README

heroprotocol

heroprotocol is a Javascript port of Blizzard/heroprotocol. It is a library and standalone tool to decode Heroes of the Storm replay files into Javascript data structures.

Currently heroprotocol can decode these structures and events:

replay header
game details
replay init data
game events
message events
tracker events

heroprotocol can be used as a base-build-specific library to decode binary blobs, or it can be run as a standalone tool to pretty print information from supported replay files.

The latest version of this library has been tested and passed with builds 44256 and higher of HoTS replays. Although it is unlikely that you should encounter any issues for older versions, no testing has been done for any replays older than 44256.

Note that heroprotocol does not expose game balance information or provide any kind of high level analysis of replays; it's meant to be just the first tool in the chain for your data mining application.

What the other Fork?

This is a fallback package created due to slow replay updates from the upstream Blizzard/heroprotocol repository. This package is functionally identical to the original heroprotocol package but instead points to a repository managed by ebshimizu that contains fallback protocol files (which are duplicates of the most recent protocol version, since we assume that Blizzard is no longer actively developing the protocol). When/if Blizzard resumes regular updates of their parser library, this repository will no longer be needed.

What The Fork?

I first want to thank Mathieu Merdy (Farof) for doing most of the work on this repo in his origin repository heroprotocoljs. I, in no way, want to steal credit or cause confusion.

The reason for this fork is to keep up with my speed of development and implement the features I believe should be the extraction library.

Mathieu did a wonderful job with the initial import and product direction, but unfortunately has not been as active on the product as I have hoped. It is with regret that I have to fork to continue development, but I hope that Mathieu understands and continues development.

Justin

Installation

npm install heroprotocol --save

Usage

As a library

An usage example is provided in the "example" folder. It displays the map name and players name.

const heroprotocol = require('../');

const file = process.argv[2];

const details = heroprotocol.get(heroprotocol.DETAILS, file);

if (details) {
  const players = details.m_playerList.map(player => player.m_name.toString());

  console.log('Map:', details.m_title);
  console.log('Players:', players.sort());
}

Output:

Map: Battlefield of Eternity
Players: […]

As a command line tool

$ node bin/heroprotocol.js map.StormReplay -H --json

Outputs the map.StormReplay replay header in JSON format.

usage: heroprotocol.js replayFile [--help] [--gameevents] [--messageevents]
[--trackerevents] [--attributeevents] [--header] [--details] [--initdata]
[--stats] [--json]

Options:
  -h, --help             show this help                                       [boolean]
  -H, --header           parse protocol header                                [boolean]
  -d, --details          parse protocol details                               [boolean]
  -i, --initdata         parse protocol initdata                              [boolean]
  -g, --gameevents       parse protocol gameevents                            [boolean]
  -m, --messageevents    parse protocol messageevents                         [boolean]
  -t, --trackerevents    parse protocol trackerevents                         [boolean]
  -a, --attributeevents  parse protocol attributeevents                       [boolean]
  -s, --stats            print SPlayerStatsEvent                              [boolean]
  --json                 prints in JSON format                                [boolean]

To extract everything, you can use the extraction tool provided:

$ node bin/extract.js map.StormReplay extractionDir/ --pretty

Extracts map.StormReplay in the extractionDir directory in prettified JSON.

usage: extract.js file|dir ... outdir [-h] [-p] [-r] [-v]

Options:
-h, --help       show this help                                      [boolean]

-p, --pretty     prettifies the json                                 [boolean]

-r, --recursive  scans input folders for replays recursively         [boolean]

-v, --verbose    prints additional info                              [boolean]

Data reference

The following files are in the archive and supported by the library:

replay.details (see reference/replay.details.md for details)
replay.initdata (see reference/replay.initdata.md for details)
replay.game.events
replay.message.events (see reference/replay.message.events.md for details)
replay.tracker.events (see reference/replay.tracker.events.md for details)
replay.attributes.events

Also accessible is the replay header (see reference/header.md for details).

The following files are in the archive but not supported by this port nor the original library yet:

replay.load.info
replay.resumable.events
replay.server.battlelobby
replay.smartcam.events
replay.sync.events
replay.sync.history

Supported Versions

heroprotocol supports all protocols avalaible in the original library and can read all replays from retail versions of the game, up to and including patch 16.0. The plan is to port all future versions as they become available.

How it works

Heroes of the Storm replay files are MPQ archives. heroprotocol uses the mpyq library to read and extract the binary content out of the archive. It then parses the binary content into data structures containing the replay information.

The three main files are:

decoders.js: Contains the binary structures decoders. They are the same for all versions of the game.
protocol#####.js: Contains the data structures description of a specific public release of the game.
heroprotocol.js: Entry point. Exports the ReplayDecoder and provides the CLI.

heroprotocol.js starts by loading the earliest protocol available, protocol29406.js and uses it to parse the replay header. It then reads the replay build version in the header and loads the associated protocol#####.js containing the correct data structures to parse the full replay.

Plans

What I always wanted for personal use is a bulk analyzer that takes all your replays and give you stats, so that's my end goal for now. If it goes well I'd like to provide a website for anyone to see their stats whithout having to install this tool. Along the way I hope I can provide tools to read individual or multiple replays and all information associated in a friendlier way than Blizzard's data structures. I would also like to build a reference for those data structure. Finally I would like to explore the possibility of using this library directory in the browser, as while hard it's certainly feasible and would help third-party tool creation greatly.

Any small or big contribution appreciated whether in code, documentation, feedback or feature request.

Acknowledgements

Mathieu Merdy for the initial implementation.

Blizzard Entertainment for making the awesome Heroes of the Storm game and releasing the original heroprotocol tool.

The standalone tool uses a javascript port of mpyq to read mopaq files.

License

Open sourced under the ISC license and MIT license. See the included LICENSE file for more information.

heroprotocol-fallback

Usage no npm install needed!