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Beta 7 is finally here!

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Litude

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King Karolus

Posts: 1233

Joined: 01 May 2006, 22:00

Website: http://www.knightsandmerchants.net

Location: Finland

Post 02 Oct 2009, 23:50

@%#! these online versions of the game do indeed have messed up DRM. I took the old TryMedia 30 minute demo version of the game to do my testing. My results were as follows:

KM_TPR.EXE has been protected by some random software, probably PECompant and the DRM wrapper thingy has been appended into the .EXE Plus there are a bunch of files which have been encrypted, those being the files in the defines, fonts and missions folder.

Now solving the problem for this very online version of the game should be no problem and I think I'll provide a fix tomorrow. There are still some issues I'm quite uncertain about though, like being able to detect whether you have the full version or the demo installed and if possibly the other online retail versions might have different protections...

But then again, if someone actually has to design such a messed up DRM system they almost deserve to get cracked...

One more question, did you purchase your game from TryMedia? If not, which store?
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Kazooie959

Serf

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Joined: 15 Aug 2009, 22:00

Post 03 Oct 2009, 01:56

I can't remember who I got it from but I can say that I got it through the TryMedia download manager... Sorry I can't give more info than that...
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Litude

User avatar

King Karolus

Posts: 1233

Joined: 01 May 2006, 22:00

Website: http://www.knightsandmerchants.net

Location: Finland

Post 03 Oct 2009, 09:42

Okay I whipped together a fix, download it from here. Just extract the ZIP into your main game folder and let it overwrite any file when it asks. Check if it works.
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Kazooie959

Serf

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Joined: 15 Aug 2009, 22:00

Post 03 Oct 2009, 13:21

Still didn't work... I fixed the torrent so I'll send it your way now I don't know if it will help though...
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Litude

User avatar

King Karolus

Posts: 1233

Joined: 01 May 2006, 22:00

Website: http://www.knightsandmerchants.net

Location: Finland

Post 04 Oct 2009, 11:56

Okay, I think I nailed it. Turns out I made a typo in the fix which is why it didn't fix the problem. Anyway, I took the opportunity to whip together an installer for the fix which you can get from here.
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Kazooie959

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Joined: 15 Aug 2009, 22:00

Post 04 Oct 2009, 15:38

IT WORKS!!! Thanks a ton for all the hard work!!!
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Litude

User avatar

King Karolus

Posts: 1233

Joined: 01 May 2006, 22:00

Website: http://www.knightsandmerchants.net

Location: Finland

Post 04 Oct 2009, 17:16

By the way, are you using the 30 minute trial version or have you purchased the full game? Because I'd be interested in getting some information as to how to detect whether someone is playing the trial or the full version of the game.
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Kazooie959

Serf

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Joined: 15 Aug 2009, 22:00

Post 04 Oct 2009, 20:09

Full game. What do you need?
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Litude

User avatar

King Karolus

Posts: 1233

Joined: 01 May 2006, 22:00

Website: http://www.knightsandmerchants.net

Location: Finland

Post 04 Oct 2009, 21:00

Hmm... So you sent me this 30 minute trial of the game. Is it the same file you used to install the game? I'm trying to figure out how the game knows if it should work in trial mode or in full version mode.

If you use the same EXE and it installs the game as the full version, I guess there has to be something somewhere on your computer telling the game to work in full version mode. Do you have any idea what it could be? Did you have to install something else than just the game setup when purchasing the game?

Are you familiar with the registry editor? To access it goto start -> run... -> then write "regedit" in the prompt.
I'd be curious what kind of values you have at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Trymedia Systems\ActiveMARK Software (there should be yet another folder here with some random name with numbers and capital letters mixed I'd like to see the contents of). A screenshot would be best. Thanks a lot! :wink:
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harold

Knight

Posts: 562

Joined: 19 Nov 2007, 23:00

Post 04 Oct 2009, 22:05

Nice we could convert trial versions to full version then lol :)
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Litude

User avatar

King Karolus

Posts: 1233

Joined: 01 May 2006, 22:00

Website: http://www.knightsandmerchants.net

Location: Finland

Post 05 Oct 2009, 08:48

Well the current installer already allows it. I let it slip because I'm ****ed at online stores and their stupid DRM forms. Anyway, I will remove all the check bypassing info from this thread once the installer is compatible with both the version sold at normal retailers and at online retailers.
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Litude

User avatar

King Karolus

Posts: 1233

Joined: 01 May 2006, 22:00

Website: http://www.knightsandmerchants.net

Location: Finland

Post 05 Oct 2009, 18:05

So an interesting problem turned up, as there is nothing in the registry (at least not where I expected) telling whether the game is running in trial mode or not. Does anyone have any ideas how the game might be checking it?
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harold

Knight

Posts: 562

Joined: 19 Nov 2007, 23:00

Post 05 Oct 2009, 20:35

Maybe one of the data files..
How about setup.cfg?
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Litude

User avatar

King Karolus

Posts: 1233

Joined: 01 May 2006, 22:00

Website: http://www.knightsandmerchants.net

Location: Finland

Post 05 Oct 2009, 21:34

It's not possible, because the same setup file installs the game as a trial on my computer and as a full version on his. I wonder if the TryMedia DRM might use some kind of monitoring application that is well hidden and it then reads the values from some encrypted database?

This is just getting ways too complicated, perhaps supporting the online versions should be dropped after all?
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harold

Knight

Posts: 562

Joined: 19 Nov 2007, 23:00

Post 06 Oct 2009, 11:54

So use regmon and diskmon, and look at what's at doing?

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