![PlayStation (Games) PlayStation (Games)](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/playstation_64.png)
![Hardware Hacking Hardware Hacking](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/hardhack_64.png)
PS2 Controller Hack Nets Codes for GTA 67
glengineer writes "Gotta love edisoncarter for his cheesy, brute force, and effective hack of the PS2 controller to discover cheats for Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas. He used the parallel port of his PC connected to relays on the PS2 controller to step thru the combinations of button pushing needed to obtain cheats that were not released by Rockstar."
Wow... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wow... (Score:3)
Yea so I cheated to get the jetpack to get past the tediousness, but I stopped using it as soon as other flying vehicles became available.
Re:Wow... (Score:2)
Apparently... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Apparently... (Score:1)
Must be a new, faster parallel. In a second or two, I was sitting in front of some cool-sounding cheats.
I'll certainly be trying the Mega Punch soon.
huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
Looks like someone figured out a way to do just that.
Re:huh. (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:huh. (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, I know that now. But thank you for your pedantry.
Re:huh. (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, Nintendo Power also used to publish glitches, like World -1 in SMB1 or the jumping-over-the-top-of-the-screen-and-using-fair y -magic glitch in Zelda 2. Since these things wouldn't have been put in deliberately, I'm guessing these were sent in by readers. The maga
Re:huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
* Leak from an insider
* Lucky guess or brute force
* Analysis of the code
This looks like a new method of brute force. However, it would be easy for the game to detect it and disable all cheat codes--all they would have to do is have a bunch of extra special codes that instead of giving you more power, silently disable cheat codes.
Re:huh. (Score:1)
Re:huh. (Score:2)
Re:huh. (Score:2)
IBM PS/2, that is (Score:1)
Probably an IBM PS/2, 80286. (If you've never heard of it, check into it. You'll stop wondering why a PC's "PS2" keyboard will not plug into your Play Station 2.)
Why do they exist? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why do they exist? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why do they exist? (Score:2)
Re:Why do they exist? (Score:1)
Anyway, I've not actually played any version since.
JC
Re:Why do they exist? (Score:4, Interesting)
You know it's funny, when I BOUGHT VC I played it for about 25 minutes, other than that, my old roomie and I were just plugging in cheat codes and seeing who could last longest. The funny part is, I eventually got sucked into the plot (I -love- Scarface). Went and started playing the game, realized once I took over half the game, that I had so much damned money that the cheat codes couldn't compete with my arsenal
You know what I miss though? Is that in GTA1 it gave you a REPORT once you finally got hospitalized or arrested. How many misdemeanors, felonies, cops you killed, civilians you killed, etc... Made it a hell of a lot more fun for going on rampages
Re:Why do they exist? (Score:2)
You can still get that info in the 'stats' menu. How far you've biked, driven, flown, swam, tons of stuff. How many people/cops/gangsters you've killed too.
With the new skills system in the game some of them rampage things are actually beneficial. Shooting at the range is rather boring IMHO once you've done it a couple of times, so, to increase my pistol skills I'd just ran into the street, b
Re:Why do they exist? (Score:2)
Re:Why do they exist? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a long standing tradition among game makers to leave little presentsin the final build of the game,
and much like real presents it's up to you whether or not to open them when you should (after you've beaten the game)
or to completely destroy the experience by using them early on.
In this age of big business and artificial limitations I find it very refreshing that developers remember where they came from.
Re:Why do they exist? (Score:5, Interesting)
Last year when bored I became a fan of turning my UT2003 single-player speed ('slomo') down to something far below normal, like 0.001, 1.0 being normal. At that speed it became more like an elaborate chess game, where you had minutes to decide where to go or who to shoot first. While it's not for everyone, it made for some very interesting matches -- you savor the triumph of a frag a little more, and then kick your own ass for not noticing the guy behind you for four minutes.
There's something that we like in games that's more about situations than strictly playing. Cheat codes allow us to get to the parts we really liked about the game.
Re:Why do they exist? (Score:2)
I tell you -- it's HARD that way, since shooting somebody too close would hurt you too. Long hallways became dangerous territory.
Plus, I got to hear the sickening gib noise *constantly*.
Re:Why do they exist? (Score:3, Funny)
So you were basically playin
Re:Why do they exist? (Score:1)
Mod that up, please. It's often fun to program a little trickery into these games, and far more fun to play a long, great-looking for a long time and find out you can play around with these hidden tricks.
I played SA and loved it, but hardly expected all those cheats. [gtasanandreas.net] I think only the Genesis Sonic games have had better cheats [sonicunited.com]--where else can you add hundreds of robots all arou
Re:Why do they exist? (Score:1)
Because the game is too damn hard? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why do they exist? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why do they exist? (Score:2)
The cheat codes are there to enable testing. So you can't launch without them...
Re:Why do they exist? (Score:1)
To sell hint books.
Will PCs Be Outlawed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Will PCs Be Outlawed? (Score:2)
I don't know what your experience with programming is, but Rockstar BUILT IN these cheats, they didn't just materialize. If Rockstar didn't want the cheats in, all they would of had to of done is change a bit of code. In all honesty, they really don't care if you cheat or not, you already bought the game, they got their profit. It's not like a cheat code will somehow allow you to copy the game and distribute it on the i
Re:Will PCs Be Outlawed? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes I know, you already bought the game, yadda yadda, but in fact you bought a license to play the g
Re:Will PCs Be Outlawed? (Score:2)
No, but that's a good idea. People do sometimes hold cheats back for sake of a little visibility bump later, but I've never heard of "pay us X and we'll give you the cheats." Quite frankly you're far better off getting the promotion in the largest mag you can find (or all the mags at once) than the however many dollars you could get squeezing some desperate smaller publication. But heck, they got on S
Re:Will PCs Be Outlawed? (Score:3, Funny)
"Bob, one of our playtesters just discovered that if you hit Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right A B Start, you'll get 30 lives"
"Woah, that's strange. I'll classify it as a showstopper bug. I mean that's just eerie.. what are the odds?"
Re:Will PCs Be Outlawed? (Score:2)
Damn it all, its BA Start! B A
Sounds fishy (Score:4, Interesting)
So, how did the "relays" know when he'd actually found one? I'd read the article, if it was actually available.
SUre, it's easy to program some i/o lines to just twiddle all combinations of the buttons, but you have to have something that confirms that you actually hit something interesting.
Re:Sounds fishy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sounds fishy (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sounds fishy (Score:5, Funny)
Couple of ways... (Score:2)
Re: Catching Button Inputs (Score:3, Informative)
random button pushing? (Score:5, Funny)
(joking, I love tekken...)
Re:random button pushing? (Score:1)
article text (Score:1)
-------------
but i'm more interested in the actual hardware. anyone find something about the hardware used?
it definitely looks like a db-25 parallel port; from the 'bit
Re:article text (Score:3, Informative)
http://server3.uploadit.org/files/KSquared-edisonc ircuit.jpg [uploadit.org]
Re:article text (Score:4, Informative)
The nice thing about the parallel port is that it is pin programmable. You can individually control any of the pins directly. Where as with serial you need to talk UART
Source code? (Score:3, Interesting)
Did he post the source code somewhere? I'd love to have working base from which to, well, work.
- Chris
Trying all buttons? How fast? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even with the 12 "buttons" he's pressing and an assumed maximum code length of 12 presses, he's got 12^12 possibilities -- 8916100448256. Testing that number of possibilities (with 12 button presses per possibility) means that if he can spit out something like 48 button presses a second that leaves him with 2,150,000 days to find all the combinations.
If the game has been out for 120 days (I don't know the real amount of time, I'm estimating), that joystick would have to be sending 1 million plus button presses a second to have a complete code list as of today? Anyone know how often the PS2 probes the joystick for button presses?
There is one key error in my math that might shrink the figure by a bit: if you have a range of 24 button presses that the joystick is sending, that could actually be a test of 12 different 12-lengthed codes. My *guess* (I can't prove it mathematically -- maybe someone else can) is that it would shrink times/sizes by a factor of 10. Meaning at 48 button presses a second you need 215,000 days or to have found every code as of today you would have need to be sending input at ~100,000 button presses a second. Even then, assuming the analog state of the joystick can be packed into a byte somehow, that exceeds parallel port speeds.
Add *ALL* the buttons into the mix, R3, L3, Select, Start, and the directions on the analog sticks and the problem just gets a whole lot harder.
Someone please correct me if my math is off. I really am curious to know how the guy discovered so many codes so quickly.
Re:Trying all buttons? How fast? (Score:2, Informative)
He has NOT discovered ALL of the cheats (Score:1, Informative)
Plus, if you compile a list of cheats from the previous GTA games, and look closely at them all, you will actually start to see a pattern with the cheat codes. Theyre not just *random* button presses, theyre put in there by a developer who has just thought one up in
Re:He has NOT discovered ALL of the cheats (Score:1)
Whether or not the author of the parallel port program did some
Supply Lines (Score:2)
Re:Supply Lines (Score:2)
Re:Supply Lines (Score:1)
Where are the undiscovered codes? (Score:1)
mission select... (Score:2)
ALL Possible Cheats? (Score:2)
Since sequences of buttons can be arbitrarily long, has he actually found all the possible cheats? Isn't he still working on that part?