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Scorched Earth 2000 – Web

scorch2000.com

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Re: Scorched Earth 2000 – Web

#71

Post by kstrauser »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #52
rhema wrote: post #27

9 year old me got my first "hacking" experience out of this game. With the shareware version, you could not select the ultra tank that could shoot 3 bullets for a human, but you COULD if it were the computer player. The "hack": -start a game with a normal tank VS ultra computer player as p2. -save the game (as a file). -open the game file. -read the ASCII text and just flip which player has which text. Now, I had my…

It would be a nice thread on here, to see what people's first hacks were, especially from that era when people were usually just alone and stumbling on these things.

Saving a game in Bard’s Tale (for Amiga). Buying an item in a store. Saving the game again. Comparing the save files with a hand-rolled AmigaBASIC hex dumper to find the bytes that changed. Working out from there how it stored money balances in the file. Tweak a little… and voila, everyone in my party’s getting mithril plate and frost horns.

Re: Scorched Earth 2000 – Web

#72

Post by HerbManic »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #52
rhema wrote: post #27

9 year old me got my first "hacking" experience out of this game. With the shareware version, you could not select the ultra tank that could shoot 3 bullets for a human, but you COULD if it were the computer player. The "hack": -start a game with a normal tank VS ultra computer player as p2. -save the game (as a file). -open the game file. -read the ASCII text and just flip which player has which text. Now, I had my…

It would be a nice thread on here, to see what people's first hacks were, especially from that era when people were usually just alone and stumbling on these things.

While not the first hack by a long shot and not even mine but I always loved the idea of how it worked.

There used to be program called Gamehack or something like that. Essentially you would start the game and point this application at said game in RAM, then take note of something like the score being "187" or whatever. Jump into 'Gamehack' and it would search for everything in memory with that value. You would then play for a little bit longer and once the score had changed, you could then jump into game hack and find which of those memory addresses had changed to the new score. Usually you would only have one, you could then change this number to what ever you wanted.

It was such a simple concept but it worked so well. Wouldn't be able to do something like that anymore due to all manner of sandboxing in action. Lost a tool, gained security.

Only other hack was messing with the vehicle stats in Vice City. Ended up with the firetruck that could jump the entire map. Good fun.

Re: Scorched Earth 2000 – Web

#73

Post by stevekemp »

colordrops wrote: post #57
jasonfarnon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a nice thread on here, to see what people's first hacks were, especially from that era when people were usually just alone and stumbling on these things.

The whole cracking scene was where a lot us cut our teeth learning to use machine code debuggers.

Very much so. Fixing software so that they correctly recognized my preferred serial number of #12345 was valid. Using soft-ice to register itself was always a deeply ironic.

But to be honest I started before then, on the ZX Spectrum. First of all it was patching games to get infinite lives, or time. But later it became necessary to patch the loaders before you could even access the game-code - speedlock, bleeplock, etc.

Re: Scorched Earth 2000 – Web

#74

Post by HerbManic »

walrus01 wrote: post #65
jasonfarnon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't I remember doom developing pretty organically from wolfenstein and a few other (what would now be called) first person shooters around that time? The name "hexen" is coming to mind too. I would put that whole era as the start of something new, so different from the strategy games and side-scrollers that preceded it. Those first person games were the first time I thought computer games were actually more fun tha…

I think the big difference for me, after playing a lot of Wolfenstein 3D, was two things... The system I had it on didn't have the CPU to run wolf3d in something like a full screen size, it was something like a 386SX/20. By the time DOOM came around I had a much more capable desktop. Secondly, wolfenstein 3d was everything on a flat two dimensional plane of grey floor. There was one size of wall or door tile and ever…

Yep, Wolf3D is a fairly simple ray casting system (see if in visible cone, scale with distance) and Doom is Binary space partitioned that could allow complex geometry, something that is still used til this day.

Re: Scorched Earth 2000 – Web

#76

Post by HerbManic »

amarant wrote: post #64

Ooh, and it's fully playable! Last time I tried this game, I think I had managed to get a hold of the original executable or something: the rate of turn for the turret was tied to CPU cycles. Paying it on a computer about a decade younger than the game made it quite impossible to aim, as the turret would spin several laps if you so much as looked at the arrow key

There are some Chess games from that era that tied their difficulty to the CPU speed. Essentially calculate options for 5 seconds or something like that. So as hardware got faster, the games got way more difficult.

Re: Scorched Earth 2000 – Web

#78

Post by b3lvedere »

stevekemp wrote: post #73
colordrops wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole cracking scene was where a lot us cut our teeth learning to use machine code debuggers.

Very much so. Fixing software so that they correctly recognized my preferred serial number of #12345 was valid. Using soft-ice to register itself was always a deeply ironic. But to be honest I started before then, on the ZX Spectrum. First of all it was patching games to get infinite lives, or time. But later it became necessary to patch the loaders before you could even access the game-code - speedlock, bleeplock, e…

I remember saving a lot of allowance so i could buy the Multiface One for the ZX Spectrum. Instant hacking and saving possibilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiface

Re: Scorched Earth 2000 – Web

#79

Post by pimlottc »

parlortricks wrote: post #54
wingmanjd wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine was on a similar game, GORILLA.BAS. I would edit the banana code for a much bigger explosion. Lots of fun back in computer class!

We added other weapons to make a poor mans scorched earth as we were only allowed to make games.

My school had a similar loophole: game weren’t allowed in the computer lab, unless you wrote it yourself…
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