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Is it wrong for me to try and disable the manual protection in Dune II?


wibble1

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Hey all, I'm new to this board and already familiar with the Dune series - I thought I'd register on here seeing as this place looks good to ask for help on something.

I'm sure you know about the fact that it is possible to patch/edit DUNE2.EXE to get rid of the protection scheme that occurs after the first scenario (in any team).  I even know how to hex-edit myself.  I've learnt that - with the US "Building of a Dynasty" version at least - editing one part of the executable will make the game accept any answer you give while editing another part of it will take out the entire question section altogether and skip straight to the briefing of Scenario 2.  (The positions in the exe are different depending on whether you have v1.0 or v1.07.)  I am aware that Super Dune II also defeats the question scheme, and indeed comparing that mod's exe to original v1.0 is how I learnt about the "skip section" trick in the first place.  I am also aware that a user on this board recently made a new version of SD2 based on v1.07, and hacked the exe in a similar manner to take out the whole verification question, and I used that exe to learn how to hack original v1.07 to skip it (as all custom cracks and hex-edit instructions I found only show you how to edit it to simply accept any answer you type in).

However, the European version of the game ("Battle for Arrakis") - which I also have - has a differently built EXE, and I assumed it wasn't crackable at first (none of the custom cracks worked with it), until I played around with a few old protection-hacking programs from Home Of The Underdogs and worked out how to make it accept any answer.  However, I have still not managed to find the part in the exe that I need to edit in order to kill the whole protection part, SD2-style.  I'm not sure if there are any specific Dune tools that help you to work out what code sections affect what parts of the game as I have tried to change all matching hexvalues without much success.  After searching this forum for answers, I seem to be of the knowledge that generally code for European Dune II is not as well known as code for U.S. Dune II, yes?  Still, I was wondering if anyone had any good advice to give me regarding finding the right hex value to adjust.  And before you say anything, I do own legitimate copies of both European and U.S. versions (albeit without documentation).

If this breaks any rules (and I did inspect the rules beforehand), then I do apologise.

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