Stunts cracks and modifications

[llm]

i've found someone who collects floppy images like hell - he also got BB Stunts 1.0 on his list
private message sent - hope he replies

[Daniel3D]

Secondly.
Is it worth the effort to create the original file with the bit changed, so the copy protection is disabled.
I know that I can just use the restunts executable or a crack, but I wish for an as clean as possible version without the copy protection.

It can be done, i'm sure of that.

Alright, it might be more difficult than I thought when writing the above post. It can still be done, but there are better solutions.
The closest thing to one with the old game files is this one:
http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=3871.msg82670#msg82670
ST4DLDR - Stunts/4D Sports Driving loader [bypass security of all versions]

[llm]

can you attach the files here - archive.org sometimes looses the stuff

builds out of the box with current nasm

nasm.exe st4dldr.asm -fbin -o st4dldr.com

its starts load.exe, waits for complete load (by hooking video bios int and wait for gfx mode change or something) and disables the password check

[Daniel3D]

can you attach the files here - archive.org sometimes looses the stuff

Files attached in its own post in stunts related programs.

[llm]

https://www.bttr-software.de/ is still active - only this stunts tool is missing - try asking the author what the reason for the removal was (maybe bugs)

[Daniel3D]

its starts load.exe, waits for complete load (by hooking video bios int and wait for gfx mode change or something) and disables the password check

It works well.
The other cracks make all answers acceptable, so there is a difference there.
I do have the feeling the game freezes a moment when I hit start driving..

[llm]

It works well.

I do have the feeling the game freezes a moment when I hit start driving..

maybe thats the reason for the author ripping of the homepage

one more - for an non-developer: there are sooo many cases that can popup an error - and under dos there are even more millions of that - so "works well"
is nothing more then "its full of crap, but i can't smell it so far"

[Daniel3D]

so "works well" is nothing more then "its full of crap, but i can't smell it so far"

I am well aware of that.
That's why in the post I made for the program itself, i stated:

this crack seems to be a better choice than the current ones.

I can't see a bug unless it pokes me in the eye, so I try to temper my enthusiasm until a certified programmer has given his opinion.

[Daniel3D]

I do have the feeling the game freezes a moment when I hit start driving..

The freeze has nothing to do with the program but with my DOSBox settings.
Increasing the cycles to match other versions makes the game behave identical to Restunts or SV11|M10.

[Farsil]

Hi everyone! I was intrigued with how the Stunts crack worked and made my own version for personal use. However, I thought that someone in the community might find an use for it so I decided to release it (even if there already plenty of cracks for this game). This is a drop-in replacement for the official STUNTS.COM launcher, it incorporates part of the assembly from the official launcher (which it merely loads the content of SETUP.DAT and executes LOAD.EXE with the proper parameters) and the bypass of ST4DLDR.COM.

This currently works for Stunts 1.1 only (no 1.0 or 4D sports driving) but if you are interested it shouldn't be too hard to make it compatible with the other versions supported by ST4DLDR, thus making it an universal launcher.

I am attaching both the NASM source file and the executable. It was tested in both DOSBox and dosbox-staging (in VGA and Tandy mode) and so far I had no issues.

Amazing that one of my childhood games is still alive after all these years (:

stunts.asm
STUNTS.COM

[Overdrijf]

Hi Farsil, welcome here!

Cool to see another person developing things for Stunts. It's always nice to have even more launcher options.

[Cas]

Hey, welcome, Farsil!  Thanks for sharing, including the source 

[FabulousFurlough]

I know I'm late to the party, but I wanted to chime in about the reasoning for creating a loader to crack this game instead of spending the time to find the bit to flip to eliminate the protection, or to load it into memory and then dump it out.

The reason, as someone above surmised, was SPEED.  We at THG had the game, and we had no idea if INC, TDT, or anyone else did as well, so we wanted to get it done ASAP.  And the quickest way for us (most likely ME) to do that was to find the bytes in memory that needed to be changed, and then to modify the loader to modify them at runtime. 

Another thing that I can contribute.  Exepack.  It serves 2 purposes in protection systems like the DSI one.  One, it makes the executable smaller (obviously), but the other NON-obvious reason is that it also processes all the relocation table entries.  So that the DSI protection doesn't have to do the relocation.  It just rebuilds the EXEPack'd image in memory and jumps to the entry point, and exepack unpacks, and handles the relocation table as well.  Another famous copy protection Rob Northen's Copylock also used exepack for what I believe is the same reason.

If you guys have any "old DOS game cracking" questions, I'll answer what I can.  I was INTIMATELY involved in the scene from '89 through '91, and can answer most questions. 

[KyLiE]

Welcome @FabulousFurlough and thank you for the information! It's great to hear from someone who was actually involved in the development of these cracks.

[dreadnaut]

The reason, as someone above surmised, was SPEED.  We at THG had the game, and we had no idea if INC, TDT, or anyone else did as well, so we wanted to get it done ASAP.

This is a really interesting peek behind the curtain, thank you!

A kid at the time, I didn't really understand the 'competitive' side of cracking. One more meta-game