Lame NoCD Cracks !
 

Wassup with these lame mini-image NoCD cracks ???? :confused:

Check this out, the LameNoCD crack i've got for D-Day actually requires you to open up your box and pull out the IDE cables from your CD/DVD drives, mount the lame image in Alcohol and then reboot your machine.

Hucking Fell :eek:, in who's mind is that more convenient than simply finding the original CD and popping it into your CD/DVD drive ? :confused:

The only people who could possibly find a LameNoCD crack useful are people who don't own/have the original game CD, you know who you are! ;)

Thank <insert your holy deity here> for DEVIANCE, HOODLUM, gimpsRus, Razor1911, BATTERY, Reloaded, EVO, MYTH, Class and all the other REAL crackers not mentioned by name, who know how to get the job done properly. :)

Now, with that said, :rolleyes: Does anyone know where I could get my grubby paws on a real NoCD crack for D-Day, you know, the "overwrite the original game.exe" kind of crack. :)


Thanks,
k!rr3D

Spoken like a champ. You have to pretty desperate to open up your box and pull cables out of holes in order to play a game. Anyways, I guess D-Day is protected with Starforce which is why there is not a proper crack for it.

stfu k1rr3d?

Now I've been saying this all along for a few months now! :D

If those people had the original they could quite easily make their own Mini Images as you can only make them from the originals! Cant be made from a copy! ;)

Make ur research and ull find out there is no "propper" no-cd as its starforce.

stfu ??? :confused:


What's so special about Starforce that no-one can crack it properly ? and if it can't be cracked properly, does this mean all games will start using it ?

By using starforce the publishers/developers are actually only hurting their customers, i.e. people who have the original disks and find using the mini-image crack to be more cumbersome than using the original disk. The main group of people that they are actually trying to stop, i.e. those without the original disks, will simply just use the mini-image, Starforce 0 crackers/hackers 1. Also, hurting ones customers doesn't show good business sense...

I wonder if anyone has done any research on copy protection, does copy protection actually lead to increased sales ? and is the amount of money spent of copy protection more than or less than the amount of money generated from increased sales ?

In an ideal world there wouldn't be a need for copy protection and we would also all have Alienware PC's :D ...and the girl you met in the chat would also be female and hot :D

L8er

K!rr3D

EXCELLENT points! I am sitting here right now looking at a collection of ORIGINAL BOXED games that would make EB, Babbages, Circuit City, and a bunch of others all drool collectively with envy!!! I would estimate that I have in this room RIGHT NOW approximately $20,000.00 worth (cost at time of purchase) of computer games... Hot D@MN!!! I didn't even REALIZE that it was so much until I did a quick calculation for this post!!! It's about 650 games at an average cost of $30 to $40 each... ...Maybe I should have my head examined and get rid of em all and go buy a decent car!!!

Anyway, I digress... My point is that I do NOT purchase a game UNTIL there is a no-cd crack published for it! I recently purchased Sacred (a game I LONGED to have on my PC) after a crack was published for the most recent update.

And a game that I waited with MUCH anticipation for I have NOT yet purchased, and WILL NOT until such time as there is some form of ACCEPTABLE crack published for it - that game is HalfLife 2. I TOTALLY detest what Valve has done regarding the implementation of Steam in the installation and playing of that game.

IMHO, excessive obsession with copy protection can ONLY hurt PC game sales. As has been pointed out, no matter WHAT CP is devised, there will be someone out there to come up with a crack or work-around for it. And as is the case of these Mini image cracks, the only people who will be HURT by the CP will be those HONEST customers out there who, like myself, simply do not WISH to take the time to hunt up cd's whenever we want to play a game, or who simply want to make a safe backup of their game.

Oh, DON'T get me started on how the manufacturers will "replace" lost or defective cd's!!! THAT goes into the same file as most warranties on small purchases, like watches, etc. You spend almost as much (sometimes MORE!) on shipping and handling to get your "replacement cd" as if you just went out and BOUGHT a new copy of the game!!! And even THEN you have to wait weeks or even months to GET it!!!

No, I am sticking by my guns here! I simply REFUSE to purchase a game over which I do not have the control that I WANT, and that means that I will be able to play the game without having to hunt for the cd, and I will be able to make a back-up copy for myself.

Again, those people who are (supposedly) being targeted by all this copy protection will ALWAYS be able to clone/dupe/copy games at will and give them to their "friends".

So, I will continue to visit sites like GCW to get no-cd cracks, use Virtual Drive and other software, etc to play my games THE WAY I WANT. I am just saddened that when I go to the store to BUY a game that the price is artificially inflated because of the lameheads out there who PIRATE the games, get them and play/distribute them without paying ANYTHING for them. The money spent on copy protection by the game publishers is TOTALLY a waste, since it is what inflates the costs AND discourages many people from BUYING the game.

One other thing about the inflated prices... I have heard a number of people talk about pirating games SIMPLY BECAUSE of the often outrageous prices. If the cost could come DOWN a LITTLE (maybe by eliminating the expense of copy protecting the games???) I know at LEAST a dozen MORE people who would become PAYING CUSTOMERS and actually BUY games rather than go through the hassle of pirating them!

I do not CONDONE their actions, but in today's climate I can at least UNDERSTAND it. :cool:

u're whining cos u have to put the disk in every time?? is it the same for dvd's?? videos?? u dont buy em cos u'd have to put the disk/tape in every time u wanted to watch it??

yes, some ppl have had problems with starforce, but most of those probs have now been sorted afaik, but I havent had a single prob using a starforce protected game on any of my pc's!!

tbh I think its good they copy protect the games!! just take a look at TRD2 - cant say I've seen an image anywhere for it, and its been out about a year now!!

@ omni555

I honestly believe that no one would want a burnt copy of a game over the real thing. It is for this reason that I believe that if games were within a more realistic price range, many, many more people would fork out their hard earned cash for the games.

So if there is any way to bring down the cost of the games, I believe the publishers overall sales will inflate and thus make more money in the long run.

But I'm sure this debate has been around for a long time. This saddens me because this tells me their is no solution in sight.

As a side note, does anyone know what percentage of profit the publishers of get?

@RK

Couldnt agree more.

@Asimov

Thats alredy happening at least in UK, you just have to look at the prices at play.com non famous new games 18 quid (in shops 35) famous games 25-29 (in shops 35-40) :)

@asimov:

Pyro studios ( Commandos saga) earns about €3-5 for any of their games copy sold. Considering an original copy costs about €30-40 and publisher/shop earns at 50%, make ur own calculations.

TIP: I almost ONLY buy games from €18 to 5. I will not pay nothing more than this for a game.

I think it is abussive.

@ Morglum007

This is why i like STEAM, as when i bought HL2 from there, i knew all the money was going to developers and nothing to publishers

yeah that´s quite a good thing, but imagine all or more game developers would use such a platform like steam... :eek: maybe not at the moment, but who knows in the future and they sure thinkin of this possibility to release games...i wouldn´t like it and i don´t thing every gamer would live with the troubles there were( activation and so on), if the game wouldn´t have been HL2, which is a blockbuster, at least i wouldn´t take all this trouble for e.g. deer hunter 2005 or something like that.. :p

and i want the game in a case with a manual and all this stuff and not only the installation files on my pc... ;)

@ Luciel

I can't believe you actually said you like Steam! LOL. But seriously the perks for valve are great.

The one thing that gets me though is that if valve are getting all the revenue from all steam sales, then why isnt the game cheaper through steam? It probably has something to do with vivendi being a little too pissed off already about losing their little court case and not standing for even more competition with a cheaper price to contend with. Or maybe it has something to do with valve being just a little bit greedy.

Either way, valve deserves the extra profit for such a good game, even if it has stuff all replayability. Bring on the expansions!!!

EDIT: If I had bought the bronze package over the retail boxed version I would have saved $7 AUS. Of course I picked up the game for only $70 so the more accurate cost difference is more like $27. I guess they did make an effort after all on the cost.

@ Magnetic

I agree magnetic, i want a box and a manual for the games I buy too. Not just the game files on my comp. The thing is that I've reinstalled the game three times already, (long story), and only one of those times it was through the original CD's. Its just so much easier than having to re-download the update files. Its far easier to make a back up of the game files and stick it on a dvd. Its ironic that the best version of the game then, is on a DVD-R.

Also, Half-Life 2 did'nt even come with a manual, damn them. What you did get was a flimsy piece of cardboard telling you the default key bindings. I would at least expect an electronic manual. But lukily I can let it slide this time, because if there was a manual it would probably tell you more about the story of the game than the game itself did. But thats also why I liked the game. The plot is there but it doesnt get in the way of the game. If you want you can puzzle it out through the scraps of information the game tosses you.

hey is this slowly but surely turning into a secret HL2 thread? :P
Thanks to both Magnetic and Asimov I dont need to add anything further as I agree totally with what you both say. :D

@ Asimov

I shouldve said i like STEAM for that particular matter although i agree because you arent getting anything physical (eg: the box and stuff) it should be cheaper

Or... you cud just disable the cd/dvd drive in the Hardware Device section.. :D

If only it were that simple :)

I thought I was bad!

After reading the txt file that came with the crack, I had exactly the same thought, you know, "check these bozo's, why don't they just disable the drives in the Device Manager ?" :D

It didn't work, starforce still detects them :( In my minds eye I could just see the developers of starforce having a good chuckle while coding that bit of logic and saying "I wonder how many we are going to catch with this ?" :p

Although I dont recall trying to uninstall the drive in the Device Manager. Im tempted to try it, but Im haunted by a image of the starforce developers, now having a really good laugh and saying "We knew you'd try that next, loser !". :o

Starforce Nightmare..
 

Thanks to a little utility called Starforce Nightmare (previously called Starf**k), I no longer need to open up my box and pull out the IDE cables from my CD/DVD drives to get the mini-image crack working.

I use Starforce Nightmare to disable my master and slave devices on my secondary IDE channel (No reboot required), mount the mini-image in Alcohol and play the game. When Im done playing I use Starforce Nightmare to enable my master and slave devices on my secondary IDE channel. I dunno how these guys do it, but it works perfectly for me. :D

Starforce Nightmare can be downloaded here :
Starforce Nightmare

I strongly recommend you read the txt file that accompanies the utility before using it....the following is an excerpt from the txt file:


Before using this program keep in mind: all what you do, you do on your own risk.
Be carefull, if you are using it: not all features will work for every one, it depends on your hardware and software combination.
If you are not sure about it, delete this program.


Like I said it works for me with D-Day 1.0, my machine is setup as follows:
Windows XP SP1 + various updates done via automatic updates, so its probably SP2.
ASUS P4C800 Deluxe motherboard.
Primary IDE Channel
master: Maxtor 80 gig HDD
slave: Maxtor 80 gig HDD
Secondary IDE Channel
master: Samsung CD-R/RW
slave: LG DVD writer

My cd/dvd drives are master and slave on my secondary IDE channel. You will need to know which position and channel your cd/dvd drives are on to use Starforce Nightmare.

This is what I did to determine the position (master/slave) and channel (primary/secondary) of my cd/dvd drives:

1. Open Device Manager.
To open Device Manager, right click MyComputer, select properties then click the Device Manager button on the Hardware tab page (hopefully I dont need to tell you that you must first select the hardware tab page by clicking the word hardware which is located between the words Computer Name and Advanced ;) ).

2. Change the view to "Devices by connection".
Click View|"Devices by connection"

3. Expand the storage controllers node.
My storage controllers node, was under the PCI bus node and was called "Intel <blah-blah> Ultra ATA Storage Controllers.

4. Expand the Primary and Secondary IDE Channel nodes.
Under the storage controllers node you'll find the Primary and Secondary IDE Channel nodes, expanding these will reveal which devices are on which channel.

Now you know which devices are on which channel, to determine the position, right click on the device node under the channel node and then select properties. On the "General" tab page check the location, on my machine, Location 0(0) denotes master and Location 1(1) denotes slave.

Use this utility with caution, read the txt file it contains important information.

Lastly, a word of thanks to the developers, I appreciate your efforts. I agree, you obviously do have deep expert knowledge of the hardware architecture. :cool:

Thanks,
k1rr3d

I wish people would learn things, before they decide to go full force shouting at people making mini-images, like...


1. Why its hard to crack StarForce

2. Mini-Images are a universal no matter what patch you have installed to play a game with no-cd/dvd

3. Its not messy as Starforce Nightmare.


Why do people always think that crackers are being lazy because a crack for a patch or game isnt out within days of a release? Maybe its because its a difficult one?


Just wish they would do some homework first before typing, would save alot of embarassment on their parts.

Unfortunately not true because...

1. People are greedy bastards and wont buy nothing even if it was cheap

2. Price excuse has been around since 8bit computers, its just an excuse to hide the fact that most wont admit they are stealing.

And game publishers are stealing from you (who playes the game) and the game manufacturer (who creates the game) because they charge money for doing pretty much nothing useful. See the same problem with pressed audio CD's; it's not as black and white as you'd think...

Its up to them what they want to charge, like I will charge what I like if I fix someones PC. Thats how it is.

Again the price excuse, still doesnt mean you have to steal it yes? If you disagree with a price then dont buy it.

At the end of the day, people are gonna steal even if it is affordable.


And for the people who are going to come in and say Prices blah de blah, remember why the prices are so high.

Its like the old conundrum, "What came first the chicken or the egg?" as in this case "What came first high prices or piracy?"

Hey DABhand,

Apparently, you need to learn a bit more about this topic - docs are lying around the Net...! Game publishers say they want to disallow "casual pirates" from copying original CD's/DVD's by introducing copy protection.

However, exactly "casual pirates" are the ones who are having major problems with the sophisticated and, as Starforce's example shows, sometimes very incompatible copy protections. Also, "mass CD/DVD duplicators", complete factories manufacturing pirated copies of CD's/DVD's in some countries, are not affected as they have enough money for their own means of defeating, circumventing or duplicating the copy protection.

Conclusion: With copy protection, trying to make the honest customer stay honest is similar to trying to make the tall customer not get shorter. (A not letter-by-letter quote from a conference about the pointlessness of DRM.)

[Edit] Damn, I forgot to mention that "casual pirates" are the usual people who might be asked to copy their original games for the neighbor, without knowing they break the law by doing that...

Joe

DABhand, I can see much of what you are saying in this and your previous posts, but I am afraid that I cannot agree with you.

I have the ability to "pirate" almost EVERY game that I own - ues, I said OWN! - but I use this ability only to make things easier for me when I actually PLAY the game(s).

In the past, I have FREQUENTLY "pirated" copies of games when there was no good demo available, only to go out and BUY the retail copy when I saw that it was something that I would be wanting to continue to play. If the game was crap, I would simply destroy the "pirated" version and wave a fond "Bye-bye!" at the publisher!

There have been a NUMBER of games that, when the initially come out, are priced too high to make it practical for me to add to my collection. Usually, I wait either for them to drop down in price or to become available through the bargain bin or the "Pre-Owned" section of my local seller.

There ARE some lame-heads out there who just want to make a "game" out of getting whatever they can for nothing, and no matter WHAT anyone does, these people are ALWAYS going to find a way to GET what they want. They have a doggedness about them that makes it appear as a CHALLENGE to them personally when an "unbeatable" copy protection scheme is developed. Those people wouldn't buy a game if the games were FREE!!! They mostly enjoy the challenge of "getting one over" on the publishers, and THAT will never change.

The people I am referring to when I talk about lowering the prices to gain more PAYING customers are those who, like myself, don't see paying $40, $50, $60 and more for games that often come out buggy as hell and are often NOT what we anticipated. As I said earlier, I have MANY THOUSANDS of dollars worth of games within arms reach as I type this, and I know many OTHER people with similar collections - ALL bought and paid for with honestly earned money!

But getting back to the original topic, I firmly believe that copy protection is ONLY going to target those HONEST people who will be hurt by it in some way, and will NOT in ANY WAY affect those out there who are intent on getting "free" games to play.

As for who is laughing at whom, let me say THIS. The publishers are "laughing" at people like ME who would BUY and PAY FOR their games, and who are getting FRUSTRATED as all hell trying to get the game set up to run the way we WANT, but it is the REAL PIRATES who are sitting back laughing themselves SILLY at the PUBLISHERS for their lame attempts at making life harder for their TRUE CUSTOMERS while the PIRATES just take a few days longer and get what they want ANYWAY! :rolleyes:

moron. copy protection is there to deter piracy which means more people buy their games which means their games stay at a reasonable price. if there were no star force and such everyone would copy the game and to even make a profit the game companies would have to start charging 10-15 dollars more per game. now tell me that copy protection hurts the consumer when it keeps the price the same. also, the only reason copy protection causes you trouble is because you want to play the games you dont own. i can tell you with 99% assurance that if you didnt do anything to your system and you use NO cd cracks, every game in the market with copy protection will work, be it out of the box, or beyond no more than a simple patch from the manufacturer. sorry but it's the truth.

WRONG! you need to do some research my friend, also, banned for a week, keep your language in the toilet ;)

Well your one of the few that say this and do it, others use the same excuse to take away the fact they stole software bottom line.

Even if you do what you said you do, if no demo was available, you still stole the game.

Im not putting you down, far from it.

And yes at the end of the day its a business, they have to make money somehow.

But I disagree with you on the last paragraph, the people WHO are laughing is the CD-rw/DVD-rw manufacturers both media and hardware, they seen that kids with broadband are downloading illegally and seen the market for supplying the things to them for them to make copying profitable. Thats the biggest winners right there.

you're becoming more hatefull(is that correct???)than BW :rolleyes:

Im not sure as to what your argument is refering to in my posts. But yes I agree there is hardware that will replicate a hard-pressed master many times, you can get raid towers for home PC's that can do the same job.

They may have money, but that doesnt mean they have the means to defeat any protection.

Some protections like the PSX and PS2 games have their protection on the outer tracks of a disc, impossible for burners to burn there, but as said before if they have a master then it can be done on large scale machinery that spit out discs in seconds.

DRM as you pointed out will be the next step, and it is a bad one I agree on that, but at the same time publishers/developers have to protect their media, just like you protect your car with an alarm or a keycode lock. Again as I said its a business, and its about making money.

Sure it costs little to replicate discs and packaging, but when people are turning to piracy as a means, they businesses use this as an excuse to pump up prices and to in turn use whacky protections.

Its a Catch22 situation that will never go away, until perhaps the Cell CPU appears which promises to make protections go a step further.

Whose BW?

@DABhand

BW is the hatefull guy.

I believe Luci is refering to Bounty Warrior.

Are you feeling the SWORD OF DAMOKLES above your heads? :D
BountyWarrior isn't BountyWarrior anymore. His name is now JoyBoy, and he is still SuperModerator of this board.

LOL i love the way you bolded still. Like your after his job or something :P

as in

"Damn that guy is still here"

lol :P

:D

Hey DABHand,

Let me rephrase what I want to say and be extremely concrete.

In China, there are complete factories that burn warezed CD's. Do they ask kids to download warez? No, they manage it themselves. Do they ask people to crack stuff for them? Doesn't matter as cracked stuff is available on the Net. Do they have problems with copy protected stuff? Of course, not. Are they making EXTREME profit with this? Oh, hell they do!

Your neighbor has a few kids. He doesn't want them to break his game CD's. Does he download warez from the Net? No, he hasn't even heard the word "warez" (yet). Does he know about the copy protection? Well, not yet, but as soon as he asks around and tries to back up his game CD's, he definitely will. At the end, will he be able to backup his stuff? Oh, hell he won't, not even after lots of struggles. Will the game publisher help him with sending him another copy of the CD,after his kids did manage to break the original? Yeah, for about 1/4-1/2 the price of another original.

Copy protection hurts the honest customer, the very person that all companies are making software for. Copy protection does NOT hurt people who try to make money from warez. And circumventing the copy protection has been an intellectual challenge for some people, just like "climbing the Himalaya, only for the damn reason that IT IS THERE" - and this is completely independent of warezing and pirating stuff...

Joe

Im afraid to say that you seem to be fixed on the pro-warez arguments there.


Who said warez isnt hurting people, offcourse it does, the less thats bought the less money goes back into developers, next time their games will be crap because no-one had the decency to buy it or some job cuts cause they cant keep up with all the salaries, then that in turn hurts people around them, etc etc.


Copy Protections wouldnt be so severe if everyone werent greedy gits, thats a fact.


I know about protections as ive been removing them since amiga times and BBS's on 9600 baud modems! I still remember the fun of rewriting track 40 and injecting a intro into track 80 and 81.

But people still bought their games in a majority then, maybe around 70-80%ish.

Now with the advent of cheap broadband, kids find out how do use torrents, how to use XDCC bots, how to use ftp's, how to use newsgroups. And what will they do? They download and never pay.

But what I hate is when people have to use excuses to make their stealing look legal. "I wasnt going to buy the game so im not hurting anyone by downloading it" and the all time favourite of the mass "Im not buying any games as they are ripping us off with high prices".

Ill be the first person to put their hand up and say I once did it, everyone at one point has, maybe not games or movies but the most blatant mp3's. But now I choose to buy games as ive seen how piracy affects others, a guy (I wont name him) had a small time software house, he worked hard on a game he was working on and was looking at a projected $250k sales, the game an RTS was only $5 he made $30kish he couldnt pay for other things as he had to borrow money from a bank to start his venture. His site had a live chat script, sorta like the old livesupport script from years back, although you couldnt see him you could feel his pain in his words, he was apologising to people for not being able to send out his game to them after they paid him and was asking them to be patient. That then is when I decided to go down the straight and narrow.


I must say you have a very very jaded view of the scene, and very pro-warez in a manner of speaking.


At the end of the day, im not gonna buy a new TV so ill steal yours, that would be exceptable yes? Or maybe grab your (for arguments sake) wedding video and mass-manufacturer it and sell it, you gonna be happy im making a mint out of it at your expense? No offcourse not.

anyways

[/end of rant]