Hack9 and Hacker9 are in English now!

[MasterBismuth]

Okay, at this point I’ve watched every Hack9 walkthrough. Overall, I can’t help but feel as though the wait of the past 10 years was largely for naught. The game appears to be vastly frustrating from beginning to end. The weapons, well, all the bullet-based guns are literally the level 1 Polar Star from Cave Story, and you can’t power them up in this game. The levels are designed to be just about as difficult as possible at all times. Get an item? Bet you’re gonna need it a lot in the near future. The enemies? Obnoxiously difficult with almost any but the best weapons obtained at the end. MP limits one’s fighting range tremendously.

The way I see it, I could probably put in an hour per day grinding out yen per day for a few weeks to build up my HP and MP by buying those booster items from the salesman on the Battleship at 120 a pop. But that’s for suckers, and while I’m as much of a sucker as anyone in the industry, it strikes me that I don’t care to take this approach on my own. It took me roughly 10-15 minutes going back and forth through the first area with enemies to make 120 gold. I did some notebook maths and found that if I take the mean of those two times, combined with some more unscientifically negligent calculations, I get roughly 208 hours, on average, to grind HP and MP to 999 from the start. This doesn’t necessarily (that adjective might be the key here) account for transit, purchase, save, and death recovery times though. The real number is probably close to 300 hours (total, uneducated guess).

Anyway, I did these calculations because I thought, for a while, about trying to grind my way to 999HP and 999MP. That’s what the 208 hour span represents: tons of wasted time. Ergo, I am now going with my alternate idea.

The alternative to grinding is hacking. Why not hack the GAME_DATA.DAT file to find and change the value for the current amount of money. My approach involves a histogram function to help me find the least-commonly occurring byte in the file. After that, I will note the least common byte and its positions in the file. Thereafter, I will convert that byte to decimal and grind the amount of cash equal to that number in the game. Once that is done, I will save again and rerun the histogram. This will allow me to see which byte value(s) has|have incremented. Finding the position of the byte that changed to the target value will help me pinpoint the current cash carried by Snort. Hopefully, I can hex edit that and then increase my overall cash reserves, thus allowing me near-invulnerability from max HP, tremendous fighting power with max MP, and extra cash to throw at things throughout the game.

Thus far I’ve failed to write it in 3 programming languages. I feel hopelessly rusty, and I was never a fan of C+±based file i/o.

Fortunately, my Perl and GNU/Linux mentor has taken it upon himself to write the utility I need in Perl.

Here goes nothing.

[MasterBismuth]

Goddammit, so close and yet so far away.

So I found the candidate byte, changed it from 74h to FFh. I succeeded in thereby cranking my money to 255. Alas, I was both insufficiently and overly daring, so I ended up screwing the file up by saving over the version that had 116d, 74h for the money count. Upon reloading, I found that GHex couldn’t take me to the exact address I needed with the “Find Byte” function.

I hate dealing with hex shit. I was clearly a misguided MASM enthusiast when I opined on the notion of becoming a ROM hacker.

I’d appreciate any help with this. In the meantime, I must have a smoke and then figure out a way forward. I think I know what to do.

The difficulty is that while 115d and 116d were relatively uncommon bytes, 255d is extremely prevalent among the bytes of this hex file. I need to stick to rare values. I think the thing to do is reload my file with 115d money, get 116d money, and go back to my old notes about where that byte was. I recall it being rather conspicuously placed in the editor, as it was at the beginning of a line (and Ubuntu is making it difficult to differentiate the line address from the first byte, as the style offers no obviously clickable or expandable separator; could also just be the application).

Oh wait, I did save the version with 116d yen in my inventory and successfully modified it back to 255d. However, my first attempt at expanding to a greater size of number caused me to warp into a weird spot in the wall on some level. I think I changed an 08h outside the likely 32-bit [unsigned?] integer representing the money.

Wait, I may be on the verge of success.

[MasterBismuth]

Sweet Success!

A quick note about that hex editor picture, the right-most byte, 0x08, is NOT part of the 4 bytes that define the current money in the game. Since the game is a 32-bit executable, the current supply of yen is contained in the first four bytes of data. Also note that the number, being little-endian per the operating conventions of Windows and x86/64 CPUs, the number begins from the leftmost byte to the rightmost. Honestly, I cannot recommend putting your money up even as high as I did. Just gaze upon the screenshot at the top and you’ll see that I’ve nearly overflowed the money counter, at least positionally speaking. I also dunno if the 32-bit integer representing the money is signed or unsigned.

One interesting note about the 0x08 byte is that it seems to represent the position from which one begins when loading the game. It’s the byte that, when changed to 0x00, sent me from the load screen directly inside of a wall somewhere late in the game. I haven’t played with values for it, but it might be interesting to chart where various values send you. I imagine the position byte is probably also a multi-byte value.

It turns out there are only 99 HP Boosters and MP Boosters each available from the guy in the Battleship, so that really throws off my estimates of how much time it would have taken to grind out 999 of HP and MP.

It would actually take a lot less time because the MP Boost really provides a larger boost in MP than the HP booster does (that appears to go 2 at a time, but maybe not).

Anyway, I’ll upload my save file when I can get a steady URL for it, which is pretty much right at the start but with some tedium subtracted from the ensuing gameplay.

Now that I’m all Hacked up, I’m ready to play this thing. I’d still like to stream a good, English-language walkthrough for it though. I need to see if Twitch can provide me with some sort of means of recording my screen.

[MasterBismuth]

https://haggishell.com/murb/hack9/

So here is the file at the link posted atop this particular post. Thanks to my mentor, OldCoder, for the hosting.

Please let me know if you try the file, whether or not it works, etc. I imagine it would, but one never does truly know, after all.

Anyway, with aid of this file I can theoretically assure that almost anyone can play the game. You’ll still get killed by certain kinds of hazards (spikes, bottomless pits) and enemies (the white, mechanized-looking ninjas have deadly sword swings that do 9999 damage) no matter what, but you’ll never need to worry about money and lesser enemies are particularly nonthreatening.

Enjoy!

[MasterBismuth]

I recently got vokoscreen working on my Ubuntu installation, which means I can record my screen while I play Hack9.

At the moment I’m stuck on the SPIKEHELL level, which is on the 2nd floor of the game (out of 5 floors total).

I’m getting really tired of dealing with SPIKEHELL. If I could have influenced BLACK BASTARD, my influence would have been to have him avoid making this stupid, annoying level. No amount of hacked save file can resist spikes with their 9999 damage. The second room in SPIKEHELL is, by far, the worst of the worst. One has to not only hop on a tank that is actively trying to kill Snort, one also has to ride that tank from the left side of the level to the right while also evading soldiers, a mech, and a goddamn attack helicopter.

I think if BLACK BASTARD had stopped to think about it he might not have had the enemy soldiers assembling and driving helicopters inside of a cavern system. Just a thought, yo.

One trick I’ve been using, and it’s a dirty one, is to take damage and then traverse the spikes while Snort is still blinking from the damage. This makes everything go a lot easier.

I still need to find a good video editing suite for GNU/Linux. I’ve always wanted to try Cinelerra but I’m too impatient to compile that complicated beast of a suite.

[contentdeleted]

You probably already noticed but the way to traverse spike hell is through the hidden drops in the floor.

Also please post your recordings! I’ve given up on playing this sadistic game but I’d like to see what happens

[MasterBismuth]

What? @contentdeleted Explain this at once, please. Ideally an explanation with screenshots.

I have noticed sections of the floor where there appears to be some sort of glimmering, golden poop in certain spiked areas.

Hopefully those things are available on the second screen as well, because that screen is merciless.

Thus far no recordings. I feel like I might start over from the beginning for the sake of completeness, but at the same time I don’t really want to. I guess maybe that’s the sensation I get from the notion of flushing perfectly good progress in this blisteringly difficult game down the shitter.

[MasterBismuth]

So I finally got the Power Unit from SPIKEHELL on 2F and managed to actually make it back to the start.

I seem to recall an area in 1F that I couldn’t reach without this item. Sort of makes me wonder just what the heck is up there.

I have the means to stream but not the confidence, nor a video editing suite to cut all the tedious crap from my screw ups. I feel like there must be a decent video editing package on Linux somewhere, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is at this moment in time.

[contentdeleted]

Oh what I completely forgot about this somehow.

So I went back to record a gif and it turns out I was thinking of PITFALL, SPIKEHELL is several rooms after that.

I am sorry for getting your hopes up, but to be fair, I found PITFALL more annoying because I kept forgetting where the gaps are and falling too far.

[MasterBismuth]

I finally made my twitch.tv channel @MasterBismuth. Alas, there was a link to it, but its poor quality and abundance of information about my hostname and the like necessitated its deletion. It is a lamentable case of me putting the cart before the horse as I attempt to get things done on inadequate hardware and in a blind fury.

When the video was around it showed a glimpse of both the fundamental stat boost provided by my hack as well as the fact that I am currently having one Hell of a time finding up-to-date Ubuntu OBS tutorials or even tutorials that skip the OS-specifics and just get down to the nitty gritty of calculations regarding optimization of frame rates. It was a predictably rotten first attempt.

I should know more about this shit, I was a professional video editor. Granted, that was at least as long ago as the invention of rocks.

The video has the unintended, added bonus of my horrible voice filtered through the microphone of this ramshackle laptop.

I am not proud of this, but I still feel a specific need to dedicate myself to fucking this game into the shape of a YouTube walkthrough eventually.

Need to check out some videos on Linux video editors though, since I think it’ll be easier to use vokoscreen to do my playthrough recordings, edit the footage down to cut out the tedium of unnecessary death, and then record my commentary as I watch the footage with audacity recording my voice from my good microphone (which, alas, I’m going to have to rely on my folks to get; I’d say at this point they’d probably be inclined to throw me out on the street if it weren’t more to their tastes to watch me wallow in boredom and futility.)

Edit: Actually, having spent some time with OBS I think it’s closer to what I need to have to make this thing happen. Unfortunately it extracts a significant performance penalty upon this machine.

[MasterBismuth]

One noteworthy difficulty concerning the walkthroughs on NicoNico is that a lot of them are using the original Japanese Hack9 engine. The English translated Hack9 (and in all likelihood the presently available Japanese binary as well) now use the Hacker9 engine. The difference in what happens with the physics probably has little to no bearing on the practicalities of the game, save that it’s perfectly possible to push a useful item into a spike pit.

This Spoiler-ridden scene of depravity begins right at SPIKE HELL, the area I’ve only just recently beaten. The thing that makes it rather remarkable to watch is that in this version of the game the bullets from the tanks break the blocks above that one is eventually expected to traverse after enduring two screens worth of the most hatefully nerve-wracking game design I’ve ever witnessed. That said, it probably won’t affect the veracity of the walkthrough even on the current build of Hack9.

Unfortunately NicoNico’s approach to streaming is miserly as all Hell so I have to watch this same stressful area repeatedly in hopes of extracting a clue as to where I need to go next. The commander said something about a “PDA” (maybe a story element? maybe not. I haven’t paid close enough attention.) that I need to reach having successfully delivered him the C source code found at the end of SPIKE HELL. I’m definitely stuck on 2F until I figure that out. A brief examination proves rather conclusively that 3F is wholly inaccessible at this point.

Somehow I feel as though a boss may be a likely appearance in my future.

edit: Somehow I think I actually do know where I need to go next. It’s a screen that inspires such intense dread and frustration that I seem to continuously forget about it. One floor below the SPIKE HELL entrance in 2F is a room called TRIPWIRE. This room is full of breakable crates, a few of those moving blocks that cause damage, and these strange patches of white, webbed nonsense. This is the part I need to refer to the Japanese walkthroughs for a solution to, because looking at it straight on there is no apparent way to traverse it without making contact with one of the white blocks, which automatically warp you back to the transportation tower inside of the Battleship.

However, the player in the video from the last post seems to enter it in the later half of the run length of that vid, so I guess I’m about to see the solution. For the sake of sparing myself the NicoVideo load times in the future I’ll probably try to describe the method of getting through via spoiler text in an edit to this post.

[MasterBismuth]

I absolutely despise the TRIPWIRE area. I can’t understand if I need to change something somewhere to get through it or what but it looks unnavigable in its default form.

Apparently, judging from that Nico video I linked in the last post, I need to go and find the area with all the waterfalls over the bottomless pit and get to a small door on the left side that delivers you into the lower-right corner of a room containing a computer. That computer seems to be the intended target of the hacking program that the Commander compiled using the .C source code I found in the last room above the entrance to SPIKEHELL. It’s also worth noting that there’s a whole left side to that room where the source code was found that I don’t know how to access due to spikes lining the tunnel leading over. Feels like a red herring.

Also, I found an item similar to Stealth Camo somewhere. Wish I could recall where though. It seemed to be a little bit of an out-of-the-way spot, but placed in such a way that it seems like a sort of “shrine” to the item.

I’ve been super lazy about finding a good video editing suite. I rather fear that there isn’t one. Ultimately I pine for the suite I learned on: Vegas. Alas, that’s Windows software and I’m a broke-ass with no reasonably functional Windows machine.

One thing that is apparent to me is that OBS, while the de-facto streaming software it may be, is a bit much for this machine. Far easier if I use vokoscreen since it seems to result in no discernible performance impact even when recording at full resolution.

[loki]

there’s a new, ninja-themed blackbastard game coming out later this week (at comiket 95)! cyber shinobi i believe is the title (or maybe cyber ninja? they’re both already the titles of videogames though!)

[MasterBismuth]

Have they come out with the trailer for Comiket 95’s doujin games? If there’s something to be seen then there will probably be a preview of it somewhere in that catalogue.

[loki]

yes

the confusion regarding the title is totally down to my limited ability to read japanese

[MasterBismuth]

Google Translate gives the title as, “Cyber Shinobi” as it was displayed on that C95 page. Amazingly, I have yet to see the first thing about this game but I see that it shares the polygonal style of the cut scenes we’ve seen in trailers for Ghost9 Solid (save the sharp Bowsette teeth). In fact, it seems to be the same engine as Ghost9 Solid, save that all the characters are actually 3D for this one.

Looks as though it could be fun but it clearly has a ways to go.

I still can’t figure out if the only way to get Ghost9 Solid is to buy them off of Toranoana or MelonBooks. I can’t decide if it’s a commercial release or just a really fancy preview disk.

I sure hope wahiko94 releases both G9S and CS in English. Maybe I should tweet at him about this. Already had my hopes dashed for a simultaneous release in JP/EN of G9S since it only seems to be available on DVD.

[MasterBismuth]

Today I asked the folks at Twitch via Twitter whether or not the use of my Hack9 hack on my (hopefully forthcoming) stream would constitute a violation of the ToS provisions of Twitch respecting the use of cheats on streams. Logically speaking, it shouldn’t matter at all. Hack9 is a single-player game and absolutely nobody’s time would be ruined by my use of it. It also helps that I made it, but this is only one type of logic.

My fear is that if I do stream using my hack the folks at Twitch might take a hardline stance and just ban me arbitrarily. I don’t think this fear is unjustified. There’s no monetary value to showing clemency to a small, unknown streamer. Only popular streamers that bring home the bacon tend to get special treatment. If anything I expect to be treated with excess cruelty.

I honestly doubt I will even get a reply to my tweet. I might have to send an email so I can explain the matter in a few more words.

My hack would be tantamount to entering a Game Genie or PAR code for a 16-bit console game and then streaming that ('cept I didn’t have to deal with some insipid shit of a code obscuring the hexidecimal values via weak cipher). Do they allow people playing ROMs and classic single-player games to cheat?

Oh well, ultimately the answer will dictate whether or not I end up playing Hack9 on Twitch. If they have a problem with it then hopefully I can stream it on YouTube instead.

Also:
Would anyone potentially be interested in providing a guest voice on any of my Hack9 streams? It’d probably just be a Discord voice-chat that I could link you into the stream with. If anyone is interested please PM me.

[Gate88]

The Community Guidelines only mention cheating/hacking in the context of online multiplayer games (or exploiting other broadcasters) so I think you’re fine. Unless you’re seeing language somewhere else that implies single player games too?

[MasterBismuth]

Ah, okay. For some reason that struck me as ambiguous the last time I read it. I wonder if maybe the word, “online” was only added to that verbiage recently? I doubt it. Occam’s Razor dictates the error is almost certainly mine. What I recall seeing–no doubt a false memory–was something that omitted the word, “online.”

Okay, I feel more confident about this. Time to take to Twitter to own up to my own idiocy. Thanks Gate88!

[MasterBismuth]

Just checked in on this thread for the first time in a year and several months. During that time it would appear that the URL for my hacked Hack9 save file has moved. Gotta talk to the guy who was hosting it, as I’m sure he just moved it somewhere else. He was moving services between his different servers in the past few months.

I’ll get it figured out or somesuch. If anyone needs it in the meantime I guess the best thing to do would be to PM me, reply in this thread, or stalk me on Twitter (that’s most likely to get my attention, sadly).

Please pardon the interruption in excellence.

Wish I’d been able to take more useful notes on the process I went through in hacking that stupid file. I still need to repeat the process with Hacker9 and Hack9 Solid. Not really sure that Hack9 Solid will be as straightforward to hack since that game isn’t yet translated into English.

Been meaning to stream this series on my channel but I barely stream enough as it is. Taking on this series on stream will be a strenuous undertaking.