With great pride I announce we have a working selfboot for geist force!

That's a amazing job!

 

He his a real *god* and does not want recognition at all (will stay anonymous forever), talk about a great person!!

 

Thanks a Lot to everyone involved,
Special Thanks to Legit, who sacrificed both, money and time for bringing this game to the community and to our anonymous Friend, who finally got it to self boot.

Really appreciate the work and time all of you guys sacrificed for this to happen.

 

whoo. yeah i can def wait till a public release comes out. i wish i would have donated that day everybody chipped in. but oh well. nicely done everyone.

 

Hope your gran is ok.

(Good work hacker people)

 

I still need someone to help me donate my remaining monies. If someone in the UK can do a paypal transfer for me and accept a bank transfer I'd be forever grateful.

 

Best wishes to ASSEMbler


Here is some more info on how the ripping fix works for Geist Force although this still doesn't answer everything:

1. the bootbin is actually untouched apart from being scrambled

2. IP.BIN is what does the trick

A. Unlike a standard IP.hak, there is no need to revert "descrambling" as the bootbin is scrambled

B. the syscall vector at 8c0000bc is patched for 3 GD calls: 1. GD init 2. GD check command and 3. GD check drive.
We know GF is making direct syscalls bypassing the vector. So I guess this is from another sample IP.hak and does not serve any purpose here.

C. GD_init routine is patched for mode 2 reading as does a standard IP.hak with a subtle different:
IP.hak sets an internal register A05F74E4 before patching while the fix sets the register after the patching.
A05F74E4 is undocumented and even NullDC will give a message that "writing to this register is not implemented"
So how the fix works is still a mystery but I think A05F74E4 is the key.

 

According to cracker, it was modified to force mode2 reading. Original game was forcing mode1 reading. GD-ROM are written in mode 1, while cd-r are in mode 2, thus the problem we had.

It was not a protection after all, only an odd design inherent to the early developpement of the game!

So I must retract on how this was cracked, as it seems it was not disassembled then reassembled, this particular hacker proved to be able to do it in the past thouh. I guess he dissassembled it to understand the problem and then modified the ip.bin accordingly.

Cheers,

FG

 

Cool stuff. The game was developed on early dev hardware and libs, that's probably why it works that way. Kudos for the hacker! ray:

 

That's great news! Looking forward to playing it!

Sorry to hear about your Grandmother, Kev. Mine's getting progressively worse, and I'm sure a lot of us are in the same boat, so we know what it's like. I hope she recovers soon.

 

i'll take a weekend in my vacation for this game. cant wait, nice work.

 

What's going on with the artwork? Did someone clean up the picture Yakumo posted?

 

Nope, it was started but not finished. Actually I printed off my own covers using a laser printer and they came out very well considering the poor paper I used. If ASSEMbler uses a quality printing house with good software I don't think a cleaned up copy will be needed since the software does it for you. I'll post pictures of mine later on. I'm 12 stories under the sea at the moment taking a breather from my work out.

Yakumo

EDIT:

Here you go. These covers aren't cut very well and were printed on really low grade paper but as you can see, even on such poor paper they still look pretty good. Printed on high quality professional stock will look much better.

I've watermarked the pictures just in case some smart arse thinks they can sell this on EBay as actually owning the game.

 

Wow that looks insanely incredible...

I think before pressing this. Don't you want to have someone really dig into the game and at least complete it, to make sure no additional bug fixes are required.

Seems a shame for dedicated assembler not to get one at point even if they didn't have a chance to donate. Maybe as a incentive for the next fundraiser?

 

Other members will be able to print their very own covers once I release the cover art or they could have a stab at making their own. After all, the back cover and spine for this cover were made by me. There is no official back cover or spine however I have used the official text that was going to be printed on the back cover and spine when released thanks to a secret provider.

 

Nice work Yakumo. Looks really great when you see the covers in the case like that.

 

amazing printing result ! Can't wait to see the final result

 

When the game gets released it should have included a box cover and a cd/lightscribe image. XD

Congrats to everyone that made this possible, and of course the donnors.

Thank you all

 

I snagged the scan Yakumo posted. I've been working on a full set of front/back/inlays in the white and black US styles for those who are interested in that kind of cover. I'll also do a DVD case for those who might recognize my name and know the blue and white DVD style I use.

I'll probably do some low key disc artwork that's close to what retail games look like as well, but with a bit more color.

 

thanks for all the efforts made on the inlays.