Gaming What is AP?

[Rydian]

Is there a list of the different types of AP, and the ways of bypassing them?
Also, I'd love to see some videos of the more creative AP's. I can't seem to find any.

The result of most AP methods is boring, the game simply refuses to run (for example it just shows a black screen or won't go past the title screen).

However as stated some games have had evil AP.

One of the sims games would let your sims needs run low, but never increase. So for example after a bit they'd be peeing themselves constantly and unable to do anything.
Pokemon HG/SS as stated would appear to work fine, but freeze up more and more often the more badges you got, until it was unplayable.
Pokemon black/white would prevent your pokemon from gaining EXP.
A Michael Jackson game would play vuvuzela sounds over the actual music.
Mega Man Zero Collection would corrupt the background graphics.

And so on.

These checksums are usually implemented by the 3rd party companies.

From what I understand most general AP methods are done by Nintendo's development tools, so they show up in newer games eventually. It's the game-specific ones that are usually done by hand (and these are generally the evil ones like above).

I am assuming flashcarts get updates to patch over newer games?

Yes, that's actually a main reason flash carts get system updates (and the reason a cart without any updates is considered "do not buy").

If flashcarts can "return known non-game values" then I guess anti piracy can be debugged pretty easily.

For the people who know how to bypass AP, it's a routine thing I guess. People like Normmatt, Smiths, YWG, Rudolph, and Yasu have been known to distribute game fixes regularly (now or in the past), and some people have even posted guides on patching general games to work on some flash carts (check option 6).

That said, there was one specific instance where games started requesting values that were slow to emulate, which is where AKAIO's AAP setting comes in, and some flash carts like the DSTwo have a "clean mode" where they do less patching and try other tricks...

Some of it's secretive, and I honestly don't understand most of the specifics, so I can't really tell you more. Most of what I do know is from very general computer/data security and seeing what some devs have posted here.

 

[bahamut920]

Is there a list of the different types of AP, and the ways of bypassing them?
Also, I'd love to see some videos of the more creative AP's. I can't seem to find any.

The result of most AP methods is boring, the game simply refuses to run (for example it just shows a black screen or won't go past the title screen).

However as stated some games have had evil AP.

One of the sims games would let your sims needs run low, but never increase. So for example after a bit they'd be peeing themselves constantly and unable to do anything.
Pokemon HG/SS as stated would appear to work fine, but freeze up more and more often the more badges you got, until it was unplayable.
Pokemon black/white would prevent your pokemon from gaining EXP.
A Michael Jackson game would play vuvuzela sounds over the actual music.
Mega Man Zero Collection would corrupt the background graphics.

And so on.

I'd add Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey to that list, where you could play the game just fine, but saving resulted in a corrupted save file. Every time. I'd put it with the two Pokemon games as one of the most clever uses of antipiracy out there, as some pirates with no patience probably tried out the game, decided they liked it, and bought it before the crack appeared. That strategy probably boosted saled by at least a few.

 

[Rydian]

Well if you're talking of all time, as stated Earthbound's piracy is the best. In addition to all the other crap it did (such as make enemy spawn rates go through the roof), in the final stage of the final battle against the final boss... the game would lock up and erase your save data.