Super Duper Debug Hint

[quatroking]

This hint is maybe not for newbies but whatever. (hey newbies.... :tease: !!!)

First, checkout if your game use this type of files:

Characters
Avi's
Sound's(in wave type)

and much other things of that.
(if you have a modern racegame, try to find the car files, can be pretty handy...)

ok, now you have found the files.
Chance the name of the file. (sample: Car1.car = car.car car2.car = car1.car and after that, you chance car.car into car2.car)

Its become pretty handy by unlocking cars.
(maybe you see in the menu the default car,but when you play you see the right car)

Try this by other games, but always make a back-up before you go debug the files!

Hint: many dosgames crash when you debug the levels. (Holyshit! my own computer have crashed when i debug it! (or it was that virus...(or i have delete explorer.exe... yes! that was it!)))

Edit: This is sometimes handy if you are stuck in your game

An other edit: feel you free to comment about this!

[Eagle of Fire]

Moved since it has absolutly nothing to do with Troubleshooting. I actually had to think a little while before choosing another forum to move this to since we don't have a "cheat section" forum.

However, let me say this to you: if this is a joke, then I am not amused. Troubleshooting section is a serious place. Insulting or taunting newbies as well as creating mindless polls is not something I am going to tolerate.

[Data]

chill out eagle.
he is probably just discovering the basic hacking skills.

But you were correct in moving it here.
it has little to do with troubleshooting.


Yes I remember some poker game with girls. you could see the final picture by just renaming the files :)

[Eagle of Fire]

I'm not angry or anything, but I said what I disliked about it in the first post.

If it wasn't of the taunting and the fact that the whole post looks like a joke, I might have just kept in in Troubleshooting. However, it is not the case. Saying something is not enough, the way you say it is also important. The "interesting" poll did not help sway my oppinion on the other side... ;)

Edit: And for the record I nulled my vote.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Yeah, yeah, but some files in some games just won't work with just their names switched.

Besides, if this is hacking then I am little green man from mars. Hacking is something else then just changing filenames and bragging about how much effective that was. See example here. (http://www.abandonia.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=2354&hl=) Now go learn something about hexadecimals and return when you're done. Modifying hexadecimal data strains is very effective, but can be also dangerous if you do something wrong...
Plus, naturally, it's a s***load of fun to figure out which part of the file does what.

[quatroking]

Its absolute NOT a joke, i have change some names by a ping pong game, i start now by LV 60!

[The Fifth Horseman]

Look, try some SERIOUS hacking. And I mean it.

[JJXB]

i have a better tip:
use a program like artmoney to look inside the game's memory for particular values and edit them while the game is still running.

[The Fifth Horseman]

By serious hacking I meant something like stuff I did with Bloodrayne recently. To quote:
Next part of my post is a lot of tech talk, so those who don't have a modicum of technical savvy can skip it altogether.
It needs a degree of basics of hexadecimal file editing to understand. To utilize what I'm explaining, you'll need a hex editor as well, Hex Workshop (v2.01 - very old one) does the job nicely.

The "control sum" in fact does as I have guessed before count the number of bytes, but not of entire file - only the length of the scripts. It is made by two bytes at offset 08-09h, IN REVERSE (for those who have not encountered this yet, it means that these offsets are read by the game backwards). For example, in AR_GH_BARRACKS.SCB it is 7C45, which means that the scripts are 457C hex bytes long, which transfers to 17788 bytes decimally.

Actual scripts begin at offet 0Ch and end with the 00 byte after :initSectionEnd.

However, as far as it has allowed me to insert a decimal into the timer before the kill command on the lift soldiers, attempting to add or delete a command _still_ caused a crash.

After the end of the scripts there is a lot of bytes that might be garbage, but might as well be not. They are comprised of hexadecimally recorded numbers (backwards again), 4 bytes long each, and their number seems to be equal to the number recorded in 04-05h (recorded, you guessed it, backwards). They seem to be related somehow to the script commands as well - there are as many of these segments as there are commands in the script block separated by the 00h values.

Therefore, deleting two commands (the kill timer garbage), combined with decreasing the value at byte 04h by 2 AND removing the last two of the "garbage" strings resulted in the patch actually working and not locking up at the beginning of the level.

By reversing the same procedure to confirm that this method works, I have modified SCB of the Church level so that Extruded View and Dilated Perception are aivaible there. Guess what, it works. The game does not lock up loading it (soo many of my early attempts resulted in crashes...), and all the abilities work as intended. I have first copied and pasted the script commands that enable Dilated Perception and Extruded View into the beginning of the script, taking note of the number of bytes the sequence has, increased the byte counter by appropriate number, then increased the command number by two (as I have pasted two commands). Two "garbage segments" were added then. It does not really matter what their numbers are, just that the number in each is successive to the previous one.

[quatroking]

Originally posted by JJXB@Jan 24 2005, 04:53 PM
i have a better tip:
use a program like artmoney to look inside the game's memory for particular values and edit them while the game is still running.
umm..

(Other words: THATS A TRAINER!)


:sneaky: hey.. where can u download that program? :sneaky:

[JJXB]

www.google.com (http://snipurl.com/8qwq)