# Off-Topic Discussion > The Lounge > Tech Talk >  >  hacking?

## slash112

i was just wondering how you actually hack games, like what do you use etc. i know that you have to edit the program or something, but how do you get that source code, because i doubt they would include the source code with the game.

i just want to do small hacks, like change the way my guy looks etc.

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## Ynot

you use a hex editor, and advanced knowledge of x86 assembly language, and the Windows PE executable format....

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## slash112

> Windows PE executable format....



huh? whats that

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## Carôusoul

> huh? whats that



Its slang for Google.

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## Ynot

Read my last post as basically "you can't"

Modifying the operations of an opaque binary is one of the hardest and most complex things to do

Just understanding what they're doing (and replicating it) is difficult enough
ever wonder why the various reverse engineering projects take so long?
Console emulators
Wine / ReactOS (Win32 API & environment)
Nouveau (Nvidia 3D graphics driver)
Etc.

If you want to start hacking opaque binaries,
ironically, cracking DRM is one of the less-complex operations
and an ideal starting point

Take 2 copies of the same program
one authenticated (valid serial number, or whatever), one not
and do hex dumps of their execution

At some point, there'll be some sort of check, and a jump
the authenticated one jumps one way
the non-authenticated one jumps another way
in a hex editor, edit the jump so it jumps down the "authenticated" path

Over-simplifying, but hey

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## O'nus

> i just want to do small hacks, like change the way my guy looks etc.



Just look for mods - not hacks.

What game?

~

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## slash112

its just an old game, tony hawk pro skater 3.

but i was just going to go on youtube, there is always a vid which tells you how to do things. i wasnt actually going to do it myself.

anyways, i found this really small stupid pointless one on youtube, so i did it. but its not letting me into it once ive saved it, it says "...failed to start because mss32.dll was not found." what does that mean? and how do i fix it?

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## LucidDreamGod

The best way you can is probably through the use of something like cheat engine and art money, which finds values and changes them. So if you got emulators, like I used to give myself infinite ammo on resident evil, you'd just have cheat engine find the program, search for the amount of ammo you have and change it, theirs a basic tutorial that comes with cheat engine that teaches you those things.

Sometimes when you download games you can find the texture files and change them in paint, I used to do it with a MMORPG called Bots but it only showed up that way to me, I could also change the music files.

As far as emulators go their are really detailed ways, some games like super mario 64 have programs that can edit them more practically to change the textures on things.

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## slash112

> The best way you can is probably through the use of something like cheat engine and art money, which finds values and changes them. So if you got emulators, like I used to give myself infinite ammo on resident evil, you'd just have cheat engine find the program, search for the amount of ammo you have and change it, theirs a basic tutorial that comes with cheat engine that teaches you those things.



ok ill do the cheat engine thing, but i have no idea what emulators means

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## Marvo

What do you actually want to do?

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## slash112

well as i said before, change the way my guy looks, but that just takes a mod. what i really want to do is make the cheats available on the multiplayer, i.e. perfect balance.

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## LucidDreamGod

> ok ill do the cheat engine thing, but i have no idea what emulators means



Emulators like n64k that let you download roms and play console games on your computer like Nintendo 64 and Playstation.

Also some of those emulators can connect you to a multiplayer server, like when I play tony hawk pro skater 2 with n64k, it's hard to find a match, takes awhile, but games like smash bros 64, you can go online and play against other people if you've got the emulator and the rom for that game, basically what it does is read the other players inputs and matches them to your 2nd player controller, and vice versa.

Roms, have questionable legal matters, just like downloading music, but if you own the game, it is totaly 100&#37; legal to own the rom, which takes only a few minutes to download. (and having a usb controller makes emulators so much more fun, because it feels like you own 1000's of games :p)

And yeah I'm a big fan of the tony hawk games, so if you download 3 I'll play with you.

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## slash112

right i know what your talking about now, i just know it as "chipped" console. but its onl for my PC. i dont know about anything else, but i know that if you try putting it in an xbox, it is very risky, it can fuck up the whole console, i cant remember what its called, theres a name for what happens.

my friend has done it to his xbox, but he got a proffesional to do it, he downloads illegal games all the time, and he just plays them easy because of it. do you need emulators for pc?

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## LucidDreamGod

I think your talking about modding systems, and I've heard of the technique your friend used, I had an erge to try it myself but my mom would probably push me against it, and its risky. This would be like that but you can download a free program here http://pj64k.emulation64.com/ , and get the roms here romhustler.net, and you can play it right on your pc free.

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## slash112

oh so you do need emultion things to play them on pc

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## Marvo

Do you actually read what people write?

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## slash112

> Do you actually read what people write?



huh? now im confused, i thought i read it right, so, you dont need emulators then?

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## Ynot

We've had someone report this thread for mentioning console emulation
claiming it to be illegal

So I'll just say,
Hardware emulation is perfectly legal

Contracts go both ways, you pay money for a piece of equipment, in return you can do what you want with that equipment
This includes pulling it apart, identifying individual components, poking them with a multi-meter and writing software counterparts that emulate their functionality

(in fact, in this day and age hardware emulation actively encouraged by manufacturers to prolong the usefulness of compiled software)

Roms, however are a grey area
It's technically copyright infringement to download roms
but as many of the roms available for console emulators are long (long) out of active circulation (and in a lot of cases, the authors are long out of business too), most people just ignore it

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## slash112

did someone actually report it? who were they?... infact, dont answer that, i take it you arent allowed. but whoever it was needs to get a life.

also, thats strange that they reported that, but not the far worse thing which i mentioned. (i hope i dont get into some sort of trouble for it)

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## Ynot

For US law, please refer to Sega Enterprises Ltd. vs. Accolade Inc. [1992]

Accolade Inc. was an independant games house, who pulled apart a sega Megadrive, discovered how it worked, then produced and sold their own compatible games for the console
Sega sued them, and lost

anyway, carry on

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## slash112

i dont need to follow US law, i can all your laws that we dont have, mwahhahahaha. i think im just going to cross the street now, lol

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## LucidDreamGod

I always thought of Roms no diffrent then downloading mp3's, and I wouldn't have mentioned emulators if I didn't know for certain they were legal.

No one cares about old playstation and n64 games, no one looses money on that anymore, those games arn't made anymore, the people who created them have gotten all the money they will ever get from them.

Plus I heard that owning a game allows you legal ownership of that rom, specually if you dump it yourself.

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## Marvo

It's still illegal, just saying.

Slash, if you want to change the skins of characters in Tony Hawk, a good idea is to find where skins are located. In counter-strike for example, you modify skins and models by changing some files. Depending on which graphics engine game is using, in can either be incredibly easy, or incredibly difficult, aka you have to reverse engineer the game, before you can understand how it works.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 is using the RenderWare engine, which is also used for games like The Sims 3. From what I could google, nobody has made any custom skins for Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, or even talked about it, so you might want to check out some of the other popular games, made with the RenderWare engine.

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## Serkat

Judging from this thread, you would be better off first trying to mod a game that has a fully documented, easily accessible SDK like Source Engine (or whatever else). I think you'll have enough problems with that, let alone reverse engineering Tony Hawks 3 or deciphering some obscure model and texture formats. If you've authored your first shadered material in a game with SDK, maybe you can start thinking about modding a game that has no SDK.

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## Ynot

Marvo,
sorry but you're wrong

2 Playstation emulators
Virtual Game Station and Bleem!

Sony sued both
lost both cases

Emulation has been tested in court numerous times
Please, don't just label something as "illegal" cause you think it is

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## slash112

> I always thought of Roms no diffrent then downloading mp3's
> 
> Plus I heard that owning a game allows you legal ownership of that rom, specually if you dump it yourself.



first of all, your use of "rom" is incorrect, rom is a type of memory, "Read Only Memory" infact i have no idea what you were talking about.

but anyways, i just remembered something i used to do with flight simulator, i think this is what marvo was talking about. if i find the files for the game, like the textures etc. i could get the code for it and alter it a bit, i think changing a guys looks is a bit much, but i could probably do all sorts of stuff. ill try it just now.

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## Ynot

this thread's annoying me now
it's crammed with inaccurate and just plain wrong information from people who know bugger all nothing
(well apart from my posts).....

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## Serkat

> this thread's annoying me now
> it's crammed with inaccurate and just plain wrong information from people who know bugger all nothing
> (well apart from my posts).....



lol

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## slash112

> this thread's annoying me now
> it's crammed with inaccurate and just plain wrong information from people who know bugger all nothing
> (well apart from my posts).....



your timing of you saying that makes it seem like i said something wrong in my last post. what did i say wrong

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## Ynot

Nah, not really
well, not entirely

ROM stands for Read only medium
can mean anything that's write once, read many times
(in fact, WORM is an alternative acronym - *W*rite *O*nce, *R*ead *M*any)

CD-ROMs
Game cartridges
(normally) Read only memory (Ie. a BIOS chip) - although these can be flashed

they're all ROMs

Roms in the game emulation sense just means a game cartridge (or CD, or whatever) has been copied bit-for-bit into a file
the emulator then reads the file

but anyway
it's more the legality side that's annoyed me
people labelling something "illegal" just cause they don't like it, or understand what it is

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## slash112

> ROM stands for Read only medium



oh dam, i guess i should tell the computing teachers in my school that they are teaching wrongly.

and i should sign up for wikipedia so i can edit this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read-only_memory

oh, and i should also email whoever wrote this:
http://www.all-acronyms.com/cat/2/ROM

and this:
http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/Rom

and this:
http://www.absolutepccare.com/articles/ramVsRom.shtml

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## Ynot

don't get sassy with me, boy
I could destroy you

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## slash112

i still think ROM stands for read only memory

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## Ynot

memory is a medium
the two words are interchangeable

it says so on the wikipedia page you linked to
"...is a class of storage media"

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## slash112

yes, but the M in ROM doesnt actually stand for medium.

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## LucidDreamGod

Thank you Ynot for trying to set people straight, if someone doesn't know much about emulation, I suggest you don't go on trying to make claims about them.

I know ROMs exist, I've downloaded many of them, and their always called ROM.

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## slash112

wtf are "ROMs", i dont mind you calling watever the hell it is that, but i want to know what it is. there is technically no such thing as ROMs.
are you talking about CD-ROMs, ROM chips, or what?

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## Amethyst Star

> wtf are "ROMs", i dont mind you calling watever the hell it is that, but i want to know what it is. there is technically no such thing as ROMs.
> are you talking about CD-ROMs, ROM chips, or what?



No need to get upset  :smiley:   And correct me if I'm wrong in this.  My knowledge is somewhat limited on the subject.

When talking about console emulators, _roms_ are, in layman's terms, the files used for each game.  If you download a Commidore 64 emulator, the rom would be the game file(s) for "Pitfall" or "Jumpman" or "Airborne Ranger."

I need to get me one of those.

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## slash112

oh i see now, sorry, but its just i only know about the "chipping" of consoles, in that case it would be "ISOs" instead of roms, because thats the format of a copied game. well, at least im up to speed now, and sorry again for going all raging.

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## LucidDreamGod

Yes Roms are the game files.





> oh i see now, sorry, but its just i only know about the "chipping" of consoles, in that case it would be "ISOs" instead of roms, because thats the format of a copied game. well, at least im up to speed now, and sorry again for going all raging.



Yes ISO's represent an image of a game to be used like a disc, if your emulating playstation games, or dreamcast games, or installing them to your modded xbox they are ISO's.

Old school cartridge games are ROMs.

Though I think both are known as ROMs.

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## Marvo

> Marvo,
> sorry but you're wrong
> 
> 2 Playstation emulators
> Virtual Game Station and Bleem!
> 
> Sony sued both
> lost both cases
> 
> ...



Goddamnit. Downloading games is not legal. Are you actually trying to tell me, that downloading Super Mario 64 for a Nintendo64 emulation software is okay, because the game is old/not in production? I don't care if this has been tried and failed in court, it's generally illegal. You have to stand by the forum rules, or we might aswell start posting torrents for Photoshop CS4 and porn all over the place. Oh wait, that's perfectly fine, they're just torrents afterall :V

Jesus.

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## Serkat

In common international copyright law, am I allowed to download copyrighted content if I legally own a copy and would be allowed to copy the original for personal use (e.g. different formats)? I have a couple CDs at another place and obviously it's easier to just download instead of going there and getting the CDs.

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## Ozzi99

> Accolade Inc. was an independant games house, who pulled apart a sega Megadrive, discovered how it worked, then produced and sold their own compatible games for the console
> Sega sued them, and lost



Hehe, this reminds me of the Java Vs Microsoft case.


EDIT: Ynot you see to know a bit about computers, could you explain how FPS aimbots are made like is it written in hex or another format?

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## Marvo

> In common international copyright law, am I allowed to download copyrighted content if I legally own a copy and would be allowed to copy the original for personal use (e.g. different formats)? I have a couple CDs at another place and obviously it's easier to just download instead of going there and getting the CDs.



In most countries, yes.

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## Stalker

> oh i see now, sorry, but its just i only know about the "chipping" of consoles, in that case it would be "ISOs" instead of roms, because thats the format of a copied game. well, at least im up to speed now, and sorry again for going all raging.



ROM in this case is just a misnomer used to refer to memory dumps of a console game.





> EDIT: Ynot you see to know a bit about computers, could you explain how FPS aimbots are made like is it written in hex or another format?



Aimbots are written as normal computer programs in a high-level language. They just need to get player data either from the game itself or by peeking on the client/server communication. Using this data it can then make decisions ("move aim left 30 degrees") in a small fraction of a second, much faster than any human.

Hex btw is just a base for numers, with the nice property that every digit is one nibble, so every two digits one byte. People don't write programs in hex unless they're absolutely forced to. (Writing small program for some system that doesn't have an assembler...but then it's probably easier to _write_ an assembler unless the app is very small.)

There are many levels of and ways to "hacking" games. From using something like cheat engine to give oneself infinite resources, ripping out a copy protection check (trap on specific disc access, or for some very easy protections just wait for the notice and then retrace) or just modifying game files.

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