How Infinity games recognize its CDs, My research in this matter Options

[drake127]

First I have to say what games we are talking about: Baldur's Gate series, Icewind Dale series and Planescape Torment.

These games contain no CD protection within the meaning of reducing possibility of illegal copying of CDs. CDs can (in technical meaning) be copied without problem.

But when game starts it requires inserted CD. I am not sure if it should be protection or game only tries to check if there is CD in drive because possible loading files from this CD.

Game checks presence of CD in moment so it cannot check all CD content but only its part - only concrete files. And I found them. Game does not check content of these files but only their presence at least in case of BG series and PST. In Icewind Dale series content of these files is ASCII number of that CD and size of this file is 1 byte so I did not concern about it).

• Baldur's Gate: /CD1/MOVIES/MOVIES.BIF
• Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast: /CD6/MOVIES/MOVIECD6.BIF
• Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn: /CD2/DATA/MOVHD0.BIF
• Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal: /CD5/DATA/AREA000B.BIF
• Icewind Dale: /CD2/DATA/IWDCD.2
• Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter: /CD3/DATA/IWDCD.3
• Icewind Dale II: /CD2/DATA/IWD2CD.2
• Planescape Torment (4 CD): /CD2/GENMOVA.BIF
• Planescape Torment (2 CD): /CD2/TORMENT.CD

If you decide to use this research, you will have to have full install of the game.

Legal note:
Creating CD with these files (better: with these filenames) is very easy and CD can be very small (no larger than 3.5" floppy) but in some countries it may be illegal because it bypasses CD protection (but as I said above, I am not sure if it is CD protection). So be aware of this - it can be illegal!

This post has been edited by drake127: Nov 20 2005, 11:58 AM

[drake127]

Vlad, are we talking concretely (BG, ...) or generally, 'cause I may list many games where some versions of crack did not work properly - Warcraft III, Age of Empires II, OFP:Resistance etc. Yes, it can be (and it is) dependent on machine and my machine was many times that bad one.

Have you heard that in every exe is located (I think crc32) checksum of exe? When you patch some offset this checksum won't be longer valid and some systems do not survive it. On the other hand in many exes this checksum is set to 0x00000000 so it is disabled (?).

As I said before I prefer images as a safer solution even if it is more unhandy than working crack.

This post has been edited by drake127: Nov 23 2005, 10:06 AM