So I 'cracked' Photon Storm. What do you guys think?

[MethodGit]

My effort is in the Zone. Highlights include editing the bootblock to skip the whole copylock business (still sucks that it isn't hardwireable) and load the game tracks straight away, darkening the screen before doing so, making the disk drive stop whirring after it's finished, and using memory dumps to grab the decoded data, paste it into the ADF (making sure it 'connects' correctly with the normal data that takes over afterwards) and editing the trackloader accordingly to pinpoint source, destination and amount to load.

This was almost going to be a "What am I doing wrong?" thread when I had trouble making it load correctly at first (it kept autoresetting the Amiga after it jumped to the game code) but it was just a case of making the trackloader add a few more tracks to the mix.

[pmc]

Having no cracking experience at all I can't say how valid or not the crack is but it seems to load and work OK.

Now add a cracktro.

[kaffer]

Nice one MethodGit. The best way to build your skills is to start simple and get on with it, just like this.

Hardwiring parameters to trackdisk.device call, and trapping straight into the game code... Nice and simple, does the job.

To turn off the drive motor, you are really depending on trackdisk.device having left bits 3 and 7 set in ciabprb. That could depend on Kickstart version. Better would be to move.b #$ff,ciabprb to get those bits in a known state, and *then* clear-then-set bit 3.

I don't know about clr.l $dff180. The color registers are word sized, but then clearing color01 register too is harmless. clr does a read cycle before the write, on 68000, so I would avoid using it on a write-only register for that reason, and move 0 into it (from an immediate or from a data register) instead.

EDIT: It would be a good idea to AllocMem your buffer for reading the game data, as you don't know what system buffers might overlap with your hardcoded buffer address. Then you would copy the game data to its proper location after knocking the system on the head (#$7fff to dmacon and intena). Strictly speaking your bootblock code could overlap with the game's proper location too, and you ought to check and relocate your copy loop too in that case. But that's possibly a bit paranoid. AllocMem for buffers passed to system calls is just good sense however. Rob Northen even left an AllocMem call for you.

[lesta_smsc]

Well done! Regardless of how good or bad the crack is, the effort and time you've dedicated into achieving the goal is most appreciated