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Author Topic: Are some games tamper-proof?  (Read 2 times)
McKnight
Guest
« on: April 02, 2008, 03:15:24 pm »
I've just been using Hex Workshop in an attempt to modify the text in Makeruna! Makendou Z.  I looked for the kana representing "chi-so-u-sa-ma" using both Relative Searcher and this kana value chart (http://www.zophar.net/tech/files/translate.html), and it did come up once.  However, when I changed the bytes in question each to "01" and ran the game, it didn't change a thing in the text.

I'm not sure whether I'm doing something wrong, kana values are stored differently in each game depending on whether or not they use dakuten and handakuten, or this game (and probably others) is simply tamper-proof.  Can someone please fill me in here?
RedComet
Guest
« Reply #1 on: April 02, 2008, 03:30:08 pm »
The word is "compressed", not "tamper-proof." Wink

Generally speaking if you've exhausted all the usual text finding methods, it's possible that the text is compressed, OR it might be that the text just uses a really weird storage format.
tc
Guest
« Reply #2 on: April 02, 2008, 06:25:34 pm »
There might be some games that expect a specific checksum for certain data, I can't name any though.
BRPXQZME
Guest
« Reply #3 on: April 02, 2008, 06:58:59 pm »
Quote from: tc on April 02, 2008, 06:25:34 pm
There might be some games that expect a specific checksum for certain data, I can't name any though.
NASIR in FF1, for one.

McKnight, doing a bytewise relative search is the tip of the iceberg. I’ll admit I know nothing about the PC-FX’s guts, but you should at least do the same search for every other byte. Also, a lot of (most?) console games store text as an array index; if you find the font, you may find that the characters are put in a rather random order (it can and does happen).

And, when it comes down to it, you may have to corrupt or debug to find the darn text.
KingMike
Guest
« Reply #4 on: April 02, 2008, 08:34:15 pm »
You might want to check for text using a Shift-JIS or EUC table (and using WindHex) (both should be available on this site).
I've heard both are extremely common text formats in Japanese games.
Mednafen
Guest
« Reply #5 on: April 14, 2008, 08:36:19 am »
Are you using a 2352-byte-per-mode1-sector raw rip or a 2048-byte-per-mode1-sector user-data-only rip?  Mednafen will automatically use the EDC+ECC in the rip, if available(in the "raw" sector rips), to correct simpler errors(which could include your test :b)...
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