Messages in game code for crackers

[ufo]

Do forgive me for the probably silly question but, Mr. E was a double agent?

Or he cracked first then protected?

Did he get found out or was money just too enticing?

Originally Posted by DrBong

For a while there in the 90s it seemed that FLT and HF were the only ones cracking games, especially when the Amiga was in decline on the games front.

Nearly every game I picked up in the later days seemed to be a Hoodlum or on the odd occasion a Prestige, it seemed as if they were the only ones still around. On the VERY rare occasion I also found a Fairlight.

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by ufo

Do forgive me for the probably silly question but, Mr. E was a double agent?

Or he cracked first then protected?

The latter. First he cracked (Oracle, Crystal etc.) and then he switched sides and coded games (and protected them).

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by ufo

Do forgive me for the probably silly question but, Mr. E was a double agent?

Or he cracked first then protected?

Did he get found out or was money just too enticing?






Nearly every game I picked up in the later days seemed to be a Hoodlum or on the odd occasion a Prestige, it seemed as if they were the only ones still around. On the VERY rare occasion I also found a Fairlight.

Quite a few of us went over to the 'light' side!

Conqueror, Mr.E, Me, Mok, Chatterbox, and obviously several demo teams and coders also moved over (Anarchy, Melon Design, The Silents, Blood Suckers, etv)

[Galahad/FLT]

Welcome Cracker!

[Gerry]

Although this messages are not from the game code but from the bootsector (Atari ST) and bootblock (Amiga), I liked and posted them.

[StingRay]

I just had a good laugh when I patched the keyboard routine of Wembley International Soccer ECS and found this:

the arcade section of this game is the intellectual property of graham blighe. if you are reading this you have disassembled or dumped it in part or whole. if it can be proved that you have profited by doing so you may be prosecuted for theft.

Looks like Graham Blighe is quite a Sherlock.

[MrX_Cuci]

Found this while sector viewing the Humans CD32 disc:
0000 : 66 72 65 65 61 6E 69 6D 61 74 69 6F 6E 0A 61 6E freeanimation.an
0010 : 69 6D 0A 67 61 6D 65 0A 0A 3B 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D im.game..;------
0020 : 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D 0A 3B 20 48 ------------.; H
0030 : 55 4D 41 4E 53 20 77 72 69 74 74 65 6E 20 62 79 UMANS written by
0040 : 20 74 6F 73 68 2E 2E 2E 2E 0A 3B 20 65 78 74 72 tosh.....; extr
0050 : 61 20 47 46 58 20 62 79 20 61 6E 64 79 2E 2E 2E a GFX by andy...
0060 : 2E 0A 3B 0A 3B 20 74 68 69 73 20 67 61 6D 65 20 ..;.; this game
0070 : 74 6F 6F 6B 20 6A 75 73 74 20 6F 76 65 72 20 61 took just over a
0080 : 20 74 77 6F 20 77 65 65 6B 73 20 74 6F 20 63 6F two weeks to co
0090 : 6E 76 65 72 74 0A 3B 20 66 72 6F 6D 20 74 68 65 nvert.; from the
00A0 : 20 6F 72 69 67 69 6E 61 6C 20 35 30 30 20 76 65 original 500 ve
00B0 : 72 73 69 6F 6E 2E 2E 0A 3B 20 65 78 74 72 61 20 rsion...; extra
00C0 : 73 74 75 66 66 20 69 73 20 3A 2D 0A 3B 20 31 36 stuff is :-.; 16
00D0 : 30 20 6C 65 76 65 6C 73 0A 3B 20 63 64 20 6D 75 0 levels.; cd mu
00E0 : 73 69 63 20 0A 3B 20 61 6C 6C 20 6C 61 6E 67 75 sic .; all langu
00F0 : 61 67 65 73 20 69 6E 63 6C 75 64 65 64 0A 3B 20 ages included.;
0100 : 6E 65 77 20 70 61 73 73 77 6F 72 64 20 73 63 72 new password scr
0110 : 65 65 6E 0A 3B 20 6E 65 77 20 73 6C 65 63 74 69 een.; new slecti
0120 : 6F 6E 20 73 63 72 65 65 6E 0A 3B 0A 3B 20 74 68 on screen.;.; th
0130 : 65 20 67 61 6D 65 20 74 6F 20 6D 65 20 69 73 20 e game to me is
0140 : 66 75 63 6B 69 6E 67 20 63 72 61 70 20 2D 20 61 fucking crap - a
0150 : 6E 64 20 69 27 6D 20 64 6F 69 6E 67 20 68 75 6D nd i'm doing hum
0160 : 61 6E 73 20 32 20 6E 6F 77 20 61 73 20 77 65 6C ans 2 now as wel
0170 : 6C 20 61 6E 64 20 67 75 65 73 73 20 77 68 61 74 l and guess what
0180 : 3F 3F 3F 0A 3B 0A 3B 20 69 74 73 20 46 55 43 4B ???.;.; its FUCK
0190 : 49 4E 47 20 43 52 41 50 20 54 4F 4F 21 21 21 21 ING CRAP TOO!!!!
01A0 : 21 0A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 !

The original disc is labeled: fuck wank

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by StingRay

I just had a good laugh when I patched the keyboard routine of Wembley International Soccer ECS and found this:



Looks like Graham Blighe is quite a Sherlock.

Didn't one of the Barbarian coders have some delusions of grandeur about his code as well?

[WayneK]

BEAST BUSTERS:

"Why not try doing something constructive with your Amiga, like writing a game for example ??? It may be a lot more complex than protection removal and perhaps a little above your understanding but with a little patience, a lot of practice and months of hard work you may create something of which you can be proud and that people will admire you for. No swearing, No insults, Just grow up! RB 18/07/91..."

[Leffmann]

Who would "RB" be? There's no one with those initials on the Amiga team. Was it based on the Atari version, and this just happened to sneak in on one of the files?

[WayneK]

Good question, that text is at the end of the Amiga Beast Busters main game executable (after the hilariously badly implemented protection check) - but you're right I can't find anyone with those initials even listed as working for the same development team!

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by WayneK

(after the hilariously badly implemented protection check)

Spill the beans!

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by StingRay

Spill the beans!

If its what I think Wayne means, I think the two words "DUFF" and "COPY" might well be relevant!

Laughably poor as i recall.

[Codetapper]

File starts with a copylock, which runs then does a jmp lbC018896. Offset $954 is end of the copylock code and the start of the main game code:

lbC018896	move.w	#$7FFF,$DFF096
		lea	lbC000954,a0
		lea	$13000,a1
lbC0188AA	move.l	(a0)+,(a1)+
		cmp.l	#lbC018896,a0
		bcs.s	lbC0188AA
		lea	$13000,a1
		cmp.l	#$96C1AAFE,d0
		beq.s	lbC0188CE
		add.l	#'DUFF',a1
		add.l	#'COPY',a1
lbC0188CE	jmp	(a1)

		dc.b	'Why not try doing something constructive with '
		dc.b	'your Amiga, like writing a game for example ??'
		dc.b	'? It may be a lot more complex than protection'
		dc.b	' removal and perhaps a little above your under'
		dc.b	'standing but with a little patience, a lot of '
		dc.b	'practice and months of hard work you may creat'
		dc.b	'e something of which you can be proud and that'
		dc.b	' people will admire you for.  No swearing, No '
		dc.b	'insults, Just grow up! RB 18/07/91...',0,0,0

For non assembler programmers, this is disabling DMA and relocating the game back to address $13000. a1 is set to $13000 (start of the game code) and the copylock serial number is checked. If it's $96C1AAFE, then it simply runs the game. If it's not, it destroys the pointer by adding 'DUFF' and 'COPY' to it, which would most likely cause a complete crash. So it's pretty easy to detect when this game is cracked as it's a terrible protection implementation.

I'm not sure how many people would "admire" the programmer of Beast Busters anyway. A sloppy 17fps NTSC game in 16 colours (where the top 1/5 is a status panel), it doesn't utilise hardware scrolling and doesn't even use a hardware sprite for the crosshair!

[Galahad/FLT]

After the Copylock has finished, it decrypts the original bootblock which has some text:

"TRAX -- Fast trackdisk emulator boot code - Copyright 1988 ID2 Ltd. All rights reserved. This code may only be used under licence from ID2. Anybody found infringing our copyright will be jumped on from a very great height."

[StingRay]

Xenomorph:

Galdregons Domain loader by David Neale (G1OSS), 16/12/88 at 11:30 Many Thanks to Michael Humphrey (Fame at last!!) , Chris (Leave Phil Alone!), Mum , Dad , Foo & Andrew at PDS (THE ULTIMATE Development system.);Hi! to Shahid (Put that rusty barge pole down!!) ;Hi! to the pulsed power group A.W.E ;God help 'us all , we need it! ;Is there any tea on this spaceship ?????? ;I want a 20Mhz 386 tower NOW!!!;??????????????????????????????????????????????

[lesta_smsc]

Loving reading through these. Surprised with the foul language used! I suppose it was never meant to be seen by the 'end' user so it's ok lol.

[Bastich]

Awesome thread

[StingRay]

DiskMonTools:

You are using an illegal DiskMonTools KeyFile !!!

It is both illegal and immortal to use a program
without getting your personally registered version.

It is in YOUR hands to support the
Amiga and its programmers ...

This time you get only this warning ..., but i
could instead easyly format all your HDs ...
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED !!!

System stopped because of pirated Software !!!

These messages (with the typos, I like the "immortal" one best ) are all encrypted in the DMT executable.

[Sektor 83]

Hahahaha!! So THAT'S what that gobbledegook says! It's just before the routine to load the keyfile, from what I can gather? (I'm having a look at it in ReSource)...

Edit: Oh right, just noticed that the message has been encrypted by taking each letter of the original message and then replacing it with the next letter of the alphabet