Reverse engineering is an aspect of computer science I sadly never got into.
I'd love to learn it one day, time willing.
As it is, I am much more comfortable with [b]building[/b] the data structures, than I am disassembling them. :v:
This guy has ascended and is no longer a mere programmer. He is a king amongst men.
this is the level of reverse engineering skill that i aspire to be at tbh
I recognize some of these words
Glad I could follow it to some basic degree
Reverse Engineering like this is what I do for study / work, and also compete in competitions for. (Recently for Team PPP on CTFTime) I started learning RE back with Gmod about 7-8 years ago, which is what got me into the field.
If you're actually interested in getting started, I recommend a beginner CTF resource like LiveOverflow. It's a ton of fun, and learning systems level debugging will seriously improve your knowledge of how and why programs and computers work.
i was completely lost the entire time, but i feel a bit smarter
[QUOTE=Gbps;52895195]Reverse Engineering like this is what I do for study / work, and also compete in competitions for. (Recently for Team PPP on CTFTime) I started learning RE back with Gmod about 7-8 years ago, which is what got me into the field.
If you're actually interested in getting started, I recommend a beginner CTF resource like LiveOverflow. It's a ton of fun, and learning systems level debugging will seriously improve your knowledge of how and why programs and computers work.[/QUOTE]
yo this yt channel is a goldmine, thanks a bunch
do you have any other suggestions for resources, like books or other channels? i've already picked up reversing: secrets of reverse engineering and RE4B and i'm slowly making my way through both
[QUOTE=elitehakor;52895267]yo this yt channel is a goldmine, thanks a bunch
do you have any other suggestions for resources, like books or other channels? i've already picked up reversing: secrets of reverse engineering and RE4B and i'm slowly making my way through both[/QUOTE]
I actually didn't start from books, but I have read and really liked these for people starting out:
Practical Malware Analysis (bit dated, beginner, very well written):
[URL]https://www.nostarch.com/malware[/URL]
IDA Pro Book by the venerable Chris Eagle:
[URL]https://www.nostarch.com/idapro2.htm[/URL]
The most important part is to really understand x86 and just dive in and work. All the learning happens hands on.
Feel free to add me on Steam
I wonder why the text object limit was so small. That seems like the kind of thing that a game like this would have ample resources for.
[QUOTE=Snickerdoodle;52895431]I wonder why the text object limit was so small. That seems like the kind of thing that a game like this would have ample resources for.[/QUOTE]
Because the devs were working with a fixed number of songs, custom songs aren't officially supported.
Pre allocation for the pool takes times and memory, so you tend to set the numbers for these kinds of things as low as possible and creep them up as needed. This makes the game startup as fast as possible and the reduced memory usage could be crucial on the older consoles this ran on. There's no point in pre allocating and pooling 2000 text objects when you know any given screen will use 350 max.
This number can be changed by devs to accommodate dlc and official songs, but they couldn't have anticipated people wanting to load up hundreds of custom songs when they never planned on supporting custom songs at all.
[QUOTE=Socram;52895463]Because the devs were working with a fixed number of songs, custom songs aren't officially supported.
Pre allocation for the pool takes times and memory, so you tend to set the numbers for these kinds of things as low as possible and creep them up as needed. This makes the game startup as fast as possible and the reduced memory usage could be crucial on the older consoles this ran on. There's no point in pre allocating and pooling 2000 text objects when you know any given screen will use 350 max.
This number can be changed by devs to accommodate dlc and official songs, but they couldn't have anticipated people wanting to load up hundreds of custom songs when they never planned on supporting custom songs at all.[/QUOTE]
Oh I didn't realize we were dealing with custom songs, my bad.
All that work to find it's a matter of changing one value, only to uncover another bug, which I would guess would originate from how the game deals with the extra memory allocated for more text objects. In other words, an absolute nightmare, on top of code that is already obfuscated by ineffective DRM. Yayyy
[QUOTE=Mobon1;52895611]Ineffective DRM. Yayyy[/QUOTE]
Ineffective? Seems fairly effective to me... obviously making it hard for him to fix this "bug" (I feel strange calling it a bug when the system works 100% as intended by the devs) wasn't the point of the drm, but you can't deny it also would theoretically make it harder to crack as well.
[QUOTE=Socram;52895627]Ineffective? Seems fairly effective to me... obviously making it hard for him to fix this "bug" (I feel strange calling it a bug when the system works 100% as intended by the devs) wasn't the point of the drm, but you can't deny it also would theoretically make it harder to crack as well.[/QUOTE]
Securom was cracked AGES ago, and it's as "effective" at deterring him as it makes him spend a few hours manually unobfuscating it, turns out he already had the solution though so that's kinda funny it didn't really do anything at all.
Securom basically did nothing in this case, it was just him making sure there weren't any other text builders in the code, so I guess it made him doubt himself?
[QUOTE=Gbps;52895195]Reverse Engineering like this is what I do for study / work, and also compete in competitions for. (Recently for Team PPP on CTFTime) I started learning RE back with Gmod about 7-8 years ago, which is what got me into the field.
If you're actually interested in getting started, I recommend a beginner CTF resource like LiveOverflow. It's a ton of fun, and learning systems level debugging will seriously improve your knowledge of how and why programs and computers work.[/QUOTE]
My university has a CTF team, but I've always delayed going to their meetings at least once. But this thread is making me really regret doing so. I guess the best time to start would be now.
"So the proper fix for this would be to create a new text object every time the pool ran out. I'm lazy though so I'm not going to this if I can avoid it."
I'm sure you are.
He also did this for halloween.
[video=youtube;HSEAfuX5fBg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSEAfuX5fBg[/video]
[video=youtube;PG3br8Ngq_Y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG3br8Ngq_Y[/video]
[QUOTE=Talishmar;52895919]"So the proper fix for this would be to create a new text object every time the pool ran out. I'm lazy though so I'm not going to this if I can avoid it."
I'm sure you are.[/QUOTE]
That certainly does sound it would be a proper fix, that way the only limit would be the system resources and not the code.
He's also made a bot to get the highest possible score (as far as he's aware) in Through the Fire and the Flames by DragonForce by abusing the hit windows to hit notes as early or late as needed to either get as many notes as possible hit under Star Power or to run out just before the start of another SP phrase, as well as activating Star Power at precisely the right time.
[video=youtube;OxPM5DKT6Bc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxPM5DKT6Bc[/video]
You can get a higher score in Clone Hero (a fan-made Guitar Hero/Rock Band clone) due to the ability to "overlap" Star Power (you can't earn any more Star Power in GH3 while it's active, but in CH you can) but this is the best score you can possibly get on the song in GH3 if you're some kind of superhuman.
[QUOTE=Gbps;52895338]I actually didn't start from books, but I have read and really liked these for people starting out:
Practical Malware Analysis (bit dated, beginner, very well written):
[URL]https://www.nostarch.com/malware[/URL]
IDA Pro Book by the venerable Chris Eagle:
[URL]https://www.nostarch.com/idapro2.htm[/URL]
The most important part is to really understand x86 and just dive in and work. All the learning happens hands on.
Feel free to add me on Steam[/QUOTE]
this ida pro book is exactly what i needed
thanks a bunch m8
After watching these videos, I was like "Hey, IDA seems pretty cool. Lemme look up on how to get it and how much it costs"
:wow: [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/82cuToo.png[/IMG]
I guess I shouldn't expect anything less from professional software.
[QUOTE=ClarkWasHere;52896665]After watching these videos, I was like "Hey, IDA seems pretty cool. Lemme look up on how to get it and how much it costs"
:wow: [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/82cuToo.png[/IMG]
I guess I shouldn't expect anything less from professional software.[/QUOTE]
That and probably also because like 3.5 people and a cat use it.
[QUOTE=ClarkWasHere;52896665]After watching these videos, I was like "Hey, IDA seems pretty cool. Lemme look up on how to get it and how much it costs"
:wow: [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/82cuToo.png[/IMG]
I guess I shouldn't expect anything less from professional software.[/QUOTE]
[URL="https://www.hex-rays.com/products/ida/support/download_freeware.shtml"]You can get the freeware version here if you really want.[/URL]
This is pretty much my workflow. Reverse engineering games can be a lot of fun
[QUOTE=Perl;52896882]This is pretty much my workflow. Reverse engineering games can be a lot of fun[/QUOTE]
There was apparently this sonic game that was heavily reverse engineered to have custom levels in it, I believe it was Sonic Racing.
[QUOTE=ClarkWasHere;52896665]After watching these videos, I was like "Hey, IDA seems pretty cool. Lemme look up on how to get it and how much it costs"
:wow: [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/82cuToo.png[/IMG]
I guess I shouldn't expect anything less from professional software.[/QUOTE]
yep. i'm playing around with the free version cos the company i'm about to work for uses ida pro for RE stuff and since i don't start until july i might as well start learning it
there are a lot of free RE/debugging tools you can play around with. if you're comfortable with command line i'd suggest radare2
[QUOTE=genkaz92;52896704]That and probably also because like 3.5 people and a cat use it.[/QUOTE]
IDA sells to companies, not people. It's kind of like Photoshop if there was no such thing as a personal license for Photoshop.
There is comparable software, but nothing that hits all the marks as well as IDA.
[QUOTE=Gbps;52897044]IDA sells to companies, not people. It's kind of like Photoshop if there was no such thing as a personal license for Photoshop.
There is comparable software, but nothing that hits all the marks as well as IDA.[/QUOTE]
This video changed my vision of reverse engineering a little bit, at first I thought that it was literally necessary to constantly stare at plain assembly and basically base everything off that, but the video shows some pretty interesting interpreting features.
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