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Creating the Longest Possible Ski Jump in “The Games: Winter Challenge”

mrwint.github.io

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Re: Creating the Longest Possible Ski Jump in “The Games: Winter Challenge”

#11

Post by msl »

DrNosferatu wrote: post #2

My PC joystick had a rapid fire mode, and if I remember correctly, it was possible to achieve huge jumps leveraging this.

That seems weird. I would expect optimizer to be able to do anything a rapid fire joystick could, so if the simulation code could be tricked that way, should it not have become apparent during the brute forcing? The other option is, of course, that you exploited a problem with the input handling instead. But then, the result presumably could not be stored in a replay file, right? Otherwise, again, the optimizer could have found it, after all. Were you able to replay those huge jumps?

Re: Creating the Longest Possible Ski Jump in “The Games: Winter Challenge”

#12

Post by karel-3d »

The previous post in this entry is even more impressive!

Very condensed tl;dr: winter games had a DRM that makes the game perform poorly if you enter wrong code; most of the cracks (including an "official" crack from 1996) skip it wrong and therefore you have a broken game; that includes gog.com version.

This person actually released a "patch" for gog.com version of the game.

https://mrwint.github.io/winter/patcher/index.html

Re: Creating the Longest Possible Ski Jump in “The Games: Winter Challenge”

#13

Post by throwaway_20357 »

karel-3d wrote: post #12

The previous post in this entry is even more impressive! Very condensed tl;dr: winter games had a DRM that makes the game perform poorly if you enter wrong code; most of the cracks (including an "official" crack from 1996) skip it wrong and therefore you have a broken game; that includes gog.com version. This person actually released a "patch" for gog.com version of the game. https://mrwint.github.io/winter/patcher/i…

I really like how well he explains the details and his "Sidebars" describing some core functionality of the underlying architecture. Link to that: https://mrwint.github.io/winter/writeup/writeup.html

Re: Creating the Longest Possible Ski Jump in “The Games: Winter Challenge”

#14

Post by AndrewOMartin »

dougiejones wrote: post #8

Impressive work and dedication. I was expecting you to discover a glitch that would easily break the record but sadly the game seems too well made for that. The glitch at the end did look quite promising. I guess we can't really rule out integer overflows for certain, so maybe one day we'll have enough compute to brute force all the combinations.

The trick is to start in second gear.

Re: Creating the Longest Possible Ski Jump in “The Games: Winter Challenge”

#15

Post by kh_hk »

msl wrote: post #11
DrNosferatu wrote: post #2

My PC joystick had a rapid fire mode, and if I remember correctly, it was possible to achieve huge jumps leveraging this.

That seems weird. I would expect optimizer to be able to do anything a rapid fire joystick could, so if the simulation code could be tricked that way, should it not have become apparent during the brute forcing? The other option is, of course, that you exploited a problem with the input handling instead. But then, the result presumably could not be stored in a replay file, right? Otherwise, again, the optimizer could…

I have not tried reproducing, but IIRC on my jumps the skis on the player were not even visible on the top part of the screen during the jump, so higher for sure

Re: Creating the Longest Possible Ski Jump in “The Games: Winter Challenge”

#17

Post by skocznymroczny »

Never was much into the winter challenge, although I remember the copy I had also had the broken ice skating segment. I remember that downhill worked, not sure about the others.

Was a big fan of the summer one though. I could get gold medal in every discipline on highest difficulty level except for the horse. I could never figure out the horse one. I think I managed to beat it only once, ever.

Re: Creating the Longest Possible Ski Jump in “The Games: Winter Challenge”

#18

Post by marttt »

IIRC, in Winter Challenge's bobsled, you could make the sleigh go really fast and then deliberately crash by letting it "jump" over the outer edge of the track into nothingness. We always did this; lots of fun. I think another way was to simply have the sleigh flip over on one side and then slide until Game Over, or maybe even get it entirely upside down? As wanting-to-be "cool kids", me and my sister always preferred the "jump" though.

Ski jumping was fun, too, and I think I was a horrible shooter in biathlon. Fond memories on a 25MHz 386SX (and of all those other pirated games, in the early Post-Soviet Eastern Europe) for sure!

Re: Creating the Longest Possible Ski Jump in “The Games: Winter Challenge”

#19

Post by alberto-m »

karel-3d wrote: post #12

The previous post in this entry is even more impressive! Very condensed tl;dr: winter games had a DRM that makes the game perform poorly if you enter wrong code; most of the cracks (including an "official" crack from 1996) skip it wrong and therefore you have a broken game; that includes gog.com version. This person actually released a "patch" for gog.com version of the game. https://mrwint.github.io/winter/patcher/i…

> The previous post in this entry is even more impressive!

Yes, it also got a very warm reception here on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43820076

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