EA Won't Let Me Play This Game - So I Hacked It
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- Опубликовано: 30 сен 2024
- Let's crack an old game to make it playable
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Accompany me on an epic quest in "EA Won't Let Me Play This Game - So I Hacked It," as I strive to enjoy the classic God game, Black and White, despite EA's hindrances. Delve into the process of reverse engineering the key check algorithm to generate a new key and surpass the restrictions. Don't miss out on this enthralling hacking adventure - remember to subscribe for more gaming breakthroughs!
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Do you know if there is away to restore full screen dosmode to Windows 10/11 , You can restore dosmode to windows, however they did block full screen mode from running.
I actually have a physical copy of Black and White if you'd like to get it we can discuss details.
Black & White was a great game, so was #2. Haven't seen it's likes or any attempt at a copy. A shame... games today have a hard time not adding zombies! I still have the original discs, just have to dust off my 3200+ and 9800 AIW!
EA did the same to me with Crysis 3. DVD-ROM not work!!
@@francoisleveille409 I had a similar issue with Crysis 2. Called their hotline and had it working within minutes. They'll take care of you if you call. Or..they used to.
Its fourtunate you didnt accidentally give out the end of the code. If fiv'e taken one thing away from this video, its the importance of keeping CD keys private. It'd be a shame four a small business like EA to lose revenue from a game they no longer sell. I eight to even think of such a thing
legend
😂
Oh neat, I have the same combination on my luggage!
@@WackoMcGoose Space Balls: The Reference!
Lmao you had me there 😂
I love that the game is reverse engineering the game, and not actually playing it. I love this channel.
Getting to the game is often more fun than the game itself (:
That was the fun part of a game genie, not just typing in the codes you got from the book but actually finding the codes
@@nathanbaggs or we could try and reverse out the key check algorithm and create our own key "Lets do the latter, it's a bit more challenging but could be a lot of fun". As u said :DD
@@nathanbaggs Yes proving you are guilty of software fraud with a video on here is really smart! Now take the fork out of the toaster!
Oh mani hated that... I thought I was going to watch somebody hack into a locked off part of my childhood, and instead he just messed around with code and left me and others hanging
Ugh, deep let down, still appreciate his craft but ... I find myself avoiding his channel, inversely to your reaction
That second function just converts strings to integers:
"4444" == 0x115c
"4548" == 0x11c4
Subtracting 0x30 is what tipped me off, it's an easy way to go from a ASCII digit to the value (e.g. 0x35 in ASCII is '5')
Thanks for the insight. I got so wrapped up in the nitty gritty I forgot to take a step back and look at what it was actually doing
@@nathanbaggs If you see 0x30 being subtracted from numeric input, it's doing ASCII to integer. If you see base 10 things being done in a start at zero, read, multiply by 10, add loop, it's doing string to integer.
@@nathanbaggs erm there is a read me in the stuff you ripped from the internet, usually they contain the info you need to install the game, like CD keys and how to install it (like sometimes you need to copy a crack into some specific file, stuff like that)
@@daftwulli6145 Yep, as soon as I saw the files in that folder I was thinking the same. Not that I've ever seen a ripped game or anything.
@@ferrumignis Yea of course not, who would ever do that ?
Btw quite a few studies showed that most often piracy is not done for monbetary reasons, but for reasons of convinience. If you do not give potential customers a good and simple way to pay you for the product they look for alternatives.
Streaming plattforms are a big example. When netflix started out, and you had all the shows you want in one convinient place, TV show piracy droped by over 80%. But then more and more streaming plattforms apeared and each had less and less shows, so you had to look up everything you want to watch to see who had it, and thus had to plattform hop all the time, it went right back up. Funny how that works.
Same goes for anti piracy meassures that are a pain in the ass for users that actually paid for the game, while pirates had no such problems. Also nobody wants minutes of unskippable adds on a dvd they paid good money for. Or why do i need to be constantly online for a single player game ? There is litjerally noi reasdon I need to be online thge whole time, and there have been so many occasions where my internet was spotty or crashed and I wanted to game till it comes back. So I will no longer buy games that demand I have to be online at all times
I could keep going with examples all day, but it all goes back to the same nonsense : if piracy is way more convinient then buying something, and way less of a hassle, people will pirate. So companies should stop the BS on their paying customers, or they will find alternatives.
I remember "A friend" who managed to find where a key was checked for an old program and converted the Jump if equal instruction to a jump if not equal. Thus the program only worked if the wrong key was entered.
true=false poof.
I did exactly the same back in the late 90's. Worked fine. With current games it won't be possible any more.
Don’t mess with Rick Sanchez 😂
Yes! This was basically how I did it back in the day. Was way easier to patch the return code than to reverse engineer the algorithm. Ahh things were so much simpler back then.
or you could change the elseif to return the same value as the if. That way it wouldn't matter what you put in.
Reminds me of back in the early 1990s when Lemmings and Lemmings 2 came out for the PC. To allow you to continue from a level, after each level is cleared a code is given which when entered allows you to go directly to the next level without having to play the previous levels. (It was sonething like 10-13 seemingly random letters long.)
Lists started appearing in magazines and on bulletin boards (was pre/at start of internet).
I noticed that different people sometimes got different codes for the same level (and sometimes a person would get different codes when replaying the same level).
Using a few of these codes I was able to reverse engineer how they were generared and was able to create codes that worked but were impossible for the game to generate.
Your challenge, should you wish to accept it, is to get a copy of the original PC Lemmings, get some codes (by playing it, or finding some) and workout how they work. This tape will self destruct in 5 seconds....
🤯☠
A lot of console games did this as well.
I remember some games were doing it, i thought that it was a gimmick which occurred when devs for some reason didn't make a saving process or it was technically impossible to handle the saving process like on cheap/bootleg disks and cartridges when it was impossible to write data on them or in the console
those are actul save points for each individual player. none of them were the same unless you had the same scenario and assets... which is extreamly unlikely.
man i miss lemmings... there are a few games today that may be better or equal to the quality... buy even their demos are paid to play.
sorry im not paying for something before i know what im getting, blizzard taught me this.
because of blizzard ive atopped paying for software at all without a fully unlocked version thats free.
@@pazsion yep that is how it worked on the Sega Mastersystem games.
"What do we do now?"
"Now we can finally play the game"
Not quite that...
Good thing you didn't give away the numbers 😁. Cool video!
Would be irresponsible if I did...
@@nathanbaggssure. EA lawyers have no mercy
As someone has already posted, he effectively did give away the numbers, just not in decimal.
Underrated youtube channel... excellent blend of information, education, light humor, and blended all with smooth transitions for a good overall flow. wishing you success!
Much appreciated!
He's got gorgeous eyes as well😅. Instant subscribe
New sub here.
Gives me flashbacks to the massive FFF keygen that could generate keys for like 200+ EA games...
I still have it and use it to this day.
Sometimes to install Sims 1, FIFA and NFS games.
I'm still not sure that was not malware, but damn it was handy and the pieces of music on various versions rocked.
@@djdamagedomeIt’s less malware than any of the DRM BS publishers put in nowadays.
You had that one too?
I think I still have it in an old hard drive with windows XP lol.
I can still hear the music playing
"It''s pretty cool that Ghidra managed to decompile this back to a x 10.............. anyway" That pause had me lol
I love the fact I've been watching a RUclips channel find it's niche and grow since I saw the first video and subscribed. Good job buddy!
Thanks for the kind words! I'm really enjoying solving puzzles and sharing that with everyone
used to make a lot of cracks and keygens back in the days before youtube, great RE is getting track here, keep it up 🤘
And they where always reported as a virus. Even if it wasn't.
Oh man... my childhood favorite is a legacy game. Guess I'm old now. I absolutely loved B&W as a kid. Training my tiger to either be nice or evil. Casting rain or fire down upon my people. Chucking boulders at enemy villages. This game is an absolute gem. I would love it if they remastered it and released it again.
That should be easy enough, just have to lock Peter Molineux in a deep dark dungeon and ensure he never, ever hears about it
As owner of the original DVD with original box and code I still found this extremely interesting.
It was on a CDRom not a DVD.
Same difference one just has more layers on the disc for storage
@@fueledbyllama3043 No, actually. a 4.4GiB DVD is still single-layer... it just packs the spiral more tightly... though it *does* sandwich it between two half-thickness pieces of polycarbonate instead of sitting on top of a full-thickness one with only a layer of lacquer to protect it.
As a non owner without any of that shit, so did I
Yep. Still got mine.
I clicked onto this video ready to type my comment about how you didn't hack a game just because you installed a no-cd patch or something similar. But I was wrong, you actually did hack it, it was so nice to watch someone doing the thing they claimed in the titles for once. Props.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate the backwards compatibility of windows?
Being able run code from '99 without any issue is insane.
On MacOS even pre M1/2/3 chips, I weren't allowed to update the OS until the all the apps supported that version or it would break.
It's insane.
Even more, windows has some apps that wasn't updated since win 95 or even 3.1.
It's pretty much the selling point for Windows at this point. They even have patches for broken games. If you're running the old Sims games, the kernel will allocate memory differently because the Sims has bugs in their memory usage.
The installer might look good, but trust me the game does not run without any issues once you actually boot it x(
Gawd, don't get me started on this... I recently tried to install my legit Adobe CS6 Master Collection on an Intel Mac running Catalina... Pure rage ensued. I have some grumpiness toward Apple for that. The frikkin' INSTALLER used some 32bit code so a 64bit application can't be installed. Seriously?!
@@hadamana Microsoft went so far as to bundle 32-bit InstallShield engines to transparently swap in if you try to install a 32-bit game with a 16-bit installer after they finally decided that 20 years was enough and didn't write support for 16-bit apps in 64-bit Windows.
I think you solved an old riddle from my childhood, ty. My friend and I were playing metal gear for 8 bit Nintendo waaaaaay back in the day. It had the most frustrating password system where it was like 32 characters long and had no backspace. if you entered a letter wrong it required you fill in all the blanks to input and then get rejected. One day my fat finger missed a letter and hit z by mistake. I just filled the rest of the password in with the letter z and it was like a debug code or something. IT was a late game save file with most everything done. We wrote it down and it worked. The look on our faces when it said password accepted was priceless.
Watching this I remember the good and old days of Phrozen Crew, Fravia's essay, SoftIce, IDA, W32dasm, etc.
You'll face a bigger challenge from here: DRM. The game performs a disk check and somehow it knows if you have the original or a copy and it refuses to start when it detects a copy. To make things more complicated, Win 7 and beyond treat this as a rootkit and refuses to run it. Even a cracked copy will refuse to run as the DRM is still there, just patched to always return success even if a disk is not present at all. So it might be easy to get it running on an old machine (I do have one with an original disk and the DRM passes without any cracks or hacks) but it will be a pain to get it running on a modern PC.
Yes I started looking at what happens next and it's, interesting... Hoping to get some time to come back to it and maybe do another video on it
Windows 7? I know that Windows 10+ disallows (some? all?) disc-based DRM, but I have never encountered a disc that could not be installed on my Win 7 system. I do not have a disc copy of Black & White, though.
It was blocked in Windows 10 out of the box. Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1 blocked it with the KB3086255 update. Uninstalling this update might allow disk based DRMs to run on those operating systems, but there's no way to get it running on Windows 10 and newer. DRM must be removed altogether, patching it like cracks did back in the day won't work.
@@DezsikeDevil1 Right, right. I do not have that update installed. And that very freedom is one of the many reasons I'm using Windows 7.
I will be building a Windows 10 system, but it will _only_ be used for playing (single-player) DX12 games. It will not be connected to the Web.
Yeah, this reminds me of running my own program, which I wrote myself on Delphi. And running it under W10 was tricky. Windows just closes it at some point. No antivirus warning, no nothing. It just closes and all.
It started after I added function, which get process list, and kill one process if its name is matched. It was added as I call curl.exe using CreateProcess function. And sometimes it hangs, so I need to kill it and restart.
It was fun for me, that Windows just kills my program, when it try to call the function. And later program file is removed from disk. No any quarantine records, no nothing too = )
It was even funnier at first, as I just copied some function from the Internet, KillTask it was called. My program was just removed on run. After I modified my function code, so it was not universal anymore, I just made it look for particluar process name, it was alright.
But a couple of weeks, and it started to kill it and remover once again. I guess some cloud antivirus protection leaked my program to MS, they analized it and blacklisted for no purpose.
Well, I am just glad I do not use Windows for myself for 15 years or so. As it is just ridiculous, that I just cannot run my own programs anymore. = )
Oh that good old times, when Windows just worked... = )
So the activation program takes in 4 different numbers, does some maths to the first set of 3 and the last one, and if the result of those two sets of maths match it accepts it as a key? Interesting! Thinking about it I'm not sure how I'd handle such a problem pre-internet activation days where you can't just put a lookup table of all the valid keys in with the rest of the code for obvious reasons lol (and then you'd have a predetermined number of possible keys without a new CD version)
Most (offline) keys worked like this back then. The Windows 95 (OEM and/or Retail) key algorithm was a joke. I could literally do "the math" in my head as it was mostly based of the numbers being added up had to be divisible by 7 (google it). Other applications and games had more complex algorithms, that's what keygens "solved". They ("hackers" or "release groups") reverse-engineered the algorithms and then calculated (or "generated") a valid key.
That’s pretty much it!
I think the thing is, back in the day, keys weren't linked directly to your copy of the game. There was an algorithm for generating random keys, and they simply printed these on each game copy. Maybe many games had the same key?
@@berenscott8999 this was almost certainly the case that many games had the same key, or could have had the same key and worked fine - thats why you could share a game key online back in the day and potentially thousands could use it without issue, its sole purpose was just to pass the installer check lol
@@humble_frog The keys were generated using a simple algorithm. There was no database of which keys were used and no Internet checks performed.
Love it! I fondly remember the space cops in original starflight who would come get you if you lost the cardboard key generator.
Glad you enjoyed it!
God, I've been playing this game for quite a while, eradicating these pests time and time again...
Was anyone actually able to land on the Spemin home world in Starflight 2 and egg nuke it? I do have fond memories in Starflight 1 of landing on the religious fanatic fish people’s home world and activating an egg on it and destroying it.
Man, Black and White was my JAM as a kid. I really need to see about playing it again, but I'll need to get a hold of an extra GPU to dedicate to the VM haha. I'm a little surprised it was that easy to crack, but then again it _was_ the early 2000s of game protections. Thanks for the video Nathan!
Prodigy and razor111 used to crack games like this back in the 90;s and 00's, they would get games from the local distributor prior to release to public and crack them, most would be out on the day of release or earlier.. at the height of the cracking game, these guys could do what you are doing in about 4 min. package it and ship it in with a bin file of the game. Vaughn, or 'little china' , just north of Toronto.
Great video Nathan! I find your videos super interesting. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with the world and helping preserve old media.
Glad you like them!
I HATE EA with a passion. Mostly because of the way they've treated some of my former employers and also from when Spore came out. I bought the game for my daughter and the code wasn't printed on the booklet. You could VAGUELY see where the code was supposed to be but it's like the ink ran out or something. I followed all the rules to get a new code, took a picture of the receipt, me holding the box, a pic of the book and they still tried to claim I had to pay another 50$ for a code. I literally told the dude on support to fuck himself and googled a code generator and talked to him while I downloaded the code generator, put the code in and installed the game. The entire time I told him how much of a fuck nugget he was and that I'd never buy another EA game again and I haven't. Of course the idiot sounded like he was from India and didn't really give a crap. I felt good about it though.
I have many EA games, but I've not spent a dime on them, and I never will. Treat your customers like criminals and well........
The community patches for the B&W series are pretty good if memory serves. I own all games but downloaded a collection with everything because it was easier to get running and more stable to play.
Omigosh I LOVE Black and White, grew up playing it! And I love your videos!
Never would have expected them to cross over =0
So cool to see inside of it like this, thank you for the really interesting look at it
This game is actually crazy. There's this obscure mechanic regarding artifacts that lets you build gigantic wonders that have absurd secondary effects.
What's the point of closing the program after 3 incorrect inputs? It's not like the disk is going to be destroyed, just a hassle for a user who is forced to reopen the program, like inputting this shitty code is not painful enough 😢
To discourage and annoy crackers trying random inputs.
After 3 attempts to have to spend more time getting to the stage where you can input a [potential] key. Also, I don't know what was available for Windwos then, but it would also prevent programs which can repeatedly enter codes until a correct one is found at a rapid rate: after 3 attempts the program stops.
It comes down to how much time is worth relative to the cost of buying the game (key).
Back in 80s the Unix password encryption function was deliberately written [badly] to run slowly. It meant that when logging in the delay was unnoticeable, but if you tried to run a dictionary through the function (to guess passwords) it created a significant delay to the process.
Also, the login of systems back in the 80s tended to close the connection after 3 attempts to prevent scripts just trying password after password until one worked - the script would have to be able to handle reconnecting to the system with the delays that involved.
This is exactly the content I am looking forward to. I am wondering if maybe you could explain how the Oblivion's Soul Trap glitch works. I tried to read up online why when you create a spell with it and cast it looking at the feet it becomes permanent, but I only found information that it is actually not really related to Soul Trap but a bug in the targeting system. I hope that it will not cause any licensing issues and you can debug it to explain how it works.
Great video as usual.
Ah black & white... my 2nd "real" game when I was a kid, just after Age of Empire 2
I never finished it... back in the days I just couldn't beat nemesis's creature ( I never understood the combat system with creatures, and still don't to this day... each time I won a creature fight it was just by luck and by spamming regen miracle on my creature )
And in recent days tried multiple time over the ears, from windows 7 to windows 11, I tried multiple time to play it, both with my CD version and with multiple pirated version with all the patchs and all... but the game ALWAYS crash at the last island soon after you capture the Greek village
Black and White is probably one of the greatest games I've ever played, however it's probably the buggiest games I've ever played as well. After the millionth time of auto save not working or my save files being somehow corrupted or just.. not saved? I gave up. GREAT game tho.
Hey, proud fun fact: my Sister, Evie, designed the Lionhead logo. The Bullfrog one too.
Ubisoft is even more fun. They won’t even accept your valid keys after a couple of years. New launchers, new whatever, and of course every game has to be online only even if you play single player only. Never buying from those fuckers again.
Good video! I like when you try to fix old software
No way that mr baggs actually plays computer games. Instead he is playing the installer of different games, each and every time :D
It’s more fun than the game!
But how did you work around the safe disc program as that’s the issue I’m having trying to run my actual disc with key
Loved Black and White. Great work as usual
This channel has inspired me to figure out why an old game freezes when a dialog box appears on versions of Windows past XP. I barely know what I’m doing, but it might be related to a text rendering library. We’ll see how it goes. 😅
If you can do that Why not just take the if statement 5:25 and say If( 1=1). Or instead just change the return 0; to return 1;?
0:40 I know it defeats the purpose of the video, but the first thing I would have done is check the readme for a pirate key.
I had this happen to me. My copy of Need for Speed: High Stakes literally exploded in the CD drive. Ruined the drive. I found a CD online. I had written down my CD code years ago in a winpad file, but I've always wondered if you could reverse engineer the key like this.
I’d love for someone to make a “black & white 3” essentially.
Blast from the past .... thoroughly enjoyed B&W :-)
I'm your age, height, size and nationality. I also love playing with Ghidra and x32dbg with old games. Are you me? Very relatable content!
Maybe you’re me?
@@nathanbaggs mind-blown gif. Nice to meet you!
I want to get into gidra just for fun, nice that google remembered and pointed me to your video :)
Im wondering a bit… the if/else function returns a 1 is access granted and a 0 if not.. so why not just set the 0 to 1? So no matter what the checksum in the end is, a 1 would be returned, and the setup should start… or am i wrong? 🤔
I mean, just set the output to „always 1“ should do it? Right?
Yup, I just thought this would be more fun
As someone who knows almost nothing about coding this was coherent and interesting to watch
Is there going to be a part two to the sim city video? that was certainly an adventure.
It's not currently on my backlog - but I've got some other cool stuff in the works. I try and post updates where I can on the community tab
@@nathanbaggs Okay, I'll keep and eye out!
Is it not possible to simply change the language to return a 1 regardless of what it reads in the check? Seems it would be far simpler if you've already isolated that section and it's function. (im not a coder, just very curious)
Sure, I just thought this would be more fun (:
You should do this for a lot of abandonware games through the ages and show the trends and changes in protection algorithms and how they have evolved.
There is "readme" file in folder. Sometimes it contain key
I can't help but wonder what video projects you've done before this channel. Surely noone can get to this level of greatness starting from scratch in such a short period
Thanks for the kind words but I had no real experience before YT. Just been figuring it out as I go along and trying to make each video better than the last one
There's a tool called "angr" that might be useful in situations like this. You can load a program and ask it what inputs would be needed to achieve a certain condition -- in this case, execution reaching the "success" case. It then uses an SMT solver to do symbolic execution to find suitable inputs even when brute-forcing would be intractable.
Back when I used to play CTFs I had a team mate who was really good with SAT solvers, something I need to get better at
Ain't a proper keygen without classic keygen music. Such a missed opportunity!
I know right! Maybe next time
I remember the gesture system in Black and White being super frustrating. Cool game concept though. I think my favorite avatar was the cow.
Holy cow! Mine too. Mine too…
why blurr the last didgit, its the reason of the video existing...
Only problem I see here is that you are missing out on the best part of just grabbing a key gen which is listening to some of the swankiest music of all time. Idk how or why they always had such groovy tunes in them, but half the fun of the seas in the past was just opening that thing up for the music.
I do feel like I missed a trick not including some classic key gen music, maybe next time
8:22 This made me laugh the delivery was perfect.
Very entertaining, thank you for sharing 😁👍
It upsets me that we can't buy Black and White, Creature Isles, and BW2 on Steam. They are such iconic games. I spent so much time playing them. It would honestly be good for my memory to be able to replay BW.
I miss black and white. That game was amazing.
Another great video! Please continue, can’t wait for the next.
Reversed-engineering is surely the most underrated job in IT
I didn't understand a word of this because I don't know anything about computer coding.
But man is it awesome to watch guys who know what they're talking about do cool things. So many of these comments are amazing too!
Thanks!
In case anyone is interested in the game itself, the community patches are good : )
Fortunately, I own the original discs of this game with original serial keys.
But what I found when installing and attempting to update the game the update installers fails on a 64bit Windows. I solved this by installing and updating the game in a 32 bit virtual system and copied the updated installation to my 64 bit Windows and applied an appropriate no CD crack and the game is then playable on a modern Windows.
After you described the function processing the last field (take ascii values, subtract 0x30 (that's ascii for '0'), multiply increasingly by 10) the obvious conclusion is that it's just turning the text string "4444" into the actual number - and 4444 in hex is 0x115c which is what you had; so quick intuition confirmed there, without having to work on building clean source code for the Ghidra decompile. It's worth becoming fluent in ascii, hex vs decimal, etc to streamline this kind of stuff which should become obvious without so much work. The first function with its bit twiddling is likely a CRC or similar polynomial-based checksum from the look of the Ghida decompile you flashed up. If you're interested, search for highly optimised CRC algorithms - it's a fascinating topic in its own right - and you might find a good match.
Excellent concise videos here. Love the content, Nathan! I'm not usually excited when I see new vids on my subscriptions these days, good to see you're still fulfilling my youtube experience!
Thanks for creating these, inspiring me to learn how to code better, gives a huge amount of freedom to explore and learn things rather than relying on other people's work. Keep it up! :)
Thanks for the kind words, glad you're enjoying them as much as I am making them (:
that might be a sign to clean your subscriptions.
@@98danielrayCertainly needs a clean for sure. Decades old subs on here still. Sometimes I hold hope for some youtubers, but it's been a bit dry.
RUclips's main page and suggestions sucks a** which doesn't help finding anyone new.
I still have a working copy of Black&White. I noticed one of the biggest issues was controlling your mouse while in game. After a bit of messing around I found out that the high DPI settings for modern mice just don't work here and I had to use a max DPI of 400 for any semblance of control.
to be fair, i remember this being the only game i ever cracked with iCE debugger in college 20 years ago, because there was a tutorial out for how to crack games based on this one.
I love what You done at the end : D
May I suggest using the dark theme ghidra recently added, going back and forth from the dark debugger to the bright white of ghidra is not very easy on the eyes
For your next video, I would LOVE to see you hack a vanilla copy of Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon which was considered to be the hardest to hack Playstation 1 game ever created.
SIR I ALWAYS THINK ABOUT THIS GAME AND HOW I CANT PLAY IT!!!!
My husband understands this better than I do so perhaps he can help me play this game again!! Thank you for encouraging me to play a game I played in my childhood and thought was long out of reach
This brought up some memories, just that I was using SoftICE, W32DASM and IDA :)
Btw, subtracting 0x30 from an ascii input converts a „string“ number to an integer (some stuff you learned and used, you will never forget ;) )
couldn't we just patch the installer to do the "checker" function to return true always? woudlnt this be easier? I mean yeah, you need to maintain the same size of previous code and so on
Of course, I just thought this would be more fun!
@@nathanbaggs ah makes sense, ty for reply! im completely noob about reverse engineering
having a serial number is better than patching, i think.
The approach by Nathan has the benefit that you can just share the serial code that you've found instead of forcing every "user" to replace their files with some shady ones provided by the cracker.
@@TheVeksha
Some games for a computer I used had the key on the original media - to play the game required to original media to be present.
I patched them in two ways:
1) the check function always returned media present; or
2) the check function loaded the key it had in the program into what should have come from the original media so that when it compared the result it matched.
Here's what happened with me and some games I did (do?) have on-disc originally with keys: One of them is 'Mirror's Edge', and when I tried to install it a few years ago, it asked me for a key, but it had to be activated online. However, the servers for doing so were shut down, so it basically locked me out of my copy. - There was also no instruction on what to do next and EA's support wasn't helpful. - So then I had the idea to just try and activate the game through (back then still) Origin, which actually worked. - So it seems that EA didn't so much remove the database of keys as just end the way they were activated or checked, instead moving it to their launcher.
The other game is 'Grand Theft Auto IV', with which a similar thing happened. Though, there was still a weird workaround where you could essentially activate "legacy" products by going to a specific webpage from Rockstar and then... I don't remember, maybe download some kind of program, then generate a code with your key, then fill in that code on that webpage or something. - I don't know, it was weird. - In any case, that was already this "extended support" kind of thing, and it stopped working as well. But then I tried the same as with 'Mirror's Edge' and entered the key into the Rockstar-launcher, which also worked... in a kind of sad way...
Luckily it DID still work in both cases, or I'd have had to buy the games again (I probably wouldn't and rather complain to them endlessly), BUT... they've effectively turned my "fizikul" copies into digital copies anyway and the discs are basically coasters now. - At the same time, probably for the better, cause I remember it took forever to install "GTA4" from the discs and I could probably download/install that sht in under 5 minutes nowadays. - Now, what am I gonna do with the discs when EA App and Rockstar Social Club shut down, though?... Probably sell them for a lot of money to some Gen A hipsters who will collect "antique" games from the early 2000s.
I remember trying to get that game working, the Bink video DLL was why it kept crashing honestly if you could remove that requirement, I bet it would just run.
Or could we replace the "if" with a bunch of NOP? That would be invasive, and the condition is complex so it's probably spread over several JE/CMP instructions. Is it hard to reset ZF instead of doing a CMP? That way all the J(N)E succeed. As long as the instruction length is the same.
What a boss! And just putting the focus on the workflow and NOT on giving out that code to those pesky abandonware-pirates...
And thanks also for the nostalgia trip : in my younger years, I've dabbled around with Softice and W32Dasm, created some keygens but lost interest when I got older... Think I'll pick this up again and give Ghidra a go 🙂
Enjoying your videos! Flashbacks to me trying to figure these things out 15-20 years ago. I mostly failed, but its still a fun puzzle. How do you feel coding has changed, solution wise, 10-15 years ago compared to today. I mean if u look at drm free games today, are they an easier or harder "puzzle" to crack?
So I don't get this. You can't swear or say certain things on RUclips anymore, but showing people how to reverse engineer software is fine?
What an interesting world we live in these days, eh? It's like "pick a crime" and see what happens!
Changed days from-
"You wouldn't steal a handbag. You wouldn't steal a car. You wouldn't nail the bosses' husband or wife, kinda depends. You wouldn't jump off a cliff just because your mate told you to. You wouldn't sail the high seas and steal a boat. Pirates are jolly bad folk with all the rodgering, oh and it's a crime." 😂😂😂
The old game you bought and still own. You can't play because you need a CD-ROM drive.
The pirated game. Anyone who owns it can play as much as they want, they don't need a CD-ROM drive.
7:03 I love how you awkwardly give a moment to just appreciate Ghidra
Slick work. I loved this game, it's has to be (IMO) one of the most revolutionary, mis-understood, and hardest to play games - ever. It badly needs a re-make to new tech, like Unlres Engine 5.
I don't know why this came up in my feed but I really appreciate it. I came across my original CD in a wallet but lost the original package long ago. Looks like I can follow your process and find the value myself by hand.
I had an issue when spore first came out.
Spore had a CD key and online validation.
Someone obviously copied or generated the key from my box.
I got a new key from them but had to email a photo of the original key/box and my passport side by side. (This was dumb on my part) but they sent me a key.
This obviously wasn't a normal/sanctioned remediation process.
I reckon they assumed i BSing for a free game until i actually sent the image 😂.
I actually still have an Original CD and case for Black and White. Found it a few weeks ago buried in the Attic.
I bought Black and White 2. "Well, I bought the game, but I want my sibling to be able to play it as well. Let's use a crack!" I later learned that cracking the game prevents children from becoming adults. Removed the crack and "whoa, this game is much easier"
Can you fix Black & White 2 on Win 10? The enemy AI was broken last time i tried, which i only realised on the later levels. They would make armies, but never use them to attack, & i think some more buggy behaviour too.
I used an old ISO, a crack & some fan made patches as far as i remember.
I rarely leave comments but figure you’ll appreciate reading this if you do check. Your delivery and knowledge is awesome man - I grew up playing black and white. Seeing it pop up in a video where technical reworking/software doctoring is being discussed as that’s what I’m into now as an adult, and it’s for a game I played as a kid. 😅😅
Subscribed when you didn’t give out those last four digits of the key - you’re a man of integrity and culture. Now I’m gonna rabbit hole your channel cuz this was my first video lol
Black&White runs really well through proton and also Wine 8 (Didn't try on Wine 9 since it came out but should be great too). From what I've been told, it's finicky in windows and has issues due to using old APIs
Reminds me of the early 90s for me trying to get rid of the copy protection on the D&D games for Commodore 64. I had a program called DI-Sector that let me look at all of the info of every sector of a disk represented in ASCII and hexadecimal. They used key words from the booklet that normally came with the game, but since I didn't have that, I would just look for regular words in the ASCII section and change them to the same word, so I only needed one word to input no matter what. Man, I spent a LOT of time in my bedroom! lol
I always love seeing the problem solving process going on, especially for fun projects like this
The same guy that was responsible for B&W's Ai is now running Google's Deep Mind (Demis Hassabis). This is most likely also going to be the guy that brings us AGI and ASI in the near future.
MessageBoxA is only the ANSI version. There's also MessageBoxW for wide characters, meaning unicode text.
Let's play black&white.... oh, i need a cd key... (3 hours pass)... nice!! i hacked into it. that was fun! (*turns off the pc) xD
I still have the original disk for PC, and the instructions, along with the code. I bought it when the Compaq 700 was new, lol. It never quite worked properly so I stored it away.
I know some companies just tell you to go fuck yourself, but when I contacted MS about my Age of Empires CD Key in 2016, they just straight up sent me a new one.