Stunts cracks and modifications

[llm]

In the bypassing load.exe there is mention of a repackaging tool.
http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=2454.msg55894#msg55894

could be hard work to get it going - some hours/days - because the stunts unpacked files are still part of a bigger exepack packing - i don't know
how to change a single byte in a partial part of an packed exe without breaking the exepack unpacking process

and in the end your'e still struggeling with a exepatch-bug-suffering load.exe which prevent pure DOS use

and i still think you didn't understand the complexity

exepack is like "zip"
stuntspack is like "7zip"
-> both packings are incompatible

zip(original.exe(here is the byte-pos known)) -> chop in 3 parts -> 7zip each part on its own

so even if i 7z-unzip the correct chopped part you still would not find the correct byte in this uncompressed part because it is still part of a bigger zip-file (differently compressed - and not blockwise but complete)

that is super special for this game and nothing typical or usual

[Daniel3D]

I'm getting to understand the complexity.
It was I nice idea, but very hard to execute.

Thank you for thinking with me though.

It gives me a greater appreciation of the cracks as the are and now I also understand more about the restunts endeavour.

[Cas]

I wonder if the community has the Stunts 1.0 version I have. Maybe I uploaded it at some point. It has a crack that may not be the same as any of the ones known so far.

[llm]

as far es i know, we dont even got a unpacker for stunts 1.0 resources, i dont think that the restunts tools ever got tested on 1.0, so its a different beast

[Cas]

Yes, it makes sense to concentrate mainly on one version. So much work is already a lot on just one. I guess version 1.0 is more a curiousity than anything... and of course, an item worth having in the collection.

[Daniel3D]

I have 1.0 with crack.
From JTK.
http://stunts.kalpen.de/zip/stunts.zip

special features:   - with Competition car 0.9.
   - with tracks made by JTK.
   - with Opponent Blaster (Ob.exe).
   - with already blasted Skid Vicious.
   - with new icons for the game and replays (.ico).
   - start Stunts with st.com so you can skip the security option of the game with the <enter> key.

[Daniel3D]

So the whole deal with load.exe was intended as an elaborate way to hide the actual executable so the game would be difficult to crack?

that or maybe some extreme size constraints with release floppies that demand such splitting (but i don't think that was a problem at that time)

and also takes the load.exe process some more RAM - so its definitily not a RAM saving strategy

Curious thing.
I was going through 4d sports boxing, and for some reason the version 1 and the EA version '2' are different in a peculiar way.
The both say version 1.0 but. the EA version has different music as expected. But does not have LOAD.EXE but different executables for all video modes....

see attachment. Isn't this exactly what restunts is??

[llm]

I've also saw that before, It seems that EA did not used this splitting process on the exe (which is used in many DSI games), they've got the exe for each graphics card but still dynamic sound driver loading

[Daniel3D]

Maybe load.exe was also a disk space saver.
Stunts fits exactly on two 720kb disks. But without load.exe more space would be needed. (Maybe that's also why sound blaster drivers are absent)

Boxing v1 also fits on one disk and has load.exe. V2 has upgrades and wouldn't fit on one anymore. Space saving with load.exe doesn't really win anything..

But that's my guess..

[llm]

Some DSI games are released in multiple floppy formats - maybe the load.exe is only needed for 360k floppies

[Daniel3D]

That is actually a very good point...

[llm]

attached are the stunpack-unpacked-exepack-unpacked-combined cga,ega,mcga and tandy executable (create with the execombiner) of stunts 1.1
hercules is the cga code with some patching to activate the hercules code pathes in the cga.exe - need to analyze the load.exe to get a real hercules.exe

there is another thing besides preventing the exepack-bug under real-dos to skip the load.exe: the start of the game is much faster if there is not multiple unpacking and combining in ram involved

this is the content of the SETUP.DAT for each grafix selection

Code Select Expand


MCGA<---
rem 4 2 -1 -1 -1 -1
load.exe /u MCGA  /std
Stunts
disk 'B'
disk 'B'
tdy.cod

EGA<---
rem 2 2 -1 -1 -1 -1
load.exe /u EGA  /std
Stunts
disk 'A'
disk 'B'
tdy.cod

TANDY<---
rem 3 2 -1 -1 -1 -1
load.exe /u TDY  /std
Stunts
disk 'B'
disk 'B'
tdy.cod

Hercules<---
rem 1 2 -1 -1 -1 -1
load.exe /u CGA /h /std      <--- only the /h Parameter is different to CGA code path stuff
Stunts
disk 'A'
disk 'B'
tdy.cod

CGA:
rem 0 2 -1 -1 -1 -1
load.exe /u CGA  /std
Stunts
disk 'A'
disk 'B'
tdy.cod


(leaving out hercules) the original load.exe based process needs 421kb space on disk, the complete uncompressed pure exes needs 859kb
so it could be really a size thing

[Daniel3D]

there is another thing besides preventing the exepack-bug under real-dos to skip the load.exe: the start of the game is much faster if there is not multiple unpacking and combining in ram involved

So for the pure DOS enthusiasts the only thing we need is a executable that reads setup.dat and starts the right game executable with sound parameter.

A little program like that is almost within my skills...

[Daniel3D]

I renamed the executables to a similar naming concept as 4Dboxing.

• 4DSDCGA.EXE
• 4DSDEGA.EXE
• 4DSDMCGA.EXE
• 4DSDTDY.EXE

[Daniel3D]

attached are the stunpack-unpacked-exepack-unpacked-combined cga,ega,mcga and tandy executable (create with the execombiner) of stunts 1.1

Thank you for creating these files.
I have a lot of trouble with this stuff.
It's irritating not managing anything related to coding. But luckily for me there is often someone who is interested.