Ken and Roberta donate EVERYTHING to Video Game Library

[dark-daventry]

DawsonJ, thank you for that. I honestly never knew that developers try to thwart reverse engineering. Though, now that I think about it, it does make a little sense. It *could* lead to piracy.

[DawsonJ]

DawsonJ, thank you for that. I honestly never knew that developers try to thwart reverse engineering. Though, now that I think about it, it does make a little sense. It *could* lead to piracy.

You're welcome. Interestingly, if you read the MaskTest.rc file (linked above), you can see that the chosen ID for the icon was 666. It's clearer when opened in Visual Studio.

[crayauchtin]

Uhm, this is probably dumb but.... what is reverse engineering and why would someone want to reverse engineer a game?

[Delling]

Hrmm... I should be able to rattle off a simple definition... but it's almost 1am... anywho...

Basically, reverse engineering is a method of reducing a finished product to its functional parts generally in order to use them in other projects. So, for instance, creating a game engine such as AGI Studio that lets you more easily make AGI style games.

[MusicallyInspired]

If LucasArts didn't have the source code to Monkey Island 1 and 2 they would never have been able to make the special editions with enhanced graphics and ported to other platforms unless they reverse engineered the game code. Reverse engineering compiled programs is difficult and extremely time consuming. It involves hex editing, a thorough knowledge of base/assembly/machine code, and the ability to translate that back into a more user-friendly language like C++ or something which can then be utilized on almost any platform.