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Didi
Registered: Nov 2011
Posts: 482 |
What is a "crack"?
In the release On the Farm III +8FD there started a discussion about what is a "crack". In CSDb rules a crack is defined as an unauthorized modification. In other scenes this would be called a "hack" or a "mod".
I hardly remember any games since 1994 which really needed to remove a protection, so most "crackers" started to use different clauses to declare their work, e.g. "raped" or something like this. But there also should be made a difference between linking an intro or training a game and other improvements like highscore-savers, bugfixes, improved packing and loading routines, etc. Crack might not be the correct name for it but what else to call it?
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iAN CooG
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 3177 |
Quote: Fake tools? :) This should be true 4 any of my homemade crap tools which might have helped me getting a few things done but which noone except me every can/will want to use, documented or not. That's why I rather not release them.
again, fake!=crap |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11293 |
indeed. if that was the case, then a lot of the recent "cracks" were infact "fake" :o) |
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Rough
Account closed
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1829 |
The Ryk: So you say the one Skate or Die 1-sided done by Sorex for WOW crashes?
Skate: First a question back: What is a "real protection"? The definition of crack is to make a protected program copy.- and playable for everyone. Actually even the most simple stuff like auto-start (especially on tape) or not-listable listing kept complete lamers from copying and changing memory of a product. Ergo, this is also a protection. Pretty quick the kids learned to trick those things over and companies came up with weird disk formats, killer tracks, using 35-42 tracks, password protection, dongle, younameit but with the circulation of cartridges incl. monitors a lot of these stuff got easy to trick over (ergo obsolete), at least when games were one-filed and most of them were in the late 80s/early 91 (heydays of Action Replay+Final Cartridge), as the US market, who offered mainly multi-load games, slowly dried out. Back to my first definition "to make a protected program copy.- and playable for everyone.", freezing a one-filer does, dirty (hence the ugly rebuilt effect on freezes), starting anywhere in the game but easy. But is it a crack?
Damn, I lost my train of thoughts.
Essence: A lot of simple things are protections, and in the beginning of the 64 era not every boy had a proper copy tool at hand right from the start. There was one on the 1541 disks, but that failed pretty quick and didnt copy files of a higher block size and stuff iirc. (DOS5.1 was way more handy, or whatever it was called)
To make the boy's life easy some people cracked the games, those guys could read the protected directories of originals, which was a secret to the kids. Put all the files like BASIC, SPRITES, ML, CHAR into one file with an executable SYS line. Voila. Everybody copy! So if you consider this, to us simple to trick over, a protection then a wide range of commerical programs had 'real protections'.
Groepaz: Fake group is a term for lamer label, which wasn't used when those groups Bad Taste, Gulas, Spalters were active. Purpose one was to make fun of other groups with low standard humour and to release games which the crackers considered they'd be a shame to release under the appropriate Genesis*Project, Chromance, Action labels. Which still makes me wonder why crackers felt responsible for a game's quality.. oh well. Fake groups started doing fake demos to continue low standard humour aimed at scene enemies or even just to have a fine time (like the entertaining Radebrekkjers stuff). |
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TheRyk
Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 2160 |
Quote:The Ryk: So you say the one Skate or Die 1-sided done by Sorex for WOW crashes?
Yup, what I say:
http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Skate_or_Die!#Versions |
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Adam
Registered: Jul 2009
Posts: 323 |
Quoting Skate... How many commercial games back in the days had a real protection (in percantage)? It includes copy protection, trainer protection, hidden "is original?" checks, timers etc. etc. Of course i'm not asking for an accurate answer, just an average percentage.
I know there were some companies like Ocean who made crackers' life really harder but i'm not sure if all Ocean and other big brand company games had those protections. And what about the rest of the games released by smaller companies or people?
I'm not sure as to what percentage it would be but i'd assume the figure would be quite high. I'd be interested to know or see if anyone has any figures? anyway, I do recall some software houses didn't do themselves any favors by using the same/similar protection systems over and over again, making the job of cracking just that little bit easier ;) Similar story with the Amiga and its copy protection systems. (hi, rob northen)
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11293 |
Quote:Groepaz: Fake group is a term for lamer label, which wasn't used when those groups Bad Taste, Gulas, Spalters were active.
i know exactly what was considered "fake group" back in the days. and i am still saying that the definition is very vague. try explaining why brainbombs are not a fake group, but the walker group is. (funny enough, there are a bunch of similarities between the two) |
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Skate
Registered: Jul 2003
Posts: 494 |
Didi said in his first post:
Quote:I hardly remember any games since 1994 which really needed to remove a protection
It makes sense not to call a product "crack", if there is no protection, nothing to "crack". My point was, what about the <1994 releases which doesn't have a real protection? Should we try to find them one by one and change their category as well?
Sometimes when a mistakenly used word widely used, it loses the original meaning. That's why i asked for an approximate percentage. |
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Achim
Account closed
Registered: Jan 2010
Posts: 28 |
Hey Skate, I'm afraid you missed something. The category 'crack' will never be changed, because it's part of the c64 tradition. That of course makes the c64 scene a die-hard scene, but that's the way it is. |
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Graham
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 990 |
Quoting Skate
It makes sense not to call a product "crack", if there is no protection, nothing to "crack". My point was, what about the <1994 releases which doesn't have a real protection? Should we try to find them one by one and change their category as well?
What's a protection after all? According to the programmer of V-Max, it's a fastloader and not a protection scheme. But then again in the early days it was already a "copy protection" if files were hidden from the directory so you couldn't simply LOAD and SAVE them.
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Achim
Account closed
Registered: Jan 2010
Posts: 28 |
This thread really makes me think. Celtic stated (On the Farm III +8FD) that there's no need for another category "that has no merit'. Now, after reading Rough's, Adam's and Graham's posts, it seems like it's nothing but a big misunderstanding to pay tribute to those who removed copyprotections back in the 80's.
At least it seems to be a misunderstanding to give them credit for their technical achievements. Maybe they should be credited mainly for networking?
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