Finding Cheat Codes For A Living 287
selan writes: "The Baltimore Sun has an article about the guys from GameShark who spend their time digging up cheat codes. 'For hours on end, hackers here squint over thousands of lines of numeric coding that translate to great feats of accomplishment on a video game.'" Good work, if you can get it.
Doing this for money? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Doing this for money? (Score:2, Informative)
For anyone who actually plays those Konami games.
Re:Doing this for money? (Score:2, Informative)
They're smart enough to avoid that scheduling pitfall, unlike some web designers I know...
Re:Doing this for money? (Score:3, Informative)
man strings (Score:2, Flamebait)
do it yourself (Score:2, Redundant)
In reality, many slashdotters are able to(and perhaps already have) done this sort of thing for themselves in their spare time. The thing that amazed(and still amazes) me was that someone would actually be willing to pay people to do this. capitalism is a CRAZY thing i guess.
anyway, i really enjoyed this article.
Nice work if you can get it.
Re:man strings (Score:4, Interesting)
And when exactly did the Sony Playstation start shipping every unit with a copy of strings and a hex editor?
Re:It's in the PS2 Linux kit (Score:2)
Why? (Score:5, Funny)
Tiger Woods game: $40
Gameshark: $60
Realizing that you spent $100 to watch a golf game play itself: Priceless.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Funny)
The hole-in-one every time is gamer heaven. Boring, you say? Hah. You can win every time. And that, my friends, is what computer gaming is really all about.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Apologies to Dogbert (Score:5, Funny)
That's about as close as you can get to being an inorganic life form.
Re:Apologies to Dogbert (Score:2)
Re:Apologies to Dogbert (Score:2)
Isn't kinda sad that we know that word for word though =)
Re:Why? (Score:2, Funny)
People do this? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:People do this? (Score:5, Funny)
No way a geek gets laid that easy
//rdj
Re:People do this? (Score:5, Interesting)
(1) Find the lives display on the screen
(2) Moisten a bit of paper and stick it over the place found in step (1) [because step (2) requires two fingers]
(3) Run/Stop-Reset into the built-in TEDMON (oh I loved it)
(4) Clear the screen, place cursor under bit of paper placed in (2), whack down an '@' character (PETSCII $00)
(5) S C00 FE7 0 (finds the '@')
(6) S 0 FFFF for the address found in (5)
(7) You should now be able to find the routine that updates the lives display... The rest depends on how it works... You are usually pretty close though.
Re:People do this? (Score:2)
Re:People do this? (Score:3, Funny)
(1) Find the lives display on the screen
(2) Draw the infinity symbol on a piece of paper
(3) Moisten the bit of paper and stick it over the place found in step (1)
Re:People do this? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:People do this? (Score:2)
You're all wimps! (Score:2, Funny)
In the only game that matters, it's easy. Just type "X", and you're in explore mode and can go on forever (but can't get a high score or ascend).
hawk
Innocent? (Score:2)
I would not say that some methods were all that innocent. Although this might not be all that good for the brain cell count.
Re:People do this? (Score:5, Interesting)
We used to do it on the Beeb by poring over hex dumps, looking for the magic sequences of 6502 assembler (the novelty quickly wore off, and we wrote a program to do the search for us shortly afterwards :-) Ahhhh, wonderful memories. The BBC Micro was
an amazing hackers machine. Much more so than the
Spectrum or C64, by virtue of the fact that it
had in inbuilt assembler/disassembler and hex
dump. As for sleeping with despectacled geeks,
I sadly conformed to the stereotypes, and wasn't
much interested in that sort of thing at the
time. Of course,
things have changed somewhat since then :-)
Re:People do this? (Score:2)
1. Turn on your Genesis with Altered Beast in the catridge slot, when it got to the screen with the statues, pull the cartridge out with the power still on. (Don't blame me if you wreck something.)
2. Put in your Strider cartridge, and push the rest key.
3. There is no step 3. Just start playing, you now have infinite lives, though you're stuck playing at the hardest difficulty setting.
I wish I could remember the first game I saw this trick for, and I never did see it published in a magazine, though I sent it in to a few...
DMCA (Score:2, Insightful)
Sad, isn't it?
Re:DMCA (Score:2)
Disassembly provisions (Score:2)
wonder if that's allowed in the EULA (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting point... (Score:3, Interesting)
Cheat codes are usually put in by coders for debugging purposes and sloppy Q&A practices or, perhaps more sneaky, left in intentionally to drum up additional interest in the game. Winning the game becomes less the point, knowing how to cheat and where to find specials is the paradigm.
"Dude, I just came up with the greatest keyboard sequence to reveal a cheat code!"
"Yeah? Alright! Let's design a game around it!"
Ah, memories... (Score:2)
Of course, when you can beat the game without even trying, the fun goes away.
Re:Ah, memories... (Score:2)
The PSX game shark (the *real* one that fits on the back), on the other hand, is a beautiful piece of work. The massive built-in memory is nice, and the serial port on the back of the game shark itself makes it handy for backing up codes and saved games to PC. I rarely even use cheat codes, I got the thing to work as a big dex drive/multiple memory card gadget. Being able to get all those hidden goodies not normally available in various games is just a bonus.
Re:Ah, memories... (Score:2)
How can they do this under the DMCA? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Remember, if we use cheat codes to make our games easier, then the terrorists win.
Re:How can they do this under the DMCA? (Score:2)
Re:How can they do this under the DMCA? (Score:2)
Cheat Codes Origin (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cheat Codes Origin (Score:3, Informative)
Also, don't forget - how much fun would it be to get a game like RTCW and push a button for God mode right out of the box? Booooorinnnng.
Re:Cheat Codes Origin (Score:5, Informative)
1) Companies insert cheat codes because like you said, they use it to test the games. The Second reason is that it is always a thrill by the player to find out about these cheat codes, either through a purposely well placed 'leak' by the company or by themselves. Thirdly, companies do make money on cheats. Some companies sell "player guides" that are filled with help and cheats on games. If there weren't any cheats, there would be no market for these player guides.
2) Game Shark (according to the article) does not use the cheats made by the companies, although, I suspect that if they are reverse engineering it, they could view the cheats. But what they do is write/edit the RAM (memory) at given moments to enhance a feature. Let's say that in memory location 255, the game Mortal Kombat stores the maximum health of player 1. What the GameShark does is, instead of letting the game store 100% there, it writes in 500% (let's say) which gives you more health. Or another way would be to store -1 or something that the program doesn't expect.
Here's why that would work: Let's say that the program says:
With this, the player would never die.
not -1 (Score:3, Interesting)
Congrats. You just described the "Sudden Death" Issue.
Look, this is life points you speak about. -1 means you are dead for a few seconds.
I know. I tested for quite a long time and -1 in life is almost always fatal.
Just as the old trick of having "EF FF" in life is better than having "FF FF".
"FF FF" usually ends up with your player @ -65 465 in life , instead of +65...8|
Shocking to see the effect on vampire weapons 8) (Diablo 1 Players welcome 8)
Remember C64 POKEs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone remember the good old C64 games, where you cheated by resetting the machine, issuing a few POKE commands and restart the game using a SYS command? That utilized the exact same tecnique - POKE stored a value in RAM and SYS started executing the game.
Usually, however, these POKEs didn't rewrite RAM locations where the number of lives were stored. Instead, it replaced the actual machine code that decremented the life counter. So instead of doing:
dec $5463
The game now did:
nop
nop
nop
Which uses the same number of bytes of RAM.
There even existed hardware devices (called cartridges) that enabled you to automatically scan the memory for the locations of life counters and such. Once the life counter was found, the game code was patched in the way outlined above.
Ahhh, those were the days!
Re:Cheat Codes Origin (Score:2, Interesting)
Have you ever beta tested ? (Score:2, Interesting)
How do you beat Diablo with a Level 1 Paladin and a big and nice 4hits points dagger
How can you test that the green monster will follow you, that the AI is good
Without the codes, all the testers would have to make that 85 hours playgame in order to get to that last scene they have to test, then be killed within 5" because that monster is Really a boss...8)
+ Without cheat codes, I would !NEVER! have finished Doom2.
I'm not even sure it's possible to finish it without cheating...
So, here's the answer : cheat codes are mostly for testing the game.
In the old time, you screened the Hex and looked for change (everytime you got hit, a handle changed,...) and, after "much" Try and Crash, you got what you wanted (EF FF in strengh and Stamina...)
Re:Have you ever beta tested ? (Score:2)
However, quake and later games have no such limitation.......
Re: Cheat Codes Origin (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cheat Codes Origin (Score:2)
They leave them in because once the game is fully tested, they don't want to do anything that might foul things up. Plus even changing a single bit could cost a ton of money if IC presses have been made.
They don't tell the consumer because they don't want their game being solved in one day. Why buy your own copy of a game when you can just borrow your friend's (your friend doesn't need it anymore because he used cheat codes to find all the secrets in less than a week) and beat it in a week?
Gameshark doesn't have anything to do with these cheat codes. They reverse-engineer the game's machine code and figure out that, "By changing byte 0x4C2B0DF1 to 0xC2, we can disable the code that makes your energy go down when you get hit."
Re:Cheat Codes Origin (Score:2, Informative)
Easter eggs are intentionally put into a game by a developer. The cheat codes used by game shark are simply a way of finding out which adresses in the RAM hold what particular values, and changing them, for example the address that keeps track of how much gold I have, and changing it to a maxed out value.
Re:Cheat Codes Origin (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously though, there is a beautiful ineffable quality in hiding something just below the surface
Anyway.... about cool game hacks. I have seen (or not seen, as the case may be) in Quake II, an "invisible" player:
"WTF? Why is the wall shooting me?"
Also, I see this guy who was running around at about 200mph.... like his game character was caffiened up to the eyeballs.
It's actually quite amusing at first, and a rather cool hack. Yes, it can be annoying. However, the really decent players have a tendency to hunt down and specifically annihilate/embarrass any cheats.
I could have my facts wrong here (help me out...), but I believe this used to be called "smurfing". There is also some unrelated cracking technique called smurfing I think. I remember hearing a story about one of the very first networked academic computers. They had this old vector-based dog-fighting game. One day, a few people were playing. Suddenly, the Enterprise appears from nowhere, and instantly destroys all the players with a photon torpedo. To this day, nobody knows who it was, or how it was achieved.
The first easter egg (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.warrenrobinett.com/adventure/ [warrenrobinett.com]
psxndc
Re:Cheat Codes Origin (Score:2)
That would be a good reason to leave them in there.
Good work? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure I agree with that one. Personally, squinting over thousands of lines of hex code for hours at a time does *not* sound like good work.
Re:Good work? (Score:2)
You seem to have gotten lost and stumbled onto the wrong message board. Let me help you with a link home [aol.com]. (Instructions: click on the word HOME.)
-
Ummm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ummm (Score:2)
And I'd just like to take this moment to thank Capcom for redeeming themselves with Mega Man X6.
Silly Me (Score:5, Funny)
Now you:
Buy the game
Buy the strategy guide
Get all the cheat codes
Get bored because it's no fun anymore
Repeat cycle
To each their own...
Re:Silly Me (Score:5, Insightful)
...
What about this cycle:
Is that so despicable?
After I beat Baldur's Gate for the nth time, I amused myself for a while by experimenting with the various cheat codes, toying with the save file format with a hex editor, and otherwise trying to push the boundaries of what the game would let me do, which in itself was made for interesting challenges. Isn't that perfectly natural for someone with a hacker mentality?
In the process, I learned a little bit about how the game worked. It was fun for a while. Of course, silly me, that's why I buy games -- for the fun, not so I can prove how cool I am or look down on others for the way they choose to have fun with the games.
The kids who said "no, this is how you're supposed to do it!" were always the most annoying ones.
Re:Silly Me (Score:2, Interesting)
Good for you. In my personal experience, the game is fun for about 1% more time, after finding cheats, etc. It's pretty much trivia at that point. A good game design (and this is a real area for discussion) keeps the game interesting for a very long time, wheras I'm under the impression that "cheat codes" and other specials are part of the product now, and expected.
Imagine your friends dismay, while playing a board game, such as Monopoly, revealing you found a remarkable cheat code for the game, which, if you wiggle your ears and stand your playing piece upside-down, you get Boardwalk and Park Place. It'll actually become an entirely different game. Interesting, perhaps in ways yet to be uncovered (as in finding your friends are as good at finding hidden cheat codes as you or showing you the door), but is the new game really fun, or is it the Discovery that's really the fun and interesting part?
NetHack, arguably one of the most engrossing first person games ever, was a blast while learning how it worked. Less so when I found the massive cheat code list on the internet. Wish I hadn't, there's a lesson there somewhere.
FWIW, I've been working on the old Scorch game lately and toying with putting out my own version, with considerable changes in gameplay, designed for a very long overall game. We'll see how it goes with coding among other holiday activities over the next few weeks. Don't expect any cheat codes ;)
Re:Silly Me (Score:2)
Sorry to break it to ya, but it's been done: Worms [team17.com]
Re:Silly Me (Score:2)
* Find new ways to have fun in the game"
Yes! I spent countless hours just messing around with the "spam, spam, spam, humbug" cheat back in Ultima 6. I would create long chains of powder kegs, and then set them off, killing a random villager at the end. Completely pointless, but it amused the hell out of me.
Overall, I think that cheat codes are a great way for the player to engage in undirected gameplay (technical term: "screwing around"). Game designers are also getting better at including it as an actual feature (for example, being able to fly around the landscape in Mario64 or being able to drive around the cities in Midnight Club Street Racing), especially as we move toward more explorable 3D worlds.
Re:Silly Me (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyway, I come home from work and he whines to me that this level is too hard. For anyone who's played the game, it's the one where you have to get the snooper rifle and not let any of the guards see you. So I sit down and tell him, yeah, this level was pretty tough, I had to play it about 5 or 6 times because I kept trying to kill the tower guard. I start playing and I notice he already has the snooper scope, which is odd since getting the gun is part of the mission and he's a long way from where the gun is stashed. Then I notice he also has 996 ammo. For those who haven't played, the snooper scope is an awesome sniper rifle, but you usually only get like 10 ammo with it to cover 4 maps, so you use it sparingly. Having 999 ammo, you don't need to do this.
So I made it about halfway through the level and I climb up a tower and accidentally fall out, and surprise! I take no damage. He also had god mode enabled.
At that point I was pretty disgusted with him. The joke was on him however, as since he already HAD the snooper scope, he couldn't pick up the one laying on the ground, which was part of the mission, and so he couldn't end the level even though all the enemies were dead.
I encourage more game makers to make games that actually require some level of skill, so that even if you have all the cheat codes you can't be a lamer like this kid. The only part of the game that can't be won by simply being invincible and this kid was completely unable to do anything. And I know I sound like an old man saying this, but this is just another symptom of how lazy kids today are. Or maybe just him, who knows. He's getting xbox for xmas and I bet he'll waste several dead trees printing out cheat codes for halo.
How anyone can consider this fun, I don't know.
Re:Silly Me (Score:2, Interesting)
Hence the term: Spoiled.
Life, like games, without challenges, ceases to be interesting.
While playing Wolfenstein 3D I got to a floor where there was a maze with guards stationed at certain intersections. It was possible to walk through the maze without being seen, but I usually went for the direct approach, going to a hidden weapons, ammo, and medical stash and just duking it out. With considerable number of guards coming running at the sound of gunfire it took a few tries to find a way to survive the gun battle, but I did and that was more rewarding than slipping quietly through the maze.
I've never understood the point of... (Score:5, Insightful)
Trainers either, for that matter.
When I was about 15, I mowed lawns all summer in order to afford to buy NES cartridges. One of the 'cartridges' I bought was a Game Genie adapter.
Once I had done all the 'special effects' on the games I owned, I realized that any of the difficulty-altering codes took all the challenge out of the game.
Sure, it was fun to always have the elusive Hammer suit in SMB3, but at the same time, if you don't have to work hard and stay alive all the way through World 6 or 7, then you don't really appreciate it as much and don't play so carefully in order to keep it.
Now days, even the graphics altering abilities of such devices or programs aren't that impressive. There's very little you can do graphics-wise to a 3D, immersive game that doesn't break the game play. One of the few legitimate uses I've seen for this is to allow the player to play as characters that he wouldn't usually get to... such as Bowser in Super Mario 64. Even then, the animation and clipping is broken, hurting the play experience.
Some trainers do have positive uses. Here, I'm thinking about the trainers that exist for games like Roller Coaster Tycoon that allow the player to more or less play in the 'Free Form Building' mode that everyone agrees is missing from the game.
The conclusion that I've drawn from these observation is that trainers usually detract from gaming... at least for people who are interested in playing. If a game needs a trainer in order to be enjoyable, such as RCT... then there's something wrong with the game.
Re:I've never understood the point of... (Score:5, Interesting)
Once I had done all the 'special effects' on the games I owned, I realized that any of the difficulty-altering codes took all the challenge out of the game.
I always (well almost) used the game genie to make the game harder. Did you ever play smb1 with moon gravity? I had already beaten the game several times over, but moon gravity made the game a whole new experience. Sure you could jump higher once you figured it out, but your control was wigged out. Many times I would take a flying leap right into a pit. (WHEEeeeeeeoooooossshhii).
How about Tetris? I find a perverse pleasure in playing the "B" game with a high number of blocks already on the screen then trying to work them down to the bottom. The only problem is you only get 10 lines to do it in. With the game genie you could change it to 40!
I wasn't trying to cheat as such, just change the mechanics of the game, for better or worse, and make a different playing experience. It should be noted that I didn't have a game genie, I just borrowed one on occasion.
Re:I've never understood the point of... (Score:2)
What, you mean that manipulation of atoms in an effort to produce a partial duplicate of your genetic code and/or collect lots of important pieces of paper (either in physical or digital form)? As soon as one realizes this fact, life becomes rather pointless, and the ex-human goes on to the next level of spiritual existence.
Admittedly, most people won't recognize this until nanotechnology matures to the point where it's the gameshark of the physical world.
Re:I've never understood the point of... (Score:2)
I still like reflex games because playing is the end in itself.
But RPGs force you to do the same thing over and over, not for the quest, but simply to level up so you can go on the quest.
Boring.
In a well-designed game you are given a quest and on your way to it you gain enough experience to complete it, and on that quest, gain the experience to complete the second, etc. Those are fun, or rather, as fun as the writing is good.
The ones that force you to wander around outside killing orcs for experience (or, like Zelda, pulling up bushes for gold coins) are the ones that suck.
It basically comes down to the ammount of filler vs content. I hate filler and will edit my character up enough for the next adventure, etc.
I'm quite into tactical combat though so I actually enjoyed old isomeric RPGs (like SSI's PoR and CotAB) when the battles were scripted. Yet another forest with orcs was dull.
IMHO games should come with cheat codes. Both everything cheats (god mode) and cheats that allow you to skip what you don't like... Maybe "fast walk" and "1000 gold" for Zelda and "win battle" in many RPGs. This way you could skip over the crap they use to be able to say "100+ hours of gameplay" and still do the bits you find fun.
A have friends who swear that cheating is wrong even in a single-player game. They're the nuts ones who admit they hate a part of the game, yet waste their weekend playing it, trying to get to the good stuff.
Maybe an RPG only gives me 10+ hours of gameplay, but if those are good hours, it's still a better value than a movie. And, better than 100+ hours of gameplay I hate.
Oh my god, my eyes! (Score:2, Flamebait)
How is "squinting" over thousands of lines of code good work? Basically the job we are looking at here is looking at code for hours and hours so you can find that one number that make a character immortal or whatever. Now I don't know about everyone else, but I prefer to writing my own stuff rather than spending hours reading over someone else's work (which has to be reverse engineered to read, so goodbye comments, formatting, etc.)
Like I said, this may just be me. But personally I can't see the attraction of a job that involves reading code when you can get one writing it.
-Xenopax
Cheat Codes (Score:2)
I think the optimum setup is when they are intergrated into the gameplay, so you don't have to go through hoops in order to get them to work.
I've often wondered why more developers don't utilize them as a feature of the gameplay.
Thoroughly enjoying (Score:5, Interesting)
DCMA, Cheat Codes and MaMe (Score:2)
Increase/Decrease for power bars
Add/Sub for number of lives
Flag toggles
So the MAME and Genie cheats force certain RAM bytes to a desirable value...
Re:DCMA, Cheat Codes and MaMe (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:DCMA, Cheat Codes and MaMe (Score:2)
You think you can get a jury to understand why that isn't a DMCA offense?
Especially when the opposing counsel is going to challenge any potential juror who is a computer programmer?
Check out the GSCCC, they do a much better job.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Been going on for years in back bedrooms! (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the skills was to load the BASIC program, break it (stop it running) and find out where the binary game code loaded. Then you'd possibly manually load the binary and start looking around at the code. Using your trusty Z80 opcode-list you'd look for places where counters were decreased (lives reduced?). You'd also look for places where initial values were set (number of lives/amount of energy). These were pretty easy to do at the start.
Once you knew the location, you could create a modified BASIC loader containing POKE statements. These would modify the contents of memory after the binary had loaded, but before it was executed. That way you could change the number of lives, or amount of energey or whatever..
Then things got a bit tricker. The developers would embed some machine code into the first line of the BASIC program. This special code would load the binary code, but using a different (non-standard) speed. This was the advent of the 'turbo-loader', the bane of most spectrum owners. With higher speed loading came the delicate balancing of the volume and tone controls on the tape desk. Get the controls wrong and the game would refuse to load.. or worse, the game would load all the way to the end, but crash either dumping you to the '(c) 1982 Sinclair Research' initial screen, or show flashing coloured blobs (sorta the equivalent of BSOD).
The other problem with turbo loaders was that you couldn't just load the binary on its own, you needed a special loader. Each game developer had their own set of routines for storing the binary data on tape. Some had cool things like counters, music or animated loading screens whilst you wait for the game to load.
People would 'decrypt' the developers loader and create their own programs to load the turbo-loader games and then hack them....
Anyway, I'm rambling..
..suffice to say, this isn't new. More complex, harder, maybe? More fun... hmmm. There's a big difference between doing this for a job, and doing it to get a namecheck in a crappy Sinclair Magazine!
Re:Those were the days... (Score:2)
Basically, he'd edited the internal representation of the basic loader so that it started the programme 3 bytes on from what the loader appeared to say when looking at the code. e.g. although it claimed to start executing from memory location 31000, it actually started at 31003.
Hmmm... I think I can figure this one out; Spectrum BASIC had two representations for a number - 5 bytes for arithmetic and as many numeric ASCII bytes as necessary for Us Dumb Humans. IIRC, there was no requirement for the ASCII representation to match the underlying arithmetic representation (though, of course, for any non-twiddled bit of BASIC, they would match...)
--
Well, that's one way to do it... (Score:5, Interesting)
A bit of social engineering could really up the value of the Gameshark and similar. I know I've often put some queer things into my own games and removed them at compile time, or in the last minute rush, left them resident without adding a way to activate them because I never got them past management/legal. If someone had been nagging me just after shipping, while I still had my map file handy, I'd have been more than happy to share the location of one nifty thing or another. I'd wager many other developers are just like me.
Get a hold of the publishers and they may see implementing leakable codes as a way to get a second bump in the sales chart.
Do a little digging and get a hold of the programmers themselves, and they may share things they put in for their own joy and benefit. A little push or some free gear, and they may even put bonus flashy extras in there as a side project.
Good Work if you can get it? (Score:2)
Sort of like recompiling a new kernel with every minor relea... oops, never mind.
I'm still creating codes for the Game Genie..... (Score:5, Interesting)
A while back, I discovered the joy of making Game Genie codes when decided to make my four-score famicom compatible (e-mail me for info)... I lost (and still need to replace (if you are from Japan and can help me out, email me!)) my copy of Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu, and needed something to test my converted adapter on. Knowing that the Famicom version of Super Dodge Ball had 4 player mode, but that it was removed from the NES version because of incompatibility, I simply spent some time to make a game genie code that would allow a four player beanball game on the NES.... "GEUOLZZA"
Click here for a screenshot of it. [rahga.com]
I kept going too....
How about coed Super Spike V'Ball? [rahga.com] (it uses unfinished/prototype characters that were not completely removed before production.)
That's "AEXGXYGE", or "AAKGNTGE" if on the same cart as NES World Cup....
I've even made a code that unlocks 3 player games in Stinger.
Any, I find this stuff loads of fun. All of it will be up on my site [rahga.com] some day, when I get a little more time and a digital camera to show off the construction of my modified four score.....
So, to all those trolls whining about cheating and gamesharks being no fun, nyaaaaah to you. There's no way I'd ever play as Wolverine on THPS3 if I didn't make my PSX memory card reader
-rah
(ahgaray atyay ahgaray otday omcay)
On the PC... (Score:4, Informative)
Back in the DOS days, there was a program called "Gametools" that worked like a Game Shark for PC games. It was a whole lot more useful, though, because you could easily come up with codes yourself by searching through memory for interesting values as you played the game.
(You could also use it to write cracks for your software. Some day, this kind of software will probably end up being illegal.)
These days there are SoftICE and GDB, but programs are getting a whole lot bigger and more complicated. It's just not as fun...
Cheats and mods (Score:5, Interesting)
People make new maps, player models, enemies, etc. to create new experiences within the game. Without cheat codes, level creation would be near impossible.
Game developers use cheat codes to debug and test the gameplay. If they took the cheats out before release, there would be no mods for the game and the lifespan would be much shorter.
Re:Cheats and mods (Score:2)
Amen! A Quake 3 mod developer's best friends are "god" and "give". (Trust me. I know.) A mapper's best friends are probably "noclip", "r_showtris", "r_speeds", and so on. (There are tons of others, too.) If those were left out, map and mod making would really, really suck. It would be impossible to line textures up properly all the time, examine your geometry close up, or find out how the BSP compiler split up your brushes. Testing new bot code is significantly easier if you're indestructible and have every weapon.
Heck, I've even added cheat codes from time to time to check out my stuff.
Incidentally, there's a fun side-effect to the "noclip" cheat. If you have the gauntlet selected before you go into "noclip" mode, you can still attack players with it, and with no reload time! I believe there was a buffer overrun exploit in version 1.16n that let you get into "noclip" mode with an evil chat or something...people used to use it on MPlayer servers all the time.
It is NOT illegal under dmca (Score:4, Troll)
The DMCA covers copy protection. It has NOTHING to do with this. In fact, here's a subsection of DMCA *maintaining* the right to reverse engineer in this way:
`(f) REVERSE ENGINEERING- (1) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and that have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this title.
Please, for the love of god, read the text of the DMCA before ever mentioning it again. It's fairly short and to the point.
Text of DMCA [eff.org]
Still not convinced? (Score:2)
Now though they do things a little differently they used to with respect to loading memory, it still doesnt matter. Unless game makers start ENCRYPTING all of their code (not just pieces as they do now for copy protection), the dmca simply doesnt apply.
As many have mentioned earlier, these types of devices give replay power and could possibly even sell more games by giving people who suck at games a chance at beating them. Why would any game company be against that?
Anyway, 26,000 words is tiny for a legal document.... I found the DMCA an easy read compared to many other copyright documents...
CheatZilla (Score:2, Informative)
Underpaid (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Underpaid (Score:2, Insightful)
One would assume those with "remarkable programming skills" would be making $50,000 and up while actually programming games, rather than trying to reverse engineer infinite health cheats in games other people created...
Hacking? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hacking? (Score:2)
GXNAGY makes getting to SMB's minus world easy (Score:2)
I've discovered a cheat code myself. While poring over the Super Mario Bros. hex code, I found the sequence "04 03 02 00 24 05 24 00 08 07 06". My previous experiments had confirmed "24" to be the game's code for a space character, and that world -1 was actually world (SPACE)-1, that is, 36-1. I realized that these codes matched the codes for the game's warp zones. After changing the 02 to 24, I was able to make the pipe at the top right of World 1-2 that normally takes the player to 2-1 to take the player to -1. The code is (in BASIC) POKE $87F4, $24 or (in Game Genie) GXNAGY.
Details on how I accomplished the hack [everything2.com]
Re:whaaaa...?? (Score:2)
Re:whaaaa...?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, the codes themselves aren't big money, as (as far as I know) nobody sells just the codes. However, the codes do enable them to sell the hardware (or you could say hardware sales subsidize the code finding efforts). And every code they develop and make available adds one more reason for someone to buy a Game Shark
Looking at this another way, suppose you are play video games and are not opposed to the idea of a game shark. If the Game Shark didnt support any of the games you play, would you buy it? Probably no, but what about if it had codes for a handful of the games you play. Then you might buy it. If it supports every game you play, you are more likely to buy it. But what if it does support new games as they come out. That would make you less likely to buy it. In otherwords, to ensure sales of Game Shark, they need to support as many games as possible, and continue to support new games as they come out. This way they build a loyal following. Then, as new games systems come out every couple of year, they quickly come out with a new product for that system and have millions of instant repeat customers.
Re:Thanks to the brave guys at Gameshark (Score:2, Interesting)
Interestingly, Phantasy Star Online, a popular space adventure in the online gaming circuit, is not one of Interacts's primary targets. John Hays says that's because of the "moral issues" involved with providing cheat codes for players in head-to-head online gaming.
"We could do it, but we don't," Hays said.
Are they lying? Or are Phantasy Star cheats found elsewhere?
Re:Thanks to the brave guys at Gameshark (Score:2)
The corallary to this is, don't send the client anything more than they REALLY need to know.
Why? Because you have to assume that if you send the data, it will be displayed. Even if you don't build a display for it (e.g. - numeric data used to display some other message) or you have conditions for it being displayed (e.g. - invisible things). Someone _will_ crack your data stream and figure out a way to get the info either inside the game or outside of it.
Witness ShowEQ for Everquest. There's not a great many hacks that have been done on the game (yes, a few memory editors... and to my knowledge using them results in your being banned sooner or later), but the ShowEQ author and later developers figured out the datastream and have broken every encryption since. Verant has become clued about these things slowly and is doing fewer stupid things. Instead of sending a monster's hit points, they now send a percentage (which is all that's displayed to the client anyway). Instead of sending a number indicating exactly how much you are liked or disliked by a group of monsters, they send a number indicating what level of faction you have (again, all that was displayed anyway).
The downside of not being able to trust the client is that you require a lot more server bandwidth - particularly CPU wise. And you do run into client side issues when you start talking about limited disclosure (e.g. - invisible players/monsters/etc) because in order to do it Right, changing from visible/invisible means that you change what data you're sending. If you have collision between PCs and other moving objects then how do you handle someone trying to walk through an invisible object? You either have to tell them it's there all the time (but don't display), or you have to let them walk through it and get corrected back by a server update, which is very confusing for the player. Fun fun fun.
Re:Thanks to the brave guys at Gameshark (Score:2)
The name for this is called "selective disclosure."
You're post is correct & informative -- selective disclosure doesn't magically make a game "hack proof" -- it just raises a lot of (other) thorny issues.
Re:Thanks to the brave guys at Gameshark (Score:2)
Re:Let He Who Is Without Sin... (Score:2)
CBM PET Urban Legend? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:CBM PET Urban Legend? (Score:2)
Re:Tell me when they find a cheat for.. (Score:2)
Ensemble Studios are the game developers. Microsoft is the publisher
> do some sort of a check on the size of your dat files which holds game data during game play, i.e. like 10000 gold, 20000 food, 10000 stone etc etc, and if your file size is greater, it is what is called a "Sync Error"
Everyone has to be using the same networking code (i.e. game version)
One person out of sync means the game is in unknown game state, which is bad for peer-2-peer gaming.
One of the programmers who worked on Age of Kings wrote up this interesting article on hacking/cheating:
How to Hurt the Hackers The Scoop on Internet Cheating and How You Can Combat It [07.24.00] [gamasutra.com]
Cheers
Re:My Daddy does the Dirty 'till they took it away (Score:2)
The folks at HomeFair say that a Baltimore $28k is a Bronx $33k, a Brooklyn $35k, and a Manhattan $77k (!)
Besides, hardly anybody in Hunt Valley gets eaten by CHUD.