Master Server
Background
The HoN masterserver is used for login, updating (patching), as well as controlling much of the UI functionality in the game.
Some examples include:
- Hosted games list
- Providing stats information to the client
- Sending the friends list to the client
- Store (displaying and purchasing)
- Plinko and ticket redemption
- Cloud store/retrieval of settings
And more.
The server uses port 80. The official endpoint was masterserver.naeu.heroesofnewerth.com, but will be offline in June 2022.
To specify the custom URL or IP address to use with HoN, simply make a shortcut of the game and add the -masterserver IP:port.
For example, if I want to connect to the localhost at port 666, I created a shortcut with the following info:
"C:\Program Files\Heroes of Newerth x64\hon_x64.exe" -masterserver 127.0.0.1:666
Then you can just use this custom shortcut to launch HoN connecting to a specific master server address.
Client <-> Server interaction
The server is basically just a REST API written in PHP. The client sends HTTP POST requests to the server and the server responds. Since HTTP is relatively stateless, the server provides the client with a cookie value to identify itself for subsequent requests upon login.
The client begins the authentication flow.
After authentication, the masterserver provides the client with the IP and port for the chat server (which the client then connects to using TCP).
Throughout the session, the client uses numerous HTTP requests over the same port 80 connection. These are requests that target .php endpoints.
The function that the PHP endpoint should respond to is set using the query parameter f=. E.g. /some_endpoint.php?f=something would call the something function on the some_endpoint.php endpoint.
For example, one such request might look like this:
POST /client_requester.php?f=pre_auth HTTP/1.1
Host: masterserver.naeu.heroesofnewerth.com
User-Agent: S2 Games/Heroes of Newerth/4.10.1.0/wac/x86_64
Accept: */*
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Content-Length: 705
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
<data_would_be_here_but_was_ommitted_to_be_condensed>
This is a pre_auth request to the client_requester.php endpoint, which is used during the authentication flow,
The server then responds over HTTP with a HTTP/1.1 200 OK in the following format:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2022 03:16:33 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.15 (CentOS)
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.4.23 ZendServer/6.3.0
Content-Length: 555
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
<data_would_be_here_but_was_ommitted_to_be_condensed>
The data is PHP serialized.
The data may look like this (from a real patcher request):
a:5:{i:0;a:8:{s:7:"version";s:6:"4.10.1";s:2:"os";s:3:"wac";s:4:"arch";s:6:"x86_64";s:3:"url";s:42:"http://cdn.naeu.patch.heroesofnewerth.com/";s:4:"url2";s:42:"http://cdn.naeu.patch.heroesofnewerth.com/";s:14:"latest_version";s:6:"4.10.1";s:24:"latest_manifest_checksum";s:40:"33b5151fca1704aff892cf76e41f3986634d38bb";s:20:"latest_manifest_size";s:7:"3628533";}s:7:"version";s:8:"4.10.1.0";s:15:"current_version";s:8:"4.10.1.0";s:25:"current_manifest_checksum";s:40:"33b5151fca1704aff892cf76e41f3986634d38bb";s:21:"current_manifest_size";s:7:"3628533";}
For working with these packets yourself, there are dozens of online tools to deserialize the data into a human readable format (example.)
The deserialized version is much more managable:
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[version] => 4.10.1
[os] => wac
[arch] => x86_64
[url] => http://cdn.naeu.patch.heroesofnewerth.com/
[url2] => http://cdn.naeu.patch.heroesofnewerth.com/
[latest_version] => 4.10.1
[latest_manifest_checksum] => 33b5151fca1704aff892cf76e41f3986634d38bb
[latest_manifest_size] => 3628533
)
[version] => 4.10.1.0
[current_version] => 4.10.1.0
[current_manifest_checksum] => 33b5151fca1704aff892cf76e41f3986634d38bb
[current_manifest_size] => 3628533
)
For more information on these endpoints, see Endpoints.