9 replies to this topic

[rdemming]

What is the best way to submit disk images to AtariMania?
A few weeks ago I've send an .stx image of a game to the e-mail addresses on the AtariMania contact page but I haven't heard since and the game did not yet appear on AtariMania.

Robert

[marakatti]

Hi Robert,

Please see here for information -> http://www.atarimani....php?f=8&t=2527 - From there you can find our submission FTP address.

As funny as it is, I'm not in the contact-page mailing list. Unfortunately no one had time to redirect the message for me I guess.

For all the 16bit+ stuff fastest way is to contact me directly by sending PM here, Atarimania forum or Atari-Forum.com. My username is marakatti on all these three boards.

Big thanks for your support and sorry for the lack of contacting!

[rdemming]

Hi Marakatti,

I've uploaded it to your FTP server and also attached it here for those who can't wait

The game in question is X-Chess. I believe it is a relatively unknown game because I could not find it in any of the Atari archives. The .stx image in the archive is a copy of the original including the copy protection. The .st image is the cracked version for those who want to play it on real systems or emulator without .stx support. I've added a loader that patches the program at run-time to circumvent the protection which was quite elaborate.

The X-Chess game was published by X-Fun and written by a Dutch man called "Bert van der Liet". It runs in medium and high resolution. And the good thing is that the author gave permission to add X-Chess to the AtariMania archive.

Regards,

Robert

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•  X-Chess.zip   366.03KB   83 downloads

[marakatti]

Awesome work! Many, many thanks to both of you

Indeed it's a completely unknown game to me. And with the permission from the author it's just the way we like things to happen

I'll add it to my update list.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Cool. Another mono-compatible game.
And I did patching of original exec. according to loader/crack. Somehow I think that simpler is better + really don't want to read every time about who cracked it (+ other blah often) when start something

[Grazey]

really don't want to read every time about who cracked it (+ other blah often) when start something

apart from here i guess

[marakatti]

The X-Chess game was published by X-Fun and written by a Dutch man called "Bert van der Liet". It runs in medium and high resolution. And the good thing is that the author gave permission to add X-Chess to the AtariMania archive.

Any chance to have disc / box / instruction scans for this title or are they lost forever?

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Considering that game is from 1987, it has pretty advanced copy protection. Here I mean delayed and not right visible action(s) when check fails.
It is something what most started to use about 1990. Rob Northen recommended something similar (not using compare with serial, but writing it in code) couple years later too.
But today all it can crack much faster with Steem Debugger. Still, testing it well, so playing for longer time is necessary.

[rdemming]

Cool. Another mono-compatible game.
And I did patching of original exec. according to loader/crack. Somehow I think that simpler is better.

I thought leaving the original files intact and only patching it at run-time by a loader is a good thing as the original data is preserved for later generations and you can still see what was involved to remove the protection. And in case there was an error in patching, you still have the original data to correct it.

Considering that game is from 1987, it has pretty advanced copy protection. Here I mean delayed and not right visible action(s) when check fails.
It is something what most started to use about 1990. Rob Northen recommended something similar (not using compare with serial, but writing it in code) couple years later too.
But today all it can crack much faster with Steem Debugger. Still, testing it well, so playing for longer time is necessary.

Indeed, the protection is one of the more advanced I encountered on the ST. The first check will just exit the program when it was detected as a copy. When this is removed, there is also a second check. But this check alters some code that makes the game do strange moves well into the game making it impossible to finish a game of chess.

Then there was a third check that calculated a check-sum of the program code. But this was not calculated in one go but spread over around 30 moves of a game of chess. If the check-sum did not match (because the game was patched to remove the previous two checks), it altered some more code that made the game crash much further into the game.
Since the relocation process also "patches" the program to run from a specific memory location, the check-sum check skipped addresses affected by the relocation process by processing the relocation table too. So much thought was put into the protection.

Since indeed the effects of a failed check are not directly visible and a check was spread over many iterations of the game loop, it took more effort than usual. But luckily, the STeem debug option make it more convenient than the old days where I used the excellent Bugaboo.
With these kind of protections, it is easy to release a bad crack. But luckily, the owner of the original disk is a enthusiastic chess player that tested the crack extensively.

Any chance to have disc / box / instruction scans for this title or are they lost forever?

I asked the owner of the original disk and the author of the game if they could find the box/manual and scan it but I got no answer yet. I will ask again. Maybe now the game is on AtariMania they will get stimulated to find it

Robert

[ParanoidLittleMan]

...
I thought leaving the original files intact and only patching it at run-time by a loader is a good thing as the original data is preserved for later generations and you can still see what was involved to remove the protection. And in case there was an error in patching, you still have the original data to correct it.
...

I keep everything. So, original will be not lost. Have many DVD filled with Atari SW, sources, STX images etc. Problem with crack blah is that they just annoy in regular usage. Not to mention that I have bad experiences about info correctness (of course, here I don't think about this crack :-) ).
And WEB is filled with many-many cracks, unchanged. I just offer little different approach. And plan to add protection infos in Game Archive. Mentioning crackers has potential legality problem too - and Archive is for games, their authors - not crackers, which are mostly not liked by game authors.
Yes, thorough testing is most important with many games - since protection may activate at some later stages or similar. This is what we need with many of stuff online.