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Wanderer
Account closed
Registered: Apr 2003
Posts: 478 |
And people wonder why...
I sometimes feel that the scene is 'lame'. I'm not going to get into that argument all over again.
This time, I'm blowing off steam. I released two games on the C64. One was called Jailbreak and the other called Virus. Both were basic attempts at a game, nothing extraordinary.
Years later, in 2005, I would come back to the scene to try to find some of my old releases. I found that Jailbreak had been "cracked" by another group and trained.
Jailbreak was never protected to begin with. It was uploaded to all of the warez boards when I released it. It even says "RFO" for Rage for Order on the wall of the prison. The level packing looks like shit and it spends more time processing the packer that the original did. The original was already packed (individual files crunched) and did not need a level packer.
Yet it was re-released with a trainer. Back in my day we would never re-release anything that had already been put out.
I also found Virus (thanks to Sailor of Triad). And low and behold, someone informs me there is a Virus 2. I checked and sure enough there is a sequal to my game.
EPIC (Warlord and Mendrake) managed to "crack" and "train" this game. Here's the kicker... it's the same game as mine, exactly. All they did was change the music and a few sprites. How does a public domain game with no protection get "CRACKED" ? And the trainer is the exact same trainer I had INCLUDED in the game to prevent people from re-releasing.
This is the second program I've put out that, years later, I would find "cracked and trained" when there was no crack, and using my own trainer. Changing sprites and music and calling it a sequel is pathetic.
Can you now see why I feel the way I do about the scene at times? If you're going to do this, at least don't pretend you cracked anything and leave the intro on from the person who wrote it.
Oh and guess what, Virus 2 was NTSC fixed by EPIC too. That's good because as I live in Canada and my c64 is NTSC, I would sure hate to release a game that didn't work on NTSC machines to begin with LMFAO.
And less than 24 hours after I found a copy of Virus and uploaded it to CSDB, some group re-released it in less than 24 hours with one more trainer.
It's pretty sad when a programmer has to include every single conceivable trainer known to man in his work, for if he doesn't someone will come along and strip off his intro and put it out with another trainer.
If I wanted Jailbreak +20 and Virus +22 I would have written it that way. :)
If the scene has not (partially) become lame, someone tell me how you can crack and train a public domain game, twice, taken from a BBS and already trained? When I left the scene this was unheard of, and today it seems the norm.
http://www.ontarioghosttowns.com/c64
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cadaver
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1153 |
Well I sure hope any nowadays game makers spend more effort on the game itself than the protection, even with the terrible possibility of crackers regarding them "lame" then :) |
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Jazzcat
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1044 |
Well its not that crackers regard them as lame for not writing protections for their games. It is if game producers bitch and moan about games being released or cracked, yet they do nothing to deter it, I like what AEG did with Turrican 3, he released the source code to the public and made the game buggy, this certainly has disabled the possibility of anyone releasing it. ;)
Check out the early USA crack/copy protections, awesome stuff that would stop most of the people releasing these days. |
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cadaver
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1153 |
Yeah, that's one hell of a way to do it :)
I'm personally interested in fiendish & cunning methods of introlink-protection, but unfortunately the means to do that, excepting any disk-based and thus nonportable protections, are fairly limited.. |
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Jazzcat
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1044 |
I remember with Blitz 3000, Jon Wells had inserted over 12 ingame protections to stop us from training it. L'trimm had to remove most of them to get our trainers working properly. Makes it even more fun!
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Style
Account closed
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 17 |
Most good crack deterents are based on funky disk formats, which requires specialised hardware to produce.
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Jazzcat
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1044 |
Some clever ingame protection is headache enough. But it seems no one cares for it these days. A pity, as it could redefine the "regular" jobs of some people from "releasers" to "crackers". Either way its all good, the games come our way, we release them. In 2005 who would have thought this would still be happening.
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Courage
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 16 |
Try to remove the restriction in the Tanks 3000-Preview. Nothing special but maybe headache enough! ;) |
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Courage
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 16 |
Oh, and try to remove the $d016-mistake in your Tanks 3000-Intro! Too much headache for you i'm afraid! :P |
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Jazzcat
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1044 |
Yes indeed. Only a "release" that one. But previews have never been much, often they are not level-packed, trained, translated or anything.
I liked the policy of Legend which was not to release previews hardly at all and just give them to other groups. Of course in 2005 this policy would be difficult to follow, as the majority of releases are previews only (sadly).
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Wanderer
Account closed
Registered: Apr 2003
Posts: 478 |
Quote: Yeah, that's one hell of a way to do it :)
I'm personally interested in fiendish & cunning methods of introlink-protection, but unfortunately the means to do that, excepting any disk-based and thus nonportable protections, are fairly limited..
I once wrote a clever utility which would compare the end load address of a program (I think it's $2d and $2e but I forget... it's been years and years). Protected it with undocumented opcodes and encrypted it. It was called Lamer Killer.
The idea was that people could use it to prevent that dreaded 'third' intro from lamer groups.
Turns out within days some loser Euro group, needing something to release, 'cracked' this. Now I'm not going to bitch and moan about that fact, but I will say why would you do this when it was meant to help sceners?
Anyway if you want to do intro protection (if I get your intent properly) thats one way, another is to EOR the code, wipe out the IRQ and other pre-setup data (eg. LDA #$00: STA $d020) with zero's once it's been executed...
But there's never going to be any real way to stop someone from kicking into a monitor and just looking for the point where you check for spacebar and execute the actual game.
You can only shrug and hope the world knows YOU released something first and any others are mock and shame... if that's your intention... again I'm not sure what it is you want to do :)
p.s. one of my favourite things to do was to check $0100 to about $01d0 for ECA linker code. It will always contain a JMP $xxxx right after setting $01 to 37. This will tell you where the intro/game execution begins and allows you to change that jump to, $FCE2 or something... and save the code.
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