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• Approaches To Modifying Game Resource Files

  16 août 2016, par Multimedia Mike — Game Hacking

  I have been assisting The Translator in the translation of another mid-1990s adventure game. This one isn’t quite as multimedia-heavy as the last title, and the challenges are a bit different. I wanted to compose this post in order to describe my thought process and mental model in approaching this problem. Hopefully, this will help some others understand my approach since what I’m doing here often appears as magic to some of my correspondents.

  High Level Model
  At the highest level, it is valuable to understand the code and the data at play. The code is the game’s engine and the data refers to the collection of resources that comprise the game’s graphics, sound, text, and other assets.

  
  
  Simplistic high-level game engine model
  

  Ideally, we want to change the data in such a way that the original game engine adopts it as its own because it has the same format as the original data. It is very undesirable to have to modify the binary engine executable in any way.

  Modifying The Game Data Directly
  How to modify the data ? If we modify the text strings for the sake of language translation, one approach might be to search for strings within the game data files and change them directly. This model assumes that the text strings are stored in a plain, uncompressed format. Some games might store these strings in a text format which can be easily edited with any text editor. Other games will store them as binary data.
  

  In the latter situation, a game hacker can scan through data files with utilities like Unix ‘strings’ to find the resources with the desired strings. Then, use a hex editor to edit the strings directly. For example, change “Original String”…

  0098F800   00 00 00 00  00 00 00 4F  72 69 67 69  6E 61 6C 20  .......Original 
  0098F810   53 74 72 69  6E 67 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  String..........
  

  …to “Short String” and pad the difference in string lengths using spaces (0x20) :

  0098F800   00 00 00 00  00 00 00 53  68 6F 72 74  20 53 74 72  .......Short Str
  0098F810   69 6E 67 20  20 20 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  ing   ..........
  

  This has some obvious problems. First, translated strings need to be of equal our smaller length compared to the original. What if we want to encode “Much Longer String” ?

  0098F800   00 00 00 00  00 00 00 4D  75 63 68 20  4C 6F 6E 67  .......Much Long
  0098F810   65 72 20 53  74 72 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  er Str..........
  

  It won’t fit. The second problem pertains to character set limitations. If the font in use was only designed for ASCII, it’s going to be inadequate for expressing nearly any other language.

  So a better approach is needed.

  Understanding The Data Structures
  An alternative to the approach outlined above is to understand the game’s resources so they can be modified at a deeper level. Here’s a model to motivate this investigation :

  
  
  Model of the game resource archive format
  

  This is a very common layout for such formats : there is a file header, a sequence of resource blocks, and a trailing index which describes the locations and types of the foregoing blocks.

  What use is understanding the data structures ? In doing so, it becomes possible to write new utilities that disassemble the data into individual pieces, modify the necessary pieces, and then reassemble them into a form that the original game engine likes.

  It’s important to take a careful, experimental approach to this since mistakes can be ruthlessly difficult to debug (unless you relish the thought of debugging the control flow through an opaque DOS executable). Thus, the very first goal in all of this is to create a program that can disassemble and reassemble the resource, thus creating an identical resource file. This diagram illustrates this complex initial process :

  
  
  Rewriting the game resource file
  

  So, yeah, this is one of the most complicated “copy file” operations that I can possibly code. But it forms an important basis, since the next step is to carefully replace one piece at a time.

  
  
  Modifying a specific game resource
  

  This diagram shows a simplistic model of a resource block that contains a series of message strings. The header contains pointers to each of the strings within the block. Instead of copying this particular resource block directly to the new file, a proposed modification utility will intercept it and rewrite the entire thing, writing new strings of arbitrary length and creating an adjusted header which will correctly point to the start of each new string. Thus, translated strings can be longer than the original strings.

  Further Work
  Exploiting this same approach, we can intercept and modify other game resources including fonts, images, and anything else that might need to be translated. I will explore specific examples in a later blog post.

  Followup

  • Translating Return to Ringworld, in which I apply the ideas expressed in this post.

  The post Approaches To Modifying Game Resource Files first appeared on Breaking Eggs And Making Omelettes.

• How do I run two indefinite loops simultaneously, while also changing variables within them ?

  11 octobre 2016, par Nyalmo

  I’m trying to write a script in Python that records a stream of an IP camera in realtime. It only keeps about a minute worth of recording, constantly overwriting the same files. Whenever an external sensor is triggered I want a variable to be set (event variable) which merges the recording with an extra 30 seconds it records after the sensor is triggered. The combined 90 seconds are then saved as the date and time for later review.

  The idea was to have 2 indefinite while loops, the first containing both the real time recording and the event. The second one would constantly read input and activate the ’event’ function. Initially I though I could just have a software version of the hardware interrupt I’ve learned before, though after some research it seems that’s only for exceptions. I’m currently using TkInter, simulating the external input with keypresses.

  When I tried it out the input wouldn’t cause the event to be triggered. So my question is : How do I run the two indefinite loops simultaneously, while also having the input loop change variables in the main loop so that the ’event’ can actually occur in real-time ?

  Since I’m using ffmpeg to record the stream, once the command is called to record it can’t be stopped, but I want the event variable to be changed as soon as possible.

  I’ve looked at several similar questions regarding multiple loops, and have tried multiprocessing(though this only seems to be used for performance, which is not that important here), making two separate files(not sure how to have them work together) and lastly, threads. None of these seem to work in my situation as I can’t get them running in the way that I want.

  Here is my latest attempt, using threads :

  i = 0
  
  event = False
  
  aboutToQuit = False
  
  someVar = 'Event Deactivated'
  
  lastVar = False
  
  
  
  def process(frame):
  
      print "Thread"
  
      i = 0    
  
      frame = frame 
  
      frame.bind("<space>", switch)
  
      frame.bind("<escape>", exit) 
  
      frame.pack()
  
      frame.focus_set()
  
  
  
  def switch(eventl):
  
      print(['Activating','Deactivating'][event])
  
      event = eventl
  
      event = not(event)
  
  
  
  def exit(eventl):
  
      print'Exiting Application'
  
      global aboutToQuit
  
      #aboutToQuit = True
  
      root.destroy()
  
  
  
  print("the imported file is", tkinter.__file__)
  
  def GetTime(): #function opens a script which saves the final merged file as date and time.
  
      time = datetime.datetime.now()
  
      subprocess.call("./GetTime.sh", shell = True)
  
      return (time)
  
  
  
  def main(root):
  
      global event, aboutToQuit, someVar,lastVar      
  
      while (not aboutToQuit):
  
          root.update() # always process new events
  
  
  
          if event == False:
  
              someVar = 'Event Deactivated'
  
              subprocess.call(Last30S_Command) #records last 30 seconds overwriting itself.
  
              print "Merge now"
  
              subprocess.call(Merge_Command) #merges last 30 seconds with the old 30 seconds       
  
              print "Shift now"
  
              subprocess.call(Shift_Command) #copies the last30s recording to the old 30 seconds, overwriting it.
  
              if lastVar == True: #Triggers only when lastVar state changes
  
                  print someVar
  
                  lastVar = False
  
              time.sleep(.1)
  
  
  
          if event == True: 
  
               someVar = 'Event Activated'
  
              print"Record Event"
  
              subprocess.call(EventRecord_Command) #records 30 seconds after event is triggered.
  
              print"EventMerge Now"
  
              subprocess.call(EventMerge_Command) # merges the 1 minute recording of Merge_Command with 30 seconds of EventRecord_Command
  
              if lastVar == False:
  
                  print someVar
  
                  lastVar = True
  
              time.sleep(.1)
  
              GetTime() #Saves 90 seconds of EventMerge_Command as date and time.
  
              subprocess.call(EventShift_Command) #Copies EventRecord file to the old 30 second recording, overwriting it
  
  
  
          if aboutToQuit:
  
             break
  
  
  
  
  
  if __name__ == "__main__":
  
      root = Tk() 
  
      frame = Frame(root, width=100, height=100)   
  
  #   maintthread = threading.Thread(target=main(root))
  
  #   inputthread = threading.Thread(target=process(frame))
  
  #   inputthread.daemon = True
  
  #   inputthread.start()
  
  #   maintthread.daemon = True
  
  #   maintthread.start()
  
  #   maintthread.join()
  
      Process(target=process(frame)).start()
  
      Process(target=main(root)).start()
  
      print "MainLoop"
  
  </escape></space>

• Approaches To Modifying Game Resource Files

  16 août 2016, par Multimedia Mike — Game Hacking

  I have been assisting The Translator in the translation of another mid-1990s adventure game. This one isn’t quite as multimedia-heavy as the last title, and the challenges are a bit different. I wanted to compose this post in order to describe my thought process and mental model in approaching this problem. Hopefully, this will help some others understand my approach since what I’m doing here often appears as magic to some of my correspondents.

  High Level Model
  At the highest level, it is valuable to understand the code and the data at play. The code is the game’s engine and the data refers to the collection of resources that comprise the game’s graphics, sound, text, and other assets.

  
  
  Simplistic high-level game engine model
  

  Ideally, we want to change the data in such a way that the original game engine adopts it as its own because it has the same format as the original data. It is very undesirable to have to modify the binary engine executable in any way.

  Modifying The Game Data Directly
  How to modify the data ? If we modify the text strings for the sake of language translation, one approach might be to search for strings within the game data files and change them directly. This model assumes that the text strings are stored in a plain, uncompressed format. Some games might store these strings in a text format which can be easily edited with any text editor. Other games will store them as binary data.
  

  In the latter situation, a game hacker can scan through data files with utilities like Unix ‘strings’ to find the resources with the desired strings. Then, use a hex editor to edit the strings directly. For example, change “Original String”…

  0098F800   00 00 00 00  00 00 00 4F  72 69 67 69  6E 61 6C 20  .......Original 
  0098F810   53 74 72 69  6E 67 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  String..........
  

  …to “Short String” and pad the difference in string lengths using spaces (0x20) :

  0098F800   00 00 00 00  00 00 00 53  68 6F 72 74  20 53 74 72  .......Short Str
  0098F810   69 6E 67 20  20 20 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  ing   ..........
  

  This has some obvious problems. First, translated strings need to be of equal our smaller length compared to the original. What if we want to encode “Much Longer String” ?

  0098F800   00 00 00 00  00 00 00 4D  75 63 68 20  4C 6F 6E 67  .......Much Long
  0098F810   65 72 20 53  74 72 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  er Str..........
  

  It won’t fit. The second problem pertains to character set limitations. If the font in use was only designed for ASCII, it’s going to be inadequate for expressing nearly any other language.

  So a better approach is needed.

  Understanding The Data Structures
  An alternative to the approach outlined above is to understand the game’s resources so they can be modified at a deeper level. Here’s a model to motivate this investigation :

  
  
  Model of the game resource archive format
  

  This is a very common layout for such formats : there is a file header, a sequence of resource blocks, and a trailing index which describes the locations and types of the foregoing blocks.

  What use is understanding the data structures ? In doing so, it becomes possible to write new utilities that disassemble the data into individual pieces, modify the necessary pieces, and then reassemble them into a form that the original game engine likes.

  It’s important to take a careful, experimental approach to this since mistakes can be ruthlessly difficult to debug (unless you relish the thought of debugging the control flow through an opaque DOS executable). Thus, the very first goal in all of this is to create a program that can disassemble and reassemble the resource, thus creating an identical resource file. This diagram illustrates this complex initial process :

  
  
  Rewriting the game resource file
  

  So, yeah, this is one of the most complicated “copy file” operations that I can possibly code. But it forms an important basis, since the next step is to carefully replace one piece at a time.

  
  
  Modifying a specific game resource
  

  This diagram shows a simplistic model of a resource block that contains a series of message strings. The header contains pointers to each of the strings within the block. Instead of copying this particular resource block directly to the new file, a proposed modification utility will intercept it and rewrite the entire thing, writing new strings of arbitrary length and creating an adjusted header which will correctly point to the start of each new string. Thus, translated strings can be longer than the original strings.

  Further Work
  Exploiting this same approach, we can intercept and modify other game resources including fonts, images, and anything else that might need to be translated. I will explore specific examples in a later blog post.

  Followup

  • Translating Return to Ringworld, in which I apply the ideas expressed in this post.