Ubisoft encrypted CD with several full games inside (or maybe demos??)

I found a plain CD, silver on both sides, with a plain "Ubisoft" logo printed on top. This was in 2007 at a car boot sale.
I bought it thinking it was be a silly demo disc. It is in fact something out of Ubisoft, because it contains a launcher file that works in DOS, and several hidden folders for different games:
Leisure Suit Larry, Sargon 5, Chess Player, Explora and others

Trying to launch a game gets me a passcode request and I don't have any passcode of course. Somehow, I hexed my way through some of the general files in the root dir, and found the name of a guy. I totally forgot the name but at the time (2008) I managed to find his email and contacted him, he told me he was a programmer and Ubisoft would send him games in CDs/floppies for him to encrypt/copy protect. I went back to my emails but all the old ones were deleted by me some time ago, so I can't show you those emails

I have a vague memory of being able to launch Chess Player at some point, no idea how I did, and some other games would freeze upon launch.

So conclusion, I don't have the CD with me now, I've lost the emails with the encryption guy, and all I have is what I posted on the Ubisoft forum in 2007
https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.p...Soft-disc-Developer-s-disc-Thanks-for-helping


Maybe someone has a similar disc? I'd love to find it again one day. Maybe it contains beta versions, in fact I also have memory of noticing that Chess Player was not matching screenshots I googled. Could be my memory playin tricks on me though

 

Found the disc copy I made back then.

Install.bat goes to a password screen:

All these games are present on the disc, or demo versions. I think they are full versions protected by a password for internal or external debug. cd is blank with ubisoft printed on it

--------------------------------------------------
D1 = Sargon 5 - Chess Player 2150
D2 = King's Quest V - Explora III
D4 = Leisure Suite Larry V - Perfect General
D5 = Red Baron - Railroad Tycoon
D6 = Silent Service II - Red Storm
D7 = Mig-29 Fulcrum - Gunship
***
F (Full Action) = Kick Off 2 - First Samurai - Mig-29
G (Golden 10) = Railroad Tycoon - Silent Service II - Red Storm - Gunship - Mig-29 - Kick Off 2 - First Samurai - The Perfect General - Chess Player 2150 - MegaLoMania
P (Power 3) = Railroad Tycoon - Silent Service II - The Perfect General
***
BI = Battle Isle
GC2 = Great Courts II
KO2 = KickOff 2
MLM = Mega Lo Mania
SAM = First Samurai
------------------------------------------------------------

I had managed to find a guy's name by opening some TXT files found on the disc, one example:

rem --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
rem Menuing System Copyright (c) 1994 Rob Northen Computing, UK. All Rights Reserved.
rem --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
rem
rem Menu Title, Copyright Message
rem
"Chess Player 2150 - Manual", "Copyright (c) 1994 Ubi Soft"
rem
rem Menu Item Name, Directory, Executable File Name, Optional Installation File Name
rem
"English", ".", "", ""
"Franis", ".", "", ""
"Deutsch", ".", "", ""



Rob Northen sent me a reply saying he did the encryption/protection for this disc but he didn't remember anything else.

Is there a way we can crack the install.bat?

 

In an interview with Rob (http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=10123)

In the early days I would produce the final protected master myself and send it back to the publisher or straight onto the duplicator. Later, when I had developed routines straightforward enough for the game developers to implement themselves I would send out a set of Copylock Keydisks each with a unique serial number embedded in the format of the disk. This was the preferred method, as it would leave me more time to develop better routines. When I could afford to buy a Trace 1006 duplicator I was able to create my own keydisks and experiment with new methods of track and sector formatting.

Yes, this arrangement worked very well. I sent out literally hundreds of jiffy bags containing Copylock routines and keydisks to publishers and game developers.

Maybe this is one of the disks rob sent back to ubisoft after protecting it?
i did find the disc in france in a yard sale

 

(Another) Interview with Rob:
http://codetapper.com/amiga/interviews/rob-northen/

About copylock :
https://info-coach.fr/atari/software/protection.php

and how to crack it (early versions) :

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=60378

ftp://codetapper.com/pub/exotica/old_website_mirrors/action/microprose_soccer.html

 

Upload the iso

 

I was a young marmot at the time so I didn't make a disc image; I simply copied the content of the disc. Now I don't have access to the disc, so that's all I can share.

Let me upload what I have tomorrow

 

Thanks for the additional links. I linked the wrong address, I meant to link to the Codetapper link

In that interview, Rob says at one point he had to remove the protection for companies who released compilations, which is what this disc is. So yeah, not sure what the exact purpose of my disc was, could have been from Rob to Ubisoft after applying protection, or from Ubisoft to Rob to remove it? Or maybe it has nothing to do with Rob and it was sent with protection to testers/reviewers. Surely not final code with that ugly launcher asking for a password.

"I never actually 'quit' the Amiga, the work just dried up when publishers stopped releasing the games. By around 1994/1995 new game releases were getting few and far between. Ironically, publishers were releasing a lot of game compilations then and sending me games to remove the protection."

 

content of the disc is fine. Will have a look at getting the password from it.

 

sending to you now

found old scan i made! came in plain white cardboard sleeve.

cd ring reads
"BUDGET-1 I-9353 A"