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Unlocking a "protected" mix.
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ArvinCool
Tiberian Beast


Joined: 01 Jun 2008

PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 6:13 pm    Post subject:  Unlocking a "protected" mix. Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I wasnt sure were to put this, anyway:

We have all seen this tutorial:
http://www.ppmsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22967
But it is easy for the guy that own the protected mix file to make aristurtles guide fail. If byte 04 and 05 is not the original number, aristurtles guide will completely fail. Byte 04 and 05, big-endian number containing the number of files. Edit two those byte to a random number. Game will still read it, but XCC Shit tool wont open it.


Now the question is, how can I get the original values for byte 04 and 05?

No offtopic!

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Lin Kuei Ominae
Seth


Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 6:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

There is a reason it was locked: no one can steal/take assets away.

If it's your mix, you surely still have the included files. If not, bad luck. Keeping the files in the mix only is always a bad decision.

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Starkku
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Joined: 28 Dec 2007
Location: Finland

PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 7:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Lin Kuei Ominae wrote:
There is a reason it was locked: no one can steal/take assets away.


You're wrong. It was locked for the gigantic war in that thread, not because the OP was handing off free tips for rippers and other parasites. It's not like the tutorial or all the other things that followed in the aftermath of that thread disappear anywhere either when it's locked.

As for ArvinCool, how about trying to work out the answer yourselves? You know, you might get the said answers faster than by waiting for others to spit it out for you. In my opinion, people who 'protect' their mixes without making backups/fully understanding what they're doing need to learn it the hard way, and people who are tampering with other people's purposefully protected (a fragile protection is better than none at all) mix files do not deserve any help for their endeavours.

Lin Kuei Ominae wrote:
I was talking about the mix.
The mix was locked, so "no one can steal/take assets away". Wink


Don't ask where I got the idea that you were talking about that thread, I don't know Neutral. Should spend more time reading the posts I guess...

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Last edited by Starkku on Sat Mar 12, 2011 8:00 pm; edited 2 times in total

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Lin Kuei Ominae
Seth


Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 7:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I was talking about the mix.
The mix was locked, so "no one can steal/take assets away". Wink

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ArvinCool
Tiberian Beast


Joined: 01 Jun 2008

PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 8:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Starkku wrote:
crap

Before you edited your post, you said it was possible, which is good news Very Happy
I hope someone can help me. I will also do what you suggested, try by my self.

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Starkku
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Joined: 28 Dec 2007
Location: Finland

PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 8:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

ArvinCool wrote:
Starkku wrote:
crap

you said it was possible


Yeah, I did. Took it out since it might trigger false hope in some people since it does not necessarily work under all conditions. Under those conditions, if you need to figure out the amount of files, you're most likely out of luck. Of course I don't have any idea whether or not that would apply to this specific case of yours, not like I really care either.

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Volgin
Commander


Joined: 07 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 8:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

mix protection is such a dumb idea...

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Alex06
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Joined: 21 Sep 2003
Location: Montreal, Canada

PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Volgin wrote:
mix protection is such a dumb idea...

It is a necessary evil. Prevents assholes like TacticalTrance/Shortbus and Michael Vranic/dagamer from stealing content and taking credit for it.

If people never stole, then protection against stealing would never be necessary or even be thought of. It's there because people have stolen things without asking and/or giving credit. If everyone who stole asked and/or gave credit, there would be no reason for any of us to protect our work.

It is not draconian, nor does it impede on the user-game interaction, unlike some of EA's or Microsoft's new DRMs (Windows Vista, MS Office, Red Alert 3 and Spore are good examples)...Unless you are trying to steal things. If you have good reason to want the assets, then I'm sure if you asked the people in question they would give said assets to you. Some would ask that you not make the mod public, but I'm sure most of us would be ok with it, but again, it depends on more than 1 thing. If you ask for an effect animation from a mod, they might say yes, but if you ask TO for their Nod buildings, they'll probably say no. (Because it's exclusive and original content intended to be experienced for and within TO...Despite the fact that they put up GIFs of their buildings on their forum, and anyone with time and photoshop could steal them (I advise against it)) In the end, just ask us.

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Volgin
Commander


Joined: 07 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 12:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

It is draconian considering how small the C&C community is and the fact that voxels and shps generally have no use outside of Pre 3D C&Cs. Nevermind that if someone does it they're usually ran out of town by a collective of angry community members. A lot of people got into modding by opening up mixes of mods to see how they did it.

You're overblowing the 'threat' of theft way too much and giving people like Shitbus credit where it is not due.

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Nyerguds
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Joined: 24 May 2004
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 12:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

ArvinCool wrote:
If byte 04 and 05 is not the original number, aristurtles guide will completely fail. Byte 04 and 05, big-endian number containing the number of files. Edit two those byte to a random number. Game will still read it, but XCC Shit tool wont open it.

Now the question is, how can I get the original values for byte 04 and 05?

Psh. Not like it's hard to make a tool to go over the mixfile header and count the number of file IDs to get the number to fill in there anyway. I'm sure that if the game can find the header's end, it probably ends on some zeroes or something #Tongue

[edit]

Oh, now I remember. The header IDs are always sorted from lowest to highest. I think it was signed though, from 80000000 (int32.min) to FFFFFFFF (-1), and then from 00000000 (zero) to 7FFFFFFF (int32.max).

The files list starts right after the mixfile size, so at byte 0x0A, and each file in the header is a block of 12 bytes, of which the first 4 are the big-endian filename ID. So basically you can just keep reading the blocks of 12 bytes, and going up until you find a value that doesn't match the ID sorting anymore, and then simply count how many you found #Tongue

After that, any corrupted value can be filled in. If the MIX body size (06-09) has been messed with too, it's just the full mix filesize minus the header size, the header size being 10 + 12*nroffiles.

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Last edited by Nyerguds on Sun Mar 13, 2011 2:36 am; edited 2 times in total

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ArvinCool
Tiberian Beast


Joined: 01 Jun 2008

PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 2:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Nyerguds wrote:
ArvinCool wrote:
If byte 04 and 05 is not the original number, aristurtles guide will completely fail. Byte 04 and 05, big-endian number containing the number of files. Edit two those byte to a random number. Game will still read it, but XCC Shit tool wont open it.

Now the question is, how can I get the original values for byte 04 and 05?

Psh. Not like it's hard to make a tool to go over the mixfile header and count the number of file IDs to get the number to fill in there anyway. I'm sure that if the game can find the header's end, it probably ends on some zeroes or something #Tongue

[edit]

Oh, now I remember. The header IDs are always sorted from lowest to highest. I think it was signed though, from 80000000 (int32.min) to FFFFFFFF (-1), and then from 00000000 (zero) to 7FFFFFFF (int32.max).

The files list starts right after the mixfile size, so at byte 0x0A, and each file in the header is a block of 12 bytes, of which the first 4 are the big-endian filename ID. So basically you can just keep reading the blocks of 12 bytes, and going up until you find a value that doesn't match the ID sorting anymore, and then simply count how many you found #Tongue

After that, any corrupted value can be filled in. If the MIX body size (06-09) has been messed with too, it's just the full mix filesize minus the header size, the header size being 10 + 12*nroffiles.


Thanks, I will definitely test that.
A program that count the number of files would help. Any thoughts about that Banshee? You said you had concern about protected mix files, if I didnt misunderstood you.

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Orac
President


Joined: 11 Jul 2008
Location: New Zealand

PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 2:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Alex06 wrote:
If you ask for an effect animation from a mod, they might say yes, but if you ask TO for their Nod buildings, they'll probably say no. (Because it's exclusive and original content intended to be experienced for and within TO...Despite the fact that they put up GIFs of their buildings on their forum, and anyone with time and photoshop could steal them

There's where it breaks down though, because anyone on the staff (or in the community, for that matter) notices someone using them, they will simply say "Oi, that's the TO Obelisk of Light" and be done with it. The same with any asset, sound, voxel, shp, map, GUI, or whatever.

Protecting a mix has more of an effect on the average modder than on a ripper, since there are more of us. It means that it is harder for the average guy to make personal modifications to an existing project - I like to have the ability to trade online play for my choice of fixes, and I don't release the things I do to Mental Omega since that'd be a little insulting.
The point is, making modding more serious just ruins the fun for the majority, even if it does deter a small, small minority.

Last edited by Orac on Sun Mar 13, 2011 10:26 am; edited 1 time in total

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Banshee
Supreme Banshee


Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam)
Joined: 15 Aug 2002
Location: Brazil

PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 4:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

What I said in that topic is that code samples helps people to learn how to mod and add new tricks to their mod. So, yea, I'm in favor of open source modding. However, I must admit that building a program to remove protection from mix files is not one of my priorities at the moment, but I'd like to allow Open Source BIG Editor to read and edit .mix files at some moment.

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Nyerguds
General


Joined: 24 May 2004
Location: Flanders (Be) Posts:300000001

PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 1:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Heh this is funny... just padding the mixfile with extra bytes already makes xcc fail to read it, while the game doesn't care. I'm inventing new methods here #Tongue

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Aro
Alcohol Fueled


Joined: 10 Sep 2006

PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 1:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Not this shit again...

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CCHyper
Defense Minister


Joined: 07 Apr 2005

PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 3:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Protecting art assets i can agree with, code etc should be open source.

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pd
Laser Commando


Joined: 19 Jun 2005
Location: Gone

PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 4:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Sounds like I need to dig out the Optimus Leech sources for a potential future upgrade. Very Happy

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Bittah Commander
Defense Minister


Joined: 21 May 2003
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 5:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

If you're desparate enough there's always third party applications such as molebox which can compile the entire mod into a single .exe or .dat file. Good luck trying to crack that #Tongue

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Nyerguds
General


Joined: 24 May 2004
Location: Flanders (Be) Posts:300000001

PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 6:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

btw, the info in that "How to unprotect" thread isn't even correct; the encryption and checksum values are on byte 02, not 01. Also, they're actually bits, not bytes, meaning they're 2 options that can be combined into the same byte (1 = checksum, 2 = encrypted, meaning 0 = none, and 3 = checksum & encrypted).

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pd
Laser Commando


Joined: 19 Jun 2005
Location: Gone

PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 6:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Bittah Commander wrote:
If you're desparate enough there's always third party applications such as molebox which can compile the entire mod into a single .exe or .dat file. Good luck trying to crack that #Tongue

Yeah, and once you play it the mixes lie raw in the game directory, that never worked.

Seriously, protection is stupid in an area like this. This community would be long dead if it wasn't for the possibility of learning by example. I know I would never have appeared.

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Bittah Commander
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Joined: 21 May 2003
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 7:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I remember testing molebox only once with DTA and it seemed to work back then.

I have no intentionally of actually locking DTA however, since I don't think graphics theft is really anything to worry about within the TS (or YR) modding community. Everyone that has been around for a while already knows almost everyone that's significant within the community and like Orac said, most would instantly spot when a public mod contains ripped assets from other mods.

The few times it actually even happened, after the shit storm (which usually made quite an amusing read #Tongue) died down, all that was left was an embarrassed little geek hated by the majority of the C&C modding community with no one playing his mod.
So in the end no mods or graphics artists have ever really suffered from this.


And when it comes to coding I agree; you get better at coding by looking and messing with already created intuitive codes from either the original game or mods. If it wasn't for this, everyone would have to reinvent the wheel again and again, which'd bring down the average mod quality (code-wise) quite a bit.

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ArvinCool
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Joined: 01 Jun 2008

PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 11:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Nyerguds wrote:
ArvinCool wrote:
If byte 04 and 05 is not the original number, aristurtles guide will completely fail. Byte 04 and 05, big-endian number containing the number of files. Edit two those byte to a random number. Game will still read it, but XCC Shit tool wont open it.

Now the question is, how can I get the original values for byte 04 and 05?

Psh. Not like it's hard to make a tool to go over the mixfile header and count the number of file IDs to get the number to fill in there anyway. I'm sure that if the game can find the header's end, it probably ends on some zeroes or something #Tongue

[edit]

Oh, now I remember. The header IDs are always sorted from lowest to highest. I think it was signed though, from 80000000 (int32.min) to FFFFFFFF (-1), and then from 00000000 (zero) to 7FFFFFFF (int32.max).

The files list starts right after the mixfile size, so at byte 0x0A, and each file in the header is a block of 12 bytes, of which the first 4 are the big-endian filename ID. So basically you can just keep reading the blocks of 12 bytes, and going up until you find a value that doesn't match the ID sorting anymore, and then simply count how many you found #Tongue

After that, any corrupted value can be filled in. If the MIX body size (06-09) has been messed with too, it's just the full mix filesize minus the header size, the header size being 10 + 12*nroffiles.

Could you please reexplain that in steps?

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CCHyper
Defense Minister


Joined: 07 Apr 2005

PostPosted: Mon Mar 14, 2011 1:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

DERP...

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Nyerguds
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Joined: 24 May 2004
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 14, 2011 8:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

No? I explained it plenty; the rest you can figure out by fricking taking a hex editor and ploughing through an actual mixfile, like I did.

Whose assets are you trying to rip anyway? I've personally never seen a protected mixfile in my life, besides the one I messed up to test these theories (which was just a decrypted copy of the TS:FS scores01.mix).

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