slyfox299
March 20th, 2011, 04:54
Good Day Everyone!
My name is Zach, and I represent the group of Pioneer 7. We are beginning a brand new task and would like everyone's support and help with this project. No, we're not so low as to beg for cash; we're looking for people who may be able to share information and knowledge to further this on.
Our plan, inspired by the great folks of SCHTHACK, is to develop and build our own Private Servers. This is real, everyone, not just some fly-by-night attempt. Time and effort will be and is being put into this project. Our current attempt is to begin either an Alien Front Online server or an Outrigger server.
Currently, I have ripped images of both these games and extracted all the data out from them. So, in other words, rather than a cd image file, we have the raw data ripped from the disks.
I currently have access to IDA Pro with the SDK installed, and I have attempted to open up the .bin files on each game. We'll start with Alien Front Online. Inside of many of the .bin's which can be determined as level files, it's possible to find real text by examining the files with a hex editor. It is therefore possible to edit the level data and text. To further this, by using IDA Pro, I can see some things that are put together by IDA. If it's possible to determine the location, my goal is to edit the IP Address of the server that the game is trying to connect to. If that is possible to be found, we can then create a DNS tool which can be run on the player's computer which forwards requests, made to that server, straight to a new IP address. This can even be accomplished with some packet sniffing, but I'm working on the hex method now.
So here come a slew of questions. Has a project, other than SCHTHACK, like this been attempted? Has anyone ever tried to open or edit the .bin or .dat data files? Have they been successful? Would anyone be interested in this?
I've already received plenty of flame over this. Whether it be from "You can't do that" to "it's not possible because of reason X", I've heard it. Please feel free to post your opposition, but have a valid reason to back it up, please.
Thanks for your time reading this and post your thoughts below! Mods, please edit this as necessary and if I have broken any rules(I did read them and believe this is clean), by all means take any action necessary.
My name is Zach, and I represent the group of Pioneer 7. We are beginning a brand new task and would like everyone's support and help with this project. No, we're not so low as to beg for cash; we're looking for people who may be able to share information and knowledge to further this on.
Our plan, inspired by the great folks of SCHTHACK, is to develop and build our own Private Servers. This is real, everyone, not just some fly-by-night attempt. Time and effort will be and is being put into this project. Our current attempt is to begin either an Alien Front Online server or an Outrigger server.
Currently, I have ripped images of both these games and extracted all the data out from them. So, in other words, rather than a cd image file, we have the raw data ripped from the disks.
I currently have access to IDA Pro with the SDK installed, and I have attempted to open up the .bin files on each game. We'll start with Alien Front Online. Inside of many of the .bin's which can be determined as level files, it's possible to find real text by examining the files with a hex editor. It is therefore possible to edit the level data and text. To further this, by using IDA Pro, I can see some things that are put together by IDA. If it's possible to determine the location, my goal is to edit the IP Address of the server that the game is trying to connect to. If that is possible to be found, we can then create a DNS tool which can be run on the player's computer which forwards requests, made to that server, straight to a new IP address. This can even be accomplished with some packet sniffing, but I'm working on the hex method now.
So here come a slew of questions. Has a project, other than SCHTHACK, like this been attempted? Has anyone ever tried to open or edit the .bin or .dat data files? Have they been successful? Would anyone be interested in this?
I've already received plenty of flame over this. Whether it be from "You can't do that" to "it's not possible because of reason X", I've heard it. Please feel free to post your opposition, but have a valid reason to back it up, please.
Thanks for your time reading this and post your thoughts below! Mods, please edit this as necessary and if I have broken any rules(I did read them and believe this is clean), by all means take any action necessary.