How To Make A Maxi Image?

[Baron]

So i presume that by copying the image in AH120 and creating a blank file the same bytesize, youre "fooling" the game by inserting the created mini or Maxi-disk which has a "dummy" TOC (table of contents) MDS File???

I'm a total noob at this game???

[caki]

Yep, thats what you are doing.

[sylvio]

Okey okey.. I uses Total Commander, I unpacked the MaxiMI make the
WCompression, but in TC I was cannot see the RIGHT Compressed LENGTH
and (thah' very important) HDD Free LENGTH!! It was the TC's bug or not?

Anyway some days ago I write a method for that know programming a little.
How can make a MaxiMini-Image conception:
- Read the CloneImage .MDF and the file-structure/sub-dir's files
Also get/read the offsets for ALL the files (Start/End/Length in bytes what
that need)
- Get the file offsets in the MDF and put/fill Hex 00 TO ALL FILES at the
beginning (offsetStart) to the offsetEnd, this can be make FILE AFTER FILE

If anybody makes a Win32 Execute with this method it can creates the
MaxiMini-Image from the right CloneImage

[ShizoFraen]

I wanted to know:
For Safedisc 4.6 you have to keep the last 200kb of the Original Image and insert them into the maxi image. could someone tell me how i can do this in winhex ?

[caki]

Just don't erase the last 200kb. Remember to keep the first part of the DVD intact too.

[ShizoFraen]

I wanted to know how to make a Safedisc Maxi Image. What exactly do i have to do ? I thought i have to copy the last 200kb out of the Original Image and Paste it in to the Maxi Image, but it didn't work for me. plz tell me howto.
(i tried it with The Movies)

[Joe Forster/STA]

Don't copy & paste from the full image into another image; instead, fill most parts of the full image with zeros and you'll get the maxi image!

[ShizoFraen]

but how do i know what to zero out.

[Joe Forster/STA]

Trial and error. Keep the first and last Megabyte of the image and, if that works, you can make a backup and continue shrinking these to a few hundred kilobytes.

[ShizoFraen]

But were talking about SD 4.6 CD's or not. I would like to know how to make a maxi image of SD 4.6 DVD's

[Joe Forster/STA]

If you're talking about the problem of the copy protection checking areas scatterred all over the CD/DVD, not only at the beginning and the end... well, there's obviously no automatic method for finding those parts. (Perhaps, Bus Hound could help?!) To keep your sanity, you might wanna make a full image instead.

[alban]

What are the right Settings for Bushound? I ve made a scan with CDB and Hexdata only. What I got was a really Huge list of Sectors to be scanned.
Do I have to keep all that sectors in the Image File? That would be very much work... Or have i done something wrong?

Data - Hex dump of the data transferred


Data
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
00 00 00 00 00 00
12 00 00 00 38 00
00 00 00 00 00 00
28 00 00 00 01 1e 00 00 02 00
28 00 00 00 01 20 00 00 20 00
00 00 00 00 00 00
5a 08 2a 00 00 00 00 08 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00
5a 08 2a 00 00 00 00 08 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00
ad 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00
28 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 01 00
00 00 00 00 00 00
5a 08 2a 00 00 00 00 08 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00
51 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00
ad 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00
28 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 00 01 50 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 00 01 51 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 00 01 52 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 00 01 53 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 00 01 54 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 00 01 55 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 00 01 56 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 00 01 57 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 00 01 58 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 00 01 59 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 00 01 5a 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 00 01 5b 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 00 01 5c 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 00 01 5d 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 00 01 5e 00 00 01 00

CUT--------------------------


28 00 00 07 de ef 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 0a e1 ad 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 10 75 30 00 00 01 00
28 00 00 10 f6 6b 00 00 01 00
00 00 00 00 00 00
28 00 00 15 9b 97 00 00 01 00
00 00 00 00 00 00

This is for Quake 4 DVD (SD 4.6)

alban

[caki]

Like Joe said, for the Safedisc DVD's just keep the first megabyte and the last megabyte there, 00 everything else. For safedisc CD's, just look for patterns that if erased give you an invalid image. Then, keep those patterns in the final image, and its all good. Unforuneatley, I find the DVD maxi images to be more useful because when they are compressed by windows compression, they are around 2 MB, while safedisc CD's can range from 5MB-50MB

[alban]

Ok. Thanks for your Help.
I try now to make an Maxi-Image for the CD-Version of NFS MW.
I got it so far that it is about 150 Megs compressed (and game starts).
I logged with Bushound that the last sector is 272805 (641637360 bytes in image) which is checked.
But the image is 811534080 bytes large.
So my problem is if i fill the last 150 Megs the image isnt mounted anymore!
How can I solve this Problem?

//edit: Using Trial and Error and Ultraiso i shrinked it to 12,5MB
Here have a look at it and if you want you can upload it to GCW
http://rapidshare.de/files/9966366/N...alban.RAR.html (8MB)

//edit2: I have just created a Maxi Image for Quake 4. 336 KB. Thanks for your support!!
alban

[caki]

Heh yeah, trial and error. How long did it take you, out of curiosity??