Lucasarts adventures on Steam!

chrisis · Post by **chrisis** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 6:43 pm

as much as I figured out, the same is for FOA: it misses the atlantis.000 file, as I said before. (and the original atlantis.exe dos is actually in the steam download! it just can't find that damn file). Probably that file is integrated into the steam/windows executable? Anyways, on my german floppy version, that file is only 12 kb, so I wonder, what that file actually does. Could anyone with more knowledge of Scumm (one of the developers?) tell, what that file actually is for after all?

Longcat · Post by **Longcat** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 6:46 pm

the lfl.000 file was integrated into the steam exe file in the release of last crusade, according to bgbenyboy over at mixnmojo. so presumable that is the case for all the games.

sucks for scummvm:(

Flo · Post by **Flo** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 6:50 pm

If it's integrated into the exe it might still be possible to extract it. But it never ceases to amaze me how companies are willing to go out of their way to screw the people who do buy their products.

Longcat · Post by **Longcat** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:20 pm

I don't know if you can legally revers engineer and extract that file around these parts. but then again, I'm no lawyer.

chrisis · Post by **chrisis** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:23 pm

ok, it should be fairly trivial to write an extractor for the files that are missing! moderatorial

Hurda · Post by **Hurda** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:27 pm

chrisis wrote:ok, it should be fairly trivial to write an extractor for the files that are missing!

Just logged back on to post that idea too, but you were faster.

Yes, for a knowledgable coder, such an extractor shouldn't be too difficult to write, and it (IANAL) probably doesn't break any laws, since it's just copying data out of a file into a new one without breaking any encryption or so.

Charlii · Post by **Charlii** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:28 pm

In other words, it would be very simple to add these versions to ScumVM? The program should be able to use the .exe instead of the 000 if it just knew at what offset the data is placed?

chrisis · Post by **chrisis** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:31 pm

Charlii wrote:In other words, it would be very simple to add these versions to ScumVM? The program should be able to use the .exe instead of the 000 if it just knew at what offset the data is placed?

probably, I guess

Flo · Post by **Flo** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:34 pm

Hurda wrote:it (IANAL) probably doesn't break any laws, since it's just copying data out of a file into a new one without breaking any encryption or so.

It depends on how you look at it. You could say that the data is extracted in order to bypass the copy protection (Steam) of the game.

You could also say that it's reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability, which is legal in some countries.

As far as I'm concerned, it's pretty low to specifically remove those tiny data files from the distribution.

Hurda · Post by **Hurda** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:37 pm

Charlii wrote:In other words, it would be very simple to add these versions to ScumVM? The program should be able to use the .exe instead of the 000 if it just knew at what offset the data is placed?

LA would just need to issue an "update" with the "file" at a different offset to break compatibility with SCUMMVM.
And I doubt that mere copying of a stream of data qualifies as "reverse engineering". But that's for others with more legal knowledge to decide.

Post by **sev** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:40 pm

moderatorial: Guys, please, stop discussing how to avoid Steam protection on the games from now. You are putting quite danger on the project by hacking that.

chrisis, sorry, but I had to edit out some information from your post.

chrisis · Post by **chrisis** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:41 pm

Hurda wrote:[d of quote="Charlii"]
LA would just need to issue an "update" with the "file" at a different offset to break compatibility with SCUMMVM.
And I doubt that mere copying of a stream of data qualifies as "reverse engineering". But that's for others with more legal knowledge to decide.

I doubt they would do that. They didn't really hide the file very good from the beginning

Also, although I'm not a lawyer, I doubt it is illegal to basically use the contents of a file you legally got and to do with it for personal usage whatever you want. It would of course be different, if you began to share that file you created that way...

chrisis · Post by **chrisis** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:42 pm

sev wrote:moderatorial: Guys, please, stop discussing how to avoid Steam protection on the games from now. You are putting quite danger on the project by hacking that.

chrisis, sorry, but I had to edit out some information from your post.

OK, sorry. Didn't think it could be illegal. Won't write about that again...

fingolfin · Post by **fingolfin** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:42 pm

As long as they don't encrypt the .exe, one could easily make the games compatible with ScummVM.

And at least under German law, I am pretty sure that this does not count under reverse engineering. Esp. since they did not apply any encryption.

To make this clear: There is no copy protection, at most a tiny change of data formats. Hence, there is no copy protection to bypass. If there was, of course we'd respect it, as we do and did in other cases.

Charlii · Post by **Charlii** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:47 pm

sev wrote:moderatorial: Guys, please, stop discussing how to avoid Steam protection on the games from now. You are putting quite danger on the project by hacking that.

chrisis, sorry, but I had to edit out some information from your post.

I was only interested in the possibilities of buying some games properly and then playing them on my own computer, but if it's all the same to Lucasarts I'll just go on using the versions I have...