Hacking Save hacking and editing?

[Daniel Sahr]

Hello. I wanted to ask a question about what is possible when it comes to save hacking and editing. Could I get 100% saves for games and how easy is it to use them, or are there other comprehensive ways to do this? Thanks!

 

[H3llbender]

Saves are encrypted and nobody has found a way to decrypt them yet..

 

[Daniel Sahr]

Saves are encrypted and nobody has found a way to decrypt them yet..

What about pcGecko and the like?

 

[H3llbender]

pyGecko is used to view and write memory to the ram.

 

[Cyan]

They don't seems encrypted to me.
I can read my character's name or save profile name by editing them on hex editor.

Savegames often contains a checksum to verify the data integrity, if you edit a value you might have to fix the checksum too or the game will report it as corrupted.
To start doing savegame hacking, just create multiple saves, with very few changes (HP, level, names, save place, etc.) and compare the files to see what's different.

some game have a very easy savegame data format (if it's only a list of completed level, like captain toad) to very complex one (like RPG, xenoblades, ass creed, etc.)

 

[H3llbender]

They don't seems encrypted to me.
I can read my character's name or save profile name by editing them on hex editor.

Savegames often contains a checksum to verify the data integrity, if you edit a value you might have to fix the checksum too or the game will report it as corrupted.
To start doing savegame hacking, just create multiple saves, with very few changes (HP, level, names, save place, etc.) and compare the files to see what's different.

some game have a very easy savegame data format (if it's only a list of completed level, like captain toad) to very complex one (like RPG, xenoblades, ass creed, etc.)

That's odd, I tried reading my Mario Kart save and it was giving me problems. I must of been using the wrong tools.

 

[Cyan]

Maybe its game dependent, some games are maybe encrypting the save data themselves to prevent hacks and edits?
but the console is not encrypting them by default, like I could see with captain toad or AC3

 

[DaBlackDeath]

That's odd, I tried reading my Mario Kart save and it was giving me problems. I must of been using the wrong tools.

Do not forget to update the CRC32 after editing.

 

[hemhemhem]

Hi, I think this is my first post here even if for some reason I have made this account many years ago apparently (I can't even remember... why).

I have a question, a problem, something that I'd like to do but I don't know how.
I have made some drawings in Art Academy Sketchpad, now I want to export them at full resolution but it's not possible with the regular methods.
I found this workaround but after trying it and reassembling the image pieces, I noticed that there is some compression in the picture, probably due to the fact that the images on the gamepad's screen aren't native but are broadcasted in streaming.
Also, the resolution is not 100%, after the assembly the picture was 1881x1039, while, Art Academy Atelier (Home Studio in USA? I have the EUR versions of both games) exports in JPEG at a resolution of 1920×1080.

I decided to try porting the drawings in Art Academy Atelier so I can save them as JPEG at full resolution, but it's not an easy task (for me at least).

Using DDD I exported the saves of the drawings, and I put them in the Art Academy Atelier (Loadiine)'s save folder, but with no surprise, the saves aren't compatible despite the extension and the title format of the files is the same.
I opened the saves with a text comparator and I noticed that there are some identical parts between the Sketchpad files, but the file is completely different compared with an Atelier file (I haven't tried an hex editor yet but I have no idea from where I should start).

Can someone help me? I have limited programming knownledge and I almost never did hacking in my whole life (I edited the resources in a flash game using a cheat engine once but that wasn't hard, just search for the number and edit it... it doesn't work with a picture!), it would be nice if someone has asolution or can help me to hack the savefile even if I'm a noob.

 

[hemhemhem]

Sorry for the double post.
Really nobody can help me? Not even an hint on what I should do?
In all these years I saw lots of troll threads flooded by people feeding the trolls, with troll posts and other stupid comments, really people on this community prefer troll threads to someone who is asking something giving explanations and details, and the something asked is not an IOSU exploit?
I don't want other people doing the work for me, but I'd like at least someone more experienced by me that tells me what I can do.

(for people who don't want to read, just leave the thread plea- no, I mean, I need to extract some drawings made using Art Academy Sketchpad at full resolution, 1920x1080 and with less compression as possible, I don't care how. Some possibilities are, converting the drawings into Atelier/Home Studio format that can export them in JPG, extract them from the savefile, or do something with the PC emulator, but I have no idea of what I should do, I even tried the hex editor on the savefiles with no results).

 

[brienj]

Sorry for the double post.
Really nobody can help me? Not even an hint on what I should do?
In all these years I saw lots of troll threads flooded by people feeding the trolls, with troll posts and other stupid comments, really people on this community prefer troll threads to someone who is asking something giving explanations and details, and the something asked is not an IOSU exploit?
I don't want other people doing the work for me, but I'd like at least someone more experienced by me that tells me what I can do.

(for people who don't want to read, just leave the thread plea- no, I mean, I need to extract some drawings made using Art Academy Sketchpad at full resolution, 1920x1080 and with less compression as possible, I don't care how. Some possibilities are, converting the drawings into Atelier/Home Studio format that can export them in JPG, extract them from the savefile, or do something with the PC emulator, but I have no idea of what I should do, I even tried the hex editor on the savefiles with no results).

There are a couple ways you could do this. One, do a memory dump of the screen buffer, but I don't know what the screen buffer address would be in that program, or if you would have problems like I did when I was dumping the screen buffer in the U-Paint program I made for the Wii U. When I would dump the screen buffer, instead of dumping it as RGBARGBARGBA in the dump, it would repeat everything four times, so the dump was RRRRGGGGBBBBAAAA and so on. The other option would be to share the dump files of your saves so others could reverse how they are saved. I do not have that Art Academy Sketchpad, so I would not even be able to start helping without being able to look at the files to reverse them, nor would other people without that program.

 

[hemhemhem]

There are a couple ways you could do this. One, do a memory dump of the screen buffer, but I don't know what the screen buffer address would be in that program, or if you would have problems like I did when I was dumping the screen buffer in the U-Paint program I made for the Wii U. When I would dump the screen buffer, instead of dumping it as RGBARGBARGBA in the dump, it would repeat everything four times, so the dump was RRRRGGGGBBBBAAAA and so on. The other option would be to share the dump files of your saves so others could reverse how they are saved. I do not have that Art Academy Sketchpad, so I would not even be able to start helping without being able to look at the files to reverse them, nor would other people without that program.

Thank you very much for the help, you also gave me an idea of a try that I should do (do a copy of the drawing with a little point on a corner to see what's the difference in the file, and see if the numbers can be converted into RGB values)... as I wrote a couple of posts ago, I'm a bit noob, I have basic knownledge but I have no experience.

I uploaded some saves so you can experiment with them if you want... they are not located in the correct folder, but it shouldn't be a problem I hope.
These are not the only artworks that I want to extract, it's just one, when I will discover the way to extract them I will do the others.

Art Academy has an option to fix/dry the artwork. When you do this, the former artwork becomes impossible to modify and you can only draw over it ignoring the color mixing influence with the fixed part (the older part becomes a sort of background).
I exported the artwork in 2 versions, with and without the fix.

I will do the other experiments soon, If I will be able to find the corners of the artwork, I will be sure that all the data between the corners is the image, so it would be easier to extract (I assume that I should fix every artwork, so it's easier to export them).

These are the saves:
http://www61.zippyshare.com/v/f587U7bu/file.html

 

[brienj]

Thank you very much for the help, you also gave me an idea of a try that I should do (do a copy of the drawing with a little point on a corner to see what's the difference in the file, and see if the numbers can be converted into RGB values)... as I wrote a couple of posts ago, I'm a bit noob, I have basic knownledge but I have no experience.

I uploaded some saves so you can experiment with them if you want... they are not located in the correct folder, but it shouldn't be a problem I hope.
These are not the only artworks that I want to extract, it's just one, when I will discover the way to extract them I will do the others.

Art Academy has an option to fix/dry the artwork. When you do this, the former artwork becomes impossible to modify and you can only draw over it ignoring the color mixing influence with the fixed part (the older part becomes a sort of background).
I exported the artwork in 2 versions, with and without the fix.

I will do the other experiments soon, If I will be able to find the corners of the artwork, I will be sure that all the data between the corners is the image, so it would be easier to extract (I assume that I should fix every artwork, so it's easier to export them).

These are the saves:
http://www61.zippyshare.com/v/f587U7bu/file.html

You can definitely see that there are images in these files. One easy one I extracted looks like this, I didn't worry about correcting the colors though -

Edit: Here it is in full resolution - https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=9525F351E1619336!715&authkey=!AECIiCeLHw1bLtY&v=3&ithint=photo,bmp

I saved it in BMP format, but it had a JFIF header on it, so it may be slightly compressed, but the format I saved it to isn't compressed, so you can see exactly how it looks after extracted.

 

[hemhemhem]

You can definitely see that their are images in these files. One easy one I extracted looks like this, I didn't worry about correcting the colors though -
View attachment 49138

Edit: Here it is in full resolution - https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=9525F351E1619336!715&authkey=!AECIiCeLHw1bLtY&v=3&ithint=photo,bmp

I saved it in BMP format, but it had a JFIF header on it, so it may be slightly compressed, but the format I saved it to isn't compressed, so you can see exactly how it looks after extracted.

How is that possible? -.- I... I don't even...
Thank you anyway!
So, well, despite this, I'm not able to do it by myself I think, if it doesn't bother you too much, would you like to tell me how you have extracted it?
(If you want I can give you the other pictures in PM, if it's so easy it wouldn't take you much time, they're 5 in total (4 because one is already extracted now), but it would be better if I learn how to do it by myself, I would really like to learn it...)
Thank you very much! It helped a lot!

EDIT:
I'm currently reading this: https://www.w3.org/Graphics/JPEG/jfif3.pdf I hope it will be helpful to learn how to recognize the pictures in the files

EDIT2:
I'm finding a lot of forum threads and tutorial about how to find JPEG files into HEX streams, yes knowing that the pictures are in JPEG format inside the files really solved my problem, now I think that with a bit of research I'll be able to extract them, probably. Thank you!

 

[brienj]

How is that possible? -.- I... I don't even...
Thank you anyway!
So, well, despite this, I'm not able to do it by myself I think, if it doesn't bother you too much, would you like to tell me how you have extracted it?
(If you want I can give you the other pictures in PM, if it's so easy it wouldn't take you much time, they're 5 in total (4 because one is already extracted now), but it would be better if I learn how to do it by myself, I would really like to learn it...)
Thank you very much! It helped a lot!

EDIT:
I'm currently reading this: https://www.w3.org/Graphics/JPEG/jfif3.pdf I hope it will be helpful to learn how to recognize the pictures in the files

EDIT2:
I'm finding a lot of forum threads and tutorial about how to find JPEG files into HEX streams, yes knowing that the pictures are in JPEG format inside the files really solved my problem, now I think that with a bit of research I'll be able to extract them, probably. Thank you!

Hey, no problem, so is that good enough quality for you? I can give you the exact offsets to extract if it is.

 

[hemhemhem]

Hey, no problem, so is that good enough quality for you? I can give you the exact offsets to extract if it is.

Yes, I think it's the exact same quality as Art Academy Atelier/Home Studio JPEG files exported using the ingame export function, it's the best we can extract from these files I think.
If you tell me what's the exact offset it would help too!

 

[brienj]

Ok, this one I extracted was in the "Art Academy Sketchpad\Fixed artwork (it's not editable anymore)" folder. Open the "2016133210219.sg" file in your hex editor.

At offset 0x00020410 the JFIF header starts. The JFIF header starts 6 bytes before the word JFIF. The whole file is 0x30202 bytes long from the start point at offset 0x00020410, so it ends at offset 0x00050612. I think you can figure the rest out from there I hope.

You just have to make sure to save the file as a JPG file and it will open up in any editing program.

JFIF headers should always start with 0xFF. The EOF is 0xFFD9.

The whole format is described here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_File_Interchange_Format#File_format_structure

 

[hemhemhem]

Did it!
http://s32.postimg.org/nzacdxi0l/didit.jpg
It's a lot easier once you know what to search!
I learned a lot of things today, thank you!
(the lenght of the file is written in the header, so once you find where it starts, and it's easy since there is even the JFIF text lol, finding the end of the file is not a problem).
I need to practice a bit with the other files, but anyway it's not that hard now that I know how to do it.
Thank you again!

EDIT: I exported all of them.
I noticed that the picture's dimension is just a small part of the savefile, so I think there is probably a way to get a picture with better quality... but it should be very tricky. I noticed that there are many FF D9 in the hex, I think there are many small pictures that make the complete picture once united, I suspect that the game saves every single trait as a stand alone picture and then it produces that JPEG to show the result on screen. This is probably the way Atelier/Home Studio makes the video sequence of how the drawing is made. I have no proofs, it's just a guess.
I'm ok with the big JPEG we managed to extract, I have no intentions of messing with those small fragments of JPEG; the quality is good enough as long as there is not high contrast (the black part of my artwork has lots of artifacts that you can easily see, but the other pictures are less affected by this because there is less contrast). Also, I noticed that the JPEG always starts at 0x00020410, in every file, but the end depends on the file dimension of the picture.

 

[brienj]

Did it!
http://s32.postimg.org/nzacdxi0l/didit.jpg
It's a lot easier once you know what to search!
I learned a lot of things today, thank you!
(the lenght of the file is written in the header, so once you find where it starts, and it's easy since there is even the JFIF text lol, finding the end of the file is not a problem).
I need to practice a bit with the other files, but anyway it's not that hard now that I know how to do it.
Thank you again!

No problem, this was something I used to do a lot when modding, so it was pretty easy, and it's good that you could figure out all the rest on your own.