Hacking Quake 4 authorization
Most people agree that the Quake series are some of the best 3d games ever written (kudos to James Carmack!). I was recently browsing through the net, and found out that iD Software had brought the security protection of the game one step further: everytime the software is started, it will try to authenticate the CD key on their authentication server. I havent tried to run the game without being disconnected from the net - simply because I am too lazy to unwire those cables at the back of my table.
Most people had tried some clever alternatives, such as running firewall program, and block Quake 4 to access the net. Obviously this will prevent you from playing over the LAN. Unless you can identify which port Quake 4 is using to communicate over the LAN network.
A better hack involves identifying the authentication server address - which turns out to be: q4master.idsoftware.com
Now, if we can somehow re route any request to this address somewhere else, then we effectively:
- disable the authentication
- still allow quake to communicate against other quake 4 clients in the LAN
Turns out that this is not hard at all, thanks to Microsoft's adoption to UNIX ip route table syntax. I am not sure if I can legally post out how to do it here, but it IS possible, and it WORKS. Just with a little bit of thought, you will be happily fragging your mates over the LAN.
Having said so, please do buy the software if you like it. It is a great game, and you will miss out most of the fun of playing over their official server.
Ciao.
posted by WiB @ 3:23 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
You can also add an extra line to the quake4config.cfg to set the ip of the authorisation server. 'seta net_master0 "192.246.40.28:27650"' is the correct ip, set it to something else and it will be unable to connect!
In case anyone isn't that sure, he's talking about the hosts file in windows/system32/drivers/etc.
In Vista you'll need to run notepad as administrator (right-click - run as administrator) otherwise you won't be able to save your changes.
Add a new line that says something like 127.0.0.1 q4master.idsoftware.com
As you've defined the server as the loopback address, it won't be able to find it - so won't be able to authenticate.
Of course, you don't have to have a pirated copy if you need this tip - you might just not like the idea of a game you've paid good money for, phoning home every time you want to play.
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