C&C: The first Decade crack search

[Joe Forster/STA]

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...?

[kosmiq]

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.

[DABhand]

EDIT: ill try again :P

[cptpooface]

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.

[kosmiq]

Originally Posted by cptpooface

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
Gotta take a look then, thanks for the tip...

[Bad]

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

[Muji-FightR]

Originally Posted by kosmiq

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...?

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.

[DABhand]

Originally Posted by Bad

WHEN YOU EXIT THE GAME YOUR F****G WINDOWS MIGHT FREEZE OR IN WORSE CASES MAY CRASH! IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO RISK THIS BUY THE GAME !!!!!! IF THE GAME SHOWS THE DESKTOP INSEAD OF SHOWING THE INTRO, SWITCH BACK WITH ALT+TAB.
Ps.: Sorry for my English. If this stuff dosen't work contact me! (I tried this with my legal ,full version game)

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

[kosmiq]

Originally Posted by muJi.fiGHt3r

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.

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...

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..

[Bad]

Originally Posted by DABhand

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

First of all, I'm using Linux.
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.

[BarryB]

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

[kosmiq]

Originally Posted by BarryB

...
Cracks used:

Unwrapped 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

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.

[BarryB]

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%?

[m4gicfour]

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?

[noscript]

it does and there is away to find out

Here you got the commandlines:

C&C95.exe -cdcovert

RA95.exe -cd.