Ever hacked PC games...

[IAmSerge]

You guys ever hacked PC games?  And in this specific case, im talking about like, old school, 1990's FPS PC games.

There is a certain Video Game that I have.  Extremely rare, unknown to, well, practically the rest of the universe.

But in my personal opinion, it was a wonderful game... like, AMAZINGLY wonderful game.

I was just wondering if you guy have ever hacked something along those lines, like.. ya know?

I would totally have it on my computer right now installed and I would play it often but...  ...the problem is the game supposedly only runs with a specific (albeit extremely old) graphics card.

I was just wondering if there was some way to be able to reach into the source code and either get rid of whats stopping it from running, or change it in such a way that it could be runnable... or even go to the extreme of taking the code out of it, and reworking it to be a new copy of it...

...anyone have any thoughts? 

If you care... the game is called "Rebel Moon".  Search it on google, the only thing you'll really come up with is limited information about its sequel, "Rebel Moon Rising".

[FaustWolf]

Serge, let's not talk about that sort of thing at the Compendium anymore, I think. I know the topic isn't something that falls under the C&D, but we're sorta supposed to be out of that line of fanwork altogether from this point forward.

This specific topic might be more up the alley of a place like XentaX.

[IAmSerge]

*sigh* meh..
...I guess you're right.

[Mauron]

A quick look on Google supported my initial suspicions - it's a DOS game.

Have you tried running it under Dosbox? I've had good luck using that for games that Windows won't properly run for whatever reason.

[FaustWolf]

Serge, let's not talk about that sort of thing at the Compendium anymore, I think. I know the topic isn't something that falls under the C&D, but we're sorta supposed to be out of that line of fanwork altogether from this point forward.

This specific topic might be more up the alley of a place like XentaX.

Reflecting on what I just did there, I don't want to promote what a wise Compendium admin once called "an atmosphere of fear" among the members or anything. When he said that, the Compendium hadn't been slapped with a C&D, but until I receive advice otherwise, I'll err on the side of...

[IAmSerge]

A quick look on Google supported my initial suspicions - it's a DOS game.

Have you tried running it under Dosbox? I've had good luck using that for games that Windows won't properly run for whatever reason.

I'm not sure cus I haven't done it in a while...but it may not be that I am unable to run it, but that I'm unable to install it cus it wont let me or something...

*genius idea*

I'll just grab my copy off of my old windows 95 (you know, the PC with GOOD games? hahaha =D )with a flashdrive!

maybe ill try it later, yeah?

But in all reality, it may or may not be a dos game in itself because I never used it using DOS but...  it was probably written in the days which Dos was dying Windows was starting... so yeah it might as well be a Dos game, eh?


... and Faust, what you saying?

are you like, retracting (some) of your original statement?
*shrug* ok then!

...aaand on another note: anyone ever play chex quest? chex quest 2?

[Mauron]

MobyGames says it's for DOS.

That, and I've never heard of a Windows game that had the problem of needing a specific video card to run - DirectX is one of Microsoft's best moves.

[IAmSerge]

MobyGames says it's for DOS.

That, and I've never heard of a Windows game that had the problem of needing a specific video card to run - DirectX is one of Microsoft's best moves.

Yeah, I saw mobygames earlier this evening when i googled the game out of curiosity...

and touche with the DirectX comment

[Prince Janus]

  I've messed around with some of the text from the two Ultima VII games (exult version). Mostly just stupid things like swearing and mentioning body parts.

[IAmSerge]

Well I went exploring in terms of old school awesomeness, and I was able to use DOSBox to install Rebel Moon on my compy.

But like I said, it says it wont run without that 3D BLASTER PCI graphics card or such.  and it doesnt.

But me, being as inquisitive as I am, decided to look up the files in which comprise the game... thankfully, its not all one big .exe.  Its got everything, and I mean EVERYTHING spread out into loads of files. Some of which were code, like, already binary, stored in hex.  Others were still regular text files, which were niceee =D.  So I basically knew what was going on with what, though I was still disappointed I couldn't play.

And thats when I got to thinking.  The sequel uses just about the same set of, well, everything... maybe it uses a similar run engine, and maybe it stores its files in a similar way?

Well, I don't have the money to buy the sequel, but there IS the demo on cnet, or fileplanet, or something.

So I downloaded that.  Turns out I was right.  Almost everything has the same format.  So I saved some of the demo's files for the first level somewhere else, and replaced those with the files for the first level in the unplayable one.  Wonderful since they use the same filenames.  First it gave me an error that it was missing graphics or something so I copied those over too, and it works!

I am win!

EDIT: Well, I seem to have everything down perfect except finding out how to do the music... Under the configuration files for each level, which are in plain text thankfully, almost everything points to a file with some sort of extension or something... but the music... the music was simply assigned numbers... gotta figure out why and how to change it.

If anyone would like to help me find where the music is being retrieved from... search "Rebel Moon Rising Demo" and dload it off of fileplanet or something.  the file which sets the music being played is under /levels, and its the .ini file.

I have determined that there is a certain variable which sets the path to find the music files.

however, I think that this path somehow only uses a directory created as a temporary directory from within the game itself... because in the original game that I'm trying to port, the "path" is set as C:\music\

C: seems to be a directory inside the program, used similar to the way that DOSBox mounts directories.
Why? because the original game that uses C:\music gets its music from a CD, which would be D:\music or E:\music.

so I think that in order to be able to do it right im going to have to make some sort of major change or something.