Thread: hacking?

you use a hex editor, and advanced knowledge of x86 assembly language, and the Windows PE executable format....

Originally Posted by Ynot

Windows PE executable format....

huh? whats that

Originally Posted by slash112

huh? whats that

Its slang for Google.

Read my last post as basically "you can't"

Modifying the operations of an opaque binary is one of the hardest and most complex things to do

Just understanding what they're doing (and replicating it) is difficult enough
ever wonder why the various reverse engineering projects take so long?
Console emulators
Wine / ReactOS (Win32 API & environment)
Nouveau (Nvidia 3D graphics driver)
Etc.

If you want to start hacking opaque binaries,
ironically, cracking DRM is one of the less-complex operations
and an ideal starting point

Take 2 copies of the same program
one authenticated (valid serial number, or whatever), one not
and do hex dumps of their execution

At some point, there'll be some sort of check, and a jump
the authenticated one jumps one way
the non-authenticated one jumps another way
in a hex editor, edit the jump so it jumps down the "authenticated" path

Over-simplifying, but hey

Originally Posted by slash112

i just want to do small hacks, like change the way my guy looks etc.

Just look for mods - not hacks.

What game?

~

its just an old game, tony hawk pro skater 3.

but i was just going to go on youtube, there is always a vid which tells you how to do things. i wasnt actually going to do it myself.

anyways, i found this really small stupid pointless one on youtube, so i did it. but its not letting me into it once ive saved it, it says "...failed to start because mss32.dll was not found." what does that mean? and how do i fix it?

The best way you can is probably through the use of something like cheat engine and art money, which finds values and changes them. So if you got emulators, like I used to give myself infinite ammo on resident evil, you'd just have cheat engine find the program, search for the amount of ammo you have and change it, theirs a basic tutorial that comes with cheat engine that teaches you those things.

Sometimes when you download games you can find the texture files and change them in paint, I used to do it with a MMORPG called Bots but it only showed up that way to me, I could also change the music files.

As far as emulators go their are really detailed ways, some games like super mario 64 have programs that can edit them more practically to change the textures on things.

Originally Posted by LucidDreamGod

The best way you can is probably through the use of something like cheat engine and art money, which finds values and changes them. So if you got emulators, like I used to give myself infinite ammo on resident evil, you'd just have cheat engine find the program, search for the amount of ammo you have and change it, theirs a basic tutorial that comes with cheat engine that teaches you those things.

ok ill do the cheat engine thing, but i have no idea what emulators means

What do you actually want to do?

well as i said before, change the way my guy looks, but that just takes a mod. what i really want to do is make the cheats available on the multiplayer, i.e. perfect balance.

Originally Posted by slash112

ok ill do the cheat engine thing, but i have no idea what emulators means

Emulators like n64k that let you download roms and play console games on your computer like Nintendo 64 and Playstation.

Also some of those emulators can connect you to a multiplayer server, like when I play tony hawk pro skater 2 with n64k, it's hard to find a match, takes awhile, but games like smash bros 64, you can go online and play against other people if you've got the emulator and the rom for that game, basically what it does is read the other players inputs and matches them to your 2nd player controller, and vice versa.

Roms, have questionable legal matters, just like downloading music, but if you own the game, it is totaly 100% legal to own the rom, which takes only a few minutes to download. (and having a usb controller makes emulators so much more fun, because it feels like you own 1000's of games :p)

And yeah I'm a big fan of the tony hawk games, so if you download 3 I'll play with you.

right i know what your talking about now, i just know it as "chipped" console. but its onl for my PC. i dont know about anything else, but i know that if you try putting it in an xbox, it is very risky, it can fuck up the whole console, i cant remember what its called, theres a name for what happens.

my friend has done it to his xbox, but he got a proffesional to do it, he downloads illegal games all the time, and he just plays them easy because of it. do you need emulators for pc?

I think your talking about modding systems, and I've heard of the technique your friend used, I had an erge to try it myself but my mom would probably push me against it, and its risky. This would be like that but you can download a free program here http://pj64k.emulation64.com/ , and get the roms here romhustler.net, and you can play it right on your pc free.

oh so you do need emultion things to play them on pc

Do you actually read what people write?

Originally Posted by Marvo

Do you actually read what people write?

huh? now im confused, i thought i read it right, so, you dont need emulators then?

We've had someone report this thread for mentioning console emulation
claiming it to be illegal

So I'll just say,
Hardware emulation is perfectly legal

Contracts go both ways, you pay money for a piece of equipment, in return you can do what you want with that equipment
This includes pulling it apart, identifying individual components, poking them with a multi-meter and writing software counterparts that emulate their functionality

(in fact, in this day and age hardware emulation actively encouraged by manufacturers to prolong the usefulness of compiled software)

Roms, however are a grey area
It's technically copyright infringement to download roms
but as many of the roms available for console emulators are long (long) out of active circulation (and in a lot of cases, the authors are long out of business too), most people just ignore it

did someone actually report it? who were they?... infact, dont answer that, i take it you arent allowed. but whoever it was needs to get a life.

also, thats strange that they reported that, but not the far worse thing which i mentioned. (i hope i dont get into some sort of trouble for it)

For US law, please refer to Sega Enterprises Ltd. vs. Accolade Inc. [1992]

Accolade Inc. was an independant games house, who pulled apart a sega Megadrive, discovered how it worked, then produced and sold their own compatible games for the console
Sega sued them, and lost

anyway, carry on

i dont need to follow US law, i can all your laws that we dont have, mwahhahahaha. i think im just going to cross the street now, lol

I always thought of Roms no diffrent then downloading mp3's, and I wouldn't have mentioned emulators if I didn't know for certain they were legal.

No one cares about old playstation and n64 games, no one looses money on that anymore, those games arn't made anymore, the people who created them have gotten all the money they will ever get from them.

Plus I heard that owning a game allows you legal ownership of that rom, specually if you dump it yourself.

It's still illegal, just saying.

Slash, if you want to change the skins of characters in Tony Hawk, a good idea is to find where skins are located. In counter-strike for example, you modify skins and models by changing some files. Depending on which graphics engine game is using, in can either be incredibly easy, or incredibly difficult, aka you have to reverse engineer the game, before you can understand how it works.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 is using the RenderWare engine, which is also used for games like The Sims 3. From what I could google, nobody has made any custom skins for Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, or even talked about it, so you might want to check out some of the other popular games, made with the RenderWare engine.

Judging from this thread, you would be better off first trying to mod a game that has a fully documented, easily accessible SDK like Source Engine (or whatever else). I think you'll have enough problems with that, let alone reverse engineering Tony Hawks 3 or deciphering some obscure model and texture formats. If you've authored your first shadered material in a game with SDK, maybe you can start thinking about modding a game that has no SDK.

Marvo,
sorry but you're wrong

2 Playstation emulators
Virtual Game Station and Bleem!

Sony sued both
lost both cases

Emulation has been tested in court numerous times
Please, don't just label something as "illegal" cause you think it is