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ready.
Registered: Feb 2003
Posts: 441 |
uncrackable / protected game disks
Hi,
I was wondering if there is any way to protect a disk from being copied / cracked that has not yet been broken. I remember GEOS v2.0 was very hard to crack back in the '80s but somebody managed to do it. |
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MagerValp
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1055 |
No, everything out there has been cracked a long time ago.
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Steppe
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510 |
Hm, in the comments to Reel Fishing Preview, Jazzcat wrote:
Quote:
User Comment
Submitted by Jazzcat on 20 March 2006
I suggest protection. It was done on Rubicon and until this day no one has cracked it. :)
Check the interview with Snacky about this, imagine if this approach was taken with each new game.
At least protection filters out some people from the crowd.
Jazzcat, could you be a bit more precise? And where can I find this interview with Snacky? =) |
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Burglar
Registered: Dec 2004
Posts: 1031 |
about rubicon, the only version that got released was cracked from a non-protected original (afaicr).
not sure if anyone has the real protected original though... |
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SECRET MAN
Account closed
Registered: Jun 2004
Posts: 336 |
I cracked Toki in 5 minutes.So what do you want?? haha |
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ready.
Registered: Feb 2003
Posts: 441 |
ok, but technically speaking... did the Rubicon protection worked? What about other kinds of protections, that later on got broken, worked? I think this is quite curious stuff since I have read very little about it. |
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Tch
Account closed
Registered: Sep 2004
Posts: 512 |
@Steppe: You can find this interview in Recollection #1.
Excellent interview,btw!! 8D
And yes,the shop-version of Rubicon was never cracked.
Now there lies a real challenge! ;) |
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Steppe
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510 |
Thanks Johan! I stopped reading at chapter 5 or so and didn't find a free spot to continue yet... :-/ |
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Jazzcat
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1044 |
Okay, regarding Rubicon - game producers listen up!
Extract from Snacky/Genesis*Project interview - Recollection #1
"Most copy protections at that time were quite easy to crack, they just had a check for a bad disk sector during the game-load and they then set a byte in the memory that a freezing module like the Action Replay cartridge wasnt able to recover. You just had to find the call check for disk protection routine and remove it. Very simple but effective, which is why it is still being used nowadays, like on the games on X-Box.
My type of protection was a little different. Not only did I develop a very special bad sector on the disk. It was changing the speed of the rotating floppy disk and also de-justed the binary reading of the floppy header. This combination during the read operation made it impossible for any type of copy program (do you remember Burst Nibbler?) to copy the disk. A manual re-sync with just three bytes SKY (abbreviation for Snacky) where then verified.
I also added not only countless checks for the protection at the start and in the game; just the Ending of Rubicon alone, meaning the demo you saw once you finished the game, was protected by more that 20 different routines that verified each other. This makes the Ending of Rubicon one of the best protected parts of a game ever done on a computer. Changing or removing one routine would end up in a crash later one.
The starting of Rubicon was protected by the TIMEX v3 system. But I improved the Timex v3 system slightly to close the attack points that I found when cracking this type of protection. I also did not fully depend on the starting alone, I also added small pieces of in the code of the game.
Another funny story about the Rubicon game was the Tape protection. Just for Rubicon, I developed a turbo tape like speed loader that was capable of loading files from tape in less than half a minute. A speed I never saw anywhere else on C64. The compression / loading functionality was that special, that even the oscilloscope based mass tape copy machine of 20th Century Software, a London based game company that was publishing Rubicon, was not able to copy it with their hardware. They gave me quite a few phone calls to understand my technique to write data to the tape, so theyd be able to adjust their copy machine. I believe they finally used my write to tape program after some failed attempts with their tape copy machine. Keep in mind, the first tape games on the C64 you were able to copy simply by using a good stereo with a double tape drive. I did this for example with Winter Games back in 1986
My tape protection was quite straightforward. I did use TIMEX v3 and included this with my 256 blocks file load. This means that I cleaned the complete memory of the C64 by loading a file that filled up everything. During the load, I modified the loader and also loaded the TIMEX system. I was pretty sure nobody would be able to crack that system. I thought about it for weeks and found no weak point to interfere.
The turmoil around Rubicon arose when Tyger of Genesis * Project released a crack of the game. When I heard that Tyger got the game, I was shocked. I called Antichrist and asked him about the game. He told me that he got a non-protected version of it that Tyger would release. I tried to convince him that I would be in trouble if he released a version. As you know, Genesis released a version of the non-protected Rubicon, which was easy to release obviously.
There has never been a release of the protected version of Rubicon. You now may understand why. I doubt that somebody ever spent the time and effort to crack it as it would have been a couple of weeks work. If you know of a version or somebody who cracked the protected Rubicon (disk or tape), send me an e-mail as I would like to commend him for the work." |
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Wanderer
Account closed
Registered: Apr 2003
Posts: 478 |
P-Man's Revenge, written by a friend of mine (Chris Fielding). The game was done in P-Code, thus there was no actual assembly language to really mess with. It was actually a pretty cool game.
Rampar released a 'frozen' version of the game, not being able to crack it. Afterwards, the sysop of NEC's bbs (I forget his name) asked for a copy of the original. Horizon wasn't able to crack it either.
Fortunately there was no 'end game' protection which allowed for a freeze capture. He planned to implement end-game protection but left to program Sony games before finishing his next game.
Somewhere in my brother's basement lies the second game in a half-finished state.
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cadaver
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1153 |
Hmm, whatever that P-Code is, brought to my mind a case that I faintly remember reading about.. which game (and by which company) was it that had a nasty protection, custom disk format and a scripting language combined, which a cracker then reverse-engineered, wrote an own game using the scripting language, and sent it back to the company?
Or was I hallucinating?
Btw. sometimes overzealous protection ends up hurting the gamers most, consider Exile. |
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