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Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

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Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#141

Post by jillesvangurp »

jonhohle wrote: post #3

It’s worth getting the Quake shareware disc for the NIN soundtrack. Official track names are now available following the vinyl release a few years ago. This is the only CD release of the soundtrack. Just don’t forget to skip track 1.

I remember I had the CD but rarely used it because having to pop in the CD just to play the game was annoying. So, I mostly played it without the sound track. Also, I never was that much into nine inch nails. Just not my genre. But my memory of the game is that it was fine without music.

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#142

Post by kriro »

kaoD wrote: post #120
dylan604 wrote: post #38

"The CD was announced[4] on July 3, 1996 and released on August 30th[5]. The hacker group GNOMON released Quakecrk.zip only 39 days later[6]." While not being familiar with the Windows side of things, I did frequent the a.b.m.a newsgroup being a broke student. It was always impressive to me to see how quickly someone would post a binary before the crack was posted. I remember one app I was very interested in posting…

I did reverse engineering as a hobby in my teens. The method for 90% of cracks back in the day boiled down to: 1. Launch the app. 2. Trigger the "not registered" screen. 3. Search for the string in the binary. 4. Search for code that references the location of the string and squint hard until you spot the "check if CD-key is valid" section. 5. Patch the final opcode from "jnz" to "jz". If you felt fancy, reverse engi…

This was me as well. +HCU and searchlores.org were so much fun. The coolest thing I remember was the hash-maze but I couldn't find it again. I saw Fravia live in 1999 :D

Switching 0x74 to 0x75 and vise versa lead to me ordering the free Intel books and diving into assembly and osdev for a while. There was something zen-like wading through disassembled code with a complete beginner mind and looking for patterns. This and reading Phrack around the "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit" times are probably my favorite memories related to computing because I only had a very vague understanding of what was going on mixed with a sense of "wait you can do this" and a lack of readily available information.

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#143

Post by raverbashing »

beloch wrote: post #33

"For video game developers, the CD-ROM was an odd beast. The capacity far exceeded the quantity of assets they were able to produce. A few titles, like 7th Guest (1993) or Phantasmagoria (1995) introduced Full Motion Video (in a world where only part of the screen could be animated). " ------ The title that made me go out and buy a CD-ROM drive was "Wing Commander III", released during the holidays of 1994, a year an…

Thank you for playing Wing Commander!

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#144

Post by sph »

kaoD wrote: post #120
dylan604 wrote: post #38

"The CD was announced[4] on July 3, 1996 and released on August 30th[5]. The hacker group GNOMON released Quakecrk.zip only 39 days later[6]." While not being familiar with the Windows side of things, I did frequent the a.b.m.a newsgroup being a broke student. It was always impressive to me to see how quickly someone would post a binary before the crack was posted. I remember one app I was very interested in posting…

I did reverse engineering as a hobby in my teens. The method for 90% of cracks back in the day boiled down to: 1. Launch the app. 2. Trigger the "not registered" screen. 3. Search for the string in the binary. 4. Search for code that references the location of the string and squint hard until you spot the "check if CD-key is valid" section. 5. Patch the final opcode from "jnz" to "jz". If you felt fancy, reverse engi…

I did this to an industrial piece of software that required a hardware dongle to function, that my father and his colleagues were using.

For a few hours, I was a teenage god among men.

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#145

Post by p_l »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #73
dylan604 wrote: post #38

"The CD was announced[4] on July 3, 1996 and released on August 30th[5]. The hacker group GNOMON released Quakecrk.zip only 39 days later[6]." While not being familiar with the Windows side of things, I did frequent the a.b.m.a newsgroup being a broke student. It was always impressive to me to see how quickly someone would post a binary before the crack was posted. I remember one app I was very interested in posting…

I remember old games shipping with huge lists of codes on paper. Paper made, on purpose, too big for an US legal/A4 photocopier. And moreover the codes would be using "light blue characters on slightly less light blue paper". Very annoying for casual piracy (as in: copying your neighbor's version of the game). > Later, the apps that would clone a USB dongle came along, and one software company that used USB dongles a…

Siemens for some software uses a license system that uses "secret" files stored on "dongle" that is just USB stick, and software that manages copying to hard drive etc.

I have heard of several cases where Siemens technicians and support staff would use a well-known "crack" (actually more of a keygen combined with license file manager) or guide customers how to obtain and use it...

Remember, legally (usually), the really important part is the proof of contract and payment, not exact way the software was activated

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#146

Post by rasz »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #39

If you were to do this today, how could you make it foolproof?

Every game separately encrypted then compressed into solid archives. Pressed in a way every game lands on different precise height of CD, padded before compression if necessary so it takes enough space on CD. Separate machine burning tiny holes in CD from the back, but not so tiny that CIRC could fixes them. At least one hole per file.

Install locates the damage and gives you code encoding locations. Over the phone You receive ECC code. No more magic keygens, pirates have to distribute whole multi megabyte games.

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#147

Post by hdgvhicv »

Lorkki wrote: post #124
virtue3 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it would have been like 520 hours to download 500mgb. Assuming it didn't break at some point. That was pretty tough in that day and age. Especially from pirate sites. mIRC had some good servers but getting someone to keep a direct connection with you for that long was problematic too. And then if you didn't have a dedicated phone line for the modem...

If I remember correctly, actual pirated copies would have been maybe tens of megabytes, since they didn't include the CD audio. But that would still have been a hefty modem download.

I got 3kB/sec, or 6 minutes per meg in ‘96. 10 meg an hour wasn’t terrible even I. The U.K. where you paid a penny a minute.

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#148

Post by tetrisgm »

classichasclass wrote: post #5

Man, those CompUSA and Computer City pictures take me back. Spent too much time there (when the 7300 was my regular Mac, the CompUSA "Apple store" was my primary source of software). Probably still have some of those free Computer City floppies in a drawer somewhere.

It was fun to just browse. As least as a kid it was

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#149

Post by tetrisgm »

rasz wrote: post #146
brcmthrowaway wrote: post #39

If you were to do this today, how could you make it foolproof?

Every game separately encrypted then compressed into solid archives. Pressed in a way every game lands on different precise height of CD, padded before compression if necessary so it takes enough space on CD. Separate machine burning tiny holes in CD from the back, but not so tiny that CIRC could fixes them. At least one hole per file. Install locates the damage and gives you code encoding locations. Over the phone Y…

I respect the creativity, but this was a 22mb game. Nothing arj or rar wouldn’t handle. Or going on irc

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#150

Post by eythian »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #60
986aignan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm curious if it's possible to make a data track that has at least some resemblance to actual music. That could be an interesting challenge if it can't obviously be ruled out.

Sounds like the sort of thing Aphex Twin would do.

I think it's the sort of thing Master Boot Record should do
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