The obfuscator (or compiler, potentially?) converts INVOKEVIRTUAL
instructions to INVOKESPECIAL in the following circumstances:
* The owner of the method is the same as the class containing the
INVOKE instruction.
* The owner's ACC_FINAL flag is set.
When those two conditions are met, and when ACC_SUPER is set on the
owner (which is always true in the RuneScape client, and the flag is
ignored in modern JVMs), then INVOKESPECIAL and INVOKEVIRTUAL are
equivalent.
This has not caused problems until now. However, the future static
scrambling transformer will break the first condition in some cases, as
it moves methods between classes.
This transformer reverses the obfuscation, such that INVOKEVIRTUAL is
used again. INVOKEVIRTUAL instructions may be moved between classes
without complication.
Graham
ccb37f120b