hacking games with starforce

[BarryB]

Kid, just FORGET trying to crack SF3!!

Perhaps the mods ought to put up a sticky topic telling people to STOP asking for SF3 cracks or how to crack it!

If the top scene crackers out there are having difficulty with it, what chance you got huh?

Just stick with your original CD's for now.

[Sinpoet]

seems lately games like soldiers heros of ww2 and codename panzers are using this new SF3 and both have been out for about a week and not one has been close to being ripped yet does that mean the end of rips as we knew them or is just this a big hurdle to overcome?

[JoyBoy]

Sinpoet, Read the Forum Rules

[Luciel]

lol cracks dont usually come out within the week watever the protection...

[Sinpoet]

just ordered soldiers but was curious about the sf3 issue, sorry wasnt trying to break any rules

[RK]

I have to say, this Starforce 3 protection has been a godsend for games publishers - not having their games ripped and available for download before they are even out on the shelves

I fully endorse whatever they have to do to stem the flow of warez etc

hopefully, with warez on the decrease because of protections such as this we will see the price of games coming down - places like play.com sell the latest releases for £17.99 - thats next to nothing!!!

just my 2 cents!

[ash2dust2]

Originally Posted by RK

I have to say, this Starforce 3 protection has been a godsend for games publishers - not having their games ripped and available for download before they are even out on the shelves

I fully endorse whatever they have to do to stem the flow of warez etc

hopefully, with warez on the decrease because of protections such as this we will see the price of games coming down - places like play.com sell the latest releases for £17.99 - thats next to nothing!!!

just my 2 cents!

A godsend? Doubt it. They may have to stop believing their own hype about how many billions of dollars they lost due to piracy. They probably had $1k increase in sales.

[mwitters]

Originally Posted by BarryB

Kid, just FORGET trying to crack SF3!!

Perhaps the mods ought to put up a sticky topic telling people to STOP asking for SF3 cracks or how to crack it!

If the top scene crackers out there are having difficulty with it, what chance you got huh?

Just stick with your original CD's for now.

Yeah, if you want the game THAT freaking bad and you love the game support the game company and go buy it! Obviously you haven't because you wouldn't be pissing yuour pants every time i look on here...

[gav_69]

hey guys just to let ya starforce 3 is not uncrackable. irecently bought desert rats vs afrika corps and thats sf3 protected, had to wait about a month but the crack came out and it worked perfectly

[t.foster73]

A 'NOCD' is one thing, but a stand-alone install and play disk is a different matter. If you can't make a working backup which allows you to install the game and play from, then you don't have a backup made! I fear that VERY soon ALL games will use Starforce 3. This might sound childish, but unless they crack Starforce 3 so a backup can be made, that's me finished with PC games for good! I can understand completely why developers want to use Starforce, but it's just legitimate users who suffer. Also, I suspect that if Starforce isn't sussed, we won't see many cracks. After all, most NOCD fixes are made by the Crack groups for their own RIPS, but if they can't rip the game, why will they bother to make nocd fixes? I still think the answer lies in making some sort of image of the install, together with registry changes (See my earlier post on this). I'm sure the crackers could suss this in days, but of course they aren't interested in this method because they want to make illegal RIPS to put on the Web. This is what I'm talking about, it's not rocket science:

1.Install Trackmania from original (MUST be from original)
2.Use NOCD fix
3.Create image of Hard Drive using Norton Ghost or TrueImage
4.Hyperthetically your dog eats the original disk :-)
5.Restore Drive image and game plays fine

OK, I know it's obvious. This method won't work when you upgrade your hardware of course, as the image won't match, but I'm certain this is the way around Starforce (for legitimate original owners of course). I've got a few coder frinds who are working on program as we speak (with some success I might add).

[Heaven871]

StarForce3 can not be cracked? Uhhh, I am scared, I don't want to put a list up here, but there are a lot of SF3 title already hacked.
I am just wondering why only the 1.0 game versions get hacked, what's the point in that??? There must be a stupid masterplan behind it.

[Gurgel]

Originally Posted by BarryB

Kid, just FORGET trying to crack SF3!!

Perhaps the mods ought to put up a sticky topic telling people to STOP asking for SF3 cracks or how to crack it!

If the top scene crackers out there are having difficulty with it, what chance you got huh?

Just stick with your original CD's for now.

Good idea!
Put up a sticky about the SF3!

[Bohno]

As far i i can see, not sure, but StarForce v3 has been cracked is "GangLand" not using that protection too ?

[BarryB]

As I understand it there are different levels of how to implement SF3 protection.

One is to just protect the EXE, not too difficult to deal with. I believe Gangland and Singles are examples of this

Another method involves not only protecting the EXE but encrypting data files too, look at Dead To Rights for an example of that! The 'crack' was nearly a whole CD!

Then there are the 'emulated functions'. As I understand it from a reliable source, it's these 'active protected functions' in the EXE that are the bitch that has stopped the release of titles like Beyond Divinity, TOCA2 and Killswitch as they are time consuming to find/trace!!

Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of those points

[Morglum007]

U re right barry, but lets say the problem is not to trace such functions, but "create" the VM SF code that is removed when a dump is made.

Thats the problem with SF, finding and linking the so called p-code table to make an "universal" crack that just works for every game release, and not only in the native cracked release.

Good luck!