Silver Earring saved game?
Stuart Southerland
the point where I have to get past the dogs at the factory. I will never be
able to do this; I have an ongoing problem with my screen being too dark
that I simply cannot fix with this game. The screen is almost totally dark
during this scene. If someone has a saved game after this point that he or
she could send me, I'd appreciate it.
I checked the saved game folder, and it appears to only have jpegs in it.
Will a jpeg work?
Thanks in advance;
Jenny100
The save would be included in the jpeg.
Journey to the Center of the Earth was the same way.
Stuart Southerland
Are you playing the Silver Earring?
Stuart
"Jenny100" <nos...@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:01Lsd.6315$Va5....@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
Tara
> I'm playing Sherlock Holmes and the Secret of the Silver Earring. I am at
> the point where I have to get past the dogs at the factory. I will never be
> able to do this; I have an ongoing problem with my screen being too dark
> that I simply cannot fix with this game. The screen is almost totally dark
> during this scene.
Have you checked the game's video settings for brightness or gamma?
> I checked the saved game folder, and it appears to only have jpegs in it.
> Will a jpeg work?
jpeg's are image files.
Tara
Jenny100
> Jenny:
>
> Are you playing the Silver Earring?
>
> Stuart
No. I haven't started it.
Jenny100
Yes, but the jpegs in Journey to the Center of the Earth (also
developed by Frogwares) included save information. I assume
Silver Earring is the same way if all that is in the Save
folder is jpegs.
Stuart Southerland
"Tara" <tara...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:61f7c3a1.04120...@posting.google.com...
> "Stuart Southerland wrote:
>
>> I'm playing Sherlock Holmes and the Secret of the Silver Earring. I am at
>> the point where I have to get past the dogs at the factory. I will never
>> be
>> able to do this; I have an ongoing problem with my screen being too dark
>> that I simply cannot fix with this game. The screen is almost totally
>> dark
>> during this scene.
>
> Have you checked the game's video settings for brightness or gamma?
There is *nothing*. As I said, this dark monitor is an ongoing problem for
me, and I wince whenever I load a new game that doesn't have in-game video
settings. Most do, but the Secret Earring does not. It must not be that big
of a deal to have the feature, I seem to remember it being done as a patch
in some games.
What is puzzling is that in this game, the Windows settings don't seem to
have much of an effect on the game settings. I have turned things up about
as light as they will go and the screen is still too dark. I've muddled
through until now, but at the point when you must get past a security guard,
in the dark, in the rain... the screen is just about black.
I need a saved game if anyone is playing and knows the place in the game
that I'm talking about.
Thanks!
Stuart
Murray Peterson
news:l9Zsd.125247$%x.28602@okepread04:
> What is puzzling is that in this game, the Windows settings don't seem
> to have much of an effect on the game settings. I have turned things
> up about as light as they will go and the screen is still too dark.
I just ran into that problem this past week with a different (and older)
game. I even have a video card that has hot keys for modifying video
settings, but the game seems to have a "lock" on the gamma and brightness
settings.
I have found several things that have worked for me in the past:
Many games modify the video settings when they first start, and then leave
them alone. alt-tab (or windows key) out of the game and get back to the
desktop. Then change the video settings while the game is still running,
and alt-tab back into the game.
If your video card is an Nvidia, increase the "vibrance" setting. This
seems to modify settings that the game leaves alone.
--
Murray Peterson
Email: murray.s...@shaw.ca
URL: http://members.shaw.ca/murraypeterson/
tara...@yahoo.com
> Yes, but the jpegs in Journey to the Center of the Earth (also
> developed by Frogwares) included save information. I assume
> Silver Earring is the same way if all that is in the Save
> folder is jpegs.
Interesting. Could you, or someone, explain how a compressed image
file can contain saved game information?
Tara
tara...@yahoo.com
> Yes, but the jpegs in Journey to the Center of the Earth (also
> developed by Frogwares) included save information. I assume
> Silver Earring is the same way if all that is in the Save
> folder is jpegs.
Interesting. Could you, or someone, explain how a compressed image
Murray Peterson
@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
> Interesting. Could you, or someone, explain how a compressed image
> file can contain saved game information?
Do a google search for the word "steganography". There is a long history
of hiding information inside jgp and gif files. The "how" varies, but in
general, you need to think of a jpg or gif image as being something with
low entropy (lots of redundant information), so you can replace that extra
information with data of your choice. One example would be to replace all
of the least significant bits with save game data -- the human eye is
really unlikely to ever detect a difference of one bit in a 24-bit depth
picture.
tara...@yahoo.com
> Do a google search for the word "steganography". There is a long
history
> of hiding information inside jgp and gif files.
I posted the question of a game putting save information in image files
in alt.hacker (these are the good guys, not black-hat hackers or
crackers) and got this response from a knowledgable person:
"Actually, it's rarely used in JPEGs. It's more frequently seen in
lossless image formats, like BMP, GIF, and PNG. Using steganography is
hard to do in JPEG files due to its lossy nature.
If someone is hiding information in JPEGs I'd check out some of the
JPEG
file headers first before I started wondering if steganography was
used.
As for why anyone would use that as a system for save games, if it's
true I can only guess that drugs were involved at some point. ;-)
A far more likely explanation is that someone was accidentally saving
pictures into the game save directory, and someone (possibly the same
person, possibly someone else) then jumped to the conclusion that the
games were saved in JPEGs."
Tara
--
http://users4.ev1.net/~taragem/security.htm
Stuart Southerland
continue the game. It was a jpeg, and it worked. I can't explain it; but it
*is* how this game saves games. Since it is such a apparrantly so rare, I
can only think that it is somehow connected with the fact that I can't seem
to change the brightness or gama in a saved game - I seem to be stuck with
the settings that I started out with. I haven't tried starting over to check
this theory, and I probably won't. The game is not *that* good. ;-)
Stuart
<tara...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1102416721.1...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
Murray Peterson
@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
> I posted the question of a game putting save information in image files
> in alt.hacker (these are the good guys, not black-hat hackers or
> crackers) and got this response from a knowledgable person:
>
> "Actually, it's rarely used in JPEGs. It's more frequently seen in
> lossless image formats, like BMP, GIF, and PNG. Using steganography is
> hard to do in JPEG files due to its lossy nature.
This "knowledgable" person has got it quite wrong. Lossy compression of
a jpeg does not make it any harder to hide or retrieve the information;
the jpeg viewer is a different program than the one that extracts or
inserts the hidden information. Also, steganography involving jpeg files
is quite common -- here is some source code for a utility to do exactly
that:
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/crypt/steganography/jpeg-jsteg-v4.diff.gz
> If someone is hiding information in JPEGs I'd check out some of the
> JPEG file headers first before I started wondering if steganography was
> used.
I have no idea why looking at the headers would tell you anything. They
should look exactly like a normaal jpeg header.
> As for why anyone would use that as a system for save games, if it's
> true I can only guess that drugs were involved at some point. ;-)
Saving the saved game information inside a jpeg sound like a great idea
to me -- you can use a normal picture viewer to look at the snapshot of
the game.
Murray Peterson
> Well, someone was nice enough to send me a saved game so that I could
> continue the game. It was a jpeg, and it worked. I can't explain it;
> but it *is* how this game saves games. Since it is such a apparrantly
> so rare, I can only think that it is somehow connected with the fact
> that I can't seem to change the brightness or gama in a saved game - I
> seem to be stuck with the settings that I started out with. I haven't
> tried starting over to check this theory, and I probably won't. The
> game is not *that* good. ;-)
How and where the game information is saved would have nothing to do with
the gamma setting capabilities of the game engine.
Stuart Southerland
"Murray Peterson" <m...@home.com.invalid> wrote in message
news:Xns95B85E86...@24.71.223.159...
> How and where the game information is saved would have nothing to do with
> the gamma setting capabilities of the game engine.
It's not the capabilities of the game engine; it's the fact that no matter
how bright I set my video card, the game is "locked." I realize that the
game engine has no gama or brightness control in the game menu. Frankly, I
don't know why I can't adjust the brightness in the game by changing the
video card settings, I've just never had it happen before, so I'm guessing
that it has something to do with the save game system.
I very well may be wrong.
Stuart