Optimise the demaster-tool for all versions of the game

[Perfect-Chaos]

Hello dear FF8 Demaster-Team!

I get the error "An unknown exception has occured" when starting the "FFVIII_LAUNCHER.exe". After doing research for a while I found the thread "[FF8:R] Demaster unofficial patch" on "forums.qhimm.com" with some other people having the same problem... and well seems like the problem originates from me using a cracked version of the game, which is fair enough.
But at the end of the thread there was a very small discussion if it could be positive if the demaster-tool would work an all game versions. The discussion was cut short and the arguments were pretty... well lets say one-dimensional but I really really wanted to present a more wider perspective but there does not seem to be any possibility to register at this forum anymore (I get no verification mail and OpenID is pretty dead). So I wanted to contact Maki directly but as I have seen that there are more contributers to this project I thought I should post it here.

At first there was the argument "Your definitely legal software that allows extracting, modifying and re-releasing trademarked artwork (often behind a patreon paywall) does not support piracy…" to which Maki responded "...EULA is just some weird long text with many difficult words- that's really sad because I speaking English bad very and I'm good no this language". Well just because one does not understand the EULA does not invalidate it. As far as I understand it, you dont have the rights to manipulate ANY game files, which this tool clearly is doing by making the game run on extracted files. For games especially you dont OWN them or the files, you just buy a LICENSE to play them in the completely un-altered state. This is one reason why online games immediately can ban you if they detect that you have altered the files.

From a completely fan standpoint I also can understand another mentioned argument of not wanting to pay multiple times for the same game. All the more if the greedy publishers lost the sourcecode because they just do not care at all for their game and try to make a quick buck with a "remastered" version by just slapping some new textures on the character models and menus. I personally bought the game six times: the platinum psx version as a start, the original PC version from EIDOS, the first PSX edition for collectors purposes, the PS store version for the PSP, the android version und finally (for a short time) the remastered version on steam which brings me to my next point...

The remastered version on steam was (at least in the beginning) a complete shitshow!!! The "remastered" part is underwhelming (like it was said in another post "Maki has spent a lot of time fixing the barebones mess square enix created."), it crashed constantly and you were forced to be ALWAYS ONLINE(!!!)... for a damn singleplayer game from 1999 without any online content. This version was such an insult for me as a long time fan that I have refunded it and will never buy it again.

So finally that brings me into a very weird position... I have supported MCindus on patreon for a very long time because he does SUCH a great job for this awesome game, I even talked with him on discord while he textured some backgrounds. But it seems that I can never really appreciate his hard work because I still refuse to give Square Enix any of my hard earned money for being these parasites they are by living off the hard work of others and dont do any work on their own.

TL;DR
In my humble opinion: If you really are on the site of these hard working fans, which I think you somehow should be by investing your own free time and work to help anyone keep this awesome game alive, and if you have the option to make your tool work with all versions, you should do it. If you really hate cracked versions (and the game preservation aspect which also comes with it and which publishers really dont care for) you could implement an option to check if the original PSX or PC disk is in the computer before executing your tool, like it was mentioned in another argument in the thread.

All in all it is great that many people have many different opinions and that the internet allows us to discuss these opinions in a very mannered way. And even if we have different opinions I want to say a very big THANK YOU for your very great work and that you have done this for free and in you free time. Iam a programmer myself so I can somehow understand what it does take to do such things in your free time when you also do it for a living. So...

Dziękuję!! Dziękuję!! Bardzo dziękuję!!!
And also Sláva Ukrayíni!!!

[MaKiPL]

That EULA comment and English understanding was actually a joke, ironic response to a guy that registered on the forum just to make such a post, lot's of coincidences happened that time and I still believe that the post author might have been someone involved in the porting process, but it's just my assumption. Anyway- the demaster is not manipulating any kind of file at all (except the game code). The original game used DirectSound and still have it as a dependency. That way by putting just some additional files to the game catalogue, the game reads my library which puts binary patches to the game code which is currently executing. The part with manipulation with the archive touches only the demaster-manager part, which allows to unpack the .zzz archives. That's more or less a basic unpacker.
About the license- the reverse engineering and manipulating comply to European Union Court statement. I'll quote the most important part:
"
Licensees are in certain cases permitted to decompile software code without infringing the Software Directive. In a judgement of 6 October 2021 in the case C-13/20, the Court of Justice of European Union (CJEU) ruled that insofar decompiling is necessary to debug the software, regardless of whether it is prohibited by the license agreement, the licensee is free to do so without being subject to Article 6 of the Software Directive.
"

• https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f5b1193c-f423-4f96-bca5-03f5145ecf15

Anyway, the license and EULA is the LEAST important thing here. Honestly- I do not care about cracked soft. Thing is that on the timeline of versions of the game (starting from 1000 to 1030) there were no changes at all to FFVIII.exe or launcher. Only the most important thing used to be changed which is EFIGS and JP DLL files (those with 20/30MB+). They contain the game code only, not the "protection" and Steam requirements. Therefore what's the game code DLL difference between 1.0.3.0 pirated/cracked/torrented version versus Steam 1.0.3.0 original one? NONE. It's not that demaster doesn't support pirated copies- correct statement that is fully true is: demaster at the most up-to-date version is not supporting 1.0.0.0 game code DLL, not "pirated" copy, the 1.0.0.0 and 1.0.1.0 and 1.0.2.0 are unsupported. That means that if you have cracked 1.0.3.0 version of the game, then demaster will fully support it. There's no hidden protection.

The demaster utilizes AFAIR 40-50 addresses, on which it puts different assembler patches or from which it calculates another addresses. Every recompile of the game logic DLL (therefore every single next version of the game) completely swaps the addresses. That means I have to one-by-one find the address in the new version of the game. It's extremely time-consuming needle in haystack job. It means I have to recompile and reverse everything once again. There's no scheme to that. I can't find one address and then just calculate the difference and apply that difference to other addresses- no, unfortunately.
Not only we have different versions but also different language versions. To support 1.0.0.0 and 1.0.1.0 and 1.0.2.0 and 1.0.3.0 version means I have to reverse enginner 8 different DLLs and then find the same parts of assembler code to match them. Thankfully there are automated softwares that pairs block of similar code execution flows to another library. That way I was able to support 1.0.3.0 JP version much quicker than 1.0.2.0>1.0.3.0 upgrade.

Summary:

• Demaster is not having any kind of anti-pirated-game protection or preventions
• Demaster supports 1.0.3.0 because finding code addresses in other versions is time consuming. Any new feature that gets added to the game requires me to redo search on 7 other DLLs (4 versions * 2 language variations)
• If you get cracked 1.0.3.0 game, then demaster will work with it
• The crack is made for FFVIII.exe, not the game logic DLL which demaster is using.
• It wraps 40-50 different addresses. Inserts code hooking and manual assembler blocks to do changes to the code
• I'm not sure if any of the updates didn't change any of my code injections in any place. Whenever there's a crash after I'll find the addresses I still don't know what's the cause of the problem and have to redo checking everything up to byte level.
• I'm lazy

Soo... If you're willing to pair the addresses by yourself, then I already made the address table for each of the versions, which obviously 1.0.3.0 is the only full one.

EDIT: Online games ban people for altering files because it's protection against cheating in multiplayer games. If I play multiplayer I want to play fair, not again wallhack, aimbots or someone who replaced grass texture with fully translucent one to still cheat but by altering the game files. It's what every player expects from the game on-line, to prevent cheating happening. Not doing so will kill whole player base. On the off-line games side though- it's totally no use to ban someone from altering files

[Perfect-Chaos]

WOW thank you very very much for your very fast and extremely detailed resonse, I really do appreciate it!

By discussing the matter in such detail I finally can understand what causes the problems and what makes your tool work, thanks again for that. By just reading this only thread I could find about this "problem" after an extensive search and by comparing the pro and con arguments I thought the problems were "merely" caused by a moral standpoint.

Unfortunately my expertise does no lie anywhere near game development or OS-specific programming but rather in target independent software created in Java. I have coded some little mods here and there but only in LUA or Java and the last time I have coded something in C++ was while getting my bachelors degree. So while theoretically understanding the problems you are describing I would have a really hard learning curve to conquer until Iam anywhere near solving them on my own.

So thanks again for giving me a concrete insight and even more thanks for your work at all! Have a great day!

Response to you EDIT:
Yeah I know that unfairness in cheating is the main purpose for pursuing and banning the alteration of files in multiplayer games but afaik the "licensing vs. owning games" and the therefore not really legal act of altering things ist the legal base of executing these actions like bans.