Amiga Cracking Twitch Stream

[h0ffman]

Watcha peeps. So the last two Wednesday streams where I usually do gamedev have been taken over by doing live cracking using an A500 and an Action Replay III.

You can catch it live on Wednesday evening from 8PM on http://twitch.tv/djh0ffman where VODs are available or catch-up on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/@HoffmanYouTube

Anyway the reason for the post is I'm looking for potential "targets" to cover. Anything with an interesting protection system, there's only so many times you can cover an RNC copylock. Also any games where useful patches in WHDLoad (2nd button support etc.) have never made it to floppy disk. While the focus is on digging into protection systems, I'd like to add some value where possible.

[Poison]

Love the idea!
Maybe this is a good thread to start:
https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=115885

[WayneK]

Ilyad, Toki (Pierre Adane, all sorts of nasty stuff)
Carcharodon: White Sharks (Multi syncs etc.)
Tearaway Thomas (Had a clever TVD if I remember correctly?!)
Rainbow Islands/Parasol Stars (infamous)

There must be more of course, that's just off the top of my head.
Looking forward to watching the VODs

[redblade]

F*ck yeah, Speed run cracking, this will be awesome, especially if Galahad and Stingray join in .

Will you be doing run using non hardware based tools? I.e C-Mon 2.02 or AmigaMonitor with external executables used to decrypt the binaries?

How do you start this off? Do you say you don't have the manual so you just have to jump in to the game?

There's a MFM based game with novella protection, Archipelagos, that was easy to bypass with the cart.

Vaxine was given away with Amiga Format and had novella protection.
Balance of Power has novella given away with Amiga Format.
Turbo Amiga Map Editor remove 30 minute timer, Amiga Computing 54 (Nov 1992)
The publisher Requires a serial key, Amiga Computing 70 (Feb 1994)

[copse]

Thanks for posting the vods on the youtubes! Wasn't able to watch the streams when they happened, due to focus on work.

[h0ffman]

Originally Posted by WayneK

Ilyad, Toki (Pierre Adane, all sorts of nasty stuff)
Carcharodon: White Sharks (Multi syncs etc.)
Tearaway Thomas (Had a clever TVD if I remember correctly?!)
Rainbow Islands/Parasol Stars (infamous)

There must be more of course, that's just off the top of my head.
Looking forward to watching the VODs

I had a very quick look at Ilyad as I found the cover disk it was given away on. Sadly the disk itself doesn't start but i can just write a new one with the greaseweazle.. I did take a quick look at the bootblock.. yeah that's not a simple one.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[h0ffman]

Originally Posted by redblade

F*ck yeah, Speed run cracking, this will be awesome, especially if Galahad and Stingray join in .

Will you be doing run using non hardware based tools? I.e C-Mon 2.02 or AmigaMonitor with external executables used to decrypt the binaries?

How do you start this off? Do you say you don't have the manual so you just have to jump in to the game?

There's a MFM based game with novella protection, Archipelagos, that was easy to bypass with the cart.

Vaxine was given away with Amiga Format and had novella protection.
Balance of Power has novella given away with Amiga Format.
Turbo Amiga Map Editor remove 30 minute timer, Amiga Computing 54 (Nov 1992)
The publisher Requires a serial key, Amiga Computing 70 (Feb 1994)

It's not really a speed run, just demonstrating the process live. Also Galahad was in chat for the first stream being his usual enigmatic and handsome self.

I'm doing these with an AR3 because it's what I used as a kid. To get some practise I cracked Archipelagos last week. That's when I found out one of the original cracks didn't work and none of them implement the game save function.

Thanks for the suggestions, will take a look.

[demoniac]

Had a look at your Supremacy Part 1 video -- seems quite fun with everyone joining.

BTW, Drakkhen might not be properly cracked for the English language.

[RichL]

I know its an oldie but have a look at Railroad Tycoon.

Way back when the copy I had obviously had the manual check removed but you could only ever buy / own TWO trains. It wouldn't let you buy any others - is this something that was missed?

I went out and purchased the original boxed copy and of course, once you put the correct code in from the manual, you can buy as many trains as you want - money permitting of course.

Now if this is something that has been resolved in the last 20 odd years then fine I don't know if it was ever a 'miss-crack' if there is such a term.

[GWhizz]

I'll be there

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by WayneK

Tearaway Thomas (Had a clever TVD if I remember correctly?!)

Tearaway Thomas had a really good encryption (over 10.000 different decryption loops if memory serves me right) that was used to hide the actual manual protection.

[h0ffman]

Originally Posted by StingRay

Tearaway Thomas had a really good encryption (over 10.000 different decryption loops if memory serves me right) that was used to hide the actual manual protection.

Holy shit! that's a lot of loops.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by h0ffman

Holy shit! that's a lot of loops.

Jurassic Park is also a good candidate : 50 checksum to obliterate, copylocks, RN Protected DOS format.

You could make few shows with just this game

[malko]

What about protected "DOS" games like King's Quest ?

[redblade]

Would be interested to see some one use Amiga Monitor and see what custom Amiga Executables they would use to speed up their attack.

[Phantasm]

Elfmania because it uses an interesting loader that runs from an interrupt and is one i've looked at a couple of times myself and never got around to finishing.


Secret of monkey island 2 because its interpreted and not just written in asm.


Double Dragon 2 because it has anti AR features (although I covered this on one of my crack tutorials for flashtro)


I'm halfway through the first video, its a fun watch..

[h0ffman]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Double Dragon 2 because it has anti AR features (although I covered this on one of my crack tutorials for flashtro)

Something of a legend that one so I did take a quick peek. That bootblock alone is interesting. The way the checksum is manipulated to read Dragon2, encryption and obfuscated custom register writes. Very cool.

I think for this Wednesday I'm going to opt for something a little less challenging for now, Turrican 2. Yes I know, not very hard but the plan is to show a different method this time. Rather than using the AR to rip the files, I'll be building a tool which ( I think.. ) will effectively rip any Factor 5 long track disk to files. Then ( cheating a little I know ) nip back over to PC to see about squeezing it to 880k.

After that, we'll start ramping up the difficulty with something from this thread.

[RichL]

Are you putting the video on YouTube this time?

I don’t ‘do’ Twitch - which is my fault I suppose. Thanks.

[h0ffman]

Originally Posted by RichL

Are you putting the video on YouTube this time?

I don’t ‘do’ Twitch - which is my fault I suppose. Thanks.

Yep, it'll be up there later today.

[RichL]

Originally Posted by h0ffman

Yep, it'll be up there later today.

Awesome. Thanks.