Cracking a Game ?
Walter Dao
As a starter, I know how to crack copy protections of games for the c-64,
all I needed was a good trusty monitor, track editor and some small utilities
to make life easy.
Now how do they do it on the Amiga ? most of the program are 100's of kb, with
weird disk format, and all kind of nasty tricks.
is ReSource one of their weapons ? (like for the one who wrote the patch for
f-18, did he Disassemble the whole prg to find the right offsets and codes to
modify ?)
Walt
Jerry Kuch
>
>As a starter, I know how to crack copy protections of games for the c-64,
>all I needed was a good trusty monitor, track editor and some small utilities
>to make life easy.
Cool. You could find your way around a 16-bit address space, a small ROM
OS, and an essentially fixed memory map. Not bad.
>Now how do they do it on the Amiga ? most of the program are 100's of kb, with
>weird disk format, and all kind of nasty tricks.
This is to keep twerps from stealing the stuff and spreading it across the
world. Unfortunately it still happens often enough that hostile and
legitimate-user impeding copy protection schemes still exist. Why don't you
spend your effort writing something new and original that other people might
want to use, or even, think of it, pay you for. It would be a bit more
constructive than ripping somebody off.
>is ReSource one of their weapons ? (like for the one who wrote the patch for
>f-18, did he Disassemble the whole prg to find the right offsets and codes to
>modify ?)
I hate to break this to you, but this newsgroup is frequented by a fair number
of people who would be victimized by the stuff you intend to do. I really
doubt that any of them are going to be willing to give you the step-by-step
guide to software theft.
> Walt
Charlie Comstock
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
May your key caps fall off, your monitor fade, your power glitch, and your
harddisk crash! The world is not in need of more software pirates.
Charlie Comstock
Dan_E_...@cup.portal.com
For an OS-based program (like f-18), ReSource is certainly the best weapon.
Most games (and all good games :)) don't use the OS, however, so you'll use
different tools. My best advice is to resist the urge to crack and learn the
Amiga first. If you're used to C64 monitors, get AmigaMon by Timo Rossi; it's
a great program. And think about programming some cool utilities INSTEAD
of wasting too much time cracking!
Dan
James McCoull
Be careful of what you say, this person was simply enquiring for facts on
how to crack software, not how to break the law, or steal. Anyway in some
countries if he was seriously called a 'thief', 'pirate' or etc... he could
take the accuser to court...
I believe the correct term is copyright infringer.
Also a person "smart" enough to crack software, wouldnt be stupid enough to
spread it around - would they? I mean they would be able to work out, that
such spreading will the kill the amiga software industry?
[should i say *DID* kill the software industry...]
I mean those clever people like 'Red Sector' and 'Quartex' who write those
great demos, wouldnt be stupid enuff to use a Replay to crack every new
game - hours after release (and sometimes before release...) , and to spread
them 'round the globe in weeks. They wouldnt be stupid enought to believe
that the amiga market can sustain the same levels of piracy as the pc-clone
market...
---
As usual to avoid offence insert a liberal scattering of :) 's
Adisak Pochanayon
Actually, there are legitimate reasons to want to crack games. Heck
I wish I knew more about copy-protection schemes. I am a professional Amiga
programmer who has written two commercial games on the Amiga Market and I
think copy-protection is often very stupid. Recently, the company I work
for acquired some software from Europe it was considering distributing.
because of the wierd copy-protection on the program, it would not run on
anything other than a standard 68000. As a result w,e were unable to sell
the program. Another programmer and I spent several days going through
their copy-protection before deciding the game wasn't worth the hassle. As
a result, both our companies lost money.
Kristian Nielsen
didn't *SAY* that the intent was to pirate software - it's just an
assumption you're making. After all, if I buy an expensive Swiss
alarm-clock and dis-assemble it to see how it's made it MAY be because
I wan't to sell cheap copies made in the East, but most likely it's
just because I'm facinated by the construction.
I remember the happy days of being a teenager, where the main fun from
a new game wasn't playing it (I tend to find action games very boring
after a few hours), but rather figuring out 'how it was done'. The
magazine 'Your Spectrum' (yes - it was back even before the Amiga was
born) used the term 'hacking' for disassembling a program, patching a
game to give 'infinite lives' etc. It even contained a regular
'hackers guide' column giving 'POKE's for games and sometimes
describing a particulary clever trick in some program (anyone remember
'Jet Set Willy' ?). Those were the days! Sure, the information could
be used for piracy, but that was never the spirit of those articles.
Of course, thinking back it is amazing that I spent so much time
studying uncommented assemblercode (not even symbolic labels!) when
today I'd winch at a few 1000's of lines of poorly commented C code.
But it was tremendous fun back then.
Anyway, in my opinion there's little scope in breaking the copy
protection of games on the Amiga since an Amiga program that forces
you to boot your machine to run it is redicolous (sorry, can't spell
that :). This is by definition, not opinion, so please don't flame me
(or at least do it by mail).
(this should probably have gone to alt.folklore.computers but what the
heck...)
- Kristian.
Lynne K Wahl
> Actually, there are legitimate reasons to want to crack games. Heck
[bunch of neat stuff deleted]
Heck yes, I agree!! When I bought "Dragons Lair II:Escape from Singes Castle"
I loved the heck out of it. Unfortunatly, I lost the little red piece of
paper that the copy protection was on. When I called the company, they
wanted about as much to replace the paper as I paid for the game. So....
I bought Mavrick, deprotected the game, and now I like it even better. :)
Nothing breaks the spirit of a game like playing along and suddenly
have to go pawing through your manuals. At least "Escape" allows you
to copy it to the hard drive. From what I have read, "Time Warp" will
force you keep a copy of the original floppy in the drive :-(
--
--Lynn Wahl lw...@matt.ksu.ksu.edu | The meek will inherit the
Kansas State University Student | earth, the rest of us are
Soil Conservation Service Computer Specialist | going to the stars.
#All my opinions have been surgically removed.
Franz Hemmer
>all I needed was a good trusty monitor, track editor and some small utilities
>to make life easy.
>
>Now how do they do it on the Amiga ? most of the program are 100's of kb, with
>weird disk format, and all kind of nasty tricks.
YOU should really go back to the C64 and drop your Amiga, so that SW-houses
can get their hard-earned cash.
--
*-------------------------------------------------------------------------*
| CBMNET: cbmehq!cbmden!hemmer!hem...@cbmvax.commodore.com |
| __ UseNet: (uunet|rutgers|pyramid)!cbmvax!cbmehq!cbmden!hemmer |
| __/// Best regards FidoNet: 2:231/126.6 PhoneNo: +45-86803067 |
| \XX/ - Franz / HemSoft Developments. >> Carpe Diem! << |
| Located in Silkeborg, Denmark, Europe |
*-------------------------------------------------------------------------*
Boerge Noest
I would like to align some data at an address that is a multiple of 128,
and I tried to do a cnop 0,128. I had no luck with this under ArgAsm(1.07)
and Macro68(2.213(?)).
Can this be done? (I ended up checking the last 7 bits of the addresses
against each other instead of an and.b #$7f, tst.b)
Thanks in advance.
--
|/// bor...@stud.cs.uit.no (Boerge Noest) | Amiga B2000 \\\|
|// Box 218, 9001 Tromsoe, Norway | Remember to :-) when needed \\|
|/ The worlds northermost university | Life is worth living. \|
Devitt
>and I tried to do a cnop 0,128. I had no luck with this under ArgAsm(1.07)
>and Macro68(2.213(?)).
>
>Can this be done? (I ended up checking the last 7 bits of the addresses
>against each other instead of an and.b #$7f, tst.b)
I, too, would like to align some copper lists to a 128 byte boundary.
I am using asmone's section directive with chip memory allocated.
Is this alignment supported by the DOS loader?
Jeffrey D. Smith
ORG (*+128-1)/128*128
The "ORG" directive (maybe it's different on Macro68) tells the
assembler to move the location counter somewhere. The expression
adds 127 to the current location "*" then divides by your line
size of 128 which discards any remainder, then multiples by the
line size to get the actual location. To align to any boundary,
just add the boundary (less 1) to the current location, then
integer divide by boundary, then integer multiply by boundary.
Works every time, even for weird boundaries. :-)
Now, if you are doing something like AllocMem, then you'll have
to over-allocate and round up to the boundary (freeing the slop).
Hope this helps.
Colin Plumb
>> I, too, would like to align some copper lists to a 128 byte boundary.
>> I am using asmone's section directive with chip memory allocated.
>> Is this alignment supported by the DOS loader?
Here's the trick. cnop or whatever, will align the code to the boundary
relative to the start of the hunk, but the DOS loader calls AllocMem, which
will return an 8-byte-aligned chunk, then it puts a next pointer and size
at the start of the memory chunk (SegList), then it stuffs the code off disk
there. Thus, you can't get better than 8-byte alignment.
In article <2aOG02j...@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> jd...@amail.amdahl.com writes:
> I don't remember the exact syntax for Macro68, but here goes:
>
> ORG (*+128-1)/128*128
>
> The "ORG" directive (maybe it's different on Macro68) tells the
> assembler to move the location counter somewhere. The expression
> adds 127 to the current location "*" then divides by your line
> size of 128 which discards any remainder, then multiples by the
> line size to get the actual location. To align to any boundary,
> just add the boundary (less 1) to the current location, then
> integer divide by boundary, then integer multiply by boundary.
>
> Works every time, even for weird boundaries. :-)
Sorry, but it doesn't.
> Now, if you are doing something like AllocMem, then you'll have
> to over-allocate and round up to the boundary (freeing the slop).
Worse yet, while freeing the slop (as long as you know about the
8-byte alignment) works on a normal Amiga, it's not documented to work
(read: can be changed at any time) and doesn't under things like
MungWall. So, annoying as it is, don't do it.
I had some serious pain once over this myself. I wanted to load up
a buffer and free the parts I didn't want. I had to go to a rather
more complex scheme to load it in chunks and re-use bits of buffers
I'd already allocated rather than letting the system take care of it.
But the code works under MungWall, Enforcer, 1.3, 2.0, and everything
else.
--
-Colin
Kriston J. Rehberg
>This is to keep twerps from stealing the stuff and spreading it across the
>world. Unfortunately it still happens often enough that hostile and
>legitimate-user impeding copy protection schemes still exist. Why don't you
>spend your effort writing something new and original that other people might
>want to use, or even, think of it, pay you for. It would be a bit more
>constructive than ripping somebody off.
No, it is a way to ensure that your expensive software investment
won't suddenly go away when your disks wear out. It's also a way to
find out how to make that poorly-written game can be installed on a
hard disk, or work on something other than a 68000 cpu.
SHUT UP!
>I hate to break this to you, but this newsgroup is frequented by a fair number
>of people who would be victimized by the stuff you intend to do. I really
>doubt that any of them are going to be willing to give you the step-by-step
>guide to software theft.
The person wasn't trying to victimize anyone. He just wanted to know
how it is done.
Fucking righteous twerps like you make me sick.
--
Kriston J. Rehberg, POD Consultant INET: con...@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu
Binghamton Computer Services BIT: CON...@BINGVAXA.BITNET
#include <stddisclaimer.h> FIDO: kris.rehberg at 1:272/94 or 1:272/51
Labra lege: Hackito ergo sum Only Amiga makes it possible!
"Your lack of common decency reminds me of a computer" - emacs M-x flame
Jerry Kuch
>In article <1992Jun18....@reed.edu> ku...@reed.edu (Jerry Kuch) writes:
>
>
>No, it is a way to ensure that your expensive software investment
>won't suddenly go away when your disks wear out. It's also a way to
>find out how to make that poorly-written game can be installed on a
>hard disk, or work on something other than a 68000 cpu.
>
>SHUT UP!
>
>
>The person wasn't trying to victimize anyone. He just wanted to know
>how it is done.
>
>Fucking righteous twerps like you make me sick.
>
One sentence.
Like me where I shit.
Have a nice day.
Another sentence.
>--
>Kriston J. Rehberg, POD Consultant INET: con...@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu
>Binghamton Computer Services BIT: CON...@BINGVAXA.BITNET
>#include <stddisclaimer.h> FIDO: kris.rehberg at 1:272/94 or 1:272/51
>Labra lege: Hackito ergo sum Only Amiga makes it possible!
>"Your lack of common decency reminds me of a computer" - emacs M-x flame
--
Jerry Kuch (t-ge...@microsoft.com) | "Sic Gorgianus Allos Subjectatus Nunc."
"I was wrong to play God. Life is precious, not a thing to be toyed with.
Now take out that brain and flush it down the toilet." - Montgomery Burns
Paul Kienitz
> > of kb, with
> >
> > weird disk format, and all kind of nasty tricks.
> >
> > is ReSource one of their weapons ? (like for the one who wrote the
> > patch for f-18, did he Disassemble the whole prg to find the right
> > offsets and codes to modify ?)
> THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF
> May your key caps fall off, your monitor fade, your power glitch, and
> your harddisk crash! The world is not in need of more software pirates.
I don't know what "patch for f-18" he's talking about, but I once
hacked a patch for F-18 Strike Eagle II ... TO FIX A BUG in the
keyboard reading routine. I also eliminated manual lookup FOR MY OWN
CONVENIENCE. I have not distributed any cracked commercial software
-- that doesn't mean there's no legitimate use for the techniques
involved.
I used the PD disassembler "Dis", the Aztec debugger "DB", and NewZap.
ReSource is way too expensive for me.
scs82...@vx24.cc.monash.edu.au
Now see what you "hackers" are responsible for? I am sick and tired of stupid
programmers who think they are clever and hack stuff and write those #*$$!##
viruses! (if I ever meet the guy who wrote that *#%#%#% hussain virus I swear
I will rip his balls off and give them to my dog for breakfast). Common guys!
Look at the facts here. You are hurting the Amiga!!! The damage has already
been done.... DO SOMETHING USEFUL WITH YOUR TIME! I get friends who come up
to me and give me a box full of disks and say "can you fill them up with the
latest games?". Hell, I don't even play games! I spend hours and hours
trying to learn how to program this wonderful machine we call the Amiga, and
it sure doesn't make me happy to hear that this poor guy and his company
loose all this money because of people who care only about filling up their
disks with the "latest games", only to go over them in a week with more
"latest games". I dont program for money, and I am not a professional. But
I can imagine how pissed off professionals must be. I'm a user and I'm
pissed off! I would hate to tell you this guys, but a lot of people that I
know who *had* Amigas are now selling them for next to nothing and getting
33Mhz 386 IBM machines with 150Meg hard drives. Thankfully, a lot of them
are game players who will go and damage the IBM software industry like they
damaged the Amiga industry. Good! Better them then us. At least the IBM
is so damn huge that they don't have to worry about disappearing all together.
But Commodore is the little guy. We cant' afford to hack software at the
rates that we do. I admire groups like Red Sector, Anarchy etc for their
great programming skills. But as far as I know, they do not hack games. And
I for one find their work a lot more impressive then the work of the dickhead
who wrote the hussain virus. What Im saying is this: the Amiga deserves
better treatment. It is a computer which needs support from its users. But
Im wasting my breath arent I? Because I know there is someone reading this
who does not give a damn about what I'm saying. Just think about this
simple example: How many Gurus and Read\Write errors are caused by viruses
like Lamer Exterminator etc? Quite a few I can tell you. And do you know
what the IBM guys and the MAC guys are thinking? They think Amigas are
unreliable machines with bugged operating systems, because everywhere they
look... bang! up comes a GURU! They just laugh. Of course, these same
people who buy Amigas for games only and who copy illegal stuff usually do
not have a clue about how the Amiga works and only know how to "put the disk
in the drive", so what would they know if a virus was eating away at their
disks... I will say only this. I truly believe that the Amiga suffers a
BIG image problem, at least here in Australia, where it is simply called a
"games machine". I give up! Go f**k it up... go on... But don't come
crying to me when in a few years all you have to pick from is a stupid
IBM. There! I've said it. It's off my chest.
The Amiga has some great software (Dpaint IV, Devpac 3.0, Penpal... the list
goes on). Support it!
- Shem
scs82...@vx24.cc.monash.edu.au
> I remember the happy days of being a teenager, where the main fun from
> a new game wasn't playing it (I tend to find action games very boring
> after a few hours), but rather figuring out 'how it was done'. The
> magazine 'Your Spectrum' (yes - it was back even before the Amiga was
> born) used the term 'hacking' for disassembling a program, patching a
> game to give 'infinite lives' etc. It even contained a regular
> 'hackers guide' column giving 'POKE's for games and sometimes
> describing a particulary clever trick in some program (anyone remember
> 'Jet Set Willy' ?). Those were the days! Sure, the information could
> be used for piracy, but that was never the spirit of those articles.
>
Yeah great. Nothing wrong with "hacking" out of interest and for the
purpose of learning. I did not accuse the guy who posted the original of
anything. If he hacks because he wants to learn, good for him. I have
no problems with this. It's the idiots who deliveratly go out to do damage
that get me upset.
- Shem
scs82...@vx24.cc.monash.edu.au
Really? Righteous twerps eh? If he wanted to know how it was done, fine
with the rest of us Im sure. We were just saying we truly really hope that
he ONLY wanted to know how it was done! Because there are people out there
who want to hack that same "expensive investment" you talk about. Ever
wonder why its so expensive pal? Righteous twerps don't make me sick. Cmon
how many people do you know who really need to hack to protect their own
software? Now think how many hack to get their name up in flashy lights on
the screen? Long list eh? If they didnt do what they do, you wouldnt have
to sit there and hack your software to back it up, we wouldnt be having this
discussion, everyone would be happy, and we could be discussing some nice
assembler code instead. Pirate twerps make me sick buddy.
- Shem
Kriston J. Rehberg
> If they didnt do what they do, you wouldnt have
>to sit there and hack your software to back it up, we wouldnt be having this
>discussion, everyone would be happy, and we could be discussing some nice
>assembler code instead. Pirate twerps make me sick buddy.
> - Shem
I wasn't discussing pirate twerps. Pirates aren't the issue. People
protecting their software investment is.
Go back and re-read that post again, friend.
Kris
Peter Simons
WD> As a starter, I know how to crack copy protections of games for
WD> the c-64, all I needed was a good trusty monitor, track editor
WD> and some small utilities to make life easy.
WD>
WD> Now how do they do it on the Amiga ? most of the program are
WD> 100's of kb, with weird disk format, and all kind of nasty
WD> tricks. [...]
Cooooooool! If someone knows, could he please e-mail me too?
:-)))))))
Peti
PS: Shouldn't we honor this man in some way? Perhaps a COOLEST-
QUESTION-EVER-AWARD?
--
Peter Simons FIDO-Net USE-Net
+49 (0)228-746061 Voice 2:241/5305.5 sim...@peti.GUN.de
Glade Diviney
>In article <1992Jun23...@vx24.cc.monash.edu.au> scs82...@vx24.cc.monash.edu.au writes:
>> If they didnt do what they do, you wouldnt have
>>to sit there and hack your software to back it up, we wouldnt be having this
>>discussion, everyone would be happy, and we could be discussing some nice
>>assembler code instead. Pirate twerps make me sick buddy.
>> - Shem
>I wasn't discussing pirate twerps. Pirates aren't the issue. People
>protecting their software investment is.
>-- Kris
Shem's point was that there are quite a few more people hacking for "fame"
than "protecting their software investment". Really, now, if you purchased
a disk from company X, and it buggered out, wouldn't company X be happy
to replace it if you sent the original disk back to them? Think about it.
And, if the software doesn't run on anything but a 68000, what about writing
the company that released it and asking for a compatible version rather than
hacking it yourself? What about not purchasing it in the first place so
that software houses know that we demand programs that work on any 680x0?
Please give this "hacking to protect my software investment" crap a rest.
If we want the Amiga to be successful, we should treat it, and the software
written for it, like adults instead of 14 year old hackers.
Please follow up to .advocacy for your netting pleasure.
-=Glade Diviney
div...@prism.cs.orst.edu
Robert Wille
Protecting a software investment is a rather lame excuse for hacking a
game. A typical game costs $20-$30. Now, if a hypothetical hacker
did something productive rather than hacking a game to protect it, I'm
sure he'd make a lot more money at it than $30. So, if his disk went
out on him, he could buy another one and still have money left over.
Now I'm sure there are hackers that hack games just for the fun of it.
To me, that's a valid reason. Doing it to protect a software
investment is sheer nonsense.
Robert Wille
--
Sleep? Isn't that a totally inadequate substitute for caffeine?
K30...@alijku11.bitnet
I've really had enough of this.
There were SOOO many replies to this posting, and 99.9 % of all of you
forget about the most important thing.
Some of you say things like "Crackers hurt the Amiga", "thief" etc.
Can't you look any further ?
Of course it's not really nice to crack a game, but you can't really see
what the effects are. Is it really ONLY bad ?
To my opinion, software piracy is a natural necessity.
If there were no crackers at the Amiga, MUCH fewer people would buy it.
Do you have an idea of how many people won't buy this thing if they had
to pay for the software ? Do you have an idea how many programmers have a
copied version of some Lattice or Aztek C Compiler ?
(I have the original because I needed the manual, by the way)
Do you know how many of them are good programmers ?
I'll tell you something.
Nobody of us has an idea of how the Amiga market would develop without
crackers, and it's not THAT bad the way it is now, I think.
NOTICE: I won't say that piracy is good here, but I say that it's a natural
thing.
And then there's a notice to all crackers:
Cracking is probably the most stupid activity you can do. Watching
cheech&chong movies is more fun. Really - you spend one, two, three
afternoons watching funny hex dumps, checking funny assembler code,
making exciting backups of interesting tracks.
I've tried that exactly two times, and I'm not gonna do that again.
Not worth the effort, really.
Have you ever tried to do some really good programming ?
Some cool 68000-Assembler-intro ? An utility ?
Then you know where to put your abilities. It's not just moral reasons -
it's simply more fun.
-Michael ("Iglo")
ANTHONY FRANCIS PRESTON
| Shem's point was that there are quite a few more people hacking for "fame"
| than "protecting their software investment". Really, now, if you purchased
| a disk from company X, and it buggered out, wouldn't company X be happy
| to replace it if you sent the original disk back to them? Think about it.
|
| And, if the software doesn't run on anything but a 68000, what about writing
| the company that released it and asking for a compatible version rather than
| hacking it yourself? What about not purchasing it in the first place so
| that software houses know that we demand programs that work on any 680x0?
it doesn't work until you purchase it, then you have to complain and pay
an upgrade fee.
|
| Please give this "hacking to protect my software investment" crap a rest.
| If we want the Amiga to be successful, we should treat it, and the software
| written for it, like adults instead of 14 year old hackers.
has nothing to do with the Amiga being a success or not. If software is
low in cost and reliable there would be less of these problems.
Patrick Casey
> Shem's point was that there are quite a few more people hacking for "fame"
> than "protecting their software investment". Really, now, if you purchased
> a disk from company X, and it buggered out, wouldn't company X be happy
> to replace it if you sent the original disk back to them? Think about it.
>
> And, if the software doesn't run on anything but a 68000, what about writing
> the company that released it and asking for a compatible version rather than
> hacking it yourself? What about not purchasing it in the first place so
> that software houses know that we demand programs that work on any 680x0?
I don't have strong opinions one way or the other, but let me tell you
about a situation I'm in. I bought the game Shadow of the Beast a
couple of years ago, while I had an A500. COOL GAME! Then I sold my
A500 and a little later (after saving, scheming, etc.) bought an
A3000. It didn't come as a total surprise when the game didn't work
on my A3000, but I was still a little frustrated.
So I called Psygnosis here in the US and asked them if they planned to
release an A3000 compatible version, and they said "NO". You suggest
not to buy the software in the first place, but this is a special case
because I bought the game before the A3000 existed, and it's such a
cool game that it'd be a shame to pass on it in order to "send a
message to the company".
Who's at fault here? Nobody, I guess... But the fact that Shadow of
the Beast runs quite well on an A3000 up to a certain point leads me
to believe that it's not TOTALLY incompatible with the A3000. So that
makes me think it wouldn't be TOO difficult to make it work on an
A3000, but I suppose it's just not in Psygnosis' or the original
programmers' interest...
So, thoughts of 'cracking' or 'patching' dance in my head... Haven't
acted on them though. It'd be a pretty difficult task for me.
What do you netters think of all this? Tough luck? Don't waste my
time messing with an old game when I could be writing unnamed "useful"
software?
Patrick
--
Patrick A. Casey pac...@lexmark.com
Patrick Casey
> Some of you say things like "Crackers hurt the Amiga", "thief" etc.
> Can't you look any further ?
> Of course it's not really nice to crack a game, but you can't really see
> what the effects are. Is it really ONLY bad ?
> To my opinion, software piracy is a natural necessity.
This is an interesting view on piracy. Have any of you net people
read the "GNU Manifesto" from the GNU Emacs manual? It details
Richard Stallman's views on the software industry. I find it
intriguing! And I get the impression that according to the GNU
philosophy, piracy would pretty much cease to exist, because all
software would be "free" in the sense of liberty, and therefore pretty
much in the sense of cost as well. (This is all MY interpretation
of the GNU manifesto and nothing more. :-) ).
What do you all think about it?
Patrick
P.S. I realize this has gotten away from the original 'cracking'
post and has nothing to do with amiga programming, so maybe we should
take this to gnu.misc.discuss or some place else. I don't much care,
but I also don't want to incur the wrath of the amiga.programmer gods.
:-)
Craig B Inglis CS89
Well... just to add my 2p worth on the subject of cracking.
Main points already brought upwith which I agree :
o The Amiga wouldnt be where it is today without cracked software,
unless games were notably cheaper in its absence (somehow I doubt it)
And yes I am familiar with the difference between crackers & pirates
(swappers ? :^)
o Cheech & Chong films are indeed much more fun than cracking (I would
imagine :) , unfortunately there are more games to crack than there
are Cheech & Chong films (although I admit "Up In Smoke" may be viewed
several times without getting bored :^)
On the subject of cracking though I must make a few points :-
Someone mentioned that protected games use weird disk formats, this is true
in the majority of cases, but I would imagine this is primarily to increase
loading speed rather than anything else. After all 90+(?)% of all game disk
formats are standard MFM tracks, with non standard or missing SYNC marks,
hardly valid protection from a skilled assembler freak who has access to the
loading routine (via Action Replay or whatever). Coders should take better
care to hide such routines, or make them extremely convoluted. Professional
games writers should take note... nonstandard SYNC codes are very easy to
find, and changing them to the standard $4489 (after a small alteration to
the loader) results in a cracked game.
Similarly simple track signatures (Code in track gap, or strong bit, or
whatever) are equally useless for the same reasons. I have a copy of the
source code to the protection routine which was used on `Bubble Bobble`
many years ago... the original source code, not a disassembly... if authors
leak such material to the outside world they are themselves inviting games
to be cracked (if not pirated).
However `weird` disk formats should not be discounted as a valid method of
copy protection, there are many ways in which a suitably weird disk format
can make a crackers life very difficult. This could of course have the side
effect of making the game in question of particular interest to cracking
crews. One possible `weird` disk format which would give the crackers more
than a few headaches would be one which could not be resolved into a single
standard Amigados disk. Contrary to popular belief this may be possible in
certain cases. One method is by using alternate method of data compression
which outputs the data in the form of a bitstream which the MFM disk
controller can read (not more than one 1 in a row, not more than three 0`s
in a row)... Compression via an adpative Huffman routine using byte wide
elements (like PowerPacker etc)... followed by recompression using nibble
wide elements into a suitable MFM bitstream (not using normal method of
encoding) can lead to the creation of disks which cannot (without some
new compression mechanism) be fitted into one single Amigados compatible disk.
This would force the crackers to place the game onto 2 disks, and to sort
out how they would indicate when the disks had to be swapped etc.
Perhaps a simpler method would be to mix MFM & GCR formats on one disk, or
even on each track(?). Yes GCR coding does work (Ive used it myself), and
it is little understood, or supported by copying software.
I seem to have forgotten what I set out to say know... so Id better stop
this article here as I seem to have slipped of cracking and onto protection.
Ill finish by saying, effective protection should stop a game being cracked
within the first few months of release. The obvious method of doing this is
by making the protection routine ridiculously complex, and deeply embeded in
the code (which should also check that the protection routines have not been
altered). If software companies would drop thier prices to affordable amounts
cracking would not exist in the first place, and protection schemes of this
complexity would not be needed. Most Amiga owners in Glasgow who use cracked
software buy it from a local market at 2-3 quid a disk (theyve already been
prosecuted for selling pirate software, but the case was thrown out of
court after being deemed "too complex" as it was decided that only computer
experts would understand the case, and they themselves were biased).
Oh, before I go...
>> 'hackers guide' column giving 'POKE's for games and sometimes
>> describing a particulary clever trick in some program (anyone remember
>> 'Jet Set Willy' ?). Those were the days! Sure, the information could
>> be used for piracy, but that was never the spirit of those articles.
This was the first game I can remember which features a look-up-table &
type-in-code type protection routine, which is without doubt the least
secure. I cannot believe they have become so popular in recent years, as
they only annoy legitimate users.
When JSW came out I had no knowledge of what a Z80 was or what computers
were about in general (I think I was in primary school?), but even then it
seemed obvious to me that if you poked 0`s into the time counter in the system
variables (remember those?) in the basic loader program... the code requested
upon loading would always be the same! Very poor protection...
........bad show Mathew Smith!
Randell Jesup
I normally stay out of these, but I'll throw a few words in for what
it's worth.
cin...@cs.strath.ac.uk (Craig B Inglis CS89) writes:
> o The Amiga wouldnt be where it is today without cracked software,
> unless games were notably cheaper in its absence (somehow I doubt it)
> And yes I am familiar with the difference between crackers & pirates
> (swappers ? :^)
I would turn that around and say that the Amiga community and
Commodore (and most users) would be in better shape if there weren't so much
"cracking". If there weren't a piracy problem, you'd see some combination of
cheaper games, more games, more publishers doing Amiga stuff (especially
the productivity and high-end games), better games for the same cost, etc.
Sure, Commodore to some degree benefits in the short term due to people who
buy machines because their friend can give them 100 games. It doesn't help
most of our users, though, and in the long run it hurts Commodore as well
because people stop making the games and applications that sell our computers.
Let's say game A sells 5,000 copies. Unless it was _really_ cheap
to make, that's a loss, and the author and publisher may well either spend
less time and money to make the next game, or leave for richer pastures, or
go under. Let's say that software thieves distribute 20,000 copies of this
game (remember, that's well under 1% of all Amigas). Now, the thieves will
argue (correctly in this case) that not all of those would have bought the
game if they couldn't get it for free. Let's say 1/4 of them would have,
and you've now doubled the sales of the product, and quite possibly made it
profitable, and given incentive for the author and publisher to do more and
better games, or if it's profitable enough to take less markup and try to get
even more volume.
You can see this operating in the European games market. Because
games have shelf lives of a month or maybe two before they're spread to
large numbers of potential customers, they have to make sales fast, and they
can't afford to spend much on making things compatible, or on "deep" games,
etc. (Obviously this doesn't apply to all publishers, but a number have
taken this path.) So they pay their programmers chicken feed and generally
take advantage of them to keep costs down. Needless to say, this doesn't
help the quality of the games, and this reflects on the entire machine and
community.
I'm not saying an immediate end to all piracy would make the world
perfect, or even stop the production of bad games. I am saying that it would
help.
Entire machines and even companies have been heavily damaged or
destroyed due to piracy. For example, one of the all-time best-rated (and
generally best) games of the 8-bit days was Mule. Would you believe that
Mule only sold ~20,000 copies? (My memory is fading, this was from an
interview with Dan Bunten in Computer Gaming World I think.) Certainly it
didn't sell horribly well or make a lot of money, even though it was head and
shoulders above most other games of the era in popularity. (Yes, I have an
original C-64 copy of it.)
> o Cheech & Chong films are indeed much more fun than cracking (I would
> imagine :) , unfortunately there are more games to crack than there
> are Cheech & Chong films (although I admit "Up In Smoke" may be viewed
> several times without getting bored :^)
So watch Star Wars films, or old Abbot and Costello films, or ....
Get a life, guys (and gals).
[discussion of common simple protection schemes deleted]
>I have a copy of the
>source code to the protection routine which was used on `Bubble Bobble`
>many years ago... the original source code, not a disassembly... if authors
>leak such material to the outside world they are themselves inviting games
>to be cracked (if not pirated).
Ah, yes, the "they were asking to be robbed by walking through the
park without a gun, and therefore they deserve it" argument. Sure, someone
screwed up, though I doubt it was the author of the game that was ripped
off: most game authors have little directly to do with the protection
scheme (it's a specialty nowadays). It also could be some clerk or other
random at the publisher who got his hands on the protection code. It doesn't
make stealing any less wrong.
>Ill finish by saying, effective protection should stop a game being cracked
>within the first few months of release. The obvious method of doing this is
>by making the protection routine ridiculously complex, and deeply embeded in
>the code (which should also check that the protection routines have not been
>altered). If software companies would drop thier prices to affordable amounts
>cracking would not exist in the first place, and protection schemes of this
>complexity would not be needed.
How are they going to drop their prices if they need "ridiculously
complex" protection schemes? Those things cost money and time. And don't
say "well, if they used only simple (or no) protection and made it 10 or 20%
cheaper no one would steal it". A few wouldn't, but piracy has become such
a way of life to many people that they would pirate it anyways and then say
"well if it was cheaper we wouldn't have to, so it's their fault". WRONG.
They charge what they think will pay them back for the money and time they
spent to develop the program. I guarantee you the programmers are NOT getting
rich, with VERY few exceptions. Salary surveys in the Journal of Computer
Game Design show that games programmers/designers make between 50 and 80% of
what they could make working in industry. Very few make more than they
would elsewhere, and many barely feed and house themselves. I'm not saying
they (and the other people in the chain) don't make money, just that they're
not gouging people and not getting rich.
> Most Amiga owners in Glasgow who use cracked
>software buy it from a local market at 2-3 quid a disk (theyve already been
>prosecuted for selling pirate software, but the case was thrown out of
>court after being deemed "too complex" as it was decided that only computer
>experts would understand the case, and they themselves were biased).
If that's what "most Amiga owners" do in Glasgow, be very glad that's
not the rest of the Amiga community. If it were, there would be NO commercial
software available, and quite soon thereafter, no Amiga and no Commodore.
If I were selling software in the UK, I would _demand_ that the police do
something about it. "too complex" my ass.
BTW, in the US on-disk copy protection has largely gone away. Sure,
some people still steal it. However, the majority of the users appear to
have realized that stealing software can hurt them in the long run, and
realized that the copy protection was annoying and demanded it be removed or
they'd buy something else. This also eliminated one of the rationalizations
use by pirates: that they were merely responding to an intellectual
challenge/puzzle/whatever (and I can see the attraction of that puzzle: I
remember back in the C64 days figuring out CP schemes for amusement - but
I didn't use that knowledge to pirate). Photocopying 150 page manuals is
rather less challenging and doesn't stroke the pirate's ego as much.
I knew I shouldn't start responding, I have better things to do.
And I'm afraid the thieves won't listen anyways, because that would require
admitting that they had done something unethical. Few people like to
admit that, I'm afraid, and will come up with ever more far-out
rationalizations to avoid it.
Oh well.
--
A Novice asked the master: "What is the true meaning of programming?" The
master replied: "Eat when you are hungry, sleep when you are tired, program
when the moment is right." - The Zen of Programming
-
Randell Jesup, Jack-of-quite-a-few-trades, Commodore Engineering.
{uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, je...@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com BIX: rjesup
Disclaimer: Nothing I say is anything other than my personal opinion.
Kriston J. Rehberg
> than "protecting their software investment". Really, now, if you purchased
> a disk from company X, and it buggered out, wouldn't company X be happy
> to replace it if you sent the original disk back to them? Think about it.
Hmm. Most of my software manuals say that they want money for the
replacement. That's irresponsible. And at over $5 for the new disk?
Come on!
> And, if the software doesn't run on anything but a 68000, what about writing
> the company that released it and asking for a compatible version rather than
> hacking it yourself? What about not purchasing it in the first place so
> that software houses know that we demand programs that work on any 680x0?
Doesn't work. Just simply does not work! You go and try to talk to a
software company. YOU WILL GET NOWHERE FAST!
> Please give this "hacking to protect my software investment" crap a rest.
> If we want the Amiga to be successful, we should treat it, and the software
> written for it, like adults instead of 14 year old hackers.
Are you a 14-year-old hacker? I'm not.
>-=Glade Diviney
Kris
--
Kriston J. Rehberg, POD Consultant con...@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu
Binghamton University Computing Services CON...@BINGVAXA.BITNet
#include <stddisclaimer.h> "Labra lege: Hackito ergo sum"
Kriston J. Rehberg
>Protecting a software investment is a rather lame excuse for hacking a
>game.
Not really.
> A typical game costs $20-$30. Now, if a hypothetical hacker
>did something productive rather than hacking a game to protect it, I'm
>sure he'd make a lot more money at it than $30. So, if his disk went
>out on him, he could buy another one and still have money left over.
No! You wouldn't want to spend any more on a game than you already
paid! Nobody should be required to spend $60 for a $30 game.
Think about that. Maybe you like to piss money away? I don't.
>Robert Wille
Kris
--
Kriston J. Rehberg, POD Consultant con...@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu
Binghamton University Computing Services CON...@BINGVAXA.BITNet
#include <stddisclaimer.h> "Labra lege: Hackito ergo sum"
scs82...@vx24.cc.monash.edu.au
Psygnosis will not do it because no one plays the game anymore (well, most
people don't I guess). Trying to fix that game would be pretty hard I would
imagine (just how much did they spend on protection anyway?). I wouldnt
bother myself (besides, I wouldnt know where to begin with a game that
advanced!). The question remains? What happens to the money you spent on
the game? Shit... cases like this make it hard to support a software
company that does not support the user. Maybe if enough of us wrote to
Psygnosis and told them we think they are being silly... but... not enough
people with a 3000 would want to play it anyway I guess (arent they supposed
to be serious users *grin*). A no-win situation? Maybe. Perhaps this
excuses you from pirating just one future game (but only one!). Hehehe....
Oh I dont know. It's a tough life.
- Shem
scs82...@vx24.cc.monash.edu.au
>...
> post and has nothing to do with amiga programming, so maybe we should
> take this to gnu.misc.discuss or some place else. I don't much care,
> but I also don't want to incur the wrath of the amiga.programmer gods.
> :-)
>
> --
> Patrick A. Casey pac...@lexmark.com
Yes yes! Lets drop the topic. Time to get back to issues of coding. I
suggest we continue this on gnu.misc.discuss as suggested and give it a break
here. It certainly is an issue we could go on about for ever. The coding
gods here will not be happy with us. :*)
- Shem
Peter Wemm
>In article <1992Jun23....@beaver.cs.washington.edu> wi...@cs.washington.edu (Robert Wille) writes:
>> A typical game costs $20-$30. Now, if a hypothetical hacker
>>did something productive rather than hacking a game to protect it, I'm
>>sure he'd make a lot more money at it than $30. So, if his disk went
>>out on him, he could buy another one and still have money left over.
>No! You wouldn't want to spend any more on a game than you already
>paid! Nobody should be required to spend $60 for a $30 game.
>Think about that. Maybe you like to piss money away? I don't.
>>Robert Wille
>Kris
You think you have got it bad... Here in Australia, it costs between $60-$100
for a game here, with most of the better ones at the $99.95 mark. Thats
about US$75.
Piracy is **really** bad here, and it isn't that hard to see why.
It is unfortunate, but it seems to me that most of the software importers
are doing a 100% markup of the equivalent retail prices overseas...
--
Peter Wemm : pe...@zeus.dialix.oz.au If it's broke, fix it (The MS-DOS way)
Work phone: +61-9-479-1855 If it aint broke, don't touch it (The Unix way)
Fax: +61-9-479-1134 If we can't fix it, it ain't broke (Maintainer's Motto)
"Don't give me that intelligent life cr*p, find me something to blow up!"
Randell Jesup
>You think you have got it bad... Here in Australia, it costs between $60-$100
>for a game here, with most of the better ones at the $99.95 mark. Thats
>about US$75.
>
>Piracy is **really** bad here, and it isn't that hard to see why.
>
>It is unfortunate, but it seems to me that most of the software importers
>are doing a 100% markup of the equivalent retail prices overseas...
I would rephrase that as "games are really expensive Australia, and it
isn't hard to see why".
Put yourself in the importer's (or publisher's) shoes: if you only
sell 1/10 as many as you would normally expect, you must charge more in order
to break even (remember, they have fixed costs as well as per-unit costs).
Also, it will cause them to import fewer titles. There may be additional
reasons for the prices, such as high import duties or shipping costs, or higher
fixed costs than in other countries.
If you want cheaper games, don't pirate, instead work constructively
to try to get games to be cheaper. Patronize the cheapest distributer or
buy from companies that give better product for you dollar. Send letters
to the distributers and game companies to let them know why you didn't buy
their game and bought someone else's instead (not that you pirated it because
of price). If you can't buy the games you want at the price you are willing
to pay, use the money for something else (hardware, books, savings, whatever)
and tell them that, and don't pirate.
Hell, if people selling games are making such a profit there as
you imply, go into the business and write or distribute or sell games yourself.
I think you'll find that because of the piracy, if you sell your game at the
prices you want to buy them at, that you won't make enough to live on. I think
you'll find that many or most of the pirates who use price as a
rationalization will find another rationalization to steal your work.
Games imported to another country, especially a smaller (population-
wise) country will tend to be more expensive. Also, different countries have
different levels of overhead, taxes, number of levels of distribution, etc.
Commodore computers that cost $399 (street price) here often cost 399 pounds
(street price) in England, the equivalent of ~$700 US. The computer costs
no more to make, but various factors make it more expensive in England. On
the other side, for a while now you've been able to get A2000's in Germany
far cheaper than you can in the US (some people even bought machines from
German dealers and had them shipped to the US I hear). Prices vary in funny
ways.
Followups to .advocacy.
Robert Wille
>In article <1992Jun23....@beaver.cs.washington.edu> wi...@cs.washington.edu (Robert Wille) writes:
>
>>Protecting a software investment is a rather lame excuse for hacking a
>>game.
>
>Not really.
>
>> A typical game costs $20-$30. Now, if a hypothetical hacker
>>did something productive rather than hacking a game to protect it, I'm
>>sure he'd make a lot more money at it than $30. So, if his disk went
>>out on him, he could buy another one and still have money left over.
>
>No! You wouldn't want to spend any more on a game than you already
>paid! Nobody should be required to spend $60 for a $30 game.
I agree that nobody should be required to spend $60 for a $30 game.
But, given that there aren't many options besides, 1) fork out an
additional $30 to keep playing the game, or 2) spend a couple weekends
cracking the game, I'd rather do the former. If you spend 10 hours
cracking a game that costs $30, the return on your time is $3/hour.
It's more productive (albeit less interesting) to work at McDonald's.
The only point I was trying to make is that there are more productive
things to do than cracking. Cracking to protect an investment just
doesn't make sense economically. If cracking is your hobby or you
enjoy it, go ahead and crack. Just don't spread your work around.
--
Robert
I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am
not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Michael....@cs.cmu.edu
for the actual content, but as a sort of psychological conundrum. I
couldn't help asking myself why anyone would possibly be motivated to
expend so much effort, not to mention time, undoing a copy protection
scheme. I mean, the average person in a developed country lasts about
80 years. Why spend even five minutes of that time in such an empty and
futile pursuit?
---
It is to be hoped that the increasing access to the net by potential
crackers will reduce their ability to see software developers as
faceless, nameless opponents who must be conquered, with a concommitant
decrease in piracy. I suspect, without any proof, that the net is partly
responsible for the recent decrease in the amount of piracy, and of copy
protection, in the US.
michael
Russell McOrmond
>read the "GNU Manifesto" from the GNU Emacs manual? It details
>What do you all think about it?
Not only have I read it, but I release all the sofware I write 'CopyLeft'.
Now, here is the 'problem' with this licence (Yes, even I agree that
there are problems with it, as with anything else in life):
The average user of software are very used to the idea that if they can just
'walk away' with it, then it's automatically 'no cost' (I refuse to use
the word 'free' as it has too many meanings ;-). Even the most honest person
who for other things in their life will pay for things that happen to not
be 'tied town' or locked up don't think twice about never helping a software
developer that doesn't FORCE them to pay for the software by having
'missing featurs' (CrippleWare) missing demonstration (typical Commercial) or
even the megga guilt trip of 'ShareWare'.
If Amiga users truly wished to have software that was totally free
('LibertyWare' is a term I use) then they should change their attitudes towards
authors who would like to take this route. When a developer knows that
the user community will just 'take' and never support the software, the
developer doesn't do the work.
Now, before someone tries to say "Well, Welmat is released CopyLeft, and
it hasn't seen much support and you're writing it anyways", they have
to realize who the 'customer' for Welmat is at the moment. Technically, it
is the people who are 'supporting' Welmat that are having work done for
them first. I myself started out as just a user of the package, and ended
up taking over development because I myself need a very powerfull network
mailer. 'Technically', at this point, I am acting both as producer and
consumer of the product.
Of course, the second problem with the licence is the standard mis-conception
that software released under the GNU Public Licence is 'FreeWare'. The fact
of the matter is that 'LibertyWare' software is as different from 'FreeWare'
as Commercial is from Public Domain.
Here is to hopeing that at least part of the Amiga community will eventually
allow for different types of philosophies in software development!
>Patrick A. Casey pac...@lexmark.com
--
Opinions expressed in this message are my Own. I represent nobody else.
Russell McOrmond r...@Atronx.OCUnix.On.Ca Net Support:(613) 230-2282(V.32Bis)
FidoNet 1:163/109 Amiga-Fido 1:1/109 Current WELMAT 'keeper of sources'.
Mike Schwartz
They used to sell games for $10 for the C64 in Europe. But you have
to look at what you got for your bucks (and development efforts if you
make games). Rarely did a $10 game have few bugs, did the programmers
spend more than a month on them, or did they sell for very long before
people stopped buying them. When you pay $60 for a game, it is very
likely that the game is at least 6x better quality than the $10 game.
But someone here in the US once put rocks in a box and sold many many
of them (Pet Rocks) for a lot more than he paid. So my advice is to
pay the $60, but make sure the game is what you really want before you
buy. That's what word of mouth, magazines, comp.sys.amiga.games, and
salespeople are for - to help you decide if the game is worth the money.
If a game sells for $60 but is nothing more than a pet rock in terms
of quality, it won't sell very well. But if the game is high quality,
gives you hundreds of hours of enjoyment (an FRP can take 200 hours to
complete), yet is pirated so heavily the developers/publishers don't
make much profit, they stop supporting the Amiga. End of story.
>--
>Robert
>
>I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am
>not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
--
Author of Amiga GRn, MailMinder, Budokan, Beyond Dark Castle, Dark Castle,
and Genesis Dick Tracy and Marble Madness.
Mike Schwartz (ames!zorch!amiga0!mykes or my...@amiga0.sf-bay.org)
1124 Fremont Ave.
Los Altos, CA 94024
Lyle Scheer
> Reading the information on how to crack a game was very interesting, not
> for the actual content, but as a sort of psychological conundrum. I
> couldn't help asking myself why anyone would possibly be motivated to
> expend so much effort, not to mention time, undoing a copy protection
> scheme. I mean, the average person in a developed country lasts about
> 80 years. Why spend even five minutes of that time in such an empty and
> futile pursuit?
Why does someone climb a mountain? Why do olympic runners try to break
records? Why put a man on the moon? Why do a crossword puzzle? Why make art?
Answer: Because it's a challenge.
> It is to be hoped that the increasing access to the net by potential
> crackers will reduce their ability to see software developers as
> faceless, nameless opponents who must be conquered, with a concommitant
> decrease in piracy. I suspect, without any proof, that the net is partly
> responsible for the recent decrease in the amount of piracy, and of copy
> protection, in the US.
If there were no copy protection, there would be no crackers. As long as you
put an obstacle in somebody's way, they will invariably try to find a way to
eliminate it.
Personally, I suspect that the decrease in copy protection is more of a result
of the crackers than usenet. If you assume that a pirate will get a cracked
copy of a program no matter what copy protection is used, then the only person
the copy protection impedes is the LEGAL user of that program. Therefore, copy
protection only serves to annoy your paying customers, and is a bad decision.
Following this chain of logic, it seems like you might want to thank the
diligent work of the crackers for the trend to unprotected software.
Then again, maybe not.
--
E-Mail (NeXTmail accepted): Lyle_...@NeXT.com
"Character is what you are in the dark." -Buckaroo Banzai
"A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men." -Willy Wonka
David Gilbert
A previous post was that someone had bought the Shadow of the
Beast game, and subsequently couldn't play it on his A3000. I have
never tried this solution, but I offer it just the same.
When people were putting 68010's in their Amigas, I got one two.
It was cool at the time, but SOTB didn't run --- and the reason is the
same as in your A3000. It's the old privilidged instruction thing.
Sometime after I got the 68010, I got a recoverable `decigel' --- it
would survive a reboot. This would make most games work.
The way it functioned would be to trap the exception caused by the
illegal instruction, and then patch the code with the correct one.
SOTB, however, still crashed. It crashed differently, however,
depending on whether or not the decigel was installed.
With a little bit of hacking, I discovered that the guru reported
with the decigel installed was the address of the decigel. It
appeared that SOTB claimed all memory as it's own (at least all
standard memory).
What I hypothesised was that if the decigel was in some ram not
normally accessible to SOTB (say other chip ram in an A3000, or fast
ram that's not at $c00000), that it wouldn't crash as usual ---
because I'm thinking that SOTB just wrote over the decigel code ---
but didn't bother to re-modify the exception vector.
Anyways... someone might try this... see what happens. You still
might find that the game is way too fast. To their credit, psygnosis
did make lemmings work very well with 680x0's. On my 68030, I even
find the game loads (and goes between screens) faster, but plays
properly.
Dave.
--
David C. L. Gilbert | Something witty should be here. |
dgil...@aeshq.uucp -> this term | |
dgil...@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca -> next |-->Only Amiga makes it possible |
Environment Canada term | |
Chris_F...@cup.portal.com
writes:
>pe...@zeus.dialix.oz.au (Peter Wemm) writes:
>>You think you have got it bad... Here in Australia, it costs between $60-$10
0
>>for a game here, with most of the better ones at the $99.95 mark. Thats
>>about US$75.
>>
>>Piracy is **really** bad here, and it isn't that hard to see why.
>
> I would rephrase that as "games are really expensive Australia, and it
>isn't hard to see why".
>
> Put yourself in the importer's (or publisher's) shoes: if you only
>sell 1/10 as many as you would normally expect, you must charge more in order
>to break even.
In my opinion, this last sentence, and the attitude it expresses, is precisely
what's been wrong with the (American? world?) economy the last few decades.
Economics USED to work on a principle called "supply an ddemand," which said,
in one particular, that if DEMAND was low, the appropriate response on the
supplier's part was to "LOWER prices in order to INCREASE DEMAND," and vice
versa - a "negative feedback loop" that acted to keep things in equilibrium.
But for the last few decades, suppliers' response to "low demand" has been
to "RAISE prices in order to BREAK EVEN," exactly the WRONG thing to do and
a "positive feedback loop" that acts to push things FURTHER from equilibrium.
Am I the only person who's ever noticed this?
Apologies for failing to remove .programmer from the followups list; it went by
before I had a chance to edit it out (Portal is not like other newsreaders).
Chris Chiesa
Chris_F...@cup.portal.com
Dan_E_...@cup.portal.com
stuff like ShadowoftheBeast; it crashes because of the different
interrupt stack format. (Naturally I have a special version for my
68010. Probably works on the 3000 too, but never tried it).
Dan
Simon Raybould
Path: fulcrum!uknet!mcsun!uunet!darwin.sura.net!mips!pacbell.com!tandem!zorch!amiga0!mykes
From: my...@amiga0.SF-Bay.ORG (Mike Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Date: 30 Jun 92 09:35:24 GMT
References: <1992Jun23.1...@CS.ORST.EDU> <1992Jun23....@beaver.cs.washington.edu> <CONSP03.92...@bingsunb.cc.binghamton.edu> <1992Jun29....@beaver.cs.washington.edu>
Organization: Amiga makes it possible
Lines: 58
X-NewsSoftware: Amiga GRn (internal beta) by Mikes Schwartz & Smith
In article <1992Jun29....@beaver.cs.washington.edu> wi...@cs.washington.edu (Robert Wille) writes:
>In article <CONSP03.92...@bingsunb.cc.binghamton.edu> con...@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu (Kriston J. Rehberg) writes:
>>In article <1992Jun23....@beaver.cs.washington.edu> wi...@cs.washington.edu (Robert Wille) writes:
>>
>>>Protecting a software investment is a rather lame excuse for hacking a
>>>game.
>>
>>Not really.
>>
>>> A typical game costs $20-$30. Now, if a hypothetical hacker
>>>did something productive rather than hacking a game to protect it, I'm
>>>sure he'd make a lot more money at it than $30. So, if his disk went
>>>out on him, he could buy another one and still have money left over.
>>
>>No! You wouldn't want to spend any more on a game than you already
>>paid! Nobody should be required to spend $60 for a $30 game.
>
>I agree that nobody should be required to spend $60 for a $30 game.
>But, given that there aren't many options besides, 1) fork out an
>additional $30 to keep playing the game, or 2) spend a couple weekends
>cracking the game, I'd rather do the former. If you spend 10 hours
>cracking a game that costs $30, the return on your time is $3/hour.
>It's more productive (albeit less interesting) to work at McDonald's.
>The only point I was trying to make is that there are more productive
>things to do than cracking. Cracking to protect an investment just
>doesn't make sense economically. If cracking is your hobby or you
>enjoy it, go ahead and crack. Just don't spread your work around.
>
In the UK, if a game disk goes phutt, the software house will usually
send you a replacement if you return the original disk. I think you
have to pay the postage, but thats only a few pence.
--
Simon J Raybould (s...@fulcrum.bt.co.uk) // {o.o}
"Only joking ... Or am I ?" - Vic Reeves \X/AMIGA \-/
===========================================================================
Fulcrum communications L.T.D., Fordrough Lane, Birmingham, B9 5LD, ENGLAND.
Fabbian G. Dufoe, III
It's a nice thought. Maybe the net has also helped developers see users
of their products as something other than faceless nameless opponents who
must be conquered, with a concommitant decrease in abusive copy protection
schemes.
--Fabbian G. Dufoe, III
350 Ling-A-Mor Terrace South | GEnie: F.DUFOE3
St. Petersburg, Florida 33705 | internet: fgd3%ni...@tct.com
813-823-2350 | uucp: ...tct!deep6!nifty!fgd3
F. Sullivan Segal
>>>>to sit there and hack your software to back it up, we wouldnt be having this
>>>>discussion, everyone would be happy, and we could be discussing some nice
>>>>assembler code instead. Pirate twerps make me sick buddy.
>>
>>>protecting their software investment is.
>>
>> If we want the Amiga to be successful, we should treat it, and the software
>> written for it, like adults instead of 14 year old hackers.
>>
>game. A typical game costs $20-$30. Now, if a hypothetical hacker
>did something productive rather than hacking a game to protect it, I'm
>sure he'd make a lot more money at it than $30. So, if his disk went
>out on him, he could buy another one and still have money left over.
>Now I'm sure there are hackers that hack games just for the fun of it.
>To me, that's a valid reason. Doing it to protect a software
>investment is sheer nonsense.
>
manual lookup, or copy protection, or removing the startup screen, or
whatever else bothers you about the program.) Typically it is just a
matter of finding the offensive subroutine and changing the ($4e7f) LINK A5,xxx
to ($4e75) RTS.
If the programmer is doing a startup checksum it is usually a good idea to
add $0a to the next word. If it is a CRC check, you typically have to
find the CRC routine (Usually by watching the PC as it is running.) Some
programs decompress themselves as they run, performing a CRC check on the
compressed code, and a second CRC on the code that did the decompression
once it is complete. (Typically you attack these by executing code until
the startup is complete, (until a JMP is executed into what was once a
data segment,) and replacing the JMP with a branch into your own routine
that disables the CRC in the decoded code, as well as the offending
subroutine.)
Even the hardest of these works out to about an hour of hacking. Anything
worse and hacking the code is typically more fun than the original game.
IMHO anyone who hacks does it for the enjoyment, or perhaps to remove a
nuisance, certainly not to save money. Typically whatever you've changed
is something that you couldn't have gotten rid of by calling the company
anyway, like removing the annoying question that asks you if you really,
really, really want to leave the program now!
--
-F. Sullivan Segal
_______________________________________________________________
_
/V\ E-Credibility: (n -- ME) The unguaranteed likelyhood that
' the electronic mail you are reading is genuine rather than
someone's made up crap.
_______________________________________________________________
Mail to: flet...@netcom.com
Gustavo Cordova Avila
>In my opinion, this last sentence, and the attitude it expresses, is precisely
>...[some stuff deleted]
>Am I the only person who's ever noticed this?
>Chris Chiesa
> Chris_F...@cup.portal.com
Nope, you're not the only one to have notices it. Commerce, lately, is becoming
a supplier-oriented business, not customer oriented as it should be. People now
pay for what the supplier says they should want, not for what they really do
want... talk about greedy people.
-Gus
Randell Jesup
Sender:
Reply-To: je...@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup)
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Distribution:
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Keywords:
Chris_F...@cup.portal.com writes:
>Randell Jesup, {uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, je...@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com
>> I would rephrase that as "games are really expensive Australia, and it
>>isn't hard to see why".
>>
>> Put yourself in the importer's (or publisher's) shoes: if you only
>>sell 1/10 as many as you would normally expect, you must charge more in order
>>to break even.
>
>In my opinion, this last sentence, and the attitude it expresses, is precisely
>what's been wrong with the (American? world?) economy the last few decades.
>Economics USED to work on a principle called "supply an ddemand," which said,
>in one particular, that if DEMAND was low, the appropriate response on the
>supplier's part was to "LOWER prices in order to INCREASE DEMAND," and vice
>versa - a "negative feedback loop" that acted to keep things in equilibrium.
>But for the last few decades, suppliers' response to "low demand" has been
>to "RAISE prices in order to BREAK EVEN," exactly the WRONG thing to do and
>a "positive feedback loop" that acts to push things FURTHER from equilibrium.
Please execute a reality check.
People who sell things are in business to make money. They are not
in business to supply goods at a loss. If you've lost 90% of your possible
market to piracy, I can guarantee that the price for those that are sold
MUST be higher than if the piracy didn't exist.
Sure, there are MANY solutions to insufficient demand. You can
lower prices (though this can _easily_ lead to the "I'll make it up in
volume" problem where you get the volume and lose money on each sale - a
quick way to go out of business). You can advertise more (but that
increases your overhead costs). You can try to decrease overhead and/or
cost of goods/sales. Or you can raise prices (which can make sales drop off
further, thus increasing the overhead burden/unit). Or you can find another
product/line of work/whatever. But you've GOT to do something, or you don't
eat.
There is a price/demand curve. It is not a straight line, and it
is unlikely to be a simple curve, and it is strongly effected by alternative
products. (I.e. if xxxx is charging $30 for shoot-em-ups, it's hard to get
away with charging $60 for a shoot-em-up unless you don't care to sell very
many.) Picking the right point on that curve is tricky. Too low and you'll
sell more (though not necessarily many more), but not make enough to make it
worthwhile. Too high and you won't make money because of too few sales.
An example: if there is heavy cracking going on, the low end of
the price/demand curve may be fairly flat, i.e. lowering the price may not
boost sales all that much. Most price curves have fairly flat regions in
them, usually in the area of "normal" prices for that sort of product.
Also, usually I'd guess that the lower end and upper end are also fairly flat,
one due to saturation and the other due to only people who buy regardless of
price. The problem is the steep regions connecting those to the center
area.
(sure, this is vastly simplified. If you want to learn about this
for real, take a course in business or microeconomics. Or write a game and
try to live off the revenue. It'll change your perspective of pirates...)
followups to .advocacy.