C&C: The first Decade crack search
 

Hi all!

I am currently investigating if old cracks will work with the modifed versions of the games in TFD pack.

Problem is GCW currently hosts very little cracks for C&C games. So this is a cry for help.

If you happen to have cracks for the following games please PM me:
Tiberian Sun: 2.03
Yuri's Revenge: 1.001
Generals: 1.8

the progress of my testing and some other information I have gathered can be found in this thread: http://www.fileforums.com/showthread.php?t=75394

Note:
I know there's a patcher for Tiberian Sun that does some cracking on the existing files. It is a small file (50kb or something like that). That one is however NOT working on this version of Tiberian Sun because the .exe file has been updated to Safedisc 4.60. However I am suspecting that replacing it with an old .exe file that the patcher works on will let the game start without the disc inserted.

So if anyone has the files to those games cracked (.exe's, dll's, whatever needs protection removal on them) I would be very happy if you could PM me so we can work something out.

Note2: Yes I own the package but using that DVD is PiA. Also all games does not work from image for me (unless I use SD4Hide wich I hate to use).

Have you searched megagames? i remember getting my tib sun crack from there a while back (not sure what version it was tho).

Hey, I'm kind of a noob to this sort of thing and I was wondering... Does anyone have/know of/can make a mini-image for C&C TFD? I've tried making one myself but I don't think alcohol likes my DVD drive :S

I'd just use the DVD - even though it is a major PiA, but since I run FEAR quite often (aot, but FEAR is important since IDE devices need to be hidden b/c SR7) with daemon-tools, to be able to use the DVD I'd have to continually re-enable my PATA controller from device manager to use the drive anytime I want to play Tiberian sun / Yuri's / Generals / Generals ZH, along with disk swapping, and then disable it again after. MUCH bigger PiA.

Some may say, why not use a no-cd patch.... In my experience they tend to cause havok, especially in online games, and since these are reworked versions IDK if they would work at all. As a side note, isn't it odd how EA has CD-Checks on some of the games, but not the others... I.E. DVD-check on Yuri, but not RA2... Tiberium, not Renegade. Generals is common sense since EA actually wrote that one.

If I may have a request, if someone manages to collect proper cracks for all games in this collection, could you, please, put them into one big archive and submit it to GCW? I think it would be very helpful to be able to find all of them in one place. Thanks!

If I somehow manage to gather cracks for all games that needs it I will of course make a pack and upload! :D

Edit:
If anyone has original versions of the games mentioned in my first post in this thread (aka NOT The First Decade pack) that you happen to know that generic patchers works with or you have old cracks left on a CD somewhere or similar Please contact me ASAP. PM is a good way.

Most of them should be available @ GameFix

The server @ 66.199.231.140:1080 seems to be down.

Yes gamefix is down and has been for a while now. otherwise it would've been solved long ago.

Also megagames has almost no cracks for the games.

However I managed to find my way through crackmanworld and get a working Yuris Revenge crack. Only problem there is that whenever the game is launched through the first decade menu it will complain about wrong disc inserted. Thats because the file the menu launches has CD-checks. However if one launches yuri's revenge directly through the cracked Yuri.exe it works... :)
Or works... maybe I should say starts without asking for disc or anything. I am still having the problem that the game hangs in the loading screen (before the game menu starts). Happens also when uncracked and running the original disc. Think I will test a reinstall later on when I have gathered the cracks.

http://www.megagames.com/gcracks.html

(There are enough cracks for "Command & Conquer" games available @ MegaGames!)


By the way GameFix is online again, since today (15 February 2006)!

On megagames there are only cracks for the following C&C games:
Command & Conquer
Command & Conquer GOLD
Command & Conquer: Generals - Zero Hour
Command & Conquer: Generals
Command & Conquer: Renegade

and none of those game I have requested cracks/.exe files for. So that won't help.. :(
Of course generals is there but not a cracked version of 1.8. I wonder if an original release of Generals patched to 1.8 would contain Safedisc 4.60 too...? If anyone has generals installed and has patched it too 1.8 please tell me how it is. ONLY applies if you DO NOT have generals from First Decade pack.

And about gamefix. Some files are downloadable and some aren't. Like with Yuri's revenge. German NoCD is downloadable but english 1.001 is not.

I am also thinking if something like this would be legal:
If I fail to obtain original .exe's from earlier versions or actual cracked .exe files would it be legal to borrow previously released sets of C&C from friends, install those, crack them with generic patchers avaible on the net, uninstall them (but save the cracked files), install The First Decade, replace those .exe files with the ones made from borrowed version...?

It could be right? Because I own the newest boxset and I am not using any actual gamecontent from the ones I would borrow?

Just a little curious as that could be a solution too. Because earlier releases of Tiberian sun and the like are Safedisc 2 protected so Safedisc Cleaner would prolly work and there are generic patchers avaible for the earlier releases (before launcher .exe's was update to Safedisc 4.60).

Ehm, a stupid question (as I don't have this collection, not interested in strategy games): are all these games on one or two DVD's? If so, the main executables had their copy protection changed so that they all check for the same signatures on the same DVD, rather than their own signatures on their own respective CD's. Will then cracks for the original releases substitute them properly?

They're all on one DVD, and yes they have updated copy protection to check for the DVD instead of their respective CD's. I.E. you can't play Generals from a First Decade install with a standalone Generals disk. I imagine the version of safedisc was upped too.

as m4gicfour said it has been changed.

However all C&C games are not really looking for any files at all on the dvd becuase all files to all games are installed if full install is chosen. So movie files that previously was on CD is now installed directly to HDD. And that was a step needed before to crack the games properly.

The .exe files now have safedisc 4.60 instead of safedisc v2.

However game content are the same. So the only thing that is not working is mini-images, but I tested to test atleast.

I think that replacing the .exe's with older ones should be fine because of the contents itself has not been replaced and the cracked .exe's looks for movies etc in the dir so that should not be a problem.

But that is excactly why I am testing this out.

The game selector menu checks the disks and passes a flag that the other games check for, so you just cant go into whatever game folder to run it from the game exe it will ask for the disk everytime.

So instead of individual cracks, the menu loader is the one to target.

This link always work: http://go.to/gamefix

Quote from the site:

"N E W F I L E S
15 February 2006

We have been experiencing server problems
for the past month
This problem has been fixed and we are online again!"

Yeah, yeah, it always works, right...? ;)

Well gamefix RA2 Yuris Revenge cracks are still not downloadable (atleast 1.001).

About the game menu and its loader. I think I have discovered how it works with the cd-checks on that one. It seems as if the menu links to a file named "gamemd.exe" for RA2 and that one makes a CD check. However it is circumvented if the game is launched directly from the .exe file instead from the menu. As for Yuri's revenge that is ofcourse as RA2 launches without crack for me.

Problem with gamemd.exe is that it is Safedisc 4.60 protected also so I can do nothing to crack it. As there are no public Safedisc 4.60 unwrappers avaible there is nothing I can do with that one (does such an tool even exist yet? I have my doubts). However maybe if patching is done to the game.exe's themselves the games might be launchable in one way or another (making your own icons for it or if someone has enough knowledge to edit the First Decade menu to launch other files upon clicking).

More than that the purpose of what I am doing is to get the games running without the need to use the DVD. If that will be done with or without the menu itself is to be found out.

Question about Tiberian Sun when I am at it. Does anyone knows which files are affected by running the generic patcher that is out in the public? The file is named "TibSun203Crk.exe" and it is about 60kb's big. I have gotten an original game.exe file from a helpful person but it seems as some more file is still affecting the unwrapper. However the ICD file itself does not seem to be updated. I am suspecting Sun.exe but ProtectionID comes up with nothing on a scan.

EDIT: ill try again :P

I tried finding cracks at megagames for red alert and red alert 2 but couldn't find them. I had been looking under "C" because I thought they would call it command and conquer: red alert. But I later found cracks and trainers for both games under "R" they are just called red alert, not command and conquer: red alert. Maybe you have to look up the name of the game without a command and conquer prefix eg. Yuris revenge, or Tiberium sun. I'm not sure if they have all the cracks or not but I hope that helps.

Didn't think if that actually :eek:
Gotta take a look then, thanks for the tip... :)

I made it work!
 

I removed my post , because it might be very unhealthy to your "precious" wins**t. If you are still interested, contact me.

That should work, but I'd watch out ;)
It's possible that the game content itself changed, so to say the patches that were available for the "old" games are already applied -> the 1.0 exes of your friends games would not work or at least cause some prolems.

Dont want to risk this?? Buy the game??


If you have the full game, why did you risk it then??


Someone is telling porky pies

Well what I am thinking is borrow the games, patch them to the same versions as the TFD pack. Content of the games seem to be the same, atleast I haven't found any differences from my Generals. Only thing I can see is updated protection and added XP support on the older games, but the older games doesn't need to be cracked anyway so...

Only real difference I can find from original releases and the pack is that how it installs. That is completely changed with only .cab files on TFD pack where older games had movie files and stuff directly on the CD. Movie files and other things gets installed directly now... :D

Think I will borrow as many games as I can find from my friends then (should be about all of the C&C games actually) and see what I can work out.. :)

First of all, I'm using Linux. :D
The second is , that it was not 100% my own computer,cuz my winchester failed to boot , and I asked my friend , if he could lend me one of his Hd. And I created my own backup image, because it is legal to make 1 prive backup copy for yourself. And i didn't want to scratch the disk. And thank god, that this programme uses safedisk, so it seems , that blindwrite could make the image for me.

I managed to help a mate get his Full Install of C&C FD working with ALL the games running from the Launcher Menu without needing the DVD inserted!

Cracks used:

Tiberian Sun 2.03 EXE and crack patch from the other 'world' site!
Yuris Revenge: v1.0 NoCD/Fixed EXE from the other 'world' site again, just rename Yuri.exe to RA2MD.EXE
Generals: Deviance v1.0 from GameCopyWorld
Zero Hour: v1.04 from GameCopyWorld

I just replaced the existing files in the respective directory with the new cracks and everything worked with a FULL install and no DVD in the drive!

I've never played Zero Hour, so not sure if they've made it a standalone game as the v1.04 crack has both an EXE and GAME.DAT file and there was no GAME.DAT file in the Zero Hour directory! Copying the files from the crack, however, into the the Zero Hour directory worked!

But, not sure if there will be problems further into games like Generals/Zero Hour due to CD Checks, but if the Laucher menu in-line patches each game to bypass the CD Checks then they 'should' work!

Someone who's a C&C GURU needs to play these games with the cracks to see if the work correctly :)

A few problems that most likely will occur here:
cracks for proper versions has only been used on Tiberian Sun and Zero Hour so I guess all patch content are not intact.

The Zero Hour thingie has already been checked (by me) and what remains to be tested is if it will run without the game.dat from the crack dir. I also added the game.dat into the Zero Hour dir and upon removal of it again the game will not launch so I think it has been changed to look for the generals game.dat. But the game works fine.

The other 'world' site as you so gently call it, I know which one it is, only has a generic patcher that didn't work for me with an game.exe from the old version of TS as it would complain about filesize mismatch. On the other hand I only had the game.exe avaible and it might check TS.exe too when applying the crack.

I need to correct something!

Just looked at the Tiberian Sun patch v2.03 and it adds a Safedisc FREE GAME.EXE, so it didn't need unwrapping at all! I thought the EXE I found had been unwrapped so that patch from the 'other' site just removed the CD Checks and lets the game load! The filesize of the GAME.EXE has to be 3,457,296 bytes for the NoCD patcher to work!

I think the cracked Zero Hour v1.04 patch looks at the GENERALS.DAT file as well as the GENERALS.LCF file (which has a reference to GAME.DAT in it) so I think the GAME.DAT file is needed. They must have just merged the GENERALS.EXE and GAME.DAT file into the 7.34mb SD protected EXE, either way the game loads and plays but is it 100%?

For those who care: DT4.03 and the maxi-image found on GCW works EXCEPT for C&C and Yuri. Here's the weird thing, though: C&C works from the launcher even when there is no image mounted (and no disk) but not directly from C&C95.exe (even with image mounted, not sure about disk) WTF? Does the launcher maybe pass some funky commandline arguments to C&C's exe? Is there any way I could find out what those would be if it did? Or maybe the launcher does some kind of anti-protection trick on C&C? I could see EA being lazy enough to do that rather than recode a major portion of a game they never made?

it does and there is away to find out ;)

Here you got the commandlines:

Well, it was a late night and I fooked things up a bit :(

Retested everything again and now 100% sure of the cracks which worked!

Tiberian Sun/Firestorm - GAME.EXE from Patch v2.03 and the NoCD patcher from the 'other' site!

Yuris Revenge - v1.0 cracked YURI.EXE (Deviance) from 'other' site renamed to RA2MD.EXE + Myth v1.001 cracked GAMEMD.EXE.

C&C Generals - v1.0 cracked GENERALS.EXE (Deviance) from GameCopyWorld.

Zero Hour - v1.04 cracked GENERALS.EXE and GAME.DAT (Iguana/Megatec) from GameCopyWorld.

All games loaded without the DVD, but not sure about any gameplay issues that may arise. Anyone know what happened with Generals/Zero Hour when a bad crack was detected? I recall something about exploding units or something but nothing else?

can you post all cracked files on rapidshare.de or something like this?

Thanks noscript, that helped for C&C95, RA95 works like a charm now. Heh, I just remembered that when I was bored a few weeks ago I wrote a program to capture commandline arguments, write them to file, and launch another app based on an INI, with the commandline args. If I had used that, I could have figured that out myself.

No problem, here ya go:

I'm wondering if the Generals v1.8 GAME.DAT needs cracking, seeing as Yuri and Zero Hour had their respective GAMEMD.EXE and GAME.DAT files cracked! The strange thing is, Generals will run with just a cracked GENERALS.EXE whereas Yuri and Zero Hour will not as they ask for the CD until you replace GAMEMD.EXE and GAME.DAT with cracked ones!

i don't know about single player but in multi player two things could happen:
- after a few seconds of playing, all your buildings exploded and you lost
- you could finish the map and destroy all opponents, but in the end, you always got the "you were defeated" message

i had this once, but not because of a bad crack, but because my installation was somehow faulty (a reinstall fixed that problem)

i'm waiting for now, till i find TFD for less than 30 euro, because i already own some of the C&C games from that package :D

-andy-

Thanks for the files BarryB! :)

Guys, if you're not sure if the cracks are proper (for these new releases), I would suggest making them available at GCW with a "BETA PACKAGE" warning and have problems reported to a single thread - perhaps, this one; perhaps, converted to a sticky?

I'll up them to GCW.

There is a note in the text file I packaged with the cracks about them not being extensively playtested in Single Player and NO testing at all for Multiplayer, so that should cover any problems :)

But feedback is definitely welcome on whether they work or not.

Will see if I can get some updated cracks that fits for the actual versions of the game in the TFD pack.

About the bad crack thingie, afaik it happens in Red Alert 2 that the units exlpode after 30secs of playing.

I will also see if I can find that 1.001 cracked Yuri.exe, I know I still have it around here somewhere.

I am also about to start play the games SP from start to beginning (C&C and onwards). I will not be able to play through RA2+Yuri though as something is seriously wrong with them for me.
RA2 starts but the game stops everytime it needs to load a sound. Lets say I create a standard G.I. in the first mission as allies. Well everytime one gets 'built' the game stops, loads the sound (takes 1-3secs) and then says 'unit finished' or whatever it says. Totally breaks the fun for me. Yuri's revenge fails to start. It always hangs up at the loading screen when started :(
Happens after reinstall, original DVD used, cracks applied and so on.
All other games works fine though.

Still gotta check about Generals 1.8 though and see if the originally released Generals gets updated to safedisc 4.60 or not after that patch. If not we might be able to use some public unwrapper there.. :D

Edit: GJ on the crack pack atleast, a very good start.

kosmiq, not sure if you can get any updated cracks (bar for Generals v1.8)! As AFAIK only the GAME.DAT file is updated in Generals/Zero Hour and GAMEMD file for Yuri, none of them update the actual EXE you run the games with!

I downloaded and extracted the RTP file for latest patches for Generals v1.8 and Zero hour 1.04 and none of them had references to GENERALS.EXE in the RTP, same for Yuri 1.001 no reference to Yuri.exe. So that's why I used the original v1.0 cracks as only the GAME.DAT/GAMEMD.DAT files are updated and needed cracking in the patches. I think I gathered all the 'proper' cracks for the games and they just need playtesting :)

Not had any slowdowns in RA2, loaded the first Allied mission and got Tanya to Fort Bradley, built a barracks and trained 5 G.I's with no sound problem! You must have something else in your rig causing that problem?