Hacking Why add anti-piracy measures to Devolution ?

[Torran]

The PC wouldn't need to be tricked, it'd still be the Wii doing the checks.

Ahaha, of course. However, what "disc" I give to the Wii to be checked is now up to me, is it not?

 

[Rydian]

The PC wouldn't need to be tricked, it'd still be the Wii doing the checks.

Ahaha, of course. However, what "disc" I give to the Wii to be checked is now up to me, is it not?

Touche. Drive emulation software is pretty advanced nowadays.

 

[SifJar]

The PC wouldn't need to be tricked, it'd still be the Wii doing the checks.

The DVV generator would be running on the PC and transmitting the DVV (this is what old8oy suggested). Meaning if you reverse engineer the PC app, you'd have the DVV generation routine, and you could easily write your own generator to generate the DVVs for ISOs without the discs.

A better solution would be to transmit the first 8 bytes and still generate the DVV on the Wii, but as noted above, drive emulation could make that easy to work around.

I'd say because of these issues, it may be a case of using a USB DVD drive connected to the Wii, as has been mentioned before also. AFAIK, tueidj hasn't commented about how games will be verified on those Wiis yet, but I'm sure he'll have a solution (or perhaps already has a solution), so no one else really needs to worry about it for now.

 

[WiiUBricker]

Maybe I should have written: "The Ap isn't only there to prevent piracy.."

Would you please cut this nonsense already? AP was, is and will always be a measure against piracy. It's sure as hell not an argument to release stuff closed source. Devolution would be still closed source even without AP. You don't just release the source code of a one-man work that is such complex like this one. Besides it's not like anyone would be capable of improving this app if the source code were available. Look at how many guys are helping with DIOS MIOS development. It's basically a one-man project, with source code available.

 

[McHaggis]

I don't think it would have to be that constant if it's just the first few bytes that have to be read.

Yes, I think I was wrong about that and most drives seem to be able to read at CAV these days. I can't seem to find a reason for PC drives not working with GC discs, unfortunately, but it is down to the drive and not the driver or operating system. Ergo, using the PC is probably not a very good option and using an external USB drive would require compatibility testing and further expense for the new Wii owners.

Has anyone tried messing with the drives in the new Wiis to get the GC disc to stay in so it can be read?

 

[Ericss]

I don't think it would have to be that constant if it's just the first few bytes that have to be read.

Yes, I think I was wrong about that and most drives seem to be able to read at CAV these days. I can't seem to find a reason for PC drives not working with GC discs, unfortunately, but it is down to the drive and not the driver or operating system. Ergo, using the PC is probably not a very good option and using an external USB drive would require compatibility testing and further expense for the new Wii owners.

Has anyone tried messing with the drives in the new Wiis to get the GC disc to stay in so it can be read?

None I've heard of. Anyway, even if someone found a way of modding his drive to accept GC discs, I don't think demanding the users of a USB loader to mess with their Wii's drives would be reasonable, considering that such an app doesn't really need the drive to function. Not to mention that if someone mods their Wii just to enable GC USB loading, they can as well go ahead and install a modchip that fools Devolution into accepting burned discs while they're at it.

 

[obcd]

Maybe I should have written: "The Ap isn't only there to prevent piracy.."

Would you please cut this nonsense already? AP was, is and will always be a measure against piracy. It's sure as hell not an argument to release stuff closed source. Devolution would be still closed source even without AP. You don't just release the source code of a one-man work that is such complex like this one. Besides it's not like anyone would be capable of improving this app if the source code were available. Look at how many guys are helping with DIOS MIOS development. It's basically a one-man project, with source code available.

I never said that the AP wasn't a measure against piracy as well.
Why shouldn't you release the source of a complex one man project?
As you say yourself, if it's 2 complex, people will look at it and will say, wow, this is 2 complex.
If you don't release the sources, Nobody is able 2 know if it's 2 complex....

Pc games are closed source and have copy protections because firms need to gain money from selling them.
That's not the case with devolution.

So basically, to help you read between the lines, the purpose of my discussion is to make people wonder why it's closed source?

And now you will tell me to stop doing this because it's off topic....

Dios Mios was a one man's project because it contained a giant amount of undocumented hacks.
So, basically taking a memory adress and changing a value in it is not very understandable source, unless you also happen to know the contents of that memory location based upon reverse engineering, or unless you document the line of code.
Devolution runs the game code in a virtual machine environment. Maybe others with ppc expierence might understand how it works.

My conclusion is that all people are equal on this Forum....Unless they have better coding skills. And please don't argue about the complexity of things if you never coded yourself. It means all code is complex for you. It's normal. I wan't discuss the complexity of open hart surgery either. (Would also be off topic )

 

[tueidj]

It is only closed source to protect the disk verification. The "complex" parts that might be useful for other projects have already been shared with someone who was planning to add something similar to an existing open source app.

 

[BIFFTAZ]

It is only closed source to protect the disk verification. The "complex" parts that might be useful for other projects have already been shared with someone who was planning to add something similar to an existing open source app.

whoomp there it is !! Legend

 

[WiiUBricker]

It is only closed source to protect the disk verification. The "complex" parts that might be useful for other projects have already been shared with someone who was planning to add something similar to an existing open source app.

So you mean you would open source it if it wasn't for the AP? Hard to believe considering you once rejected to release the source of something like Superdump, but I guess people can change.

As for sharing parts of Devolutions with someone else, I would guess it either has to be crediar or emu_kidid (maybe for audio streaming).

 

[Hells Guardian]

It is only closed source to protect the disk verification. The "complex" parts that might be useful for other projects have already been shared with someone who was planning to add something similar to an existing open source app.

That is quite cool! Thanks for doing what you've done for the wii m8. used to hate the wii but I loved my GC now I have reason to love my wii again and open source you say? I can't wait to see what pops up!.

 

[naxil]

i think that: with ap u always have GOOD DUMP! and the developer not have problem about people use not good iso.
But now after lot of loader for wii games (And relative cios), for me AP have NONSENSE.
Is just good for people have lot of retail games.... but if i have retail games i can use the systemmenu very well. Gc controller cost 6$..

 

[Aroenai]

Prefacing this by saying I don't have one of the new wii's without ngc compatibility, and I legally own all the gamecube games I play. But....

Non-ngc wii owners (or those who have to replace their wii's due to a broken drive, etc.) really are screwed with this AP stuff in place, as for using a pc to do the disc verification wouldn't that require using one of those LG GDR-something drives to even be able to read the gamecube discs? In which case, they'd have to have been fortunate enough to buy one of those drives when they were still around (or spend a huge amount of money if they can even find one) and have a PC that can connect IDE drives (my new motherboard doesn't even have IDE plugs). The whole reason rawdump worked for reading gamecube discs is because those drives had left over debug code that allowed reading past where normal dvd sectors would be. Isn't it reasonable to assume the people who bought those drives would already have ngc backwards compatible wii's based on the fact that the LG drives were discontinued before the new ones came out making it a moot point for those new wii owners?

 

[JoostinOnline]

If someone bought a gc-less Wii, they couldn't play gc games anyway, even if the AP was gone.

 

[daxtsu]

Not until Wiimote support is added to Devolution, they couldn't.

 

[JoostinOnline]

Not until Wiimote support is added to Devolution, they couldn't.

Everybody knew from the very start that there would be AP, so if anyone bought a Wii that wouldn't support GC games with the hopes of playing GC games, that is their fault. They weren't promised anything. Nor are they owed anything. They aren't screwed over, they just got what they paid for.

 

[daxtsu]

Oh, no doubt. I was just stating a quick fact.

 

[Lumstar]

It is only closed source to protect the disk verification. The "complex" parts that might be useful for other projects have already been shared with someone who was planning to add something similar to an existing open source app.

Then what is the purpose of disk verification? We've long been side-tracked from this topic's core question. Pages of theory, bickering, and side-tracking.

I suppose my likeliest reason (if I were the author) would be as an effort to weed out bad dumps (as naxil suggested above) during the program's development phase. Ensuring a clean iso will help get consistent results from testers. Otherwise we'd get bogged with inaccuracy at a crucial time. Once devolution is stable enough, then we should loosen protection to let people play the games who cannot. Working-elsewhere bad dumps at that point can be fixed in the program by including a way for users to setup compatibility profiles.

 

[obcd]

There are better and easier ways to check a dump. It's usually done by creating a hash of it.
Tueidj never said that you will need one of those hard to find LG drives to verify your discs on a pc,
so this argument doesn't make sense. Besides that, there is no wiimote support yet.
If Tueidj has to write his own bluetooth stack to avoid using gpl, this might still take a while.

 

[Rydian]

Man, I wish people would make a 49-page thread questioning my motives for putting on blue boxers this morning.

Then what is the purpose of disk verification? We've long been side-tracked from this topic's core question. Pages of theory, bickering, and side-tracking.

Well I'm wearing my lucky tiger boxers today because they're the most form-fitting. See, I went swimming with a friend yesterday and it rained on us both on the way to and from the beach, so we both ended up chaffed. D: So I'm wearing these boxers to avoid that annoying slight-pain feeling while I walk, 'ya know?

See, what I think you all don't understand is that knowing the reason is unlikely to give you some edge in convincing the author to change it. The reason is already known, the reason is actually pretty fucking clear, the author does not want to allow piracy using his program, so he's installed anti-piracy and then kept the program closed-source so the AP isn't simply removed (and then given access to the important GC-running parts to some devs he seems to trust). You all just don't want to accept that situation, you all want to grasp onto the hope that there's some deeper hidden meaning to his motives, like this is some Ace Attorney or Professor Layton game where you can crack some sort of mental mystery and get him to remove the AP.

Considering this is built on his own personal morals (and ones held by many, many people on the planet, so it's not random shit he thought up one day), and given that he announced the inclusion of AP from the first announcement (meaning it's intentional and a thought-out move), that shit's just not happening. If he decides to remove the AP at a later date, it will be his own decision based on his own plans and thoughts.

"Then why is there this thread?" - To keep the bitching out of the main thread.