Új üzenet küldése








FUCK SPAM!

Tamamo
2023.03.13. 04:55:04
I can send the exe too, do you have an email?

I can't imagine being completely disconnected from Social media, but hey props for being safe.
I get your concerns though.
TCH
2023.03.13. 01:33:16
It's not that hard; i avoided all of them. Of course this means compromises. I don't have a smartphone for instance. Also i avoid messengers (i still use IRC for chat) and i am not on any social media. As for the EU law...that is a joke. No big company follows it, they are rather pay the fine if they get caught (and i mean if they ever get caught), because they still make bigger profit like this. So bigger, that they laugh at the amount of fines the EU putting on them, because they can pay it out ten - or more - times from the profit they've made by avoiding the EU laws.
Well, after compression, you can but them on pastebin.org in base64 encoding. But without the EXE, i cannot really do anything with them if they are encrypted. I cannot tell the encryption algorithm by just looking a bunch of "random" numbers.
E-Mail
Tamamo
2023.03.13. 01:09:52
Fair enough, as long as it works it's cool.
To be honest to avoid any kind of spyware today it's nearly impossible. You just gotta avoid the worst, Discord is required to follow EU law, so they cannot go too far.
No credit card or bank account? Shame. I could have shared some files for you to look at but you do not have Discord so I wouldn't know how...
LINE? Telegram? Or plain old Steam?
TCH
2023.03.13. 00:49:11
Your choice. I would instantly quit if my job would required me to install it, or any kind of spyware.
Interesting. Too bad i cannot buy these, i don't have the money and i do not have any bank account either.

Perhaps it is not. But free encryption libraries are available for them to utilize.

Yes, i know it is annoying, i got several complains about it so far, but i cannot help about it; i cannot tell lame antivirus software developers that they really should not rely on patterns and signatures in 2023, when we got sandboxes, heuristics and the processing power to use them...
E-Mail
Tamamo
2023.03.12. 23:41:46
Perhaps, but I value a lot the connections I have with my friends and with communities. Forexample my job requires me to use Discord.
And yes, they are on Steam and GOG. https://store.steampowered.com/app/490370/Imperium_Galactica_II/
They even released the official server software.

Nonetheless, I do not believe it is a complex encryption. Most games do this today, sadly I am completely deficient when it comes to hacking and reverse engineering. So I wouldn't know where to begin.

And yeah I know they're not viruses but it is annoying that they get flagged by everything. Forexample I couldn't post the tools on Archive.org as they got flagged as a virus.
TCH
2023.03.12. 19:29:13
It's never too late to abandon something.
Modern releases of IG2? There are modern releases of IG2? Everyday i learn something new. However, if we would target these new releases which encrypt the SCN/DSC files, then it would be almost hopeless; who is gonna break the encryption? Perhaps the algorithm can be "extracted" from the EXE, but simply disassembling it and searching for the routine will most probably yield no results; we would need to monitor the EXE's process and when it opens a SCN/DAT file, then freeze it and start to "step" the process... Lot's of time, lot's of work and even more trials and errors.

Do not worry about the warnings, they are all false alarms. All of those programs were compressed with the UPack EXE-compressor which was popular among virus writers two decade ago, hence it's routines are "recognized" as malicious by lame antivirus programs.
E-Mail
Tamamo
2023.03.12. 18:40:33
Well, been using it since 2016...Way too late for me now. Everyone I know are using it. ^^'
And that's a shame. The modern releases of IG2 dropped the .dat files and instead seem to encrypt the .scn and .dsc files, so I have no way to mod anything for those versions, which is a shame.

Another problem is that the .dat unpacker/packer also seems to trigger a lot of antiviruses.
TCH
2023.03.12. 18:28:24
It's not a miracle, i wrote them out of interest. :P
These tools are almost two decade old, written at the time when i learned Delphi; their code is not something i would show (or continue) today... The concept of the scenario creator is also erroneous, it should rather open the scenario DAT file and parse the SCN and DSC files, than work in a custom work directory and "assemble" the result. So, the only way would be to start it from scratch. For which i have neither the time, nor the affinity, i'm sorry.

As for Discord, i would never use that.
E-Mail
Tamamo
2023.03.12. 18:12:43
I'm sorry to hear that, I would have helped. Sadly many communities have these problems, I find it a miracle IG2 has these tools at all.
Sadly the kind of organization you'd get from a Discord server just didn't exist back then.
If you're willing to continue delving into it, I'll gladly provide assistance and setup a discord server.

TCH
2023.03.12. 16:36:41
I don't remember anyone else than them either.

Well, as i said, i got zero support from Digital Reality (they did not even bother to reply my email) and even less from the "community". There were a few guys, who tried to help me, contributed stuff (like one of my classmates - Mocsy - from high-school (yeah it was very long ago, almost 20 years...) who made the first concept of the planet generator for the scenario creator in REXX, which i later integrated into the program), but most of the "community" either ignored me, or only attacked, insulted me.

The official IG2 forum was drowned into a flamewar between me and a script kiddie - called L Maqvus - and his "believers". He performed a full topic-hijack by claiming to be developing a hacking/modding tool for IG2, which later "evolved" into an IG2-like 3D space-RTS called Teronaced. Naturally, we've never seen anything from him, but empty tatter.

Then i've arrived with my tools and patches and implored the "community" to participate in their development via testing, or ideas, or anything. His reply was the first, in which he haughtily emphasized that he does not have time, because he is working on a neww game (Sic! Of course in hungarian... His grammar was as hopeless as his mental state or programming capabilities.) Well, who asked him specifically in the first place?
I then asked what did he made for IG2 until then. He replied, that nothing, because then he would has to restructure the graphical system to handle shaders and others (for instance for space-goo) (Sic again. And WTF, also.) Perhaps when his game is done. But, if i give him a C++ decompiler, we can start reshape IG2.
I informed him, that it is not possible to "decompile" a binary to C++, only to assembly. (I know it is possible to convert assembly code to C/C++ code, but that will has no resemblance to the original sources; no objects, no units, just a pile of functions and references, just like in assembly, but in C/C++.) But if he is able to disassemble IG2 and make a new game from it, then he could sign up at Digital Reality as a programmer. Also the admin of imperiumgalactica2.hu told me that he wanted to disassemble the DAT archive files with a disassembler... Data files with a disassembler. I told him, that i already made a packer for the DAT files, he can use that. And then i told him, that i saw his page where there were some nicely designed (really!) drawings of space ships (they weren't drawn by him), but no program which could use them. Also his page said, that he suspended the project...so with this much force he could actually could come to help.
Then he called me a bigface (it's the hungarian slang equivalent of boastful). I asked him, that why would i have a big face, when i only asked people to help in development? I did not even wanted to talk about my stuff on the official forums, but on my page, to not disturb gamers or hijack the topic (and to gain some users. :P ). He is the one who is constantly advertising his website and his nonexistent IG2 clone. Of course a flamewar occurred. (He even accused me of stealing my patches from russians. WTF...)

At some point the moderators got fed up with the inferno and archived the old comments and informed members, that from now, stronger moderation is in order. (Well, indeed, it was long overdue.) They also introduced some improvements in the forum engine. I asked for formatting options and they made it possible to use some HTML tags, for coloring, etc. I used green for my textcolor. Once i left a tag open, and the texts became green. (It was not an accident, but an experiment...and i like green color. :P )Somebody asked if i hacked the forum and i told, that no, i did not, i just left a HTML tag open and closed it. But after this, L Maqvus suddenly proclaimed himself as an elite hacker and begun threatening me, that i will be hacked and also i will be beaten by his comrades (yes, really). But when i told him, to come to the IG2 meeting and meet me personally, then he told me that i do not worth the petrol.
As for his "hacking" attempts, you can see for yourself here at the bottom of the page (he is using the name DHC (Dexter Hacker Crew) here): http://oscomp.hu/bgafc/data/Oldal_V.html
PHP injection (WTF), JS injection, etc...

He was a script kiddie and nothing more. As i said, we've never seen anything from him. However, he was "louder" than me and had better "marketing", so people took his vaporware stuff and admired him. It was one of the big lessons of life for me. I had drawn my conclusions from my experiences and quit the community. Which eventually has fallen apart to no surprise.

The IG2 community was a bad joke. I was working alone all along. There is another hungarian guy - Dávid Karnok - who've made a trainer for IG2 (and now he is developing Open-IG, an open source version of Imperium Galactica 1, written in Java) and Michail Beschetnov, who firstly deciphered the DAT files and made an open source CLI unpacker for them (i based my GUI DAT packer on his work), but neither of them ever participated in IG2 community life.
E-Mail
Tamamo
2023.03.12. 14:37:18
Yeah I haven't checked all Scenarios but I don't recall anything besides traders and pirates in the built in scenarios... Nonetheless it is always interesting to mess around with this.
It is a shame you stopped working on it, there is a lot of potential there. :3
TCH
2023.03.12. 12:25:14
Thanks for filling the holes in my memories. :)
It was so long ago, it is all blurry.

Revolting colonies turns to Pirate if they were revolting "normally" (you mismanaged the colony), but IIRC it was a scripted revolt. I've checked the message data file (UZENETEK.DAT) and i've found two type of missions with "independent" settlements, one was a result of a revolt and the second was an expedition which finds an Independent planet and you can convince them to join, or you can conquer them, or leave them alone. But the revolting ones were using a portrait of a "kalóz" (pirate in hungarian), so i cannot surely determine just from the message, that the planet turned to Pirate or Independent. Still, the game seems to use the Independent race for missions and i remember them, but i don't remember how i met them.

The only race i've never met without hacking is the Aminits. Event the messages do not contain anything about them. Perhaps they were used in one of the built-in scenarios. Or not used at all.
E-Mail
Tamamo
2023.03.12. 04:03:51
Oh I never tried that as the Kra'Hen. xD

I recall colonies revolting turning to Pirate, not Independent.
In any case you're correct that this isn't possible in the creator, as I said, I edited the .scn itself with notepad++.
Here's the limitation: No diplomacy, spy screen causes a crash, designer needs to be modded because there's no racial models, with the wrong settings the race will crash after some days. (Needs research)

And yes, this is entirely separate from the DSC. The DSC cannot exceed 8 as there's no data for the other races or portraits.
TCH
2023.03.12. 01:41:20
The Fist Tribe is indeed used in the Kra'Hen campaign. When you are unable to colonize the 5 planets in 4 years, then the Fist Tribe revolts and departs and you have to destroy them.
As for the Aminits, you're right, i've never encountered them either, i even forgot their name. The Independents i think i've ran into once. They were not even a separate race, a colony revolted and became Independent...or maybe not. I don't remember clearly.

Strange. Well, it was a long time ago. The creator does not allow you to set your race to anything above Toulen though. There must have been some reason behind this limitation, i think i tested this and there were blocker issues, like they are not appearing in diplomacy, active design and active planet will be erroneous (though tweakable manually).
Besides the race definition appears twice. Once in the DSC file as 'race' which may crash the menu if you set it higher than 8 and in the SCN file with 'EN' (which is "I" in hungarian: "Én" :) ) which may be higher than 8, but then the problem mentioned above will occur.
E-Mail
Tamamo
2023.03.12. 01:09:07
I don't think all are used.
I remember the following not counting pirates and traders:
Zaul, Cha'karg (terraformer ship), Kul Hunters, Pyridian Empire.

I do not remember the Fist Tribe, Aminit Kingdom, or Independent. Although the latter might be me just not seeing them.
Regardless I am 100% sure their spies are unused.

You can actually play as them, you simply edit the first line "EN" to something else, but it does have it's share of issues.
I remember many years ago I had a full game as the Kul Hunters.
TCH
2023.03.12. 00:16:41
In the campaign mode all factions were used. I would not swear upon it, but IIRC i've even encountered the race "Independent" (race 17) in one of my campaigns.

Cha'kargs and Kuls are very similar in appearance, maybe the developers confused them at some points.
AFAIK, you cannot play races 9-18, the player only can be 1-8. Not too long ago somebody asked this in email (but wrote to my old unused email which i occasionally check once per year or even rarer) and after some checking it seemed to me, that you cannot play anybody above the Toulens (race 8). But my memory may has cheated me; it is more than a decade since then after all...
E-Mail
Tamamo
2023.03.11. 23:01:33
Yeah I know.
I find it fascinating that there's so many unused factions. Instead of making a new scenario, I find it easier to open a dat and edit a .scn in notepad++.
I got some interesting results so far, but a lot of work remains to be done.

Biggest mystery to me is why the Cha'karg and Kul species have swapped portraits. The Cha'karg and Shapechanger spies appear normally, but the game has many more spies for many more races like the Pyridian. Those races are also fully functional ingame, and can even be played as.
(But it takes some work to get them functional)
TCH
2023.03.11. 22:38:15
The scenario format of IG2 was never fully reverse-engineered, some of the internal variables' purpose has ultimately remained unknown. I got zero help from Digital Reality and even less from the "community", so i had abandoned development. It is possible to craft working scenarios with the scenario creator, but it is quite far from an easy task.
E-Mail
Tamamo
2023.03.11. 19:23:58
Yeah true, it is a very old email. xD
I remember many years ago I experimented with playing as the unused Imperium Galactica 2 in scenarios.
Kinda want to mess with it again.
I remember it took me a lot of tries before I could get one working without a crash after a few months.
TCH
2023.03.11. 18:08:56
You're welcome.

I have a good long-term memory (well, mostly :P) and i remembered the name gurluas which you still use for your email account.
E-Mail
Tamamo
2023.03.11. 17:07:09
Oh wow, thank you so much!
Yeah I had no idea what was going on at the time. xD

I'm surprised you could recognize me after so long! :o
TCH
2023.03.11. 16:03:29
Hey, i remember you. You're the danish guy from 2007 whom i mistook for a script kiddie who attacked us right at that time when you appeared and he used fake IP-s, hence the misunderstanding. Sorry for that.
As for the IG1 and IG2 stuff, they are still available, it's just that t-hosting.hu collapsed last summer and their subdomains are not restored along with BGAFC, but you can reach the site here: http://oscomp.hu/bgafc/
And the IG stuff is here: http://oscomp.hu/bgafc/frs.php?mukk=prg&c=3&l=1
E-Mail
Tamamo
2023.03.11. 14:36:33
Hello TCH, a long time ago you made editors for Imperium Galactica 2, including a program able to extract and pack .dat files.

Any chance you still have that? As it's been long since lost
TCH
2023.03.06. 17:22:03
Van egyébként quote tag idézésre. :)
Az Amiga 500-as Pistorm-al is vannak gondok, pl.: a chip ramot sem kezeli rendesen, de a fő gond vele, hogy ez így már nem igazi Amiga.
Ez szokott lenni a másik nagy gond az emulációval: mindig van valami nyűgje.
Letöltöttem, megnézem eredeti vason. :)
Na, ütős? :)
E-Mail
1tom
2023.03.06. 16:57:49
2023.03.04. 15:39:12 HSZ-re: Igen, teljesen egyetértek veled. Én is a rendes gyorsító kártyákat preferálom. Az Amiga 500-as Pistorm-al is vannak gondok, pl.: a chip ramot sem kezeli rendesen, de a fő gond vele, hogy ez így már nem igazi Amiga.

2023.03.04. 17:27:35 HSZ-re: Letöltöttem, megnézem eredeti vason. :)
E-Mail