Messages in game code for crackers

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by BarryB

Did IFW put that one in

Im very tempted to break his heart.......25 years later!!

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by BarryB

Did IFW put that one in

Who is IFW???

<joking, of course I know who he is>

...a lot of new members over the past few years wouldn't though, so see here; IFW

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by BarryB

Did IFW put that one in

I guess he did

[StingRay]

Found in Universal Warrior:

THIS CODE IS COPYRIGHT MARK GORNALL 1993WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN HERE I WONDER! NOT

[StingRay]

Another message found in Universal Warrior:

Hey dude, what ya looking through my code for ? If you are wanting to get infinite lives you are in completely the wrong place !! Bet you wish you had the source, eh ?

[Galahad/FLT]

Hidden under the boot loader encryption


HACKMAT DISK LOADER - (C) 1989 - Jeff Spangenberg

[pants]

Heh, Jeff and Darrin. Enemies of the State both.

[nzlpoa]

I guess they were some form of different way by hiding message within games? Not that it helped in any way

[StingRay]

Not a game but a demo and not a message to crackers at all but still entertaining enough to share:

You found it, the bootblock! You're a genious. Now, if you intend to rip the muzaks from Mean Machine's Muzak disk, we might as well tell you it's not worth the trouble. You really want the tunes - contact the composers or rip them from somewhere else, as we did. It might be easy, or it can be as difficult as this. Once more: for swapping, contact JANNE HUHTANEN (Devil), BROBACKA AS. 5, 02400 KIRKKONUMMI, FINLAND. But remember, no disk = no answer. Just because I know you're interested (you've read this far), I'm currently at Overlander's finishing this disk. He went for dinner. Sounds good? Good. If you've only got this disk, that's too bad, 'cause it works ONLY with Mean Machine Muzak Disk I. Then all you have is this text. And some encrypted modules. But that's a lot. You cannot play them, but who cares? We don't. Send $185,50 to the address above and we'll send you the disk. Lamers, send the cash twice or you won't get anything! AND: DO NOT INSTALL THIS DISK IF YOU WANT TO USE IT!! *Zebra*

[deicidal]

Originally Posted by StingRay

Not a game but a demo and not a message to crackers at all but still entertaining enough to share:

Seem to remember a Anthrox Trackmo (Inner Madness I think) had a message thanking you for spending the time to look at the disk and his contact details.

Whats annoying me now is why on earth I was looking at the disk at the time to find this?

[AmigaRob]

Originally Posted by girv

From Codemasters' "Fast Food", hidden away in a compressed loader so probably only someone actually cracking the game would find it



It asks you to telephone a premium rate number to get an activation code everytime (yes, every time) you boot the game. I think they must have been on some seriously perception altering drugs the night they thought that one up! Maybe I should call it now to see if I can get a code

FWIW HOL lists Fast Food as (c) 1992 not 1990 as above. I was curious how it could have appeared on the 1991 Dizzy Collection 2 a year before it was first published

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

John, you really should know your protections better!

The TAS system (Telephone Authorisation System) uses Rob Northens Copylock, if it fails the serial check, then the TAS only boots up because of this, if the protection gets the correct serial key, it doesn't boot up like Istvan said.

Even a complete novice could crack it by accident, surely the worst implementation of RNC Copylock that gives wannabe crackers their first chance.

This is a very late reply, but I used to use my original copy of Fast Food Dizzy to get around the TAS check on a home copied version of one of the other Dizzy games, (I think it was Magic Land Dizzy). I noticed that during boot both Fast Food Dizzy and Magic Land Dizzy paused disk access for a couple of seconds before you got a grinding crunch. I guessed that crunch was it accessing the protected track. If it failed the check you would then get the prompt for the TAS.

What I would do is wait until that little gap in disk access came, take out the copy of Magic Land Dizzy and quickly stick in Fast Food Dizzy. The game would access the track on the Fast Food Dizzy original and then continue into the Magic Land Dizzy title screen as normal. I think I completed the game that way. I suppose they must have reused the exact same copylock and disk system for Magic Land Dizzy as they did for Fast Food Dizzy, and then did no further checks.

Although I have never been a fan of the argument that the cost of games caused piracy, I do not think I ever saw an actual cracked version of a Dizzy game around. There was a lot of brand loyalty to that egg, and Codemasters built an empire on all of us that spend £5.99 to £7.99 on those titles. I think the only reason I even bothered with fiddling Magic Land Dizzy was because I was more interested in trying to beat the telephone system.

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by AmigaRob

Although I have never been a fan of the argument that the cost of games caused piracy, I do not think I ever saw an actual cracked version of a Dizzy game around.

The Dizzy games were cracked like any other game.

[AwoLStill]

Epic thread Thanks All!

[BarryB]

In the protection track on The Blues Brothers:
Megaprot by Eric CAEN (c) Titus 1991...Hackers, I hate you !!!!

And in each normal sector:
Sector number x Hackers are insects !!!

x = A to J as there is 10 sectors!

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by BarryB

In the protection track on The Blues Brothers:
Megaprot by Eric CAEN (c) Titus 1991...Hackers, I hate you !!!!

And in each normal sector:
Sector number x Hackers are insects !!!

x = A to J as there is 10 sectors!

Oh yes ! and also : "Hackers are women"

[BarryB]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Oh yes ! and also : "Hackers are women"

Say that to Galahad

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by BarryB

Say that to Galahad

Galahad ? Eric Caen said in the Megaprot that Hackers are women !

[oRBIT]

Perhaps a bit offtopic, but disk 2 of "His masters noise" (Mahoney & Kaktus you know..) contains some assembly-sourcecode on the last few tracks on the disk. Looks like they compiled this "musicdisk" on a non-empty disk back in the days.
Of course, the disk is trackloader so you can't extract the source itself, just see the remains using a disk-editor or something similar.

[StingRay]

THE HIDDEN MESSAGE, HI DOC NICE SPRITE ROUTINE I JUST LOVED THE BALLS.....PHONE ME ON (0903) 47548 - THATS ENGLAND O.K. BYE BYE..... TONY COOPER

He's referring to DOC's "Demons are Forever" demo.


And before that:

CRACK THIS ONE D O C IF YOU CAN AND FIND THE HIDDEN MESSAGE

[jotd]

Alien Breed:

not sure it qualifies but I found this message don't remember where, maybe while working on the patch, it's been 15 years my memory is fuzzy. I suppose Stefan Boberg wrote this

ZALIEN BREED V1.3, =SB= 14-Oct-91
Main program code by Andreas Tadic and Peter Tuleby, Graphics and game design
by Rico Holmes, music and sound effects by Allister Brimble,
additional programming, bug fixing, copyprotection, data compression routines
and algorithms, and fastmem sample players by Stefan Boberg

== "Funny facts" about this game...

1) Source code is unreadable and extremely sensitive to changes
(banana-code at the highest level).
2) My first protection had to be removed due to the fact that those f***ing
duplicators couldn't copy it reliably , so this is really not the protection
I wanted to put in (this one was threwn together in great haste in two days,
completely from scratch) . For a REAL protection, look forward to PROJECT X
from Team 17 software, released Jan-92.. It will be tough!
3) A dozen or so MAJOR bugs were fixed within three days.. we worked 72 hours
without sleep! I worked even longer after that... I hate the sight of this
bloody game, sure hope it'll sell well, so I can get some serious cash and
buy some goodies for me... like a Fusion Forty for my little A3000
4) The game's gotten rave reviews in all major mags, YAHOO! (six-page review in
ACE, three pages in CU AMIGA etc..) Good job we payed them all that money!
(not really... 5) After this sentence is finished, this game is 100% finished
, and you cannot possibly imagine how bloody RELIEVED I am.... phew... Over and out...
bibi
>w
FILENAME> abfinal.s
>! Exit, are you sure? Y bzzzt.... EOT

What's funny is that the protection is known to be very difficult to crack
But "look forward for Project-X" is ridiculous: I think I cracked Project-X in 5 minutes (special edition at least), well I don't remember having such a hard time with it. I'm not sure of ever working on the original Project-X...
Managers must have told "bibi" to tone it down protection-wise