HIR Issue 2: Ins and outs of Game Guru
Written by Axon for Hackers Information Resource
Shoutouts to the coderz at Studio 3DO who participated in the making of what I believe is one of the best programs written for the die-hard data freaks out there (more specifically, those who love to screw around in hex editors, looking through saved games to try to "transcend" the rules of the game). A retail store I worked at was given a demo copy of Game Guru. My boss told me to just go ahead and keep it, and tell him what exactly it was. He read the box, and it looked like something a hacker-type would like. Just reading the package, it seemed almost cheesy. I was unsure how a box with a single floppy and a scant 20-page manual would achieve all of the results that were flaunted in the product description. But indeed I know that coderz can work miracles, so I gave it a shot.
I took it home and installed it on my laptop. I wanted to see what all it would do for Duke Nukem 3D, which was about the only game I had installed on my laptop at the time (before I got an external CD Drive). When I pulled it up, I was asked to "remove the disk, and un-write-protect it." It was strange. I've never seen an install disk that needed to write to its own disk. Creepy. It installed fine after that. It runs in 4GW protected mode. Rather mundane. When I ran it, I was shocked with a really kick-ass graphic of some sort of virtual game-buddha sort of character. There was even a list of dozens upon dozens of games, and several codes for them.
There were a ton of them for my Duke3D.
As I read through the instruction manual (Oh yes, I read the manuals after i install the software. I make a religion of it, but i wished I hadn't practiced this on this occasion. It turns out that this software could only be installed three times, then, the disk would be useless, much akin to AOL diskettes that are mas mailed to our doorsteps to prevent us from needing to purchase the media ourselves. Then it struck me. This thing was WRITTEN by hackers, for hackers. Of COURSE! So I played. I ran a DISKCOPY of the install disk. Nada. Would not install. It needed "the ORIGINAL Game Guru Install Disk" and wanted me to feed the Floppy drive the genuine disk. I zipped up the installed version, and copied it to a 486 i had. After I uncompressed it on the 486, and attempted to run it, it asked me to install it from the install disk, because it wasn't originally installed on that hard drive, but another. I was truly puzzled. Truly, a work by hackers, for hackers, just like the manual said.
...and so i hacked...
What did i find? I decided to go with my diskcopy theory. when a diskcopy is run, it literally lays everything, or so i thought...Sector by sector, the same. What in the world was it forgetting to copy. Obviosely, the writers of Game Guru knew that something wasn't copied with DiskCopy, which I'm sure would be one of the most obvious choices for copying a single disk install. I wanted to know what it wasn't copying. I made 3 diskcopies of the install, none of which installed (surprise, surprise). I pulled up a copy of PC-Tools by Central Point, which is a must for most hackers that rely on power tools for the PC. It shows all kinds of stuff on the disk, even FAT layout, serial number, and header info.
(I found out the serial number, which can be seen with a dos DIR command, is actually reversed. It's in hex. If the Serial number shows up in DIR as "5F31-8E4F" it will be in hex on the disk as the characters "Oé0_" which is in hex "4F 8E 31 5F", exactly reversed from the serial number. As you can tell, I tried changing the serial number of the disk to match that of the install disk. No go. (I did learn that trick about the serial number though. I didn't know that until this project.) This is when I used the header viewer. The OEM ID field of the illegitimate floppy read "WIN4.0" or something like that, because the floppy was formatted on a windows 95 machine, my laptop. Strangely enough, the header view of the true install floppy revealed that the OEM ID was garbled...horribly so. It was a mass of strange characters, I cant remember which characters. I did this hack nearly a year ago.
This Really should be done with Central Point's PC tools. Norton Just doesn't cut it. The industry standard requires the OEM ID field on the diskette to be in ALL CAPS. Norton wouldn't let me enter a letter lowercase, and wouldn't let me insert any higher ascii characters either. Please for the love of hacking use PC Tools. It rawx. View the OEM ID of your Game Guru disk (which can be purchased for 9 bux or so), and jot it down. Then, all you do is diskcopy the install, and edit the Fake install's header to make the OEM ID read the same as the original install. Voila! You just hacked Game Guru. Now...you know a TON about Copy protection, as this was one of the most challenging schemes I have gone up against. I wanted a copy because Floppy disks shelf lives just suck. There should be no reason I couldn't make a backup. I bought it, and learned a lot while trying to hack it. It is not often that one can hack a program that will help you hack.
You hacked Game Guru...How do you Hack WITH it now?
When you first run Game Guru, Go to the "Edit Settings" Menu, and activate everything cool. There are quite a few things there to play with. Advanced mode is a must. This opens up options for a very powerful hex-editor to your disposal, as well as a few other things. The HEx editor has a dual window display. If you load up two files that are the same size in either window, you can compare them. This works well for saved-game files. It will even suggest what possible values the changes represent. If you like to hex out BBS software, like Renegade, you can save the original, and then hex edit a copy of the original, reviewing EVERY difference in the two files at any time. If you open an executable in the hex editor, you can launch an edited version from within Guru, without saving the file itself. If the edit works the way you want, save it. if not, you don't need to worry, just exit the editor.
Anyone who has ever messed around with saved-game files also knows that sometimes the programmers make Checksums part of the file. This is a very annoying practice, for when you edit the saved game file, the game will freak out and say that the file is corrupted, so it's erased...with your hard work inside it, as well. Game Guru contains a really great CRC Calculator.
When you add these great hacking features, with the ability to add special game guru patches to games, (patch codes available all over the net), and the "Knowledge base", a list of cheat codes. The Game Guru File List feature doesn't care about hidden files. They are openly readable, and writable, as well, as long as the other file attributes allow such.
If some of the other many uses for this program are not already beginning to form inmm your heads, you may not be able to justify buying this program. If so, go get it. Search for it on the web if you can't find it in stores. There is a free version (it looks like game guru but doesn't really do much of anything. I think you may be able to get it from Studio3DO direct, if you can't get it anywhere else.
This has pretty much covered the ins and outs of Game Guru. How to hack it, how to hack WITH it. It is a good quality program, and i hope that these methods of hacking are not used for Piracy, which I do not condone in any way. I do encourage the technique described here, in order to make a backup of the install, because if my drive crashed, I would probably die if I couldn't use it again. HAppI HAqN!
