3 ms·

Ah I remember TomWoozle as one of the super advanced ships in EV:N. I'm guessing a few staff members had them? They were always intimidating and very powerful,

by nthitz 6y ago

Ah I remember TomWoozle as one of the super advanced ships in EV:N. I'm guessing a few staff members had them? They were always intimidating and very powerful, was a treat to see them as a kid.

TomAnthony 6y ago
Yes, I had a character in the game. I had an extremely over powered ship, and then if you managed to defeat me and board the ship you would find I only had a single credit. I was a beta tester for EV Nova before I joined as a staff member. I got the character for winning a bet against Andrew Welch that I could hack the shareware mechanism of Snapz Pro (the screen capture tool). I did it by ignoring the shareware code itself, and instead patching the watermark code so the rectangle was 0x0. So you got nagged but the tool worked.
- rgovostes 6y ago
  I spent hours as a kid trying to figure out the serial number scheme for Ambrosia games. (Sorry.) I had learned how to read PowerPC assembly but the Ambrosia registration application was obfuscated and had very long functions I couldn't follow, I suspect compiled from machine-generated C. Andrew dropped an enigmatic hint once that it involved "polynomials" and when I eventually learned about these in school I spent a lot of time wondering how you could turn one into a serial number. Maybe @khalwat can finally reveal the answer to a question I've had for at least 20 years?
  - TomAnthony 6y ago
    I remember them changing the licensing system, it was shortly before I started at the company. Matt Slot, who was the lead coder alongside Andrew, wrote an article about it which I've managed to find archived [1]. The article doesn't shed a lot more light on it, but the rough understanding (between my understanding at the time and what I've lost to memory!) was that it was similar to public key cryptography, with a public key in the app that could be used to verify license codes signed with the private key. [1] http://www.windowsusers.org/piracy.html http://www.windowsusers.org/piracy.html
    - rgovostes 6y ago
      That's probably the exact article where I first heard about it using polynomials. Perhaps it uses something like Shamir's secret sharing. I found a Reddit post that explains most of the algorithm, but not much to do with polynomials. https://www.reddit.com/r/evnova/comments/g3ie3x/ambrosia_and_registration/ https://www.reddit.com/r/evnova/comments/g3ie3x/ambrosia_and... (P.S., I did pay my registration fee for Uplink. Thanks for porting it!)

by nthitz 6y ago

Ah I remember TomWoozle as one of the super advanced ships in EV:N. I'm guessing a few staff members had them? They were always intimidating and very powerful, was a treat to see them as a kid.

TomAnthony 6y ago

Yes, I had a character in the game. I had an extremely over powered ship, and then if you managed to defeat me and board the ship you would find I only had a single credit. I was a beta tester for EV Nova before I joined as a staff member. I got the character for winning a bet against Andrew Welch that I could hack the shareware mechanism of Snapz Pro (the screen capture tool). I did it by ignoring the shareware code itself, and instead patching the watermark code so the rectangle was 0x0. So you got nagged but the tool worked.

rgovostes 6y ago
I spent hours as a kid trying to figure out the serial number scheme for Ambrosia games. (Sorry.) I had learned how to read PowerPC assembly but the Ambrosia registration application was obfuscated and had very long functions I couldn't follow, I suspect compiled from machine-generated C. Andrew dropped an enigmatic hint once that it involved "polynomials" and when I eventually learned about these in school I spent a lot of time wondering how you could turn one into a serial number. Maybe @khalwat can finally reveal the answer to a question I've had for at least 20 years?
- TomAnthony 6y ago
  I remember them changing the licensing system, it was shortly before I started at the company. Matt Slot, who was the lead coder alongside Andrew, wrote an article about it which I've managed to find archived [1]. The article doesn't shed a lot more light on it, but the rough understanding (between my understanding at the time and what I've lost to memory!) was that it was similar to public key cryptography, with a public key in the app that could be used to verify license codes signed with the private key. [1] http://www.windowsusers.org/piracy.html http://www.windowsusers.org/piracy.html
  - rgovostes 6y ago
    That's probably the exact article where I first heard about it using polynomials. Perhaps it uses something like Shamir's secret sharing. I found a Reddit post that explains most of the algorithm, but not much to do with polynomials. https://www.reddit.com/r/evnova/comments/g3ie3x/ambrosia_and_registration/ https://www.reddit.com/r/evnova/comments/g3ie3x/ambrosia_and... (P.S., I did pay my registration fee for Uplink. Thanks for porting it!)