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Russian release anti-copy protection?


rast12345
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After a couple of years, i've found my LR CD! It's russian release with localization and strange copy-protection. I tried to make an image, all utils report bad sectors on a CD, however game successfully installs and works with the original CD. But see what i've got with an image mounted:

 

Maybe i'm wrong and this issue has another source?

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JrMasterModelBuilder

Could you post the text in the image? I'm having trouble deciphering which letters those are to translate them.

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Whoa, you did a research on LR releases!! That's sign of a true fan :)

I'll try alcohol, sure. It seems to me, russian version has different (or extra one?) protection, because:

* all binaries differ from couple other releases i've found (i'll read your release-research topic with more attention later and will try to figure out)

* it has extra .dlls in game directory

* weird CD behavior i mentioned above: surface is OK, installs and plays with no troubles, but tons of bad sectors when trying to make an image O_O

* other odd things with CD: it has two tracks; most of bad sectors belong to strange binary file system.dat (or sth like that) which is not installer package or whatever useful. i'll rty strace tool to check if it's accessed by installer or game.

 

PS: i also noticed that FLYSKYHIGH cheat doesnt work. maybe others too.

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lol username

Bizarre, but interesting. Have you noticed any other differences? Also, the cheat is FLYSKYHGH, not FLYSKYHIGH, did you enter it correctly?

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Mr. Eight-Three-One

Interesting. This is well beyond anything we've found so far; wonder why they added such protection to the game? Was the SafeDisc just not enough?

I'm also interested -- your signature mentions LRR and LI...does that mean you have the Russian versions of those games too?

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Bizarre, but interesting. Have you noticed any other differences? Also, the cheat is FLYSKYHGH, not FLYSKYHIGH, did you enter it correctly?

I just misspelled it here. Savegames are compatible (thanks god!) so i have a flying high player in english release and not in russian. :)

I'll summarize differences i spotted when i've got free time. Maybe move this topic to another section? It's going to be tech thread, not screenshot related..

 

Interesting. This is well beyond anything we've found so far; wonder why they added such protection to the game? Was the SafeDisc just not enough?

I'm also interested -- your signature mentions LRR and LI...does that mean you have the Russian versions of those games too?

Well.. It was common practice for russian publishers from the very beginning of PC gaming market. They translated particular game, usually just subtitles and only sometimes made it quality, then they changed (or added, even if there's no protection on original release) copy protection and released the result. If you want more details (and hear cry from my heart), read the spoiler.

Sometimes new protection was custom (!), sometimes it was well-known like SafeDiscSecuRometc. In mid 2000s things became worse: our publishers fell in love with Starforce protection system, which caused windows hangs and BSODs and was too aggressive to CD drive accuracy. Just a pain in the *** :(

Modifying original protection means modifying binaries andor resources, so games capable of unofficial modding became untouchable. If you wanted to apply official patch, it failed most of the times, and publishers or game devs made adapted patches for russian versions with delays or just never.

I'd like to mention dumb policy of local publishers: they've got exclusive rights for games they released here, and one wasn't able to find and buy original (english, japanese, etc) release of a game.

If you go to gamecopyworld.com (database of NoCDs) - you'll find that a lot of games have different NoCDs for international and russian releases :) Or check ag.ru (big russian gaming database and news site like IGN) - they have patch archives, usually international and russian versions are different.

I don't know what's going on now, i simply learned english and moved to Steam :D And even on Steam, russian versions of some games are only available in russian (can't switch to english even if game was multilingual) and only if you are in Russia/Ukraine/Belarus/Kazakhstan. To play internationaloriginal game, you have to buy separately, it spoofing your location.

That's all crazy, i don't know if any other country has such mad ways of doing business :D

 

I made another image using Alcohol, and it's unplayable too. Same result: game installs, launches and has locked menu. I can play test-drive however ^_^ Alcohol hasn't detected any protection, just same errors while reading.

I don't know this forum's policy related to piracy-like things, but if it's allowed and someone wants my image or game files, i can share it (if it's legal here). In Russia, we just don't care most of times, but i try to :)

 

UPD:

LI just plays nice with no-cd method i've found here, thanks to this community :) Game's buggy as hell and crashes after some time, i think it's common behavior. I play at old laptop with Windows XP and mid-2000 hardware.

LRR... well, i tried to launch it on the same laptop and it falied, i have no free time to handle this too. My younger brother is too young to play RTS games, so i'll go back to LRR laterr :)

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JrMasterModelBuilder

Did you set the Data Position Measurement feature on high in Alcohol? Also, could you post the MD5 hashes of your files?

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