Just a theory, but I could be right: aren't CAS files just encrypted? And if we found out the encryption method, then we could decrypt it, therefore making the CAS file format obsolete.

007bond wrote:Just a theory, but I could be right: aren't CAS files just encrypted? And if we found out the encryption method, then we could decrypt it, therefore making the CAS file format obsolete.

Why waste your time trying? lol. If you're after people's ASL code you're pretty bloody sad.

i'm not, but if we can get at it, why buy Quest Pro?

Just a question, 007Bond. If you were interested in buying Quest Pro, would you share it with your other half CodingMasters or would he have to buy his own copy?

1. That's not what the topic is about.
2. I have already said that I will no longer be posting about the myth of me being the same person as codingmasters.
3. I think Quest Pro needs more "Pro" features, so as to attract more buyers. Like Game Maker, when registered, allows you to create games that play over the network or internet, as well as a few other features. There are only two reasons y we should get Quest Pro: to get QCompile, and to get rid of that annoying splash screen at the start and end of QDK.

I can't believe anyone with a genuine interest in Quest would seriously want to be able to de-compile .CAS files! The idea of QCompile isn't some sort of half-assed 'security measure' to force people to buy Quest, it is to give us a way to distribute our games as one file rather than a whole clutch of .ASL files. My own efforts seem to always involve lots of librarys and numerous fragmented .ASL files which would otherwise make distribution a nightmare.

The .CAS file format also prevent the player casually peeking at the text and thus spoiling the game for him/herself - which IS important and deliberately damaging this feature would be tantamount to vandalism in my book.

What Quest badly needs (much more than any de-compiler!) is a way to either package audio/graphics and or video files into the CAS file or as a seperate resource file so that we can have a neat distribution package for our finished games. I've nagged on at Alex before about this, (and have my own way around the issue - but that's another story) any chance of it happening soon Alex?

To address the comment about making the CAS file format obsolete. being able to decompile CAS wouldn't make it 'obsolete' at such - it would still be the only way we have to get our multi ASL files into one sensible distribution.

What a decompiler would actually do is provide the opportunity of using a "game spoiler" to the players and therefore make a lot of our coding work obsolete - it would be rather like that #@?1#@ who always spoils someone else's good joke by butting in and giving away the punchline early.

Just because something COULD be done doesn't mean it SHOULD be done!

Al

Al

What Quest badly needs (much more than any de-compiler!) is a way to either package audio/graphics and or video files into the CAS file or as a seperate resource file so that we can have a neat distribution package for our finished games. I've nagged on at Alex before about this, (and have my own way around the issue - but that's another story) any chance of it happening soon Alex?

This is a feature I'm working on for Quest 3.6. I'm interested in what your workaround is though...?

Not so much a workaround as a "bodge job" for showing visual clues only in my case

I use the 'shellexe' command to start a self-written (VB) picture viewer program. This viewer requires a command line switch to be supplied in order to work. This is coded into Quest so that (for example) 'look at treasure' causes

shellexe <picview.exe 9c6f0d>

to be run. The command line arguments dictate which (if any) of the pictures (all embedded in the exe) are displayed. Working with a captive audience like mine this is a 'good enough' way to supply a lot of not easily peek-at-able picture files. It is a complete pain in the @$$ to set up initially of course!

I'd certainly not claim it to be the ideal answer!

Al

Personally I would like Alex to release the source code for Quest (minus the CAS and QDK stuff of course)...

Would help put other ASL players on different systems... I'm guessing CAS will be surpassed by CAS2 (erm, maybe a zip/rar file that's then encrypted).

What Quest badly needs (much more than any de-compiler!) is a way to either package audio/graphics and or video files into the CAS file or as a seperate resource file so that we can have a neat distribution package for our finished games

I've noticed it's possible to pack everything in a zip file (pictures, sounds, source), but there was still a problem with it. I don't remember well, maybe it was possible to open the game in the zip after quest is opened, but not from the command line (for including in a batch file). I'll check it later and post it again.

Sorry to bring up an older post but my reason for getting at the game file isn't to cheat as much as it is tweaking the code to make unplayable games playable.
A generally well-made game (Mitchell's Quest) that I am playing has some errors or 'needed adjustments' that normally would be simple to fix but since it's a CAS file, I can't.
I'm not asking 'how do I break in to the file', I'm just adding to what 007 said and giving my own reason for wanting to open the CAS file. It has nothing to do with buying or not buying Quest as far as I am concerned.

exactly. If someone wanted to cheat in the games, all they would need to find out is how to decrypt the cas files. unless, of course, QCompile does it with a password, in which case it's going to take an awful long time

The point of it is to compile the file as such that it is no longer plain text. I don't know how Qcompile works, but chances are it uses some industry encryption algorithm to encrypt and write the new .cas file.

Alternately it might just compile into a generic Quest game executable, running Quest in .cas "compiled adventure script" mode rather than the .asl "adventure script language" mode with the debug Quest information available.

If it's the first, then you are going to have to find someone who can crack through high-level encryption methods for love of interactive fiction.

If it's the second, then you are going to have to find someone who can buy Quest Pro, then have them write a decompiler for a compiler most likely written in Visual Basic 6.0. This would most likely require a VB6 decompiler, which I'm not sure if one exists, otherwise everyone would be decompiling and recompiling software illegally on a regular basis.

Basically you are asking could Quest be warezed? And the answer is, Yes, probably. Will it be most likely? No, it's a small piece of specialized software for a very small subset of internet users. Even not paying for the Pro version, you are never inconvenienced by Quest, I think Alex has done a well enough job making it not worth wanting to Warez his software.

Nope, I wasn't saying is it possible for Quest to be warezed. I was saying, it's probably possible to decrypt CAS Files to look at them and cheat.

again, that's not the main reason why I would want to break in. I normally play a game on here to see if it's worth playing. If so, I play for a while and find things that annoy me such as my big pet peeve of leaving the player with little option to identify objects.
I then go into the code or QDK and 'update' the game and save it as another file and then I play the game.
A lot of times when I think I need to cheat, it ends up being a matter of game programming error and what was needed to do by the player was not made correctly in game production.

blah, blah, blah..I've said what I needed to say

Another very good point. But if Alex tested them before he played them, he should find those errors, and notify the author, who would then fix those bugs, then resubmit it. Then the good people of the world, ie Steve, would not have to waste their time fixing those bugs for them

Oh shat up 007bond... I mean c'mon, get some control of the stuff that you type.

You expect Alex to play ALL the games submitted to the archive, give feedback to the author (if they even bothered to leave an e-mail address), and keep doing so?

ITID - the "encryption" is probably a bit-wise XOR encryption... I can't see Alex wanting, or needing a stronger encryption... I also doubt a "password" either.

yeah, but considering that most games submitted to the archive are short, and are very infrequent, i'm sure he could find the time. As for the password, it's a thought. I've looked for encryption without a password, and I haven't found anything.

Hi Guys

If ever there was a thread that begged for this to be shouted it is this one:-

Before a game is ever released (and this includes the so-called 'demo', which I think is a euphemism for "half finished thing I couldn't be arsed to test properly")

BETA TEST - FIX - BETA TEST - FIX
DON'T RELEASE ANYTHING UNTIL YOUR BETA TESTERS ARE 100% SATISFIED

Sorting out logical errors and rank poor programming is the job of the AUTHOR OF THE WORK - not the Quest system designer and certainly not the end player!

Al (MaDbRiT)

Well said! Bugs/errors/problems with a game are the fault of the person writing the game, not the fault of the person who created the system.

If you're careless enough to release a game without testing it for bugs, it's your own stupid fault if people don't like it.

Sometimes, 007Bond, you really do say some ridiculous things.

007bond wrote:Another very good point. But if Alex tested them before he played them, he should find those errors, and notify the author, who would then fix those bugs, then resubmit it. Then the good people of the world, ie Steve, would not have to waste their time fixing those bugs for them

007bond,
I'll take that as a compliment but I do have to agree with everyone else. It is up to the game-maker to test for their own bugs. I'm sure there are bugs that are over-looked even after a thorough scanning by the maker but there are some games on here that you can't even get to the end because the author did not test it.

Additionally, I'm really not wasting my time fixing bugs. Sometimes, I simply make things more playable for my taste.

But anyway, thanks again...

I know what you guys are saying, and it's true, but I would of thought that Alex at least loads the file into Quest to make sure it works before uploading it.

007bond wrote:I know what you guys are saying, and it's true, but I would of thought that Alex at least loads the file into Quest to make sure it works before uploading it.

I say Alex should only have to do that if we had to pay for each game that we played (which nowadays, no one would do). Otherwise, just be glad you're not paying for the games with errors!