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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - - Posts by DarkPhoenix |
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba                 Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| Okay, first off, for clarity, in reference to people getting scared off by the word "hacking" (particularly in reference to "but they don't know it's considered hacking"), a definition of hacking (as a noun):
1. Modifying the source code of a program such as an operating system. 2. Black-Hat hacking (See cracking) is the unauthorized access to computer systems. This is only, however, one type of hacking which most hackers do not like to de affiliated with. - Wiktionary ( http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hacking ) Perhaps someone can fill me in a little more as to the general legality of modifying sourcecode, but when we speak of ROM hacking, we're not referring to Black-Hat hacking, which is what gives the term "hacking" its stigma. Second, I'm not an attorney or anything, but I'd imagine that it could be argued that a ROM hacker distributing IPS patches, so long as the individual isn't making a profit from their work, or redistributing the original work, should share the same rights as a writer of fan-fiction. Furthermore, I can't imagine it'd be any less legal than all those "Star Wars Doom" and "Barney Doom" type shareware games that used to get sold at KGP/Marketpro computer shows, back in the day when games came on a large stack of 3 1/2" floppies. Those patches involved modifying the Doom sourcecode in the same way that we modify ROMs, and they often used various trademarks and copyrighted characters. Not to mention there were some thick books out there on how to hack Doom. "Tricks of the Doom Programming Gurus", anyone? ( http://cres1.lancs.ac.uk/~esasb1/doom/dpg/ ) Seems to me that the legality/ethics of ROM hacking, in and of itself, shouldn't even be an issue. Likely the only legal matter is the posession of the ROM, which is generally (rather weakly) argued to be legal due to the allowance of a backup copy of any software that you own. Whether or not that's a sound enough argument to hold up in court has yet to be established, as far as I know, but at the very least, that 24 hours thing for software you don't own is likely bunk ( http://www.theesa.com/ip/anti_piracy_faq.php ). But at the very least, the ESA seems to have better things to do than sue 12 year olds and senior citizens, as the RIAA has taken to. Things like opposing internet regulation and game labelling systems with the purpose of restricting sales. And if you're still concerned about the "hacking" part, some brief notes on US Multimedia Copyright I stumbled on a while back: ( http://www.aea11.k12.ia.us/downloads/copyrightposter.pdf ) Note that under software, it states that a program may be adapted by adding content or adapting to another language. Granted, it doesn't say whether or not it's legal to distribute the changes made to create this adaptation. And note that this poster hardly a legal document. Hopefully that's enough information to put the issue to rest. |
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| Regarding the decompilation of roms into sourcecode, you might want to check out the decompilation wiki - http://www.program-transformation.org/Transform/DeCompilation , particularly the Legality of Decompilation page
- "The exception allows reverse engineering of computer programs if the reverse engineer lawfully obtains the program, seeks permission from the copyright owner, only uses the results of their efforts to create an interoperable computer program and does not publish the results", according to the US DMCA. The same page has some information relevant to the usage of flash carts, as well. As far as flash carts go, it's a little up in the air, as of late. While the Sony Corp. of America vs. Universal City Studios case ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._v._Universal_City_Studios ) essentially ruled that manufacturers of blank media and related devices cannot be held liable for infringement by the user, the more recent MGM vs. Grokster case ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_v._Grokster ) brought about the issue of intent, saying that if one who distributes a device promotes its use to infringe copyright, then that person or organization can be held liable for infringement by third parties. The point here is that, regardless of laws getting stricter on manufacturers, it is still accepted that there are other uses for these blank media devices, and so their use does not necessarily imply the infringement of copyright. So there's little need of concern for posessing a flash cart, as, similarly, it is not illegal to posess or sell drug paraphernalia - there needs to be proof of drug posession or usage. (correct me if I'm wrong here, I'm not exactly an expert on drug related legal issues) Regarding Twytch's remarks, he's absolutely right. There's hardly a rational reason to be concerned about being arrested or the like for anything related to ROMs, given the technical nature of the topic, the lack of media coverage of the topic, and the lack of severity of the infringement, among other things (well, the RIAA and MPAA may disagree, but this has nothing to do with them. Only the ESA need be concerned, and they're not, really.) I figure that kind of goes without saying, but, notwithstanding, it's useful to know the legal issues behind it, particularly in the event that you'll need to justify yourself to someone who may be a bit critical of the issue, a situation where "I didn't know" will hardly suffice. |
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| Distribution and posession are generally treated separately. For example, it is illegal to sell cigarettes to a minor, but it is not illegal for a minor to buy cigarettes, or be in posession of them. Regardless, Disch is correct. Not as a result of the fact that they're distributed illegally, but more, well, because they say so. According to http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html , even if we classify ROMs as computer software, it's illegal to load an infringing copy onto a computer (as you would be making a reproduction of the illegal copy in memory, by actually using this copy), so similarly, it would have to be assumed that downloading a copy of a game, even if you own it, is illegal. It wouldn't, however, be illegal to make the copy yourself. Granted, this isn't a legal document, but it is a government one, so, while I'm not sure off hand if Section 117 of Title 17 (the copyright act) actually says this flat out, that's likely how it would be interpreted by the currently conservative supreme court. So, if you ever find yourself in trouble in court (however unlikely), as a ROM hacker, you'd probably have a lot more luck arguing for "Fair Use" (Title 17, Section 107 - likely in regards to Criticism, Comment, or Research of said game) than claiming to have, by some absurd loophole, legally obtained the file. | |||
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| Good point. Something else to note:
"WARNING: Copying of any Nintendo game is illegal and is strictly prohibited by domestic and international copyright laws. "Back-up" or "archival" copies are not authorized and are not necessary to protect your software. Violators will be prosecuted." ... "The Rental of this game without permission of Nintendo or its liscensees is strictly prohibited." - taken from page 41 of the Ocarina of Time instruction booklet That second one's possibly a stab at that "24 hour trial period" thing. The first one speaks for itself. Nintendo seems to deny you the right to even make your own copy, though the wording's a little shady. It says these copies are "not authorized and not necessary", but not "these copies are illegal"...unless of course somewhere in the copyright law it says that unauthorized copies are illegal, or something of the sort. |
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba  Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| It's possible that it's legal to have a ROM if you dump it yourself, but not entirely too likely. Nintendo states quite specifically on its webpage that game copying devices are illegal, and as I think we've established, Nintendo's fairly careful with their wording. The question would then be, is the ROM created, if you create it yourself from a legally owned copy of the game, with an illegal device, legal or illegal? Or, on the other hand, can we say that the Sony vs. Universal case protects the copying device (assuming it has other uses, aside from infringement), and then, would the ROM created be legal, and under what uses? Would it be legal to run this copy, if the original is in good condition, or could it only be used strictly for archival?
Well, obviously this doesn't apply to most, who've pretty much obtained ROMs flat out illegally. So more, the question is, To what end would a person have to go to in order to hack a ROM, without breaking any laws? If ROM hacking is considered Fair Use, then none of this infringement business applies, but if it doesn't, then how can we create for ourselves, a legal ROM to hack? This is important if someone wanted to present a ROM hack to a company as part of their resume, or felt that their hack was of such high quality that they wanted to present it to a company to be officially released, for example. And, for reference, the penalty for copyright infringement is up to $30,000 for each work infringed, or up to $150,000 if the copyright owner proves willful infringement. But, keep in mind that these laws were created with the intention of attacking distributers of infringed works, not individual users. No need to be paranoid about just having ROMs on your computer. Granted, the RIAA considers anyone they find sharing music on a file sharing network to be a distributer. They've sued everyone from 12 year olds to senior citizens (that's not an exxageration). Luckily, the video game industry isn't so depraved. For the most part, all they've done is sent nasty letters to websites distributing ROMs, demanding that they shut down, as far as I've heard. |
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| This is copyright law - no one will really go after you except for the companies that own the copyrights, and, as I've said time and time again, unlike with the deplorable Music industry, they seem to have better things to do than go on an internet piracy witch-hunt.
Bottom line, if you're not openly distributing your ROMs (e.g., selling them, posting them for download on a website, or sharing them all on a File-sharing network of some sort), no one's likely to hunt you down. And by the way, if a higher government agency was really after you, breaking a CD into pieces wouldn't do it. It's still possible to recover data from a broken CD, albeit not all of it, but probably enough to prove the existence of a file on it. The best way to dispose of a CD is somewhere between 5 and 10 seconds in the microwave. It will, however, leave a bit of a smell behind, at the very least, and you could conceivably damage the microwave a bit, so, as they say, adult supervision required |
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| Bit of a problem with using System RAM | |||
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| As much as my vote tends to disagree with me (did I misclick? I'm quite sure I clicked B), Method B seems like the best compromise. Fighting to support 64-bit systems seems to me (and I may be biased from the fact that I don't use a 64-bit processor) to be overkill. The user base is too small to kill yourself over...though I guess that probably depends on what you're writing. The Windows style solution will probably be the most sane to work with if you plan on releasing newer versions every so often, or releasing the sourcecode, especially since plugin developers might not be too happy if their plugins stop functioning properly whenever you release a major update. | |||
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba  Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| IrfanView is amazing.
Another decent media player worth noting is BSPlayer, though I use VLC, myself |
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba  Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| You probably need a TV tuner or a line doubler/scaler/de-interlacer/upscan converter.
(you can also get TV tuners as PCI cards for your PC, such as with the ATI All-In-Wonder, or as USB devices, which are usually poor, but I'm referring to TV tuners that don't use a PC, unless otherwise stated) It depends on what you're trying to do on the monitor, though. For example, Gamecube, X-Box, and Dreamcast, as far as I remember, all natively support component video output, so you can find VGA adaptors (read as "you don't need the aforementioned device, just a cable") for them on Ebay and such (I got my gamecube VGA adaptor off Ebay for $15, and most games support it, just hold B when you start the system up). Playstation 2, and older systems, however, don't support component video, so for those systems, you need to buy a TV tuner or a line doubler to display the output on a monitor. The downside is, at the very least, you get what you pay for. Viewsonic sells a bunch of TV tuners for fairly cheap, and you can get others from lik-sang.com, like the VGA box, but the picture won't be great, because of the way they de-interlace, and it depends on how they try to sharpen the image (read as "cheap stuff might give you a blurrier picture" - and a lot of people have had problems with the ones sold on lik-sang not even working). Granted, it won't be any worse than putting it through an internal TV tuner card in your PC, which would give you more options, but suck up system resources, and then you'd need to keep your computer on to play games. I'm not a big fan of lugging a TV around to college, so I use a Viewsonic Nextvision N5 TV tuner (it was on sale at Best Buy), among other things, to use my monitor for everything. Also good to note, if the system supports component video, then it should look better on the monitor than it does on the TV, because usually it will display at a higher resoution. The downside, you'll still need the regular cables, and some little adaptors, to output the sound. Oh, another thing, if you're playing on an LCD monitor, you want to get a TV tuner that outputs at as close to the native resolution of your LCD monitor as possible. The further you get from the native resolution, the blurrier your picture will be (so if you get the N5, which outputs at 1024x768, the image will be best on a monitor with a native resolution of 1024x768). Not to say that it will get blurry enough to not be playable or anything. Same is true of the systems that support component video, actually. They likely output at 720p (that's 1280x720), so those would probably look best on a monitor that natively does 1280x1024. If you're using a CRT, however, none of this native resolution stuff applies, so just don't worry about it. Edit: BestBuy doesn't seem to carry the Viewsonic TV tuners anymore. I'd gotten mine last fall, but it's not listed on their website anymore. Fry's Outpost.com still has it, though, so if you have a Fry's Electronics store near you, then you might be able to get it there. (edited by DarkPhoenix on 01-12-06 01:57 AM) |
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| http://www.tweakxp.com/article36781.aspx
http://www.beemerworld.com/tips/systemproperties.htm I'm not sure if it'll change what you want, but this is how the branding in system properties is done. |
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| My apologies for screwing up your poll...
And, some more reasoning - I could be wrong about this, since I haven't thought this all through, but while it might be useful to combine multiple function calls into one string, among other things, Method C seems likely to produce a higher density of errors. Even if it's just a small syntax issue, convoluted code means more coding time and more debug time, which will likely translate into a lower quantity and quality of plugins for your app. These all might be insignificant sacrifices if plugins aren't really a huge part of the program, like if they're only used for reading/writing files. If, however, they're an integral part to the program's functionality, simplifying the code that plugin developers have to write might have a more significant effect on how well the program succeeds at its task in the long run than even the coding you do on the main program. ...I miss Dr.Brain. |
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| Speaking of "Things your operating system's developers/hardware manufacturers don't want you to do" and EFI, as it's part of the framework for implementing Trusted Computing, does anyone know of any indication as to whether or not Apple has any interest in Trusted Computing themselves? | |||
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| Props to Xkeeper for a focus on good level design, something that even many commercial games have suffered from an excruciating lack of, as of late | |||
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| We're discussing it because it's of some interest to us, and, obviously, since there's debate over it, the issue's certainly not that clear cut - and some people may actually have some use for this information. If you tire of the conversation, don't open the thread, and just hope for it to die, and for that matter, don't bump the thread when it's started to die just to complain about it.
In regards to people getting in trouble for just posessing ROMs, well, it likely wouldn't be financially beneficial to any company to sue an individual for posession, unless they're doing a significant bit of distribution. Especially under the chance that the individual can prove that they own a legal copy of the game, because then, even if the copy were definitely illegal, the individual would be showing that they're doing little or no financial damage to the company or the market, so the case would likely just get thrown out. Unless the gaming industrly, like the RIAA has, gets into scare tactics, it only really hurts them to go after individuals for just posession and use. |
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| To be serious, for a moment...perhaps he's looking for a program that would act like a specialized paint program, that would let you open a sprite library, and from it build level designs. Such a program has been requested by more reputable rom hackers, looking to plan out their level designs before actually writing them to the game.
...alright, I admit, that was a stretch. |
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| I have a GC->USB adaptor, but it works so poorly that I've not really touched it since I got it. It wasn't one of the ones sold on Lik-Sang, though...think I got it at RedOctane, but I can't find it anywhere anymore, and I don't have it on me, so I can't show you a picture or anything. The playstation adaptor I have works pretty well, though, and my adaptoid (N64->USB) is absolutely flawless. If I had to recommend one, it'd be that one. http://www.wishtech.com | |||
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| I'd imagine you could (just might take a little work), though I haven't tried the adaptoid with a transfer pak myself...probably depends on what you want to do with it. At the very least, as long as it can access the pak, you could possibly modify Pokemon Stadium to help you do your dirty work.
The GC->USB adaptor that I have is the Skillz Cube Adaptor. I might've just gotten a faulty one, but it pretty much flat out doesn't work. ...seems other people on the Lik-Sang forums have had some issues with the skillz adaptor, so someone made a patch for some of the bugs - http://forum.lik-sang.com/showthread.php?t=297 .Can't test it myself now to see if it fixes the problems, though. |
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| That post deserves some applause.
Well written. I thoroughly enjoyed it. |
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DarkPhoenix Red Goomba Since: 12-27-05 Last post: 6306 days Last view: 6306 days |
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| Well, first thing's first. If you're looking for text, it's generally stored uncompressed, but not in ASCII. (ever written a Caeser Cypher type program? No? well, wikipedia is your friend) The way most people seem to find it is with relative searching. (e.g. if the game contains the string "mario", search for any set of strings where the difference between the 2nd character and the 1st is 12, and the difference between the 3rd and 4th is 17) You'll want a good hex editor for that.
Moreover, not to get all "RTFM" on you, but find yourself a good Intro to ROM Hacking document. This issue is covered in quite a bit of depth. For the more Assembly inclined, a more complicated way to find data would be to use differences in RAM (think save states - like before and after the event occurs) to find where the information is stored in RAM. Then, one could possibly search for it in the ROM and try changing it (a little more elegant than random corruption), or, if you have a good debugger and disassembler/tracer, you could break at writes to that RAM address, and disassemble the associacted subroutine, figure out what it does, and see where it gets its data. (useful, for example, if you have a subroutine that copies data from one area of memory to another, or addresses another component, like a PPU - memory maps are your friend) As for dasm86, as far as I know, that's an x86 disassembler (that is, for IBM compatible processors, i.e. Intel, AMD, and Cyrix - like what's probably in the computer you're using, unless of course it's a Mac) Genesis uses the Motorala 68000 processor, so you need a disassembler that supports that instruction set. A quick google search offers some help - http://emureview.ztnet.com/sega/gentechnt.htm. http://www.sws2b.com/forums/index.php?s=7251b347599c9bcdbc9558cf73682728&showtopic=1866 |
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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - - Posts by DarkPhoenix |
