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Patching to 1.09 and cracking


Feyd-Rautha

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Hello, everybody!

 

Recently, I uninstalled E:BfD in order to patch the game to 1.09. It worked. However, it needed to be cracked. I found a 1.09 crack, so I replaced the .exe and entered the game. Nice!

 

I could play Skirmish, but the campaigns couldn't be played unless I had the CDs. I have another crack for this game, but it's 1.04. Comparing between 1.09 crack and that one, the 1.09 crack has only one file, Emperor.exe, and lacks of Game.exe and other files that the 1.04 crack has.

 

So, at this point, I decided to replace the Game.exe file in the game directory (along with other files whose names I can't remember) with the 1.04 Game.exe. I didn't replace the Emperor.exe (it has been replaced previously with the 1.09 Emperor.exe). And what happened? THE GAME RETURNED TO 1.04!!! So sad. Any ideas to solve this?

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Recently, I uninstalled E:BfD in order to patch the game to 1.09. It worked. However, it needed to be cracked. I found a 1.09 crack, so I replaced the .exe and entered the game. Nice!

 

I could play Skirmish, but the campaigns couldn't be played unless I had the CDs.

We generally do not advise on the use of cracks, NoCDs and other means of obtaining and running pirated software here, as per the forum rules:

  • Discussion of obtaining pirated software is not allowed.
You can try contacting the author(s) of the crack that you have used and try to get the solution from them.
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MrFlibble, no-cd systems are hardly piracy-related nowadays. They're usually just a matter of offering the comfort of full hard disk installs.

Heck, I cracked my C&C3... it's a full hard disk install anyway and only needed the DVD to check if I own the game. Well screw that. It's way handier to play games without needing to insert the disk, especially if it's not necessary.

Feyd-Rautha: Only one of these (game.exe) is the actual game executable. The other one (emperor.exe) is just a small tool launching the game.exe. You can usually see this from the file size of the involved files. So obviously replacing that game.exe downgraded your game version again.

By the way, I'm fairly sure that making a no-cd Emperor requires you to copy a bunch of files from the CDs to your hard disk, and mess with some settings text files to tell the game to read the videos from your hard disk rather than asking for a CD.

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MrFlibble, no-cd systems are hardly piracy-related nowadays. They're usually just a matter of offering the comfort of full hard disk installs.

Heck, I cracked my C&C3... it's a full hard disk install anyway and only needed the DVD to check if I own the game. Well screw that. It's way handier to play games without needing to insert the disk, especially if it's not necessary.

Feyd-Rautha: Only one of these (game.exe) is the actual game executable. The other one (emperor.exe) is just a small tool launching the game.exe. You can usually see this from the file size of the involved files. So obviously replacing that game.exe downgraded your game version again.

By the way, I'm fairly sure that making a no-cd Emperor requires you to copy a bunch of files from the CDs to your hard disk, and mess with some settings text files to tell the game to read the videos from your hard disk rather than asking for a CD.

I have to agree on this one, it's one thing to pirate and another to remove the cd restriction. In most countries its entirely legal to circumvent the cd.

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In most countries its entirely legal to circumvent the cd.

Could you please provide examples - clauses from respective legislation that state there is no violation of law in hacking a game in order to remove copy protection, or cases that set the precedent of this being legal? Also, what are those "most countries" you are referring to?

Because generally, it is technically illegal to "hack" an executable to bypass CD checks.

However, at any rate I suppose that there is little we can do to help Feyd-Rautha with without the details on the crack that was being used. Unless someone of you is willing to hack a clean version of the executable v1.09 to make it play without the CD that is.

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Could you please provide examples - clauses from respective legislation that state there is no violation of law in hacking a game in order to remove copy protection, or cases that set the precedent of this being legal? Also, what are those "most countries" you are referring to?

Because generally, it is technically illegal to "hack" an executable to bypass CD checks.

However, at any rate I suppose that there is little we can do to help Feyd-Rautha with without the details on the crack that was being used. Unless someone of you is willing to hack a clean version of the executable v1.09 to make it play without the CD that is.

 

Excerpt from United States Copyright Law:

§ 117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs

(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. — Not withstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:

(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or

(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.

Its legal for the same reason its legal to break css on a DVD to make an archival backup, as its impossible to make a backup copy without breaking the encryption (in this case, removing the cd requirement).

 

§ 117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs

(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. — Not withstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:

(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or

(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.[1]

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Its legal for the same reason its legal to break css on a DVD to make an archival backup, as its impossible to make a backup copy without breaking the encryption (in this case, removing the cd requirement).

Well, the passage you quoted does not say anything at all about the legality of modifying existing code to remove copy protection. I fancy the backup copies referred to are digital images of physical media in their entirety.

As stated in Chapter 12 of the same same copyright law,

(a) Violations Regarding Circumvention of Technological Measures. — (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

(b) Additional Violations. — (1) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that —

(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof;

(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof; or

© is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof.

(2) As used in this subsection —

(A) to “circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure” means avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating, or otherwise impairing a technological measure; and

(B) a technological measure “effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, prevents, restricts, or otherwise limits the exercise of a right of a copyright owner under this title.

Unless you're a non-profit library, using means to circumvent copy protection is not legal.
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It's generally against any EULA to modify the existing program, sure, but the matter here was a rule against piracy. According to these EULA rules practically all modding our community does is illegal as well. Stick to the actual forum rules. The original questions here were not piracy related.

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Stick to the actual forum rules. The original questions here were not piracy related.

1. Cracks and NoCDs are illegal per the clause I quoted above (but that's not really that relevant).

2. The tech support forum for a game, in my opinion, should not cover any issues that are related to any unofficial modifications unless those are either well known or created by forum members.

3. I acted upon the following parts of the original post (emphasis added):

Recently, I uninstalled E:BfD in order to patch the game to 1.09. It worked. However, it needed to be cracked. I found a 1.09 crack, so I replaced the .exe and entered the game. Nice!

 

I could play Skirmish, but the campaigns couldn't be played unless I had the CDs. I have another crack for this game, but it's 1.04. Comparing between 1.09 crack and that one, the 1.09 crack has only one file, Emperor.exe, and lacks of Game.exe and other files that the 1.04 crack has.

I concluded from these that the original CDs were unavailable to the poster.

At any rate, the best thing we could advise is to create digital images from the CDs if the owner does not want to wear them down or whatever, and then mount them as virtual CD-ROM drives. Not only is this entirely legal but it also spares the troubles that many NoCD cracks have (also you play with 100% original game content, no hacks or modifications).

Oh, and one more thing:

MrFlibble, no-cd systems are hardly piracy-related nowadays. They're usually just a matter of offering the comfort of full hard disk installs.

Heck, I cracked my C&C3... it's a full hard disk install anyway and only needed the DVD to check if I own the game. Well screw that. It's way handier to play games without needing to insert the disk, especially if it's not necessary. [emphasis added]

You might have noticed that copyright legislation generally isn't about the end users' comfort, like, at all. Trust me, there's a lot of things that I personally don't like about the copyright stuff, but, you know, rules are the rules.
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The fact he has the CDs is only a point in favour of allowing it, in my opinion, since that means it's certainly not a piracy issue.

Did I state otherwise? The initial question was worded so that I had the impression that there were no original CDs the OP could use.

Ah well. Anyway, I can tell you that if a similar question were posted in a Russian old-gaming forum I know (where people as you might guess are quite lenient towards issues concerning NoCDs, cracks etc.), the OP would be either provided with a link to a reliably working crack or asked to link to the crack he had used himself. Such links are certainly against the rules here.

I'm pretty certain that generally there shouldn't be any issues with creating CD images of Emperor, there are plenty of freeware/shareware disk authoring tools that can get the job done reliably.

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