Guild of Writers

Great! I hope you enjoy it!

Lontahv wrote:Wasn't hard for me. Basically I just fetched the files out of my windows temp folder while MOUL was running.

Unfortunately, the files were read locked so that wouldn't work, but you could have used a volume shadow copy backup to retrieve them all the same. Unfortunately, even then, you would find that many of the files are blanked immediately, so that you can't retrieve their contents that way. And even if you could, you would still have to figure out the new encryption algorithm and find the key for it.

Still, the only way Cyan could really have sufficiently obfuscated those files would be if no-one cared about their game enough to put in the effort. And they were dangerously close to that being the case.

We have success!

I now have a full working install that includes Crowthistle too.

Many thanks to all who helped me!

Hmmm. I thought I would wait for a few posts before I asked...You now have a portal calc in there...How, When, and Where do you use it?

If you download the PortalCalculator or the LanguageChanger, they're saved to the /tools folder in your Uru installation. There are readme.txt files in their respective folders. LanguageChanger is just 3 .reg files that will change Uru's language between German, French, and English. PortalCalculator tells you when the portals will appear in the Pod Ages like Negilahn, Payiferen, Tetsonot, and Dereno. (You need .Net installed for PortalCalculator to work).

These are completely optional; they are just there for convenience.

ddb174 wrote:Great! I hope you enjoy it!

Lontahv wrote:Wasn't hard for me. Basically I just fetched the files out of my windows temp folder while MOUL was running.

Unfortunately, the files were read locked so that wouldn't work, but you could have used a volume shadow copy backup to retrieve them all the same. Unfortunately, even then, you would find that many of the files are blanked immediately, so that you can't retrieve their contents that way. And even if you could, you would still have to figure out the new encryption algorithm and find the key for it.

Still, the only way Cyan could really have sufficiently obfuscated those files would be if no-one cared about their game enough to put in the effort. And they were dangerously close to that being the case.

I hibernated the computer with MOUL running and booted into Ubuntu. From there I could access my Windows drive and copy the files.

When all else failed I just switched off the power while MOUL was running. That effectively prevented it from cleaning up its temp files.

your poor hard-disk...

Yeah, getting the files in situ is the easy part. Like I say, volume shadow copy also works for that. Getting the *complete* files is another matter (e.g. custom version of WINE, with some special modifications...) because it didn't store the whole file for a lot of them, after they were loaded. And of course, you still need to find the encryption algorithm (XXTEA, rather than XTEA) via reverse-engineering, and then find the key, e.g. by tracing with a kernel debugger modified to not be detected.

And the cost of all this, was amongst other things, a ridiculously large startup time. Not impressive at all.

There are multiple ways to do even these things. As I say, the only real way to have barricaded enough stuff would be if no one cared. Which, in the case of Moul, was pretty much the case.

A feature that i'd like to see is a GUI to add/remove books to Relto and Nexus.
Because there are 2 files to update.
The AvailableLinks.inf should be able to be updated with all Ages you have in your dat directory (with Drizzle), then use a GUI (inside Drizzle? maybe) or ULM if it can be supported to manipulate Relto

It has taken a while to get everything back up to where I had it, with all the test Ages that I do


Thanks

In the latest versions of the KI, the dat folder is automatically scanned and unknown ages (that is, ages which are not in the AvailableLinks file) are added to the Nexus and the KI knows about them. You can then use "/link AgeFilename" to get there, which (in my eyes) is quicker than always going to the Relto Shelf, especially when you are testing things.