Tell your story!
In december 2008, I was playing some MKWii online. But then I saw someone who had infinite power stars who kept winning. I obviously noticed that he was somehow cheating and I was wondering how he did that. After some googling I read about the HBC and Gecko OS. Bought Twilight Prinzess (just for HBC!) and installed everything. Got some codes for games and managed to get them to work. Later, I met Ozelot, who decided to create some codes for VC/Wiiware games. I wasn´t sure if I could do this aswell, seemed pretty difficult at first. He encouraged me a bit and I decided to buy a USB Gecko some months later. The beginning was the worst, I kept hating my USB Gecko since I didn´t succeed with most of the codes I tried to make. Though, I was aware of the theme. 1 year later, after understanding more and more, it became the fun I expected it to be and I often used my Gecko to make and put out new codes. I didn´t feel too bored about it until today. There´s so much to discover and there´s never the state of "all codes were made". Be creative, you´ll never run out of new codes... and keep trying. :P
I noticed cheating on that children's kart game a few months before December when I first ran into a mega mushroom and bob-omb user. I began cheating on that year's December with pure green shells and it led me to learn about hex and stuff which also led to using more codes. >__> I registered on the site known most for having that game's codes when I felt I already knew everything I needed to know about simple gecko code/wii modifying. I had a usb gecko by the time I registered on that site but didn't know hot to use it nor bothered with it until like...March of last year. 3 months after I quit from having the realization that I was being such a stupid ass by cheating. The first thing I did was a measly button activator and it took me about an hour to do. I then wanted to hack a health meter and that is when I registered here. To simply ask because I didn't understand fully from the threads other members had made. Once the great knowledgeable members of this site helped me, I kind of understood the "unknown value" search. Enough to go on to hack some of the most useless yet fun things of certain games that no one else seemed to want to do. Game changing hacks are those that are most practical and those that have no real purpose. ;D
DEAR GOD, NOT 1 WALL OF TEXT, BUT 2.
Never read Jay's (can't take 2 walls of text a day) but I went through basically same deal as bully, 'cept I was looking for some sorta Action replay like device for the wii ;)
Quote from: matt123337 on December 16, 2011, 10:12:19 PM
DEAR GOD, NOT 1 WALL OF TEXT, BUT 2.
Never read Jay's (can't take 2 walls of text a day) but I went through basically same deal as bully, 'cept I was looking for some sorta Action replay like device for the wii ;)
Well this is a thread for people's hacking "stories". e.e
lol. I don't read walls of text much either which is why I shortened the font size on my previous post. Those who want to read it can. Those who don't want to, that is fine too. I did not want to fully contribute to a possible wall of text throughout this thread. =P
Quote from: Jay on December 16, 2011, 10:24:38 PM
Quote from: matt123337 on December 16, 2011, 10:12:19 PM
DEAR GOD, NOT 1 WALL OF TEXT, BUT 2.
Never read Jay's (can't take 2 walls of text a day) but I went through basically same deal as bully, 'cept I was looking for some sorta Action replay like device for the wii ;)
Well this is a thread for people's hacking "stories". e.e
lol. I don't read walls of text much either which is why I shortened the font size on my previous post. Those who want to read it can. Those who don't want to, that is fine too. I did not want to fully contribute to a possible wall of text throughout this thread. =P
How did changing font size help? Just makes it harder to read xD
I honestly don't see why people can't use enter key sometimes tho >_>
Hmm... I started hacking only because I was annoyed at Fire Emblem (and it's massive longness and other things) - yet I still actually haven't beaten the game because my save glitched on me and I don't feel like starting again... still.
IIRC I bought a USB Gecko because I wanted to toggle codes in my SSBB codeset and I needed to find out what the original values were, then I started hacking other games because It felt good knowing I had the ability to change things I didn't like about games with codes.
Quote from: matt123337 on December 17, 2011, 02:37:30 AM
How did changing font size help? Just makes it harder to read xD
I honestly don't see why people can't use enter key sometimes tho >_>
it helps by not making this thread long with long stories. as i said, those who want to read my post can. if they don't its fine. and maybe you cannot see why people can't use the enter key because you aren't there with them? ^-^
I got started when I was laying in bed one night after I had been brawl hacking with the file patch code. It dawned on me someone had to make those codes so I went online and found foxx's video tutorial on wii hacking. I didn't own a usb gecko at the time but even so I watched that video mutipule times while searching the web for a gecko for sale.
Finally found one and had it shipped from Spain(I live in the usa). So here I am. ;D
In 2008, I was an active member of a Nintendo Forum called "NintendoWorlds".
And someone just happened to post about Brawl codes. And at the time I had always been annoyed that you couldn't do team final smashes, so I looked around.
http://wiird.l0nk.org/forum/index.php/topic,37.msg1808.html#msg1808
Found that... and got interested in RAM hacking in general. I used to be before that, making videos for Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, but I was never into the "hacking" part of making codes themselves. I just used them.
So after I made this thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWWYkvEB0HI (WOOT 633k views and counting!)
I was like... HMMM... I wonder how these guys made these codes... Looked around... bought a USBGecko...
But then I didn't really do much after that. That thing sat for about a year or two in my game things cabinet...
Got into Fire Emblem GBA ROM hacking...
Learned lots of stuff by starting from basic hex editing... and worked my way up. I even did my very first and VERY BASIC ASM hack:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9AGSno2klU
... but I guess it was a pain for the person helping me because I didn't know much about programming at the time. I only started CS135 then... and even right now, I don't have that much programming experience.
Then I saw on Youtube, someone named GoldieX39 with stuff like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wwTlmsHXKc
Being a big Fire Emblem Fan... I started looking into it. And I found out she's ShadowX39 from this forum! Got me back into it... And basically used what I learned from using VBA's memory viewer and cheat search functions... I'm like "HEY! This is easy now!" instead of the time when I first used my USBGecko...
And that's pretty much my history. I'm in and out of it for weeks/months at a time on using my Gecko for Wii RAM hacking.
FE and smash :o. I want in, but I'm not ready yet. >.>
Well I've been around for just a few months, but I have to say, I've enjoyed hacking more than actually playing...And I've got a story too.
I've always hated cheats, tbh. Well ever since my gameshark for ps1 broke :(
Quote from: flashbackI remember cheating my ass off in FF7, strider1&2, and that's about it. Gameshark had a short life. It was Ruby Weapon...I finished beating Emerald weapon spamming limit breaks after beating the game and then going to sleep. When I woke up, I realized my GS was in my back pocket and it was split in half :'(. I had to fight Ruby Weapon without cheats. It was such a hard fight. I didn't even know what materia was for. But after that, I had to start a new game because my save was corrupted. This happened the first time I used GS on FF7 and I thought this was some kind of side effect for cheating. Ever since then I've been a perfect file kind of person. Get anything and everything Maxed out if possible legit. I don't really do that often, but that's the main goal for every game I play at least. To this day, I haven't beaten FF7 legit. Curse you GS!!
But then in MHFU, my friends had this monster hp display. Being the stubborn anti-cheating that I was, I refused to use cheats in MHFU for long time. But I couldn't help but explore when I saw that game's super run XD. "VROOOOOM!" Lower your maturity level a little and imagine seeing your MH character running from the farm to the gathering hall in a split second with someone making that vroom noise. It was the funniest thing in my life. I had to have that. So I tried cwcheat for the first time. Just a few codes. They won't hurt. Moonjump was so the best.
Quote from: more recent but still flashbackNot that those events contributed to my hacking, but at least at that point I was more open to cheating(I wish some haters would just be more open too, but I was there before...). MH3 came out, I bought a wii, smash(for hbc(my friend had a wii and I liked the homebrew)), and MH3 of course. I was lurking around here looking for MID at first, but since there wasn't one yet, I stopped looking. Next thing I knew, there were 3 different kinds. It's the only code I wanted, really. Unfortunately, it only worked offline. Oh well. But one of my MH friends was using modded weapons. We eventually exchanged skypes discussed some cheats and now we chat about nonsense. He wanted to be able to do some codes online so he was using some "usbgecko" to find the codes and I didn't care.
I started caring when he mention rapidfire didn't have an off code. I learned some basic codetypes to see if I could decipher the code, asked him to look at it's address and tell me what's there by default. I got the hang of it and we experimented with different codes. I later joined this site just to respond to someone's question on rapidfire, since it's been weeks and nobody answered and I had the answer. It felt good. I knew something and helped someone even though they probably never saw my post. After that I asked if it would be possible to attach the map to the hud cuz the portables do that. No one answered. My intention was to be one of the many members that ask for codes. But I needed this code. I asked my friend to use his gecko and maybe we can find something. But I got impatient. We live thousands of miles away from each other and sending each other images of wiird(I would circle stuff and send them back) just wasn't gonna work. So I looked for a usbgecko. I think they were extinct at the time(maybe still. idk). I got the special edition and waited like foreeever for it(probably 4 days) and when I got it, I ripped open the packaging and inserted that bad boy in slot A(or B. I don't look at it). Man this was gonna be the best thing in the world. I was gonna see what my friend sees. It took a while but I got the hang of it and soon I made Map attached to HUD myself as one of my first codes.
AsteriskRocks emerged out of nowhere talking about custom quests and stuff he wants to accomplish to give mh3 new experience. He found out I had a usbgecko and he started demanding codes. He still does. But that's where inf rage comes from. I thought it was an awesome idea. It's a code that I could be proud of, cuz I still have anti-cheating in me :D. This is the opposite of cheating. Who knew you could uncheat with cheatcodes. XD
With alot of help from dcx2, I learned so much. Even asm, and I wasn't planning on touching that. But I needed to. C2 is a codetype and I wasn't using it. I think I'm pro now. :p
And man, those days were great when gecko.net was in active development. The little help I was able to provide simply by reporting bugs felt so good. And seeing them being addressed so quickly. This site was just the place to be.
And it's like everyday I log on I learn something new. Or at least I address something I had on queue. And accomplishing something is so satisfying. I just need to hack. And that bintotxt.cs was the greatest thing ever. I needed something to get me into programming because I'm getting nowhere when I should be practicing. C# has been my favorite language since then. Probably cuz of it's syntax. idk. And I'm looking forward to being in game design. I'm feeling programming more than anything else. So I hack and program to hack some more, LUTs, quest ripping, hex, data types, and while I program I sharpen my skills too. And it feels good to extract every last bit of fun from a game when it should've died long ago.
And then it's today. I made a few codes for kirby and skyward sword, but I'm not seeing too much needing to be done in those games. I was gonna go back to save hacking for yugioh 2011. Whenever I'm ready. I started a thread in gbatemp long before I started wii hacking about exporting replay data from your save because of the limited space they give you. Got a couple of suggestions that meant nothing to me at the time. Now that I look at it, they explained some stuff I've seen while I hacked MH3. o.O But there's still alot to learn because idk somethings like CRC32. So I'll probably vanish when I start messing with the ds. My intention is only to import/export replays, but looking back at how I started wii hacking, I'll probably find other stuff to do on the ds.
I've never done any hacking before this. Unless you count following instructions to hack my psp and wii. lol.
I've been interested in console game hacking for quite a while. I first got interested when I saw that hackers had accessed a deleted level in Sonic 2 (Hidden Palace Zone), and when a beta ROM of that game was found in the late 90's, I was impressed with the amount of detailed data that the skilled hackers were finding in that ROM, and how they were able to reconstruct so many details of how the game was developed.
But of course, I was in 3rd grade then, so I didn't really get involved in hacking then myself.
When Mario Kart Double Dash was announced with a LAN mode, I heard some people talking about how it might be possible to tunnel the traffic over the Internet to produce the first ever online Mario Kart (well, technically XBAND was the first ever Mario Kart, but I had never heard of it at the time). I Googled around and found the Warp Pipe Project. I got involved in beta testing, and met some cool people.
And then I started wondering if non-LAN games could be made to play online. It sounded like a doable hack. I asked on the Warp Pipe forums; one of the guys there said to check out GCDev. I looked them up, and found the then-unreleased GCARS-CS program which aimed to allow GameCube games e.g. Super Smash Bros Melee to play online. I got involved with beta testing and adding support for new games, which involved GCNrd -- this was my first experience with creating game enhancer codes. I wasn't that good at first, but my technical background helped me pick it up reasonably fast.
So then the Wii came out. The Wii had some online games... but not enough. And it couldn't play GameCube games online at all (Warp Pipe and GCARS-CS both don't work because they use the Ethernet adapter). So I figured it'd be a cool idea to try to do something like GCARS-CS for the Wii. I found WiiRD and GeckoOS circa 2008, and asked the relevant people (Nuke and Link mostly) how suitable the USB Gecko would be for such hacks... it looked doable (though difficult), so I figured it was worth a try.
Unfortunately I didn't really have time in 2008 due to high school eating up my time. But I eventually arranged with a college professor to get college credit for Wii haxx... and I was able to actually spend some time on the project. That was in 2010.
I'd say that Wii hacking has definitely gotten me more competent with ASM, as well as the reverse-engineering process in general. And I've produced some cool stuff as well. I'm probably a rare type here, in that I don't think game enhancers should be used largely for cheating... I think more innovative/competitive/fun hacks that don't cheapen the game are preferable. Then again, infinite health is probably one of the easiest hacks for beginners, so I won't judge. :)