Zeroranger Save File
Tracee Hsiang
I just go to the save file, which is 17 numbers long, and rename the savegame.bac. I have six extra saves, three for the game after the Sept update: .bac1a, .bac2a and .bac3a, and three for the new game: .bac1b,2b and 3b. I usually save at the end of the evening. I have had other games where I have lost 1200+ hours and one was 1800+ hours and I started over, frustrating yes but workable.
ZeroRanger is a criminally underrated, astonishingly difficult shoot 'em up that seems to have (unfortunately) flown under the radar for most people following its release. If you've not played the game, that's a great pun by the way. Because you play as a big plane.
Anyway, if you manage to get all the way to end of ZeroRanger, which in itself is no small feat, you're given a choice - forfeit all your continues, and you're offered ONE shot at fighting the true, final boss of the game.
If you fail, not only do you not get to retry but the game deletes your progress entirely. To add insult to injury, should you fail it also makes you watch an extended, unique cutscene of your demise. ZeroRanger then makes a point of showing you your save file getting deleted, just to rub salt in the wound.
The karmic themes even affect the meta progression of Zeroranger. Score contributes towards earning the next of nine total continues, used to retry a stage from a checkpoint after death. Continues are represented by the nine orbs that fill out a wheel at the end of the run, which itself resembles the Wheel of Samsara, often used by Buddhists to describe the cycle of existence that mortal beings are subject to.
By framing each attempt as another cycle or reincarnation, it implies that each death has in fact happened, and the only way to escape the cycle is with enough perseverance and knowledge. It blows up the scale to a cosmic degree, and makes your journey to the end of the game, and the knowledge you build of its world, into a form of mechanical and narrative progression.
Completing the first phase reveals the true form of the final boss, Despair, a suitably terrifying challenge with a massive suite of attacks whose design could inspire its own essay. Compared to the cerebral challenges preceding it, this final form is more straightforward, but learning the complexities of the patterns often felt as hard as the combined challenge of every obstacle met on the way here.
So I cheated. I downloaded my save from the cloud, backed it up, then went back and completed it on my third try, after restoring my save twice. As I finished the final challenge, Zeroranger left me with the same message it began with:
**CAVE: Developer of several major entries in the genre, and credited with popularizing the danmaku (bullet curtain) or bullet hell sub-genre. Their games are often marked by complex enemy bullet patterns, with a powerful player arsenal that can hit many parts of the screen at the same time.
RFID is a contactless radio-tag technology. It is quite common and you may see it in a lot of places: intercoms, bank cards, public transport passes, office passes, they are used to track domestic animals, for toll collection, etc. The two main RFID tag types are high frequency and low frequency.
Most RFID tags are passive tags with no internal power source. The chip inside is completely turned off until the tag is exposed to a reader's electromagnetic field. As soon as it comes within range, the tag's antenna begins absorbing energy from the reader's EM field and the chip receives power. The chip then turns on and begins communicating with the reader. It's worth mentioning, that a tag's antenna is tuned to a specific frequency, so the tag can only activate when it is inside a suitable electromagnetic field.
On the outside RFID tags can be quite different: cards both fat or thin, key fobs, bracelets, coins, rings, or even stickers. Judging by the visuals alone it's almost impossible to distinguish the frequency or protocol the tag operates on.
Quite often manufacturers use similar plastic cases for different types of RFID fobs operating on different frequencies. Two absolutely visually similar tags might be totally different inside. It is worth considering when you try to distinguish the type of tag you have. In this article, we will be looking at the two most popular types of RFID tags that are used in access control systems. Flipper Zero supports both their frequencies.
The easiest way to understand what range of the RFID tag is operating on is to look at the antenna. Low-frequency tags (125 kHz) have an antenna made of a very thin wire, literally thinner than a hair. But such antennas have a large number of turns, therefore, such an antenna looks like a solid piece of metal. High-frequency cards (13.56 MHz) have a significantly smaller number of thicker turns, with visible gaps between them.
You can shine some light through an RFID card to see an antenna inside. If the antenna has only a few large turns, it is most likely a high-frequency antenna. If the antenna looks like a solid piece of metal with no gaps between the turns, it is a low-frequency antenna.
Low-frequency tags are often used in systems that do not require high security: building access, intercom keys, gym membership cards, etc. Due to their higher range, they are convenient to use for paid car parking: the driver does not need to bring the card close to the reader, as it is triggered from further away. At the same time, low-frequency tags are very primitive, they have a low data transfer rate. For that reason, it's impossible to implement complex two-way data transfer for such things as keeping balance and cryptography. Low-frequency tags only transmit their short ID without any means of authentication.
High-frequency tags are used for a more complex reader-tag interaction when you need cryptography, a large two-way data transfer, authentication, etc.
It's usually found in bank cards, public transport, and other secure passes.
A separate NFC controller (ST25R3916) is used for high-frequency protocols (NFC). It takes care of everything related to hardware interaction with the cards: reading and emulation. Low-frequency 125 kHz protocols are implemented programmatically via a custom analog frontend, that works in cooperation with MCU and also allows to read, write and emulate.
The top part of the PCB is shielded with a ferromagnetic layer which isolates the rest of the electronic components from interference and extends the operating range by reflecting the high-frequency field.
During assembly, the antennas are glued into Flipper's back panel. It connects to the PCB with pogo-pins. This greatly simplifies the assembly, as no cables are used and no UFL connectors are required.
Low-frequency tags store a short ID, just a couple bytes long. The tag's ID is compared to IDs stored in the database of a controller or an intercom. However, the card will transmit its ID to anyone asking as soon as it receives power. Quite often the ID is inscribed on the card itself, so you can take a picture and input it into the Flipper manually.
In reality, there are a lot more low-frequency protocols. But they all use the same modulation on the physical layer and may be considered, in one way or another, a variation of those listed above. At the time of writing Flipper can read, save, emulate and write all three protocols. There may be other ones, which are not supported in Flipper's firmware, but as the 125 kHz subsystem is implemented programmatically, we can add them in the future.
EM-Marin is the most common format we have in CIS. It is simple and has no copy-protection. EM-Marin cards usually have EM4100 chips inside, but there are others as well. For example, you can have an EM4305 which can be re-written unlike the EM4100.
EM4100's unique code is 5 bytes long. Sometimes you can find it on the card itself. The unique code may be written both as a decimal or in hex. Flipper displays the code in hex, however, EM-Marin cards usually just have the 3 lower bytes written on them, and not the full 5-byte number. If there is no way to read them from the card, the other 2 bytes can be brute-forced.
Some intercoms try to protect themselves from key duplication by sending a write command prior to reading. If the write succeeds, that tag is considered fake. When Flipper emulates RFID there is no way for the reader to distinguish it from the original one, so no such problems occur.
Some HID26 cards have numbers written on them - they are the sales order number and the card's ID. You can't figure out the whole 3 bytes with that information alone, the card only has the 2 bytes printed on it in decimal format. That is the card's ID.
Flipper can only work with the HID26 protocol of the HID family. In the future, we plan to extend this list. HID26 is the most popular one since it is compatible with most digital access control systems.
Indala is an RFID protocol developed by Motorola and later acquired by HID. It's a very old protocol that you won't find in modern access control systems. Rare as it is, you may sometimes find it in the field. At the time of writing Flipper works with Indala I40134.
Same as with HID26, cards using Indala I40134 have a unique code that is 3 byte long. Unfortunately, Indala's data structure is proprietary and everyone who wishes to support this protocol is forced to choose whichever byte order they want, and also how they interpret the signal on the hardware level.
High-frequency 13.56 MHz tags are a set of standards and protocols. They are usually referred to as NFC, but that's not always correct. The basic protocol set used on the physical and logical levels is ISO 14443. High-level protocols, as well as alternative standards (like ISO 19092), are based upon it.
To put it simply, NFC's architecture works like this: the transmission protocol is chosen by the company making the cards and implemented based on the low-level ISO 14443. For example, NXP invented its own high-level transmission protocol called Mifare. But on the lower level, Mifare cards are based on ISO 14443-A standard.
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