Sacred plus ver 1.8 no cd or backup play?

[Mad_Max911]

Anyone know how to play this version without CD or at least with a backup CD?

[lokitos]

Give it a week or 2, these guys are good, they
will have something sooner or later :)

[Cooliwhip]

I hope your right, Sacred has been owning all so far. They have brutal protection and there hasn't been a reliable no cd or copy method since the first few releases. Everything since has been nothing better then monkeying with it and duct tape and praying.

[Mattias]

.....

[Snautilus]

I can play it with te same fooling-CD as 1.7 version. Burn that fake-image to CD with Alcohol, configure Clcohol as they teach and voila!

[Mad_Max911]

well i cant even get that to work :(
No one seems to be able to figure out why some can and other cant

[BirdDog]

I allso hope that there is coming a Nocd patch.
And i hope it comes soon :D

[Mad_Max911]

I allso hope that there is coming a Nocd patch.
And i hope it comes soon :D

Yeah me too cant be that impossible to make!

[Josh Sparks]

Hi,

there is no need to create some no cd crack.

You should only burn the fake cd image with Alcohor (unpack exe with password: erased).
Use all settings (RAW DAO, RMPS, VOB protect V5)!
You can burn it to arbitrary CD (i used some Benq CD-R, Verbatim CD-RW) - it works! Speed - once 4x, once 10x...

But before running the game (v 1.7) you must have installed and running some SW with RMPS emulation (e.g. Alhohol). I have also running Daemon 3.46 - right click on it -> Emulation and tick All options ON - if you don't have Alcohol installed but only Daemon - Sacred will disable emulations when is launching and you will get un-pleasure message. So you must click on Daemon and tick All options ON several times – 3x – 5x.

Cheers
Josh

[Mad_Max911]

A no cd crack IS needed for some because it simply wont work here. Not with daemon running or Alcohol and RMPS ticked

[Maniacski]

What protection does it use? starforce/safedisk??

[xrealgarx]

vob protectcd5 i guess

[LordBate]

hey @ all ... got a solution that works for me with the english & german version ...

1. install game full
2. apply official 1.7 patch
3. install sacred plus
4. delete/rename "chkfiles.txt" file (-> now sacred doesnt check for the file checksums anymore)
5. burn the english cd1 mini image with RMPS (did it at 52x with AOPEN CD-RW CRW5232, tho a lower speed is more recommandable)
6. play the game with RMPS emulation on
7. the english CD1 fixed image definitively works with german version, too!!!

[i used Alcohol 120% 1.9.2 Build 1705 to burn and emulate]

good luck ...

[sin316]

what cd1 fixed image ? you mean that sacred cd1 fake ? from russia ?

[nea]

na, deleting or renaming the checkfiles textfile had not worked for me... it crashed... and by the way, the updcheck should work doesn't matter what, why shouldn't it... it checks for the files on the harddisk not cd... and even then, those files aren't changed, so the crc is the same... i don't think that is really a solution that solves it global...

what would interest me, in which order did you install sacred? first english, then german or vice versa? only english? only german? because i got it playable too, as said in the other sacred thread...

[sin316]

well the "burn fake cd1 with alc rmps enabled blabla" didnt worked for me , not in v.1.7+ anyway , i think 1.0 it worked lol ^^

hope someone makes a real cracked exe sometime soon :(

[sin316]

and yes the delete file thingy above didnt worked either lol

[H~PULSE]

Man I’ve been trying to get this thing to work for 5 day… but now its personal…

The settings I’m testing right now:

http://www.mgforums.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=2545&stc=1

I can only select RAW SAO as a write method and I already tried ProtectCD as data type… what am I doing wrong?

I guess I’ll try to do what LordBate recommended…

[nea]

look in the sacred 1.7.60 thread a little deeper, on page 5... there is a description how i got it work... maybe that'll help... http://www.mgforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=221054&postcount=114

'raw sao' shouldn't work at all... 'raw dao' if...

[H~PULSE]

Yes nea I’ve read your post and it gave me some ideas but like I said my burner (LG) only supports RAW SAO writing method . So unless I can find a way to emulate it directly of the hard drive there’s no point in burning anymore CD’s.

[nea]

thats bad... so, you don't know anyone got a newer burner, and can burn you a dao version, so you can test, if it at least reads the right way...

[H~PULSE]

thats bad... so, you don't know anyone got a newer burner, and can burn you a dao version, so you can test, if it at least reads the right way...

Yes I can try it next Monday… but you know, I want it now HE HE… at lest I know not to waste my time burning CD and thanks to everyone for all the info on this… I’ll just try to find a way to crack it or emulate it of the hard drive.

[nea]

i am looking for methods since this game was released, and i met only two people who got it work with an image and emulation... burning helped a lot more, me too since yesterday night...
wait the weekend and see...

[sin316]

would be cool if someone made something like they did with the 1.66 , that cracked update + nocd

[Mattias]

would be cool if someone made something like they did with the 1.66 , that cracked update + nocd

haha, yeah, should be so cool with another fake :rolleyes:

[Maniacski]

well price of the game has come down from £29.99 to £19.99, so i think i may toodle off and buy the game instead of running off m8's installation and v1.5 update/crack. Obviosly this protection (much like many other games nowadays) have got the crackers well and trully stumped and beaten.

[aika-san]

Here's how to get Sacred Plus v1.8.51 (UK version only, not US) running with the fake boot cd mentioned earlier in this thread. It works fine for me. This is the best version so far, and all major bugs have been fixed. This method is very tedious, but I will explain everything carefully. If you follow these steps carefully you should not have any problems. Make sure you follow ALL the steps in order, even if you don't think they are important.
Trust me, they are. Don't do anything else other than what is explained here. I know this works because I have tried it on several occasions. You have been warned.

You will need:

- Sacred (UK English version)
- Sacred Fake Boot CD image file (this comes in a 7-zip archive. the password is erased)
- Sacred Plus patch (UK English version 'sacred_plus_eng.exe')
- Alcohol 120% v1.9.2.1705 or higher
- A CD burner that supports RAW DAO
- The ability to follow instructions EXACTLY.

WARNING - THIS PATCH ONLY WORKS WITH THE UK ENGLISH VERSION OF SACRED AND THE UK ENGLISH VERSION OF THE PLUS PATCH. IT WILL NOT WORK WITH THE US VERSION, SO DON'T EVEN TRY.

[aika-san]

Part A - CREATING THE FAKE BOOT CD

1) If you have ANY version of Daemon Tools installed then completely uninstall it first.

2) Reboot your computer.

3) If you have ANY version of Alcohol 120% installed then completely uninstall it first.

4) Reboot your computer.

5) Install Alcohol 120%. I used v1.9.2.1705 and know it works. Install it and crack it.

6) Reboot your computer.

7) Load Alcohol 120% and select the 'File -> Options' menu. Select Emulation. Make sure that the following items are enabled:

Ignore Media Type
Launch "CD/DVD Manager" without "Ignore Media Type" function.
RMPS (Recordable Media Physical Signature) Emulation

Select "Extra Emulation" and make sure that the following items are enabled:

BAD Sectors Emulation
Sub-Channel Data Fixed and Emulation
LaserLock Emulation

Now click 'OK' and close Alcohol 120%

8) Unpack the contents of the 'Fake Boot CD' archive to a temporary location. The password is 'erased'.

9) Now insert a blank recordable CD into your CD writer.

10) Reboot your computer.

11) Close down all unnecessary software that you have running in the background. Virus checkers, screen savers etc...

12) Load Alcohol 120%

13) Select 'Image Burning Wizard'.

14) Select the 'Fake Boot CD' image file you unpacked in step 8. It should be called 'Sacred CD1.mds'. Click 'Next'.

15) Select your CD Burner with the blank CD already inserted. Set the 'Write Speed' to the lowest possible.

16) Make sure 'Write Method' is set to 'RAW DAO'. Make sure the 'Burn "RMPS" to recordable media' setting is enabled. Make sure the 'Datatype' setting is set to 'VOB ProtectCD v5'. If you cannot set the options in this step correctly then you have a crappy CD burner and you will not be able to burn this CD properly. Get yourself a better burner.

17) Now, if you have everything set as above and you are confident you have not missed a step, then click 'START'. The CD will begin burning now. Don't touch anything while it's burning. Just leave the computer alone until it's finished.

18) Once the burning has completed without errors, you can close Alcohol 120% and eject your new CD. You may want to label it as 'Sacred BOOT CD' or something like that. You can also delete the 'Fake Boot CD' you unpacked in step 8.

PART B - INSTALLING THE GAME

19) Install the game as normal.

20) There is no step 20. Not now anyway!!! :face:

21) Install the 'sacred_plus_eng.exe' patch.

PART C - RUNNING THE GAME

You must follow these instructions exactly every time you want to run the game.

22) Make sure that Alcohol 120% is installed. Make sure that the 'RMPS (Recordable Media Physical Signature) Emulation' setting is also enabled in Alcohol 120%. Make sure 'Daemon Tools' is NOT installed.

23) Insert the fake BOOT CD you created in PART A. You should put it in the cd burner which you used to make the CD with. Other drives may have problems reading it.

24) Reboot your computer. This is very important!!!

25) Run Sacred as soon as you can after the computer has booted. The reason why you should do it quickly is because the CD will still be spinning from the detection during Windows booting. If the CD is spinning it will make the protection much easier to pass. If you launched Sacred quickly enough then it should detect the fake BOOT CD correctly and the intro FMV's should start playing. If this happens, then congratulations. YOU MADE IT!!!

You will now find that Sacred Plus v1.8.51 runs fine. You can find the version number in the bottom right of the Sacred Main Menu.

If the game does not run as expected then do the following:

26) Follow steps 22 to 25 again.

27) If it still does not work, then try following steps 1-25 again.

28) If it still does not work, then try everything again using a different CD burner and a different type of blank CD.

If after all that it still does not work, then I can't help you. You could try a different CD burner/blank cd.

Now all this works fine for me. I know that if you don't follow these instructions precisely then you will have problems. You may also have problems with certain types of cd-recorder or blank. I used an MSI DR-4A DVD burner and Mitsubishi blank CD (SR80KP1) at 8 speed to burn the fake boot cd. It plays fine when i insert this fake cd in the MSI DR-4A. It also worked on my LG 16x DVD. It never works if I don't perform step 25 quickly enough. The PC I'm using is a P4 running at 3.7Ghz. I did not re-install windows. I did not need to play in the registry. I did not need any Sacred version other than the english one. I also did not need to unistall/install any software other than what I have mentioned in this walkthrough. My P4 has a 240GB raid hard-drive system with about 200GB of software installed and has not been re-installed for over 12 months. It gets used daily for a wide variety of demanding tasks so that sort of rules out the 'need a new windows' line. It's running Windows XP Pro (Build 2600) with Service Pack 1. Those of you running SP2 would be wise to uninstall it if possible as SP2 has issues with some software and could cause problems with running Sacred in the manner I have described.

I hope this makes things a bit clearer for everyone. Feedback on whether this works or doesn't work for you would be very appreciated.

Have fun!!
Troy

[Plipft]

Following all of those steps, including 26, 27, and 28 (spent several hours, tried four different brands/types of media I had lying around, and all three of my burners, old to new), and still have the same problem. It seems to be blacklisting the latest version of Alcohol, 1.9.2.1705, so I have no idea how others are getting it to work. Unless the copy protection "phones home" and autoupdates itself like Starforce does, I don't see how mine could be blacklisting the same version others purport to be using successfully.

I've tried rebooting it and running it as quickly as I can dozens of times now with no success. I even put it in startup and disabled all other startup programs so it would autorun as soon as possible. Maybe my 3.6Ghz machine is too fast loading the Alcohol drivers for me to beat it and run Sacred in time (though you say yours is a similarly fast machine), but I always always always receive the error (with version 1.7 and Plus, anyhow; the unpatched version works fine with the fake CD): "This CD-ROM/DVD-ROM cannot be validated due to installed Copy Protection Emulation Software. (#10001)"

I don't and never have had Daemon Tools installed, preferring to use Alcohol, and this is a pretty clean install of XP (just set it up 2 weeks ago) so I shouldn't have any other software it's blacklisting. In fact, I can confirm it's blacklisting Alcohol because if I uninstall Alcohol I get a different error (invalid CD or whatever, since without the emulation it sees it's a copy). I even went as far as to try uninstalling Alcohol DURING the CD check in the hopes of fooling it into thinking I had no emulation software while at the same time emulation was running, without success. (Even if that worked, I'd say uninstalling and reinstalling Alcohol every time I want to play is more annoying than switching the CD anyway.) So, any suggestions?

[aika-san]

hi. i think you might be right about the phone home bit. the pc i'm using to test this walkthrough with is not and never has been connected to the net. i've never had it blacklist any version of alcohol whatsoever. I've never experienced this error:

"This CD-ROM/DVD-ROM cannot be validated due to installed Copy Protection Emulation Software. (#10001)"

and was not aware that this problem exists. I can't see why you can be using exactly the same versions of all the software I am, yet you get this error and I never get it. The only reason I can think of would be the phone home bit.

I have experienced the invalid CD error though, but that only occurs if I don't do step 25 quickly enough.

Maybe you could get around the error by trying this:

- remove sacred
- remove alcohol
- disconnect completely from the net. I mean pull the plug out the back to make sure.
- install sacred plus the patch
- install alcohol
- reboot
- make sure you are not connected to the net.
- try steps 22 onwards in the original walkthrough using the fake cd which you have created during previous attempts.

I can't see why you would need to re-create the fake cd every time. that's just a waste of blanks. if the fake cd you use works using an unpatched install of sacred then it should be fine for running the patched sacred

i know it's a pain to have to disconnect from the net but if you really want to run it....

Maybe it phones home during only the Sacred startup and maybe you can connect while Sacred's running without getting blacklisted. Then everytime you want to run Sacred, you disconnect, reboot, run sacred, then re-connect. Painful, but with the lack of a better option...

I'm sorry but I can't check whether I get blacklisted by hooking my P4 up to the net mainly due to the fact that it's a work machine.

the other obvious option is to try it on a pc like mine which does not get connected to the net, if that's possible.

one final thing, don't burn yourself out doing this. trying dozens of times won't do anything but annoy the crap out of you. you should be able to get it to work within the first 3 attempts as long as you don't get blacklisted and you perform step 25 quickly.

the only difference between your setup and mine appears to be the fact that your pc is connected to the net. if you eliminate that difference, I think you may have success.

I have only documented what works for me. I thought that I typed out exactly how I got it going, then it would help eliminate some of the problems people are having. Unfortunately, I was not aware of the blacklist problem. I must have installed Sacred and related software at least 10 times now and never been blacklisted yet.

It seems that although the Sacred protection is good, it's not perfect. I think the reason why it is so good is because it protects on multiple levels. i.e.

- 1:1 backup prevention (VOB ProtectCD V5)
- File Crc checking
- CD integrity check
- Checking for and interfering with cd emulation software
- phoning home (maybe...)
- etc...

Any one of these protections normally does not cause much problems, but when combined like they are in Sacred it makes things a bit more difficult. All you need to do is fail during 1 of these protection checks and you won't be playing. It's a bit like a virus which attacks using multiple techniques.

get back to me as to whether this works. if it does, then i can update the walkthrough to suit. If it turns out that Sacred is phoning home then maybe we can organise the blocking of the port it communicates through using firewall software. that way you could remain connected and still play sacred without getting blacklisted.

anyway, hope this helps. don't worry, i will keep checking back here. the more ideas we throw around the quicker this issue will be resolved. at the moment, i'm confused as to why you get blacklisted and i never have. if we can find out why you get blacklisted then we will quickly solve the problem.

[Plipft]

I can't see why you would need to re-create the fake cd every time. that's just a waste of blanks. if the fake cd you use works using an unpatched install of sacred then it should be fine for running the patched sacred

I couldn't see why, either, but media is dirt cheap these days and I was feeling especially belligerent. ;) People complaining that these methods haven't worked for them weren't particularly clear about what error they were getting, and while it appeared to be a blacklisting issue for me, for all I knew it was caused by a faulty CD. The CD working with v1 but not v1.8 doesn't necessarily mean the CD is good, either. But I certainly have plenty of CD's to test without my net connection active. ;)

I worry that there might be another issue. It could be that there are two versions of the Sacred Plus patch floating around out there, identical in everything except the copy protection. It's possible it was updated later and they quietly distributed it under the same name. I didn't pick up the patch until a couple of days ago, and others who have gotten the game working may have patched sooner after the initial release of Plus. The fact 1.7 won't work seems to discourage this theory, except that the Plus patch may have updated some System dll's that aren't uninstalled with the game itself the first time I installed it and I basically screwed myself permanently. If just disconnecting from the net and reinstalling doesn't work, that remains a possibility.

Wish me luck. I'll report back with my success/failure.

Edit: No go. Disconnect from net, uninstall, reinstall, test run on v1.0, works fine, even without rebooting and trying to run it real quick or anything like that. Install Plus patch, test run, fails with same message I reported earlier. Blacklisting my version of Alcohol, which is 1.9.2.1705. Sigh.

[aika-san]

We can compare our 'sacred_plus_eng.exe' patch files to make sure they are identical. The way to do this is to get the CRC32 checksum of the file. My patch file's checksum is 710D3F6F

If your plus patch checksum is not the same then we have different versions of what is supposed to be the same patch.

To find your checksum, just archive the patch with WinRAR, then double-click the archive you created to open it. In the WinRAR archive manager you should see the patch listed and to the right of this you will see the CRC32 checksum. Please see the attached picture to make things clearer. What is your plus patch checksum?

If it turns out that your patch is different to mine then I could write a program which modifies your patch so that it is the same as mine. This would take me about a week to do as I am fairly busy with other things at the moment. I would also need to download the patch version with the same CRC as yours. Then I could make a delta file containing just the differences between your patch and mine. After that, I would write a small program which applies the delta file to your patch which effectively changes your patch into mine. This is assuming that your patch is different to mine.

I downloaded my plus patch about 2 to 3 weeks ago so it is possible that they have updated it without telling anyone. If that's the case then you probably do have a different version to me.

You would think that they would give it a rest. I mean, every program is crackable. It's just a matter of time. The amount of cash they spend doing this would be better used making the game better rather that extending the copy protection. IMHO it's not even a really good game. It looks nice, but it's still essentially a Diablo clone. They haven't really advanced the genre on anything but a graphical level. As is usual for games nowdays, it's been dumbed down to kiddie level. Not only that, they rushed it out full of major bugs and then expect everyone else to pick up the pieces. The only reason why I am spending the time to attempt cracking it is because I love a challenge. I think the game itself, is mediocre at best. Now if the game was as full-featured as it's protection is....

Anyway, keep with it. I have done similar types of hacks on other games and it always ends up working. As long as we keep in contact I can't see any reason why we can't get Sacred going for everyone. You just need to keep your hopes up. We will get to the bottom of this.

At the very least you will be able to say you helped with the cracking of Sacred Plus. I'll even put your name on the intro window of any crack I program. :)

[Plipft]

Well, I don't know whether to feel embarrassed or just glad we figured out the issue (or at least part of it). I own the US version of Sacred, not the International English (import, to those of us on this side of the pond) one, and am thusly looking at the _enu patch. I just tried the _eng patch just for grins and it won't patch, telling me, understandably, "This Update is not compatible with your installed Version." To my credit, nowhere in this thread was it clarified which version of Sacred was being discussed, and you yourself in your "ingredients list" only say Sacred and Sacred Plus patch, though your step by step instructions do say _eng instead of _enu. Sorry for missing that single character the first time around. It goes without saying that the _enu patch has a different CRC value (and is 120 bytes larger, as well), but at least the _eng patch I downloaded has a matching checksum to the one you posted.

That said, do I have any options? I tried some simple registry hacks to try to convince the patcher I had the UK version, but it didn't work. I don't know if anything like that would make a difference anyway, given it may just patch with file differences instead of entire files (since the patch is so enormous and will work to update any version to Plus, I suspect it may contain all the file data, but you can never be sure). Wonder how many other people for whom this is and isn't working are using which language version of the game.

You would think that they would give it a rest. I mean, every program is crackable. It's just a matter of time. The amount of cash they spend doing this would be better used making the game better rather that extending the copy protection. IMHO it's not even a really good game. It looks nice, but it's still essentially a Diablo clone. They haven't really advanced the genre on anything but a graphical level. As is usual for games nowdays, it's been dumbed down to kiddie level. Not only that, they rushed it out full of major bugs and then expect everyone else to pick up the pieces. The only reason why I am spending the time to attempt cracking it is because I love a challenge. I think the game itself, is mediocre at best. Now if the game was as full-featured as it's protection is....

No kidding. Copy protection just serves to annoy those who legally own the game and maybe delay a game's inception into the warez community by a few days, on the rare occassion it doesn't show up online as a download before it even hits the shelves. There have been a few "victories" for the copy protectors of late (the first ones I've seen in my couple of decades of experience with PC gaming), such as Starforce v3 which is actually taking weeks rather than days to crack it seems, but at the price of the increasing violation of privacy ("phone home" style software) and end-user rights. To be fair to Sacred's developers, though, copy protection is generally invested in and determined by the publisher rather than the developer, and the buggy state of Sacred at release is also likely due to publisher pressure to release before the game was ready. It's not an excuse, per se, but the publishers deserve our ire far more than developers do.

[aika-san]

Apologies for not making it crystal clear what version I am using. Yes, I am using the eng version with the eng patch. I have the enu patch but can't use it as it gives me the same message you get when u use the eng patch.

Ok. Here's a hypothesis. I have the eng version and the eng patch. Now, this fake cd has to have originated from a certain version too. I'm going to say it's from the eng version and thats why it works with all the eng stuff. Now, here you come with your enu version and enu patch which works fine. However, when you try to run the game, it spots that you are using the eng boot cd and then gives you the error. It knows you installed with a different version than what you are booting with.

Two possible solutions. The one you are looking at, which is fool the patch into thinking that you really have the eng version installed. This might work so I have included a pic of the relevant registry settings on my pc. The other option, which I am about to look at, is modifying the fake boot cd so that it looks more like the enu version.

We're getting closer. You realise that the more possible differences we eliminate, the closer we get to a solution which will work.

What do u think????

[Plipft]

The only issue with your hypothesis is that the fake CD works great on the unpatched game. That leads me to believe that it at least theoretically should work with either the US or International versions. Of course, the patched copy protection is smarter than the unpatched one or we wouldn't be having this issue at all.

Trying the registry entries you listed gets me a little further through the install process, but it still detects a version mismatch. I think to test this properly, I'll need the version number of the unpatched ENG version, because it recognizes 1.2.0.10 as ENU retail. The final patched version number of ENU Plus is even different, I believe.

I almost wonder if you shouldn't make a ENU to ENG patch (either for use before or after patching to Plus). ;) It would have the bonus side effect of implementing gore for those who want it and are annoyed with the (again publisher) decision to cut gore in the US version for a Teen rating. I wouldn't guess there'd be a lot of differences between the versions, since the languages are nearly identical.

[aika-san]

OK. I will remove sacred and re-install and get the unpatched eng version number.

I'm also looking at the possibility of modifying the eng plus patch so that it works on the enu version.

Give me about half an hour.

Back shortly

EDIT - The unpatched eng version number according to the registry is 1.2.0.20

Hope this works!!!!

EDIT 2 - I think if you change the version to 1.2.0.20 then you will be able to install the eng plus patch. I just did a small test. I installed the eng version of sacred unpatched. then changed the version in the registry to 1.2.0.10 and then i was able to install the enu 1.7 patch. if the version is 1.2.0.20 then this won't install.

[Plipft]

No luck. :( It's probably checking the version number embedded in the exe to double check against the registry and kicking me out at that point. The version information includes not only 1.2.0.10 (instead of .20; that seems to be the portion of the version number that's different at every patch level--ENU Plus shows up as 1.8.1.11 instead of .21) but "ENU" under "Special Build Description" as well. Either of these could be triggering the patch failure. Or, if it really is trying to do a change style patch instead of overwriting with a whole new exe (though if it's doing this, why does it need to be 130MB and why would it work with all versions before patching?), it's just not finding the offsets it wants.

This is getting quite frustrating. Almost bringing up more questions than answers. :confused: What is the exact file size (in bytes) of the setup.exe on your original (non-faked) Sacred ENG version CD?

Edit: Since the 1.7 patch can be tricked to patch the other direction, but I can't get the Plus patch to work this direction, maybe I can try the 1.7 ENG patch followed by the Plus ENG patch. Lemme track down the 1.7 ENG patch someplace and give it a shot.

[aika-san]

404,943 bytes.

Don't worry. I'm starting to get pissed off with it too. I can't continue much longer as I will be working shortly.

[Plipft]

That confirms (at least nearly 100%) that the faked CD is in fact from the ENG version and not the ENU version, since that size matches the faked CD whereas my setup.exe is 408,322. That's most likely my problem then, and is conceivably the problem other people are having (since most people don't mention if they have the US or Import version when they say it does or doesn't work).

So it still comes down to trying to get me from ENU to ENG.

[aika-san]

Maybe you can replace your setup.exe with the one on the fake cd and rebuild a new install cd image from that. then try installing with it. with a bit of luck, the eng setup.exe will put the eng bits in required for the eng patch to work. it's a long shot, but anything may work. Maybe even try replacing as much of your CD1 with the equivalents on the fake cd and try installing with that.

edit - another easier one to try would be to start the setup using the fake cd, and then swap this with your real cd just before you click the install button.

[Plipft]

The fake CD is all whitespaced data. None of it is valid. That's why over 650MB can be compressed into 14MB for distribution as the crack. I'd need a real ENG CD, but that'd enter the territory of illegal downloading or else cost me $25 to buy the import, which would kind of defeat the purpose of this whole thing (I'm not going to BUY my backup, I've spent $40 already :p ). The setup.exe isn't the only differently sized file, either. The Setup-1.bin is also off by some bytes, and that's basically the entire CD right there.

Of course, I might be able to just make a faked version of my own ENU CD. It may even be as simple as ripping it and using the mds file from the crack distro (assuming the mds data is the same and it's only the VOB-PCD.key file that's different or something). Basically creating a ENU version backup CD with full instead of whitespaced data...and praying. Seems like a long shot.

I wonder just how much difference there is between ENU and ENG. A Sacred_Plus_ENU_to_ENG.exe patch would be nice right about now. ;)

Edit: ARGH! I can't find the ENG 1.7 patch on any site without a damned queue. :angry2: I hate FilePlanet.

Edit 2: Found it. On yet another site copying FilePlanet's horrible lead, but at least one where all the waits were 0 minutes instead of 75. Now to see if I can trick it into installing.

[aika-san]

Of course, I might be able to just make a faked version of my own ENU CD. It may even be as simple as ripping it and using the mds file from the crack distro (assuming the mds data is the same and it's only the VOB-PCD.key file that's different or something). Basically creating a ENU version backup CD with full instead of whitespaced data...and praying. Seems like a long shot.


I can't see why that won't work. That's essentially how the fake cd was created. I'ts not even really a crack, just a stripped version of the original.
Looks like they made it with Alcohol 120% so you shouldn't have any problems doing the same. Given some time, someone who has the enu version will do this. If I did own enu, I would be doing it now.


A Sacred_Plus_ENU_to_ENG.exe patch would be nice right about now. ;)

That's not possible. I'm in the same boat as you. I've already paid for the game, and can't justify paying for it again whether it's imported or not. Catch 22 really. To make that kind of patch you would need both versions of the game and a fair amount of patience.

You wanna swap internet connections. I get a max of around 230MB in 24 hours. It took around 10-12 hours for my Sacred Plus patch to come down. 56K sucks but I'm in a remote location, no ADSL or BroadBand here. Patience is a virtue...but it still sucks:)

EDIT - At the very least we have managed to narrow the problem down. Now we know that it is highly likely that the reason why it's not working is because of the differences in the enu and eng versions.

I'm afraid I have other stuff to attend to now. I will be back in around 24 hours to see what has transpired. It's hard for me to help because my version works flawlessly. Without the enu version, all I can really do is give you ideas to try. Well, if you have any more queries about the eng version, feel free to ask. Cheers for now.

[Plipft]

Well, 1.7 won't install either. It gets as far as letting me choose a directory to apply it to, then says, "This Update is not meant for this installed Sacred version!" They probably put in extra protection for patching this direction because god forbid a teenager see a drop of blood, right? :rolleyes:

I'll try burning ENU now... This is definitely turning into a hassle. While I know how to burn a copy and try it, and I did try that before without it working (though I'm hoping the mds file from the crack is the holy grail), I don't know how to conveniently create a whitespaced version to help anyone else out if this helps me. Mine will actually have the real data in it.

Edit: Well, it won't even work with the mds from the crack. Says invalid image with my old ripped mdf. Half-expected that. And my old ripped mds didn't create a working backup CD either. Gave me an invalid CD error with the copy protection. I'll rip my original again (maybe it'll catch something it didn't the first time), but I'm quickly losing faith in my ability to get this to work. That $25 is almost starting to look worthwhile, especially if *I* could make a ENU to ENG patch...though the game isn't really worth $65. If this were Kohan 2, I might (I love Kings of War). But Sacred? I'm working this hard on it more for the principle of the thing than because the game is that great. :/

Edit 2: You may want to modify your original 28-step plan to mention it is verified to work with the UK version only, not the US one. It could turn out to be the reason all the people for whom it doesn't work are having issues.

[aika-san]

Edit 2: You may want to modify your original 28-step plan to mention it is verified to work with the UK version only, not the US one. It could turn out to be the reason all the people for whom it doesn't work are having issues.

Updated to make this point clear.

Good luck with trying to make a backup. Try using Alcohol, put your original in the burner to read the image, and make sure all the settings are the same as when you use the fake cd. Other good programs for making 1:1 images are

- Elaborate Bytes CloneCD
- Golden Hawk CDRWin
- BlindWrite

Nero and EasyCDCreator and lots of others aren't that good at doing the 1:1 thing. Just my experiences with doing this type of thing. You may have different results. I normally have no problems with making working 1:1 backups of originals with Alcohol or CloneCD, so long as the settings are correct.

Seeya for now.

EDIT - Just found an interesting document concerning the fake cd. Here's the part I find interesting:

To get other languages to work replace this file C:\Games\Sacred\scripts\us\global.res with the one of your language SAME VERSION

So what does that mean?? I could only find 1 global.res file in my installation and I'm assuming it's an eng one. I can find several versions of this file elsewhere, so I need your global.res versions CRC32 checksum and size in bytes. I need both these before you apply the plus patch and also after you apply the plus patch. Then I can make a delta file which you apply to your plus patched enu global.res in order to change it into the plus patched eng global.res. I'm assuming that if we can do this then the fake cd will be fooled into thinking you really have the eng version and everything will work. Phew.:)

Also, please try not to get disheartened by the failures so far. We have only been working at it for a few hours. Cracks sometimes take up to a week to devise and this is an exceptionally well protected game. If you are going to give up then please let me know now, otherwise this will be a waste of our time/resources.

[Odin_Allfader]

Hi guys, I just want to say that I think it's great that you try to make a well working crack. It is because of guys like you that gyus like me can play games! =)
So thank you for your hours of hours of hours that you spend trying to make this cracks! You guys are great!
I hope it's going well with this crack! =)

[Plipft]

Also, please try not to get disheartened by the failures so far. We have only been working at it for a few hours. Cracks sometimes take up to a week to devise and this is an exceptionally well protected game. If you are going to give up then please let me know now, otherwise this will be a waste of our time/resources.

Don't worry about me, I'm still as determined as ever to get this backup thing to work.

global.res v1.2 - 1735202 bytes - checksum DA9D064D
global.res v1.8 - 1985718 bytes - checksum 3992A3A4

Hope this helps! It occurred to me that since while the US version won't patch to UK but the UK seems to patch to US okay, you still might be able to get copies of all the US Plus files, including those other than global.res, to aid in creation of a ENU to ENG patch. Good luck, whatever you decide! :)

[aika-san]

Damn. My global.res is identical before and after.

i.e. it's DA9D064D before applying the plus patch and 3992A3A4 after the patch is applied.

I'm assuming that the other global.res files I can find must be for intermediate versions between the unpatched version and the plus patched version.

Wonder what the author of the document I found means by that comment.

Oh well, back to the drawing board...

I think you are right about making an enu to eng patch. Here's what I think is feasible:

If we compare CRC's on all the files in the unpatched Sacred folder and then make a patch which changes all the different ones of yours to be identical to mine and then finally make the eng registry changes, then it would have to work, wouldn't it. This way, your installed copy would be modified from unpatched enu to unpatched eng. You could then install the eng plus patch and use the fake cd. Don't worry about having to get CRC's on hundreds of files. I will write a small util which does it for us and dumps the results in a text file. Then you could upload this text file for me and I could scan through and find out exactly which enu files are different from eng. Then I could make the delta files for all required changes and write a small program which applies all the delta files in one hit. As you can understand, it's a bit long-winded to do this and I'm working flat-out at the moment. What do you think about that? If you think this would work then I can start doing it tomorrow. At the moment I can't see why this would not work.

It's good to hear that you aren't giving up on this. I certainly won't unless we run out of options.

Thankyou for the kind comments Odin_Allfader. I'm sure that Plipft appreciates your gratitude as well.

I'll be back tommorow to see what you say about the enu to eng plan which I have devised. I don't think I've forgotten anything...but you never can tell:)

BTW Can you program? You seem intelligent and logical enough that you would be a great programmer.

Anyway cya tomorrow....

[Plipft]

I think global.res just contains the translations of all ingame text, basically. So the UK and US versions are identical, both in English. The other global.res files you found may be completely different languages. No separate localization was necessary for the US since differences would be few and mostly in the realm of idioms and the like. That would explain the reason our files are the same, though not explain the message you saw since it seems to be simply false.

Plan sounds okay, though different from what I was thinking. Didn't you get your version to patch to 1.7 US at one point? Or had you not tried going further through the installer and it turned out not to work?

With regard to your newest suggestion, after determining which files are different, how can the differences be patched without having both versions of the files themselves available to you? Most likely some large files, such as the .pak files that range up to >500MB, are different.

I'm not a programmer, though I've dabbled in it a bit. Actually went through a teach yourself C++ book when I was like 6 years old. I'd LIKE to be a programmer, I think, but ended up in hardware instead of software, and unfortunately it would require some rather large life changes to try to switch at this late juncture. I spend some of my free time fiddling with it, but other than a DOS console poker game and a few other basics, I've never made anything useful.

[mikimouse]

- Sacred Fake Boot CD image file (this comes in a 7-zip archive. the password is erased) ?????????????????
- don't work cd1.exe it is not 7-zip arhive and it have 25kb.What else i can do please

[aika-san]

Apologies for not getting back sooner. The area I live in had no dial-tone for the last 30 odd hours. Talk about annoying. It's all fixed now though. Took 'em long enough. Oh, the joys of living in remote places.

About the global.res thing: Yeah. I thought it was a long shot too, but you never can tell. Every avenue is worth investigating. It was pretty easy to check as well. The statement came in a document with one of the fake cd versions I have.

About the patching to 1.7 version: Yes, I did get it to patch to enu 1.7 at one stage, although I just tried again and it did not work. Not sure what's going on there. I know that I had been replacing parts of the install with other versions I have found floating around on the net. Maybe there was something I replaced which allowed the enu 1.7 version to patch. I've unpacked my image files and installed and tinkered on too many occasions to mention now. Not sure what I could have done, but I will try to find out what it was.

You are right about needing both versions of any different files to make the patch. Anyway the size/CRC's for the largest files on my unpatched eng install are:

models.pak / 210,942,438 bytes / 73C50340
texture.pak / 553,673,913 bytes / D00D85BB
sound.pak / 279,662,766 bytes / 47B2A57C

Any differences in yours???

I don't work as a programmer anymore. It's too much of a headache and nowdays there's too many people eager to rip you off. That crap sorta goes against my morals, which is something I won't tolerate. Nowdays, I run a mobile computer repair business. The hardware repair side is much easier money than the software development side.:) I've been programming on different systems/languages for around 15 years. I've programmed for Tandy MC-10, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, C64, Amiga and now PC. Worked on a variety of programs on these systems, ranging from utilities to applications and games. I have been programming a 3D PC RPG now for the better part of 12 months, although that's just a sideline hobby. Probably end up releasing it free when it's ready.

[aika-san]

- Sacred Fake Boot CD image file (this comes in a 7-zip archive. the password is erased) ?????????????????
- don't work cd1.exe it is not 7-zip arhive and it have 25kb.What else i can do please

If you know where to look, you will find a fake boot cd like the one I mention. This fake boot cd will be in a 7-zip archive and the password for this archive will be erased.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you exactly where to find this because that goes against the rules on this forum and I will possibly be banned or this thread closed. In this instance, google is not your friend. In fact, no search engine will locate this fake boot cd for you. That's about all the clues I can give you.

[RandomCorpse]

I dl'ed the file but it was only 40k and didnt extract and had a bunch of errors. If someone could email me at Michael_S_Hale@yahoo.com with some help, that would be most appriecated.

PLZ & TY

[Plipft]

No difference in models and textures, but my sound.pak is 279,662,766 / BEE62E3E.

What you mention is part of why I didn't go into software as a job in the first place. I kind of enjoy doing it on my own, but don't think I'd enjoy doing it for someone else on someone else's terms. I enjoy working out how to get a program to work, but not so much programming some tiny module that just gets plugged into a piece of code ten-thousand times larger, much less being forced to write a certain way to match everyone else in a large project and such. I don't know, I guess I love logic but hate organization. ;)

Keep trying to work out how you convinced the patch to work. I might be able to do the same to patch in your direction, or if you can patch my direction again you could patch all the way up to ENU Plus and keep a copy of all those files this time for a ENU_to_ENG patch :) Hell, I'm still trying to talk myself into buying the ENG version and maybe doing such a thing myself.

[Semnae]

I would like to thank all of you that are working on this project. I bought the game legitimately, and the copyright protection keeps giving me the disk verification error (I think it doesn't like my cd rom drive). I e-mailed the company, but they don't seem to care. This is yet another game where the copy protection causes problems for people who legitimately bought the game. I can get the game to run using a 1.66c no cd fixed exe crack, but I would really like to be able to play Plus. I'm not a programmer, so I probably can't help much, but I'll be keeping my eye on this thread, so don't be discouraged and don't give up, I'm counting on you! :banana:

[matersci]

could someone please tell me where to find this "boot cd image" ??
I couldn't find it anywhere.

pleeeeeaasseee!!

if you can't say it the forum, please mail it to me:
matersci@mailbox.gr

Thank you for your help!

:nervous:

[sin316]

i tried every way staed (though all are basicly the same) and nada.

ive a liteon burner , so i doubt thats the problem. i never had any error saying that use image or whatever , just the "disc verification error".

hope someone makes a crack "not so based on random factors" anytime soon lol.

[aika-san]

I'm working on a solution to the enu version right now. I'll need someone with the original enu version to run a small program for me which generates the checksums i need in order to create a working patch. This program should be ready within 24 hours at which time I'll upload it. Then someone with enu can run it and upload the results for me. I can then use this to work out exactly where the differences are between enu and eng. From this info I can build a patch which converts enu to eng. Then you can use the eng fake boot cd and all the eng patches including the plus patch. Sounds like a lot of work, but the whole thing will be ready in 1 more week if there are no further problems.

Please be patient. I'm working 38 hour weeks as well...

I'll be back in 24 hours with the program and the instructions that must be followed in order to correctly generate the info I need.

[aika-san]

Here is the program to generate the checksums I need.

Here's how to use it:

1) Uninstall any version of Sacred that you already have installed.

2) Delete any left over files in the Sacred directory (like save games)

3) Now, install your enu version of Sacred from your original CD's.

4) Don't apply any patches to your freshly installed Sacred. Don't even run it.

5) unarchive the SacredMD5.exe to a location on your hard drive. The Sacred folder is fine.

6) Now run the SacredMD5.exe. You can run it from wherever you want, as long as it is not in an archive. It will tell you that it is generating the checksums. This will take a few minutes. Once completed you will get a message saying that the checksums have been generated. You will then find a text file in the same directory you ran SacredMD5.exe from. This text file will be called SacredMD5.txt and it will contain all the information I need in order to create the crack. Please do not modify this text file in any way.

The text file will contain all the Sacred checksums, all the Sacred registry entries and the Sacred directory structure.

7) Finally upload your SacredMD5.txt file to the forum and then I can use it to help create the crack.

Without this text file I can't continue working on the Sacred Plus crack.

[Semnae]

Here you go aika-san. I'm not a programmer, but I can follow simple instructions and don't like the idea of being a bystander while you all work so dilligently to make a crack so people like me can play this game. I'm pleased that I could do something after all. If you or anyone else needs something done with the enu ver. again, then feel free to ask. Good luck!

[aika-san]

Thankyou so much Semnae. Tonight, I'll have a quick look and see which of the main files the crack will need to modify and start getting some of them. Tomorrow, assuming there's no major issues, I'll begin work on the patching engine. Please keep on standby, as I may need further info.

Your help is much appreciated.

[aika-san]

Right. All is going well Semnae. I have used the file you uploaded to locate all the differences in the enu version. Now I need you to run one more program and upload the resulting file for me. The instructions for this one are pretty much the same as before. It's extremely important you follow all these steps, otherwise incorrect data will be generated

1) Uninstall any version of Sacred that you already have installed.

2) Delete any left over files in the Sacred directory (like save games)

3) Now, install your enu version of Sacred from your original CD's.

4) Don't apply any patches to your freshly installed Sacred. Don't even run it.

5) Now run the SacredCrypt.exe. You can run it from wherever you want, as long as it is not in an archive. It will tell you that it is generating the crypt file. It won't take long. Once completed you will get a message saying that the crypt has been generated. You will then find a .rar file in the same directory you ran SacredCrypt.exe from. This file will be called SacredCrypt.rar and it will contain all the differences between the 2 versions. This data is heavily encrypted and will be of no use to anyone other than me. I can extract this data using my decrypter and then use it to generate the delta files needed for the patch. The file you need to upload will be approximately 6MB in size. Sorry bout that, I've got no other option. I've been trying to get the data I need from other locations but it's almost impossible to find. Once I have this file, that will be all the data I need in order to create a working enu to eng patch.

[Semnae]

I've done as you asked aika-san, but I am having trouble uploading the file to the forums. It is 5.6 Mb. I tried uploading it just like the previous file but all it did was sit on the "Uploading File(s) - Please Wait" message for several min. Could it be too big? Maybe I can e-mail you the file, what is your e-mail?

[aika-san]

I thought that might be a problem Semnae. Unfortunately my email address has a 2MB attachment size limit too. Hmmm. Let me look around for a while. Maybe I can find a bit of free file hosting space.

I can create the patch without the data file you just created but it will be a lot bigger in filesize.

[Semnae]

I have KaZaA Lite K++ installed if you want to connect to our own KaZupernode and send it p2p, but I've never actually done it before, I'd have to figure it out first. I also have GAIM installed, which has a way to transfer files.

[aika-san]

Here's an email address:

ratly@dodo.com.au

You can send it to this address. It has a 10MB limit:)

I'll probably get the patch working tonight and then upload it for you to test. You will still need to have the fake boot cd, and you will also need the eng version of the plus patch. I can't see why it won't work now though.

[Semnae]

The e-mail's been sent. I don't know if aol has any file size restrictions or not, so it might get sent back to me. Hopefully, if were lucky, you'll recieve it within a min. or two. If not, let me know and I'll try something else.

[aika-san]

It's downloading now on my ultra-slow connection. :greencry: Thanks heaps.

I'll get started on the patch as soon as it's down.

If it's ok with you, I'd like to email you a test version before releasing it on the forum. You can test it, and send me a mail back saying whether it works or not. That way we can fix any problems before anyone else gets hold of it. I won't be able to properly test it because I've only got the eng version.

Don't hold your breath though. I've got about 10 hours more work before it's completed. I took a sickie from work today so I could do this:)

Heh. I wonder how many people are now wearing their mouse out by clicking the refresh button on this page every 5 seconds:)

EDIT: Got it. I'm about to start writing the patch now. If you don't hear back from me then you know all is going well. It should be ready in around 10 hours.

[Semnae]

Sure, I'd love to test it. I'm glad to help, but I have school tomarrow morning so I may not be able to test it until tomarrow afternoon around 3:00 p.m. Central time. If you don't mind the wait and still want me to test, then use the same AOL e-mail that I used to send the SacredCrypt file to you. I checked and found out it has a 20Mb file size restriction, so it shouldn't be a problem.

[aika-san]

Yep. I don't mind waiting for you. I'd prefer it if you would test it anyway. The wait gives me more time to make it a bit nicer too. When it's finished I'll mail it to you.

EDIT - The patch is ready. I haven't uploaded it yet. I was stupid enough to delete your previous email before adding you to my address book. Can you send me another email so I can get your address, then I'll upload the patch for you to test. The bad news is that the patch turned out to be around 5MB as well, so if it works, I'm going to need to organise some file hosting so people can download it. Does anyone know where I can host a 5MB file for no cost, at least temporarily?

[Plipft]

Does anyone know where I can host a 5MB file for no cost, at least temporarily?

You could create a torrent and link it here. Hopefully enough people would be nice enough to leave it seeding to get a good share going. I'd be willing to leave it seeding at least for a while. Only 386kbps upstream but it's something.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I, too, have a job (50 hours a week, actually), so I have limited availability. I'm glad Semnae had the right timing to get the ball rolling faster. I hope this works! Don't see why it wouldn't.

I'm shocked you were able to use such a small program to compare such large amounts of data, with only one full set of data present at that. Split large files into small blocks to checksum and find the small amounts of changes or what?

Good luck, guys!

[aika-san]

Hi Plipft. I think I've got the hosting worked out. I'm going to take a break from this for a few hours and hopefully when I get back Semnae will have replied with a mail. I'll then upload the test version to him. If he gives the nod, then I will post it and put the link here.

As for how the program is able to compare large amounts of data from extremely small code size. I'm using a very tight language, no wasted bytes. For this test version I have modified the registry entries to their eng counterparts. I have also patched all files that are different in each version AND are modified by the plus patch. There's only a few files that meet both these criteria. In the event that this does not work, I will start looking at other files which are different but ARE NOT modified by the plus patch. Phew! I think you get my drift. The main thing is that very little data is actually different between the 2 versions. I have not included the sound.pak differences because although the 2 versions are different, the plus patch does not modify them. I'm just hoping that the plus patch will not look at sound.pak and spot that it's from the enu version. I don't even really understand why sound.pak is different. Anyway, when Semnae gets back we can start testing.

[Beddei]

:D yehepeee let's get this show on the roll :P thx guys you all are great, without people like you the gameing industry would be at a halt ;) :banana:

[Vlastik]

Where can i download fake cd image of sacred?

[Semnae]

Good morning! My email is gambit4185@aol.com, I'll check it as soon as I get home. I'm on my way to school so I wont be able to test until I get back.

[sin316]

http://www.microsqft.com/

(no that aint miss spelled :p)

(for file hosting)

[aika-san]

@sin316 - Thankyou. I'll post it here when the release is ready.

@Semnae - I've sent you an email with the test version attached. Let me know if it works.

@Vlastik - I'll put the fake cd up when I release the patch.

@Beddei - Thanks for the positive comments. I just hope that it works.


Once Semnae approves the test version, I will release the full version and the fake boot cd. Finally, I'll post the links here that everyone's waiting for.

[Semnae]

The patch works! I can install Plus using the sacred_plus_eng.exe file now. I cannot run the game, however, because I don't have the 'Fake Boot CD' archive, but everything installs O.K.

[Marmi]

I'm sorry for my english (still learning). I wonder if anybody tried to run Sacred Plus in this way:
1. Burn game cd's with Alcohol120% from mds(f) files - I got them from p2p
2. Install game from cd (not from image) & uninstall alcohol/daemon tools & restart
Note: Nforce2 users should reinstall nforce drivers and not install IDE SW driver (or sth like that) - I read it in readme for sacred+
3. Install 1.7Patch & run game with 1cd in cd-drive(updcheck should start & approve this patch)
Note: I'm not sure if this point is necessary but I made it this way.
4. Install 1.8(sacred+) patch and simply run the game (updcheck at first time should start as in step 3)
I made it this way with my version and it works fine on 2 computers, 1st Win98SE, AthlonXP, VIA KM400 and 2nd WinXPSP1, AthlonXP, nforce2.
I have only small problem on 2nd system when sacred.exe crashed after last step but it works perfectly after restart.
Before that I tried english fakecd (no, I didn't try this big 28point solution posted in this thread) and few other tricks without success. Mostly I had statement that I have emulation software even if I hadn't one (maybe because my IDE SW driver which is not allowed in sacred plus as I mentioned earlier).BTW. Is it fair that I can't use either emulation soft nor IDE SW driver for my mobo if I want to play this game?
I think that success of this solution depends on what version you have on the beginning. I have images of polish ver. 1.6.6 (it's first polish edition) and I'm not sure if it's cracked or not (I think not). Maybe if you have cracked version updcheck fails?
Anyway you are doing great job here :thankyou:
BTW. Do you know this thread is famous on the net - I got URI to it from p2p!
If it's stupid what I wrote just ignore it. You know, I'm :newbie:
PS. My cd-burner is 48x LG and I have burn 1st cd on cd-rw disc at 4x speed and have nero all the time (but I doubt if it's important).
PS2. WOW, it's longest english text I ever wrote :contract: Ale błędów pewnie nawaliłem co niemiara, hehe.

[Marmi]

The patch works! I can install Plus using the sacred_plus_eng.exe file now. I cannot run the game, however, because I don't have the 'Fake Boot CD' archive, but everything installs O.K.

You can find it for example in emule (sacred 1.7 crack.zip)

[aika-san]

Back again. Great to see the patch works:) I have uploaded it to the following location:

EDIT - Removed this link. You can get the patch using instructions described later on in this thread

There is an extensive manual contained in the package. Make sure you read it. You won't have much success if you don't.

Thankyou for the file hosting info sin316. I was having trouble finding something like this. You've saved the day:)

I would be very interested to hear from someone who has success running the US English version using the patch. If you fit into this category and you can now play the game using the fake boot cd, then please let me know as soon as possible. That's the last test that needs to be verified.

@Marmi: Thanks for your kind comments and your version of the walkthrough. Look out, we're all famous now:) The main reason I have worked so hard at getting past this protection is because I think that ascaron are a bit rude. Apparently some people who have the original game, are having problems with their heavy-handed protection. ascaron won't even help. Those kind of morals really piss me off. Software publishers should know by now that protection only keeps the average user out. All protection is breakable, no matter what underhanded tricks they try. They never seem to learn though.

Unfortunately the patch will only work with the US English or the UK English versions. I can modify it to suit other languages but I would need to get in contact with a person who has the original version.

[aika-san]

I am now sharing the following files on P2P:

Sacred enu2eng.rar
Sacred Fake Boot CD.rar

You can use a program called emule to get them. You can download emule from:

http://emule-project.net/

In the instructions it says that the Fake CD comes in a 7-zip archive that is password protected. The version I am sharing comes in a WinRAR archive and has no password protection. Other than that, it's identical.

Also, when you first manage to run the game and get past the CD protection, Sacred will check some files. It will then bring a requester up saying to read the 'upderror.log' file. Press 'OK' and Sacred will quit. Now, the next time you run Sacred and get past the CD protection it should start as normal.

You should now have no problems. :)

[Semnae]

What server are you sharing it on?

EDIT: Nevermind, I found it on Razorback 2.

[aika-san]

What server are you sharing it on?

EDIT: Nevermind, I found it on Razorback 2.

Hi. When you finish getting the fake and making your boot cd could you please post your test results.

Apologies for my slow connection.

[sin316]

emule is such a no go lol. why dont up it to that site ?

[aika-san]

I tried uploading it to the site twice (4 hours). Both times failed. I don't know why, but I'm not interested in wasting another 2 hours trying again.

I'll make it a bit easier for you in emule now, but I need everyone downloading it to keep sharing it for a few hours so it spreads. I notice that a heap of people have downloaded the complete file from me, and then removed it to use and not continue sharing it. Damn leeches. I can't be the only one who shares it.

[Semnae]

I'm sharing it, but only during nighttime hours. My family gets angry if i hog all the bandwidth during the day.

[aika-san]

Thanks Semnae. There's a lot of other people who are not doing that. Must be something to do with being self-centered and greedy. Probably the same people who have been watching this thread but not posting.

Anyway, did it work?

[jetse]

hey you guys out there,

i'm having this trouble cracking dtm race driver 2. Does anybody know a good site or a program to carck this??

[Micge]

Aika-San: I downloaded the packages fromyou and I'm now sharing both of them plus Alcohol 120% & it's crack. I found that I got everything working in no time. I just followed the manual.txt (which is really greatly organized and easy to read). Only thing I noticed is that I dont need to boot the computer every time to get the game working. I just need to open and close the cd-drive so the cd starts spinning. if I dont do that then the cd-checker will crash my whole desktop.

I'm so happy to back into Sacred. I quit around 1.5 when the bugs were just so annoying and 3 of my characters became unplayable.

[Beddei]

:beer: well, all in a days work :P.. good job chapes, this proves that the games we play are cracked by people not by the magical cracking elfs :P .. thx guys

[Semnae]

When you finish getting the fake and making your boot cd could you please post your test results.
I followed the instructions that came with the patch file word for word, but I still am getting the "Disk Verification Error" message when I try to load the game using the fake boot cd. Everything installs correctly, it just won't run.

[aika-san]

I followed the instructions that came with the patch file word for word, but I still am getting the "Disk Verification Error" message when I try to load the game using the fake boot cd. Everything installs correctly, it just won't run.

Hi Semnae. I see that some other people now have it working so I must assume that the patch and fake CD work. I'm also assuming you are able to get into the game normally with the enu plus patch installed using your original cd's. If this is true then the only reasons I can see why you would still be having the verification problem using your fake CD is that:

- your CD burner is not burning the fake CD correctly. If you've tried different blanks, then try a different burner, preferably in a different PC.

- your CD reader is not reading the fake CD correctly. Try your fake CD on a different reader, preferably in a different PC, and see whether you can get it going like that.

The reason I say this is because I have heard of people who have had problems with the CD verification using the original CD's. This problem can only be attributed to compatibility issues between the original CD and the CD reader. The only other unlikely cause is that the original CD has been damaged. Hope this info helps.

It's good to see that everyone else is having success. :blacgrin The hard work is paying off. All I need to do is help fix Semnae's problem, and we'll all be set.

@jetse - This is a thread for Sacred, we're not interested in other games. If you can't find a thread for dtm race driver 2, then create one and post your question there. I'm sure you'll get a reply then.

@Micge - Thanks for keeping the files up. I'll keep them up for a few more days too. It's great to see that it now works for you. I only put the excessive rebooting in the manual because it does cause issues on some PC's if you don't.

@Beddei - I've never fully understood why the magical cracking elves are never to be found on any forum. They seem to think that they are part of an elite group. What they are doing is not illegal, yet they act as if it is.

[Semnae]

- your CD burner is not burning the fake CD correctly. If you've tried different blanks, then try a different burner, preferably in a different PC.

- your CD reader is not reading the fake CD correctly. Try your fake CD on a different reader, preferably in a different PC, and see whether you can get it going like that.

The reason I say this is because I have heard of people who have had problems with the CD verification using the original CD's. This problem can only be attributed to compatibility issues between the original CD and the CD reader. The only other unlikely cause is that the original CD has been damaged. Hope this info helps.

I'm glad everyone else is having success! I'm almost positive my problem lies with my cd-rom. I did a google search and found out alot of people with Lite-On burners that own the origionals are having the same error. I'll try getting it to work on my parents laptop later, but I don't have any different kinds of blanks on me right now. I also just realized that Nero ImageDrive is installed, so I might try uninstalling that to see if it has the same effect on the game as Daemon Tools. I also read somewhere that some antivirus programs can cause this error, so i may try booting up to safe mode and trying to run the game without Norton going in the background. I discovered something interesting with my origionals though. If I restart the computer with the origional playdisk in the drive after a fresh install (without any patches) then run the game as soon as possible it will start! Unfortunately, it doesn't work after I install the Plus patch. If none of this works, I may just have to wait until one of those elves comes up with a no cd fixed exe crack, like the 1.5 patch, but for Plus (if it's even possible to make one). On the bright side, the fortune cookie that came with may dinner tonight said, "You will emerge vicorious from the maze you've been traveling in." At least the cookie is on my side. :blacrazz Congrats to the rest of you.

[aika-san]

Yeah. Lite-On burners suck. The name says it all. Try Acer, Benq, MSI, Pioneer, Sony, or one of the other big-name brands.

The reason why you can't get your original to work after the plus patch is because the plus patch also updates the cd detection algorithm. It's this updated algorithm which either your cd burner or cd reader is having trouble with. Replace your burner and you should have success. I know that's not a cheap option, but at the moment it seems like your only option, unless someone can work out a foolproof way of using the fake cd with a virtual drive. I'll try not to aggravate your cookie, so I'll have a look at whether I can get the plus patched with fake cd working using a virtual drive under DaemonTools/Alcohol. I'm working over the next few days, so I'll get to this on the weekend. In the meantime try it all on another PC and I think you will have success. Maybe your LiteOn is not burning the fake correctly or maybe it is not reading it correctly, or maybe it's not doing both things correctly.

Good luck Semnae. I'll be watching for the results of your laptop test. If it works using that, then there must be something not right about your PC. I'm assuming it's your Lite-On. You should at least be able to start the standard plus patched version with your originals. If that's not possible, then there's no way the fake will work.

Also, don't take this the wrong way, but Norton and anything Norton makes is a pile of crap. In the DOS days Norton stuff was great, but now they have gone the big corporate way, and their programs are a lot like Windows. They get the job done, but not very efficiently. Norton Antivirus is slow, chews heaps of system resources and doesn't check for as many viruses as some other lesser known virus checkers. It also causes problems with the CDilla license management system used in 3DStudioMax. I can notice a drop in system responsiveness when I put Norton Antivirus on my PC which is a P4/3.7Ghz/1GB Dual-Channel DDR RAM/240GB RAID Hard Drive. It seems to suck grunt out of any machine I try it on. In my opinion a virus checker does not need to be as intrusive as this. I now run F-Prot Antivirus which has none of these problems. It also scans for and finds more viruses than Norton. You can download a free 30 day trial version here:

http://www.f-prot.com/download/home_user/download_fpwin.html

I've been using it for at least 2 years, and have yet to find a better virus checker. The only way I notice that F-Prot is running is by the icon in the system tray. It doesn't make your PC slower like Norton does. And most importantly F-Prot does not interfere with Sacred in any way. The only program I have found that F-Prot does not like is DVDXCopy, but DVDXCopy is a pile of crap as well. DVDShrink does the job better and is free. Oh well, just my opinion. I do computer repair work, so I get to see/test a lot of software, and I've come to hate anything that has Norton in the name.

Finally, thanks for everyone's positive comments and help in making this a reality, and for having the patience to see it through to completion.

[Beddei]

right.. i do have one last request.. if someone could please put the "sacred fake boot cd" and the "sacred_enu2eng" (THE FILES) on a nother p2p download manager, something like warez, kazaa, limewire, anything.. cuz' some of us (namely me!) can't download with e-mule (or i may be just to darn retardet to understand how :blacpuz duhhhh) or at least someone can give the instructions on how to dl with that rotten program (damn that mule)
:)

[aika-san]

right.. i do have one last request.. if someone could please put the "sacred fake boot cd" and the "sacred_enu2eng" (THE FILES) on a nother p2p download manager, something like warez, kazaa, limewire, anything.. cuz' some of us (namely me!) can't download with e-mule (or i may be just to darn retardet to understand how :blacpuz duhhhh) or at least someone can give the instructions on how to dl with that rotten program (damn that mule)
:)

Just be patient and it should start downloading. Sometimes it can take a few hours to begin downloading. Download the emule manual from the emule site and read it as well. You can also use shareaza to connect to the emule network. I have to go to work now. If you have not had any success in 24 hours then let me know.

[Micge]

E-mule doesnt always download instantly because when you request a file itputs you on the very end of the que in the hosts emule client. It might take some time to free up room in their upload bandwith as well. Also emule keept track of your uploads/downloads ratio and gives you a score based on this. the highger you get the better places in the lines you start to get.

In my first week I was unable to get more than 5-15k/downloads at a time but I just left emule on all the time and let the uploads pile a while and now when ever I want something I can prettu much get it at 20-40k/sec. Patience young grasshopper ;) and dont be a leecher.

[topjolly]

Thought this might be usefull, http://www.yousendit.com/ I'm sure you guys you guys can work out how to use it (has a 1gb size limit and user/day limit).

topjolly

[Jouster]

The hard work you guys put is incredible.. good to see people dedicated working together. I too have a lite on drive 1633S I have it in a hard drive enclosure running usb. Unfortunately, I too am not able to get the fake cd to work. Even tried using a CDRW set to 4x speed thinking that perhaps it's like the Xbox in the fact it will read RW media better. Nah... no change. Though the interesting thing is if I install my original disc in let the update log run then exit out and restart with fake cd it will go further in the cd check before getting disc verification error. I do have the latest fixaspi drivers too so I know I have a solid write. Before I was having huge problems with making coasters with single write DVD's, but that's getting a little off the subject. I sure wish they could do something like that awesome russian version 1.66c where all you do is copy the entire directory over the top of your current install and wahalla no cd check. If someone is interested in it I can put it on my share in emule. Least 1.66c is better then 1.5 but still has bugs.

Let me know cause I like to help too!
Jouster

[aika-san]

Thought this might be usefull, http://www.yousendit.com/ I'm sure you guys you guys can work out how to use it (has a 1gb size limit and user/day limit).

topjolly

Thankyou for the info topjolly. If Beddei continues having problems getting the files I will send him the files he needs using this.

[Semnae]

@aika-san, thx, i'll try that f-prot. I can't complain about the Lite-On though, I got it at the local COMPUSA on sale at their grand opening. Its 52x24x52x and I got if for $20, with a $20 rebate, so it was free. I'll get back to you after the laptop test, but I have alot of work to do for my Calculus class to do this week, so it might take awhile.

@Beddei, I've had some trouble with eMule myself. I'll start sharing the files you want on KaZaA tonight, but your not going to find it unless we happen to be on the same supernode. Post back if you want me to use a specific node that you have access to.

@Jouster, Looks like we're in the same boat. Be sure to let us know if you get it working on a different computer. By the way, the 1.66c crack is the 1.5 crack. It's a fake, all they did was modify the version number on the startup screen, but none of the bugs are fixed that should have been fixed with the 1.66c update.

[aika-san]

Just had a thought Semnae. Have both you and Jouster updated to the latest firmware for your Lite-On drives? If you haven't, then that may be the problem. My MSI DVD Burner gained extra burning capabilities by updating the firmware. Maybe if you update the firmware on your Lite-On you will gain the capabilities required to burn the fake correctly and pass the Sacred Plus verification check. If you need help doing this, just say.

[Jouster]

aika-san - That is a good suggestion I will definitely give it a shot. I even tried to go back uninstall alcohol 120%, reboot, reinstall, reboot, then tried using my HP200i with latest drivers and burn the fake cd image with 2x and cdrw disc, but to no avail. It seems strange when I boot up my system from clean boot and hear the drives spin up that I try launching the game and they come to an almost immediate halt and slow way down. Maybe this is the issue? I can definitely burn the Raw DAO format didn't have a problem with that at all with either drives. I must say they definitely outdid themselves when they came up with this protection scheme. I simply hate using my originals. I'll let you know if firmware does it or not. For now I am getting ready to hit the sack.

Thanks for the suggestion
-Jouster-

[Beddei]

Well, after 25 hours of leaving the computer open, also only playing "minesweeper" (tm), and hearing the cooler like it was goeing to blow up i finaly downloaded the files, witch is curios, because my net connectin is preatty good, but anyway. All my 10x go to all wonderfull crackers :P.. who made this possible.. this gives us little guys in Romania to play this great game.
p.s.: you guys rock

[Jouster]

Just wanted to make a quick update.. updated my firmware on the liteon 1633S it was vers 0C updated to 0K.. unfornately still no joy. I'm wondering if the fake cd has been tested on CDRW media? don't know why it wouldn't work but who knows. I'm trying another computer with just a burner it's a Mitsumi the problem is must be crap because doesn't support the Raw Dao format. I'll let everyone know of the results. Even tried to get as desperate as to convert the mdf format to an iso and write to a dvd rw format - not even close to working - worse then before.

@Semnae- thanks for the info on the fake 1.66C I think I read that back some where but didn't think it applied to that version. Until we get lucky with something looks like it's just running from Originals or going back to the 1.5 ver.

[Marmi]

I've noticed curious thing. When I tried to start my copy of Sacred (as I said earlier it's polish ver) with my cd-burner I got statement 'you should out & in your disc and restart sacred' or sth like this and I can't start the game (no matter which ver. 1.66 or 1.8x). When I do it with my dvd-player game starting without troubles. I've tested it on 2 cd-burners (no chance to run even without patch) and 3 cd(dvd)-players (no problems) on 3 compz. I used both cd-r and cd-rw discs. Maybe polish version (1.6.6 original) is protected different that us/uk? Anyway perhaps this info will be useful for somebody: try run game from cd(dvd)-player, not burner.
Sorry again for my english.

[Jouster]

Hello, thought would give update of the latest testings.
Using the Mitsumi burner the image was done with Raw SAO w/ sub channels. It got as far as the Raw Dao did regarding testing. Played a little bit of the plus version and can't say that I like it too much. Now having lesser potions to buy from town instead of just potions. You can't merge them so just takes up that much more space. Maybe I just might go back to the old buggy 1.5 version especially with all the problems I am having to get it to work without the cd which I don't want to use. Though the quest bugs are annoying.. hmm which of the 2 evils to decide between. I'll keep an eye on progress in here and if wish me to try anything different to help out Samnae I will.

Take care,
-Jouster-

[Lakos]

hello guys,
i've uploaded the sacred CD1.exe at www.gamecopyworld.com!
so, if anybody need it -> get it there!

greetz,
Lakos

(i hope advertising is not forbidden :beigeconf )

[depechenode]

Where is this file? I can't find it on GCW?

[Jouster]

You can also find it on emule in Razorback2. I've left my share on and leave my computer on 24hrs.

[Lakos]

hmm...
don't know where the file is...
i sent the mail with the image one day ago...
i think they test it first (or something like that)

[FrozNic]

how big are these files you're sharing? if they are decent file sizes i can host them on good servers on irc if they are good enough quality cracks and don't require a year to make work. (pointless to share something that someone else will make better in a few days).. lemee know.

froznic [at the nospammin] gmail.com

[aika-san]

how big are these files you're sharing? if they are decent file sizes i can host them on good servers on irc if they are good enough quality cracks and don't require a year to make work. (pointless to share something that someone else will make better in a few days).. lemee know.

froznic [at the nospammin] gmail.com

The fake cd is 20mb
The enu2eng patch is 5mb

The process required to get Sacred Plus running is reasonably complicated. However, the enu2eng patch comes with a detailed step-by-step document that most people seem to be having success with.

The reason why it's complicated is because the game has quite extensive protection. Sacred Plus has been out for well over a month now, and at this time there is no other way of getting it running from backups. I think that if a one-hit no cd crack was possible then it would be out by now. Earlier versions of Sacred were easier to make no cd cracks for, but the Plus update has also updated the protection. This new protection is also causing problems with running from the original cd's. No-one has yet made a no-cd crack for Sacred Plus. The only way is to burn the fake cd with the correct hardware/software and then run the game with the fake cd inserted.

The enu2eng patch translates the US version of Sacred into the English version. This is necessary because the fake cd only works with the English version.

Some people still can't get it working because their CD burners do not burn the fake cd correctly. It appears to be mainly Lite-On burners, although any burner which does not support RAW DAO won't work either. Unfortunately this is a hardware issue which no amount of patching will fix.

I'd say, at a guess, about 80% of people have success with this patch/fake cd. I'm still looking at other ways to get the remaining 20% of people with incompatible burners running on backups.

Anyway, that's the story. It's basically another case of extreme protection which has gone too far. Even to the point of interfering with legitimate owners.

You can host both files if you wish. It would certainly help the people who have trouble getting them. The process of using these files is straightforward as long as the user reads and follows the instructions. At the moment, that's their only option anyway. Like I say, it's been over a month and no-one has made a no-cd crack.

[FrozNic]

You can host both files if you wish. It would certainly help the people who have trouble getting them. The process of using these files is straightforward as long as the user reads and follows the instructions. At the moment, that's their only option anyway. Like I say, it's been over a month and no-one has made a no-cd crack.

Yeah I'll do that for ya, i was afraid you were sharing some sort of image of cd1 and changing files and blah blah blah, 25mb won't be bad. Email me and let me know the easiest way for you to send. I have gmail you can send to but some sort of chat client would be best, irc would be great. Let me know.

[Jouster]

@aika-san - I am curious to see what kind of protection scheme will be on the dvd version when/if it ever gets released. The DVD media is much different then CD format from what I can see regarding options copy protections have. Wonder if it's just going to be standard VOB encryption or not or simply DVD9? I have been checking here locally for the Plus DVD version but none of my stores says it even exists but yet it's right there on Sacred's home page. I went looking on the internet and US version was supposed to be released 10/29 but again no confirmation. If I could find the DVD version I plan on purchasing it so can give my CD version to my nephew and brother in law. Yes, the coversion from US to English works like a champ. You definitely do excellent work.

[Jouster]

Nevermind about the dvd version it was cancelled so that option is out the door. This would explain why I could not find it anywhere in the stores.

[aika-san]

In a way I'm glad, otherwise that would have probably complicated the situation further.

[Sfernoza]

Hi, I registered just to post this:

aika-san, thanks for the great effort you've made. Appreciate it. :D

^^

[m4ko]

Hey guys !

I got 2 computers here and i have got it working with that Fake-CD.

However:
- It works on Pc1 but not on Pc2
- I use the same CD -> on Pc1 its successfull on Pc2 its not
- Even when I put the CD-Burner of Pc1 into Pc2 it wont work

Therefore:
There is more to it but simple hardware-incompatibilities. There must be some type of Software/RegistrySetting that lets the CD check fail.

Any ideas ?

[Mattias]

There might just be that the other computer got old drivers, that is affecting the CD check. I had old drivers on one of my computer and on that the org disc even wouldn't work. (drivers for the mobo)

[aika-san]

Hi, I registered just to post this:

aika-san, thanks for the great effort you've made. Appreciate it.

^^?

Thankyou for the kind comments. I couldn't have done this without all the great help from the other user's though. I'm happy it works for you.

Hey guys !

I got 2 computers here and i have got it working with that Fake-CD.

However:
- It works on Pc1 but not on Pc2
- I use the same CD -> on Pc1 its successfull on Pc2 its not
- Even when I put the CD-Burner of Pc1 into Pc2 it wont work

Therefore:
There is more to it but simple hardware-incompatibilities. There must be some type of Software/RegistrySetting that lets the CD check fail.

Any ideas ?

Do the original CD's work on both PC's? If they only work on PC1 then you may have a software or hardware incompatibility. It does not just have to be the burner which causes the cd check to fail. Equally important is the IDE port which you have the burner plugged into. If the IDE port is using old drivers or the latest drivers are still a pile of crap, then that can cause the same problem. Unless all the hardware in both pc's is identical in every way then you can't totally eliminate the possibility of a hardware incompatability. Sure, it could be a software issue, but don't neglect the fact that it could still be a hardware/driver issue just because you are using the same burner in both pc's. That's like saying a Holden type engine will fit in a Ford type body just because they can use the same type of battery. Remember that your burner is only 1 of the many components that is in your PC. It's also not the only hardware item that determines the outcome of the cd check.

Also, if the original CD's plus patched don't work then there's no hope for the fake cd. In this instance you should aim at getting the original's working correctly first. Once you have done this, you should find that the fake works fine when used with the enu2eng patch.

[m4ko]

Thx for the reply guys !

Yes I should have mentioned that the original CDs are working fine. Just the FakeCD wont work. I will try getting the newest MoBo drivers later and post results.

Also I found this registry key which seems to belong to the VOB ProtectCD5 which is the copy-protection of Sacred if I remember right:
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1749038904-1987407816-1124599300-1003\Software\VOB
The S-1-5..... part might be different on your computer.

I think most pc parts just cant be responsible for it not working. Will concentrate on MoBo for now - especially IDE port of course. I tested the Ram already its fine.

Will post results.

[DutchUser]

Very recently I saw a friend of mine play this game (original version) and he requested me to get him the Plus version (he stopped having internet at home, sucker :-)). When I looked for it, I stumbled onto this thread. I followed it to my best ability, cause most of the time I wasn't quite sure what you people meant.

Aika-San made a wonderful guide to get everything installed correctly and I want to express my gratitude. Not just to him, to all of you who have put so much effort into this. I don't know how and what, but I know it works as was written here.

I want to add that I burned the boot cd on a NEC burner (cd/dvd writer) and used it on a different computer afterwards. My windows doesn't boot that fast and by the time I click to boot the game, the disc had stopped spinning. Still, using probably one of the simplest cd readers available, I managed to get the game started without a problem. The reader is even a little foobar. I followed the rest of the instructions to every detail, except this bit. Just wanted to let you know it can work like this. My friend is extremely happy now.

PS: I am sharing the necessary files on emule & Kazaa.

[TonyTheTiger]

Hey all. first thx to all for helping out!

i have read the thread but i feel like im missing a step by step (in detail) how to get sacred plus to work with a backup cd.

if any1 would be so kind plz. im using the UK version atm.

Thx in advance!

[LupinIV]

i found out theres also a difference between the protection of different sacred + versions.
up to sacred+ 1.8.19 the russian CD Image (sacred1.exe) worked for me. sometimes i had to restart my system and start sacred when the CD was still spinning from the Window Autocheck, as described many times before, but i got sacred always to run when i wanted to play.

im using:
Windows XP SP2 (also tried no Service Packs - it doesnt matter)
Alcohol 120% 1.9.2 is installed but not running
D-Tools 3.47 is installed and running, with all emulations on (it seems like the 3.47 version isnt blacklisted, i tried earlier versions like 3.66 and the emulation options got turned off, but 3.47 keeps its options when sacred starts)
i have the german Sacred Version, and it worked with the english CD1 image.

now the reason for this post: i installed patch sacred+ 1.8.20 and suddenly the CD Check took much longer and the game refused to start. now Sacred +1.8 final (Sacred+ 1.8.26) is out, i tried it - and same thing: CD verification takes much longer and always shows the wrong CD message. I even get the message with the system restart trick.

So it seems like the protection changed again with version 1.8.20 and following versions. I would like to hear your experiences with the new versions.

[aika-san]

@LupinIV : Sacred Plus detects which version of the game you have installed and checks this against which version of the fake you have mounted. So if you have installed the US or UK version but you have a Russian fake mounted then it won't work. In this instance you need the UK fake and if you have the US version installed you will need to use the Sacred enu2eng patch to convert it. Earlier patches did not do this version check which explains why your russian fake was working. I am using UK Sacred Plus v1.8.51 which works flawlessly with the UK fake. So, if you have the US or UK version of the game then you need the following files:

Sacred enu2eng.exe
Sacred Fake Boot CD.exe

These can both be found on emule and will allow you to get the UK and US versions running from the non-russian fake. The enu2eng patch contains a manual detailing the process. There's no guarantee though. About 20% of UK/US owners still cannot pass the CD verification using this method. Not sure why. Try it and see.

Hope this helps

@everyone: thankyou for your gratitude in my abscence. I just wish I had more time to help get the other 20% going (particularly Semnae who helped so much)

[TonyTheTiger]

@aika-san: i cant seem to find Sacred enu2eng.exe or Sacred Fake Boot CD.exe on eMule. what server r u connected 2 ?

[Johnny_Mo84]

Hello everyone.
First I want to say that my english is not so good so I want to apologize if you don't understand what I want to say.
First I started reading this thread from first page then it become too much complicated and too long for reading (that test stuff etc)
I just wanted to ask few questions.
1. Is there any way to check what version I have (US or UK)
2. I need exact size of those 2 files (enu2eng.exe and sacred boot cd.exe)
(right now I'm downloading sacred boot cd.exe which is 19.97mb, is this complete file?)
I also found enu2eng.exe but is only 65kb, is this ok?)
3. Which version of sacred plus do I have to download from official page (130mb) UK (international) or the US one.
4. What else do I need or step by step manual comes with those 2 files.

and after all I just want to thank everyone for their help and support esspecially aika-san who didn't give up

[Jouster]

@ Johnny Mo84 - There is a pretty easy way of telling if you have US or UK version. Just download the Sacred Plus International version and try to run it from your installed directory. If it upgrades then you have the UK version if it does not, then you have the US version and need the awesome converter aika-san created to convert it. To answer your 2nd question - The Fake Boot CD is 20,453KB and the sacred_enu2eng is 5,027KB. Hope this helps.

It will take some time but a friend of mine is helping me devise a boot DVD that will allow us to run some clean environments of Windows. Not exactly sure how it will work but he was telling me it's like booting your computer without a hard drive. Maybe it might allow us to test some other environments that may be causing the fake CD not to work. Like I said it will take some time but will let you know the results as soon as we do.

[Johnny_Mo84]

Thank u for the answering so soon.
I will be short now :)
I installed sacred plus international (uk) that confirms I have uk version.
Do I have to use sacred_enu2eng anyway? Or I just have to create fake cd and test my luck.
Best regards

[Jouster]

My understanding would be is to simply just create the fake cd and follow the rest of the instructions. Good luck.

[Johnny_Mo84]

The worst thing is that I ask something before I look one more time. I'm little embarased now cause right there in manual it says like this: "If you get a message saying 'this version of Sacred does not need patching' then you can just click "OK" and continue on at Step 28." And so I did, I burned that fake CD, but I didn't understand why did it burn at 10X. I set it on 4X cause that was the lowest speed I could choose, anyway it was burned on 10x. Ok just wanted to say that it worked for me but it takes some time to load (check cd).
You all did great work out there and once more I want to thank you.
It is great to have such good community.
Farewell and good luck everyone, I hope it works for u too, it is great game.

[aika-san]

@aika-san: i cant seem to find Sacred enu2eng.exe or Sacred Fake Boot CD.exe on eMule. what server r u connected 2 ?

Hmmm. Sorry, made a mistake:

Sacred enu2eng.rar
Sacred Fake Boot CD.rar

Apologies. :cries:

[DrAkEn AT]

Hmm.. Everything goes fine, but when i try to start (i've followed the guide, yes.) the check-cd stops after like 0.1sec saying "Insert sacred CD1 into your bla bla bla".

And oh, the Boot CD doesnt spin up like other cd's do when i restart the comp.. Just tried to explore it, but its empty, and it says the CD is on 0 bytes. Its like its a written empty CD >_<

Windows doesnt detect it, but i can still browse it.. (For example, the icon is unchanged in "My computer"..)

Any help please? :)

[DrAkEn AT]

You said Sacred Plus v1.8.51

Btw just saw, where do i get that? If i hover over my sacred.exe then i see the version-number 1.8.1.21
could that be the problem?
I dled the official patch from sacred-game.com.. :/

EDIT:
Tried on a diff comp.. Same problem.. And when i'm burning the cd it seems like the burner aint working (same problem on both comps, diff burners)...

[wolfsrain]

Any chance that those mini images to be uploaded on the megagames or gamecopyworld, and not on the p2p clients?

[Johnny_Mo84]

New patch for Sacred PLUS released.
V 1.8.2.6

http://eng.sacred-game.com/changelog.php?s=&showversion=280

I hope it works, anyone tried?

[ctg08]

i agree with wolfsrain, can someone put these files somewhere besides p2p? i'm at school, and they have all p2p programs blocked here. Thanks

[neoro]

Status -

Version - 1.8.1.21 - I got it running with the Fake Boots Disc Technique

Version - 1.8.2.6 - Disc Verification Error , Looks like another its all back to version 1.8.1.21

[wedge]

hmm looks like this plus patch disables the emulation in daemons tools before it runs the check on the fake cd.. can the plus patch be pulled apart and just use the data files to overwrite the old ones but leaving the main protection files untouched???

[wedge]

after about an hours of trying different combinations.. the answer is no the new files can't be copied over the top of the older files... as soon as you get into the game and start to move your charater around sacred.exe crashes

[TonyTheTiger]

@aika-san oh that might expain it but i realized that after a while and found them.

I have installed according to ur guide aika-san and it works perfect. i don´t even have to rebot every time i wanna start it :D

any1 tried it on the new patch that war releaserd yesterday ?

[Johnny_Mo84]

I tried new patch but I receive disc verification error too :(
I guess we will have to wait for someone to fix that too

[TonyTheTiger]

@Johnny_Mo84 did it work before u tried the patch? i mean with v1.8.51 ?

[neoro]

@ Tony , Plz read all the Post before this and you will Know
Yes it does , Prior to the 13MB Or was it 10MB ? patch that was just released yesterday, Sacred can be RUN with the Fake CD method.

[Johnny_Mo84]

@TonyTheTiger
Yes, it worked with fake method (v 1.8.1.21) but I want to say that it won't work
with latest patch (v 1.8.2.6) at least I don't know how to make it work. After I run update (international [eng] version) I restarted and then only get disc verification error

[Ang3LFirE]

:enforcer: HAY..can anyone help me (pretty) please :confused: :confused:
my original SACRED serial noumber is damaged and noone cares about it in the ascaron ant. support...
So if anyone has an extra SERIAL NOUMBER FOR SACRED plz...dont post ti..send it to my email purpledust@net.hr.....
The one guy or girl chooses his/her reward ;)
PLZ i'm desperate and can't find it ....
Kisses to ya all ;)

[TonyTheTiger]

:enforcer: HAY..can anyone help me (pretty) please :confused: :confused:
my original SACRED serial noumber is damaged and noone cares about it in the ascaron ant. support...
So if anyone has an extra SERIAL NOUMBER FOR SACRED plz...dont post ti..send it to my email purpledust@net.hr.....
The one guy or girl chooses his/her reward ;)
PLZ i'm desperate and can't find it ....
Kisses to ya all ;)


If the key is gone u should be able to send the CD back to ascaron and get it replaced. so if u don´t do that we can´t help u sence this site dont support it.


@Johnny_Mo84 okey damn hope that it would thx for posting.

Hope that our superman aika-san can figgure it out. maby the boot CD has to be changed a bit.

[m4ko]

Actually -> Why isnt there a skilled h4x0r who can crack ProtectCD5 - Its just a re-crack - the basic protection sheme will be the same in each new version and should take little time to re-do. Of course the copy-pro was enhanced since version 1.0 but still there must be a skilled one who can do it.

[aika-san]

I'm about to download this new patch and begin testing. No promises, but I should be able to get it going somehow. I'm pretty busy (work sucks...) but I will get to it this weekend. If I have to make a new patch, I will.:)

[Johnny_Mo84]

:enforcer: HAY..can anyone help me (pretty) please :confused: :confused:
my original SACRED serial noumber is damaged and noone cares about it in the ascaron ant. support...
So if anyone has an extra SERIAL NOUMBER FOR SACRED plz...dont post ti..send it to my email purpledust@net.hr.....
The one guy or girl chooses his/her reward ;)
PLZ i'm desperate and can't find it ....
Kisses to ya all ;)


Kaj je bedak jedan :blah:

Choose reward?! Kupit cu ti onda novu igru :))))

[Ang3LFirE]

Kaj je bedak jedan :blah:

Choose reward?! Kupit cu ti onda novu igru :))))

WTF??
can U talk in english pretty please?

[aika-san]

is that a real reward or a virtual reward? :)

[TonyTheTiger]

@[aika-san gr8 to hear hope it don´t take to much time to fix a new one. it is suppose to fix the DE item set drops and i really need that :p
The best of luck to u in fixing it.

[Ang3LFirE]

is that a real reward or a virtual reward? :)

a one of your choice :)
depends on what u want :) :fett:

[aika-san]

I'm hoping it won't take much time. Another half hour and I'll have the patch. I'll do a few tests today to see if I can find the problem quickly but if I can't then I'll have extra time over the weekend for more technical testing.

EDIT - I've got the new patch and the disk verification error returns. I have made a few changes but have not had any success yet. I'm working on it. Probably won't have a working solution till some time over the weekend though as I'm thinking that I have to make my own fake cd instead of the one we currently use. Doing this is a reasonably difficult and time-consuming process. Hope you understand. Apologies if this is inconvenient for anyone.

[fishman]

I'm hoping it won't take much time. Another half hour and I'll have the patch. I'll do a few tests today to see if I can find the problem quickly but if I can't then I'll have extra time over the weekend for more technical testing.

EDIT - I've got the new patch and the disk verification error returns. I have made a few changes but have not had any success yet. I'm working on it. Probably won't have a working solution till some time over the weekend though as I'm thinking that I have to make my own fake cd instead of the one we currently use. Doing this is a reasonably difficult and time-consuming process. Hope you understand. Apologies if this is inconvenient for anyone.


hmm. cant wait till somone cracks it.

cheers fishman...

[DutchUser]

Patch 1.8.1.21 cannot be downloaded anymore I see. I wasn't even aware there was a newer patch than 1.7. Things change very rapidly.

Is anyone sharing the old patch still?

[neoro]

is there a 1.8.1.21 patch ? I thought when you update to version 1.7 then Install Sacred Plus , it becomes Ver. 1.8.1.21

[cacamaca]

hmm looks like this plus patch disables the emulation in daemons tools before it runs the check on the fake cd.. can the plus patch be pulled apart and just use the data files to overwrite the old ones but leaving the main protection files untouched???

In order to prevent it to disable the daemontools emulation,
before running the game, rename the daemon.dll file in your Windows directory.

Don't forget to rename your file back after playing.

[Jouster]

@ m4ko - The reason this copy protection has not been hacked yet with a simple crack is it is highly unique. It actually looks for and disables programs like disassemblers which allow hackers to go through the code and find the protection checks. It seems like with each version the program is enhanced to look for the new stuff and disable that too. It's pretty much a hackers nightmare. If you look at it like a virus point of view its like those super viruses where they will check to see if you an antivirus on your system or try to go out to antivirus sites the virus will disable the antivirus then do it's dirty work and tell the antivirus everything is ok. I myself am interested in the hacking and learning how to do it but I definitely picked the wrong program to start. I believe even the super elites are having a difficult time with this one. Almost have to create some kind of device that hooks into USB port that is outside of the computer memory to have access to look into it. I know there are hackers out there that love a good challenge and believe this is one of the best. Then again with the time involved with this super challenge this company is putting patches out there like crazy. Seems like once a month or so, possibly they are waiting for the final, final patch before they take on this monster.

[cacamaca]

EDIT - I've got the new patch and the disk verification error returns. I have made a few changes but have not had any success yet. I'm working on it. Probably won't have a working solution till some time over the weekend though as I'm thinking that I have to make my own fake cd instead of the one we currently use. Doing this is a reasonably difficult and time-consuming process. Hope you understand. Apologies if this is inconvenient for anyone.

As I've noticed, the new version disables protection emulation from both Alcohool and daemontools. This is for sure the caus that the check fails.
As my previous post i've found a way to prevent it from disabling daemontools's protection. Nothing for alcohool, yet, but a similar aproach could be tried.

[Jouster]

@ Dutchuser - I have just put the older sacred international patch 1.8.21 on my emule share in Razorback2. Don't have huge bandwidth so might be little slow (dsl).

[wedge]

okay after renaming the daemon.dll and applying the new plus update, I ran the prog and it doesn't turn off daemon emulation but it does access a different part of the disc... looks like you will need the full 'Setup-1.bin' file on the cd to be real and not just fake.....or another similar file maybe

[aika-san]

hi. just got home from work.

good to see everyones pitching in and testing. your feedback is invaluable and makes my job much easier. thankyou for the info about alcohol emulation being disabled. i'm pretty certain that someone related to ascaron has been watching our progress and that's why the new patch targets alcohol. i'm gonna get some sleep then i'll look at the situation further. i may have to work again tomorrow though and i gotta fix a mate's pc sometime over the weekend, but i am hoping to get the new patch solved by the end of the weekend or at the latest early next week.

keep testing, and as i said before, don't lose hope, as it's only a matter of time before a solution is found. the protection is a nightmare, but it will be broken like it was before.

cheers for now...

[aika-san]

I think I have a solution.:) I have been able to get the new patch running with our current setup on 2 occasions now. I'm working on a more reliable way of doing it though.

[Wiesel No1]

moin,

Today I tryed fortuitously the game Sacred-German version on my mothers PC - winXP pro - and voila the play started with every version I installed!
On my PC - win2k - the CD I made months before doesn’t functioned!
Now I installed a new clean install of winXP pro corporate edition as second OS and installed at first only the most important drivers for sound, display and motherboard! Then I installed daemon-tools 3.47 enabled all emulations and disabled all drives from daemon-tools. Now I installed sacred. Before starting sacred I installed Alcohol 120%, disabled all alcohol-drives but very important for me was: don’t put it on start-up or run it – only install it on your Pc and enable all emulation functions. And for my surprising all patched worked fine and now I can play it without any problems with this CD2 on my own computer!

I made this CD2 with alcohol and the standard VOB Protection settings at low speed reading from an Original CD from a Videothek ( I don’t know the English word for this).

Cya Wiesel

PS: I hope this method will work by other people too!

[Johnny_Mo84]

WTF??
can U talk in english pretty please?


Yeah, sure. I can talk in english. Can u talk in croatian? I guess it was my mistake.
You are not really from Zagreb. And you also have email on one of the Croatian portals. ......@net.hr
weird

[TonyTheTiger]

In order to prevent it to disable the daemontools emulation,
before running the game, rename the daemon.dll file in your Windows directory.

Don't forget to rename your file back after playing.

Does this work on the new patch as well? i guess u dont have alcohol installed? do u have any emulations on ?
If this is true. then perhaps all we need is to install deamon insteed of alcohol. then make a .bat that renames it (so we don´t have to do it manualy everytime) then another .bat to name it back after we r done playing right ?


Edit: or even better make only one .bat that renames it then pauses and when u press any key again it renames it back to deamon.dll

[aika-san]

here's what i have that works every time. it's painful, but temporary:

first get sacred plus running as per usual from the fake cd. once you can confirm that this works, then apply the new sacred patch.

now the following steps must be performed every time you want to run the game.

1) uninstall alcohol and reboot when prompted.

2) reinstall alcohol and reboot when prompted.

3) enable all alcohol emulation options and exit alcohol

4) launch sacred. you should find that it passes the check and runs correctly. however, the next time you attempt to run it the check will fail, but if you go back and repeat steps 1-4 again, then you will pass the check.

like i said, it's temporary, but it works.

[TonyTheTiger]

@aika-san yeah that was painful but its progress. have u had time to look in to the deamon tools thing that cacamaca talked about ? maby that is a posible solution

[aika-san]

@TonyTheTiger - I have tested the Daemon Tools thing and it works the same way as what I just outlined. Just replace Alcohol with Daemon Tools. You still only get to run it once before you must uninstall/reinstall Daemon Tools.

The comment about renaming the daemon.dll file only stops the daemon systray icon changing from green to red. The emulation options still get disabled.

However, I just wrote a small program that rapidly enables the daemon tools emulation options repetitively using the command line switches, and I'm part of the way through testing it. It's not working at the moment but I've still got a few tricks to try.

At least now we know it's definintely about the disabling of these emulation options. I checked in the registry for these options in the vain hope that they may be straightforward registry entries. They aren't. It looks like they are encoded as binary keys attached to the virtual device driver. If I can figure out the registry changes required to enable the emulation options then I can make a program which sets and locks them so that sacred can't disable them. That would be a sure fire way of forcing it to pass the check every time without needing to do this uninstall/reinstall crap. Bear with me, I'm tired but also extremely interested since we have had some success.

[TonyTheTiger]

@aika-san lovley i didn´t understand half of what u just said *lol* but it´s sound like it might be a permanent solution to this and all future patches perhaps? best of luck to ya. i´ll e-mail u a couple of gallons of coca-cola so u don´t fall asleep on the keyboard

[Xelorz]

Renaming the Daemon.dll doesn't work after applying 1.8 Plus. I'm going to guess that it checks for the daemon installation in similar way that it seems to check an Alcohol 120 installation.

[wedge]

can I make a suggestion... and that before people post they read at least the last 10 posts... I'm reading the same thing just re-worded! it's quite annoying..

renaming the .dll in deamon will not get it to work..
uninstalling then reinstalling it will.... so far thats a hassle but is being worked on..

[Xelorz]

However, I just wrote a small program that rapidly enables the daemon tools emulation options repetitively using the command line switches, and I'm part of the way through testing it. It's not working at the moment but I've still got a few tricks to try.


Tried the same thing with a Daemon Script. Didn't work to well. Hopefully you have a bit more success.

[Xelorz]

Hehe has anyone else found this yet?

I open sacred.exe in hex worshop and found the string
" ** 5% BEER ENTERTAINS LONGER THAN 120% ALCOHOL ;-) ** "

Stupid f@#%s are asking to be put in their place if you ask me.

[aika-san]

I think i've found a way that will pass the check without requiring any emulation settings to be enabled.:)

I'm gonna get some sleep, then do these new tests. If this works, then you will need to download and burn a small image file, but then you won't need alcohol or daemon even installed to pass the check. All you will need is this new cd burnt and inserted. I'm optimistic, but hopeful.

If it works, then I will upload the relevant files and the instructions on how to burn it. I won't be giving out any details as to how it works though, as I think ascaron are watching, in which case they will just ruin my effort with their next patch. Hope you understand.

I will have more info in approx 24 hours time.

[cacamaca]

The comment about renaming the daemon.dll file only stops the daemon systray icon changing from green to red. The emulation options still get disabled.

However, I just wrote a small program that rapidly enables the daemon tools emulation options repetitively using the command line switches, and I'm part of the way through testing it. It's not working at the moment but I've still got a few tricks to try.

At least now we know it's definintely about the disabling of these emulation options. I checked in the registry for these options in the vain hope that they may be straightforward registry entries. They aren't. It looks like they are encoded as binary keys attached to the virtual device driver. If I can figure out the registry changes required to enable the emulation options then I can make a program which sets and locks them so that sacred can't disable them. That would be a sure fire way of forcing it to pass the check every time without needing to do this uninstall/reinstall crap. Bear with me, I'm tired but also extremely interested since we have had some success.

I think you are wrong.
Here is how daemontools works:
It has a driver (.sys file), the daemon.dll file that accepts commands from UI and talk to the driver, and the UI (meaning the daemon.exe that dispays the icon, etc)
The emulation is done in driver. And the only one who can change the emulation settings is daemon.dll which talks directly to the driver via NtDeviceIoControlFile system call. So if you rename daemon.dll, there is no further way to talk to the driver, unless ofcourse you reverse-engineered daemon.dll and know how to actually talk to the driver.
Sacred uses daemon.dll to call the driver to disable the emulation.
The status of the emulation that is displayed by the UI, is queried using daemon.dll directly from driver. So, during runtime the the emulation settings are remembered inside the driver.
I might be mistaken since I haven't spent much time debugging this.
Also what I'm saying is about daemon tools, I know nothing about alcohool, but i'm pretty sure that you can isolate the driver so it keeps its emulation settings frozen.

The driver does NOT read from registry (believe me, i've written windows drivers, still I'm not an expert). There is a user mode program that usually reads from registry and talks to the driver via system calls.

btw, how can you tell if the emulation is actually enabled?

[cacamaca]

In order to prevent it to disable the daemontools emulation,
before running the game, rename the daemon.dll file in your Windows directory.


How silly I was, i just found that Daemontools has an option to Lock the .dll file, so no no other programs can use it.
Right-click on the daemontools icon, select options, and check Lock DLL

No need to rename anything.

[aika-san]

nope. i've tried what you said on several occasions. the way to tell whether emulation options are enabled is by right-clicking the systray icon and checking whether the relevant emulation options have a tick beside them.

i enable all emulation options and lockdll by ticking all of them, then i rename daemon.dll, then i run sacred, it fails, and the next time i check the emulation options all ticks are disabled. try it. i've tried several variations of your technique as well but it has never worked. it's already been confirmed that this method is not working by another user. keep in mind that we are testing the absolute latest patch for sacred which was released just yesterday. if you are running an earlier version then the protection is not as strict and you may pass the check with your method. i have only checked your method on this latest version so i can't confirm whether it works on earlier versions. to check whether you are using the latest version right-click sacred.exe and select properties. then select the version tab. if the number here is anything other than 1.8.2.26 then you have an earlier version. we already have every version up to and including 1.8.1.21 going from backup. the very next version is 1.8.2.26 and has not worked for me using any method other than the uninstall/reinstall method i described earlier.


i'm thinking that maybe we could use the same technique to enable emulation as sacred uses to disable it. it must be calling a function in daemon.dll in order to switch emulation off. all we need to do is call the same function to re-enable it.

[Xelorz]

Aik, what version of Daemon are you using. When I had 3.46 it did what you described. All the emulations options became unchecked. However, I updated to D-Tools 3.47 as of yesterday, which has an auto lock feature or something. With that version the CD check still fails, however none of the options are changed. RMPS emulation remains checked after running the CD check.

[cacamaca]

i enable all emulation options and lockdll by ticking all of them, then i rename daemon.dll, then i run sacred, it fails, and the next time i check the emulation options all ticks are disabled. try it. i've tried several variations of your technique as well but it has never worked. it's already been confirmed that this method is not working by another user.

You only have to enable all emulation and enable lock dll (no rename needed anymore). Then run sacred. Your emulations will NOT be disabled. This has worked for others, see the previous post by Xelorz.

BTW, i've never said that Sacred works. I only said that it will not disable emulations anymore.


i'm thinking that maybe we could use the same technique to enable emulation as sacred uses to disable it. it must be calling a function in daemon.dll in order to switch emulation off. all we need to do is call the same function to re-enable it.

Since we can prevent Sacred from disabling emulation, and it still doesn't work, I think the problem is somewhere else. So I think writing scripts/programs to enable daemon tools emlations using daemon.dll is a waste of time.

PS: I'm using the latest Sacred version.

[cacamaca]

If you care, I found the daemon.dll equivalent for Alcohol.
It's called alcoholx.dll and can be found in the directory where you installed Alcohol ("C:\Program Files\Alcohol Soft\Alcohol 120" usually).

Since Alcohol has no "lock dll" options, you'll have to rename the alcoholx.dll file after you enable emulation, in order to keep it locked down.

BTW, I've had a look at Alcohol's drive emulation and it seems it's based on daemontools 3.47 (might even be the same code). So there should be no differences between alcohol and daemontools emulations, except that daemontools has "lock dll" option.

[cacamaca]

btw, how can you tell if the emulation is actually enabled?

I've found the way in Daemontools' help:
To help recognize RMPS-enabled discs, the actual label of the disc is always "NEEDS EMULATION", and when the emulation is enabled, this label will be replaced by the label of the original disc.

[aika-san]

i think you are wrong about emulation not being the problem. i am on daemon 3.46 which explains why my options get disabled. the reason why i'm using 3.46 can be found in this thread:

http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/portal/viewtopic.php?t=3598

i think this reduced protect cd 5 emulation explains why sacred won't work under dt 3.47

however, your rename trick works using alcohol 1.9.2.1705

begin by making sure your fake cd is inserted.

1) install sacred and all patches including the latest one

2) uninstall alcohol and reboot

3) reinstall alcohol 1.9.2.1705 and reboot. when you install alcohol use expert install mode and select unique names for bus and scsi which you have never used before. the default names and other names you have used will probably already be blacklisted.

4) enable all emulation options and close alcohol

5) rename 'alcoholx.dll' to some other name which you have never used before. other names you have used will probably be blacklisted.

6) now sacred v1.8.2.26 will run every time without requiring uninstall/reinstall.

i only included steps 1-3 so you start with a fresh untampered install of everything. you may not need to do this if you haven't been modifying things.

thankyou for your help cacamaca. i'm thinking dt need to fix their emulation problem for their next version

[TonyTheTiger]

Gr8 one more point for the hackers.... what does that make it?
hackers: 38 Ascaron: 0 ? :p


I´ll try it now. btw is there any1 that can make a .bat that renames the file, pauses then when u press a key it names it back? so that we can use it insteed of manualy renaming the file every time ??


Does it work with Deamon tools as well and if it does with what version?

[aika-san]

sorry, just uninstalled everything and tried my walkthrough again and it did not work. also, it does not work under daemon. not sure why it works this first time. i'm about ready to give up as i'm running out of options and starting to get sick of doing this crap. sacred makes it so difficult to get anything done. no normal hacking tools work. hexedit/win32dasm turns up nothing and it +++++es when process explorer is running. i gotta start wondering whether it's even worth my time. i've probably spent at least 48 hours working on all the various bits and pieces during the course of this thread and i need a damn break. maybe someone else, like caramaca can do some more work on it.

[TonyTheTiger]

I fixed it. just make a .bat file and put this in it (change the dir names to suit ur installation. Atleast i can help with something

cd..
cd..
cd..
cd..
cd Program Files
cd Alcohol Soft
cd Alcohol 120
rename alcoholx.dll 1alcoholx.dll

@echo.
@pause

rename 1alcoholx.dll alcoholx.dll

@echo.
@pause

[TonyTheTiger]

i think you are wrong about emulation not being the problem. i am on daemon 3.46 which explains why my options get disabled. the reason why i'm using 3.46 can be found in this thread:

http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/portal/viewtopic.php?t=3598

i think this reduced protect cd 5 emulation explains why sacred won't work under dt 3.47

however, your rename trick works using alcohol 1.9.2.1705

begin by making sure your fake cd is inserted.

1) install sacred and all patches including the latest one

2) uninstall alcohol and reboot

3) reinstall alcohol 1.9.2.1705 and reboot. when you install alcohol use expert install mode and select unique names for bus and scsi which you have never used before. the default names and other names you have used will probably already be blacklisted.

4) enable all emulation options and close alcohol

5) rename 'alcoholx.dll' to some other name which you have never used before. other names you have used will probably be blacklisted.

6) now sacred v1.8.2.26 will run every time without requiring uninstall/reinstall.

i only included steps 1-3 so you start with a fresh untampered install of everything. you may not need to do this if you haven't been modifying things.

thankyou for your help cacamaca. i'm thinking dt need to fix their emulation problem for their next version

I have followed the steps twice but it won´t work anyway. any ideas ?

[anya]

Come on, aika-san, I know you can do it. I've been watching this thread and following your instructions. I was able to make plus work with the fake cd you told us about.

I see that this last patch is really difficult to beat, though. I tried your walktrough but it didn't work for me either. I was thinking that, if Alcohol can work only one time, the problem isn't only the emulation being deactivated, but perhaps that it gets damaged somehow. Have you tried reinstalling Sacred and applying only the previous patch (21) without reinstalling Alcohol, to see if it will work like before?

Why did this walktrough work for you last time? Or did you do something else that you didn't realize, perhaps?

Don't give up.

[Xelorz]

I did a fresh install of Alcohol. The method worked for me once and only once, I guess same thing that happened to you Aika.

[Freezer]

great job!!!

So i did a fresh install of Alcohol too. (don't forget to delete the old a347*.dll's, )
Tried with english and german Version of the game -> Both start with the Fake Cd from here.
Also i did a PC-Restart and the game starts again, so no problem here.

Befor starting the game execute your Alcohol-Rename-bat from above

Try jv16, a good regcleaner delete all from Sacred and alcohol and try a fresh install of both. my new unique names for bus and scsi: al347bus and al347scs

Hope you can run the game too

[aika-san]

Why did this walktrough work for you last time? Or did you do something else that you didn't realize, perhaps?

Don't give up.

At the time when I thought I had success I didn't realize it but I had the v1.8.1.21 version installed and not the v1.8.2.26 like I should have so of course it worked. Once I realized this I put the 1.8.2.26 patch on and it stopped working again. Duh...I feel like a real idiot now...

My PC's become a bit of a dumping ground for all things sacred so it's getting a bit confusing. I won't give up, I just need a break from it so my brain has a chance to settle down. I'll probably have more ideas then and I'll be in a better frame of mind to effectively apply them. At the moment, I'm that annoyed at this new patch that nothing I try is likely to work. thankyou for the morale booster. i'm just getting disheartened by what seems like an impossible task, and any attempts I have are likely to suffer because of that.

@Freezer : thankyou for the info. i'll try this one a bit later.

[Xelorz]

great job!!!

So i did a fresh install of Alcohol too. (don't forget to delete the old a347*.dll's, )
Tried with english and german Version of the game -> Both start with the Fake Cd from here.
Also i did a PC-Restart and the game starts again, so no problem here.

Befor starting the game execute your Alcohol-Rename-bat from above

Try jv16, a good regcleaner delete all from Sacred and alcohol and try a fresh install of both. my new unique names for bus and scsi: al347bus and al347scs

Hope you can run the game too

Double check that your running 1.8.2.26.

[aika-san]

@Freezer : just checked your walkthrough. does the same thing under 1.8.2.26 as my walkthrough. runs once then never again. i uninstalled everything and deleted alcohol/sacred directorys, used jv16 and deleted all entries other than red ones, re-installed alcohol and sacred and patched to 1.8.2.26, renamed alcoholx.dll, rebooted. then i run sacred, it worked and did the updatecheck. next time and every time thereafter i tried, no go. :frown2:

[Freezer]

so i tried 1.8.26

Yesterday i did only a restert in XP and it worked, but today the PC was turned OFF and ON and it failed...
Trying to find a solution for this....

[anya]

I'm glad you are not going to give up, Aika-san. And you too, Freezer.

Well, I tried what I had said and only reinstalled Sacred up to 1.8.2.21 and it worked. And I did not reinstalled Alcohol, so I guess it's OK. Sacred 1.8.2.26 didn't really damaged it permanently. But I think that you knew it already.

I can't understand why the game would work once and only once. During the inicial procedures it must do something different that prevents it from working again. At least until Alcohol is installed again. That's why I thought that Alcohol was not OK anymore. But it is OK. At least for Sacred 1.8.2.21.

I wish I could be of some help. But I don't know enough to help you guys. At least I can help you test something if you like. Good luck and keep doing the good job.

[Warklor]

ho k

long time ago when sacred came out i used deamon script program this has worked fine with my backed up copy up until plus was released, now from all the intelgent and dumb ppl over large amounts of sites i have come to belive that the reason it would work for some and not others was individual to their cd rom drive, as if i just put the cd in and ran my script it would work(cus cd is spinning) if i was sitting still i had to run a different script with a longer delay. now with sacred plus i have notice that with damon tools my icon will change from green(emulation is on) to red(emulation off) for a split second, then when my script runs out it will turn red and stay that way. this never use to happen on all previous versions, so they have found an overide for my script :( and damon tools is not detected so renameing dtools is pointless u get a please remove all virtual cd drives error if it detects image software.
and all i have to say is good copy protection very impressed too bad you did not spend as much time on the game engine

[govmust]

Hi all!
Been watching your work for some time now and decided to join your efforts.
I've been tampering with renaming alcohol.dll but no success so far.
Did you tried to start alcohol after renaming alcohol.dll? It gives me some message that device drivers loading failed and that there won't be any emulation. If you then go to alcohol options RMPS emulation is off and when you activate it there is an error message. Alcohol then tries to apply changes and hangs up. My point is this: IF we rename file there is NO emulation then how the hell will the game start when there is NO emulation? We are IMO going wrong about this and need to change our approach.

[Xelorz]

Your just a bit confused. Your supposed to start alcohol with the dll with the proper name and enable the needed emulation options. Then close alcohol, rename the dll and run sacred. The idea is to call the needed functions within the dll to turn on emultion, then prevent the CD-check system from accessing the file to turn emulation off.

[cacamaca]

Hi all!
Been watching your work for some time now and decided to join your efforts.
I've been tampering with renaming alcohol.dll but no success so far.
Did you tried to start alcohol after renaming alcohol.dll? It gives me some message that device drivers loading failed and that there won't be any emulation. If you then go to alcohol options RMPS emulation is off and when you activate it there is an error message. Alcohol then tries to apply changes and hangs up. My point is this: IF we rename file there is NO emulation then how the hell will the game start when there is NO emulation? We are IMO going wrong about this and need to change our approach.

How do you think renaming a dll will turn off emulation?
The emulation is _still_ ON. Just that alcohol and any other software can not talk to the driver anymore (they can't talk to the driver to alter the settings further), but the emulation IS on.
See my previous post (regarding cd label) on how to tell if the emulation is on or off.
Also you can run an older version of sacred, which used to work _only_ with emulation ON. You'll see it will run fine, meaning that the emulation is still on after you rename the dll.

Disabiling the emulation is only one part of sacred's protection.
This part has been solved!
Please try to focus on the other parts of the protetion.

[govmust]

@Xelorz
I'm not confused. I did it the way you describe it and it didn't work. THEN I tried other things to make it work and that's how I got those messages. I used couple of other methods that's suposed to fool even SF3 and failed. Those methods also involve dennying permissions to access alcohol's a347bus&scsi.
@cacamaca
I think you miss my point. The fact that older versions are running proves only that older versions didn't know how to turn alcohol emulation off.
I'm saying that newest version use OTHER means to turn the emulation off. First I thought that it uses registry but now I'm not sure. When we find out how Sacred detects&turns off emulation we will have our solution.

I was wandering since we can't disasm sacred.exe maybe we could somehow compare 1.8.1.21 and 1.8.2.26 to find what is different (excuse me if this is stupid I'm new to cracking). BTW that "5% BEER..." message is in every version of sacred.exe (I just checked it in 1.02, 1.7, 1.8.1.21 & 1.8.2.26)

[aika-san]

ok. i've been watching for a while at whats been said. here's an idea which may work:

do the uninstall/reinstall trick and have everything ready so that the first run will work but before you run it, backup the sacred directory to a temporary location. this is a backup of everything in "prior to first run" state. now run sacred, it should work, run it again and it won't. now copy your temporary backup back into the sacred directory, effectively putting it back to the "prior to first run" state and see if it works again. if it does, then sacred must be changing something in it's own directory during the first run.

i can't test this at the mo because i'm strapped for hard drive space (authoring a dvd). if someone can confirm whether this works, I'd much appreciate it. if it does work, i can locate the changes made and make a patch which puts it back to "prior to first run" state.

[cacamaca]

I'm saying that newest version use OTHER means to turn the emulation off. First I thought that it uses registry but now I'm not sure. When we find out how Sacred detects&turns off emulation we will have our solution.


Let me remember you, that older versions do NOT turn emulation off at all. So there is no "OTHER means". Believe me emulation is turned off by using daemon.dll (respectively alchoolx.dll). Other copyprotections use this approach also.

So, please try not to misguide people.

Let me remember you that the cd-image that you are probably using is NOT a complete CD. So it's very likely that the last version of sacred check other data, that is NOT in that cd-image.

I was wandering since we can't disasm sacred.exe maybe we could somehow compare 1.8.1.21 and 1.8.2.26 to find what is different (excuse me if this is stupid I'm new to cracking). BTW that "5% BEER..." message is in every version of sacred.exe (I just checked it in 1.02, 1.7, 1.8.1.21 & 1.8.2.26)

Let me give you a a very brief inside of copyproteted games executables:
They usually have an anti-debug "module", also they have an dencryping/decompressing module, and then they have the actual game code that is encrypted and/or compressed.
So from one version to another only (parts of) decrypting and/or anti-debug module usually stay the same. And by the nature of the encrypting and/or compressing schemes, comparing two different versions that have even only one byte changed, will yield to _a lot_ of differences.
Encrypted and/or compressed executables have very low compressability ratio. So if you try to compress an executable and it is only compressed to 90% or even worse, then you can tell for sure that it's compressed and/or encrypted.

[DutchUser]

... if someone can confirm whether this works, I'd much appreciate it.

I updated my 1.8.1.21 to 1.8.26, verification error. I can't get it to run the first time even.

Had to reinstall Sacred. Skipped updating to PLUS, used the Sacred to 1.8.26 update. I had to use the enu2eng too, because it kept telling me I had the wrong version (weird that it did that will all updates). Verification error using aika-san's boot cd. I didn't boot before I had 1.8.26 installed, cause I noticed the boot cd updates as well. So I wondered if that would make a difference.

In the end, no luck on all fronts. Gonna see if I can boot the 1.8.1.21 again.

[DutchUser]

is there a 1.8.1.21 patch ? I thought when you update to version 1.7 then Install Sacred Plus , it becomes Ver. 1.8.1.21

Yup, you're right there.

[anya]

I made a backup of Sacred (26) before running it for the first time. After running it, the only difference between the backup and the sacred directory is a file called "explog.log". All the other files are identical. I used WinDiff to check this.

Since I am having difficulty getting my configuration to work even in the first time ( I had to try two different cds and several times ), I don't know if my attempts to make it work again would mean anything if they fail.

Another difference is in registry, where the Updated key is modified from VERIFY to OK.

There might be some other file outside Sacred directory or perhaps some other registry key...

Have you already been able to test it, DutchUser?

I had no difficult at all with version 21. It worked every time I wanted.

I tried reinstalling Alcohol but to no avail. Sacred didn't go back to working. I'm not sure if it should. I remember Aika-san telling us that this worked for him. I turned back to 21 and Sacred worked well.

This 26 version is sure a tricky thing. I tried deleting the log file I mentioned and changing the registry back to VERIFY. Of course it didn't work. It could not possibly be so simple. There must be something else besides that. :disgust:

[LupinIV]

the VERIFY in the registry means a new patch has been installed, but the files havent been checked (by the small dos box program).
after the check was successfull once, the program sets VERIFY to OK and from now on doesnt do that filecheck.
so you could for example set the Key manually to OK to bypass the checking sequence, but this is only neccessary if we change files in the sacred dir.

[anya]

I had realized that VERIFY was meant for that. I was just trying to make Sacred go back to initial procedures, so that I could reproduce the time it had worked. But of course there must be other changes as well.

[aika-san]

Let me remember you that the cd-image that you are probably using is NOT a complete CD. So it's very likely that the last version of sacred check other data, that is NOT in that cd-image.


if this is the case then why does the uninstall/reinstall first run work? we're using the same fake cd for this first run.

also, why can't we use the same technique to re-enable emulation using the daemon.dll API. I tried opening the DLL and getting the function list from it but i only find 1 function???? what is the function call that sacred is using in daemon.dll in order to disable emulation? if they can do this, why can't we? If i knew the function call required, then i could re-enable it using a faster technique than the command-line allows. it seems to me that daemon.dll is hiding it's function list (API).

@anya : thankyou for performing the test. i was actually thinking this might reveal some clue as to why the first run works.

[anya]

I though that too. I really think there might be some other difference between the first and the following runs, but I can't figure what it could be. If we could find this it would be much easier to solve the problem.

[cacamaca]

also, why can't we use the same technique to re-enable emulation using the daemon.dll API. I tried opening the DLL and getting the function list from it but i only find 1 function???? what is the function call that sacred is using in daemon.dll in order to disable emulation? if they can do this, why can't we? If i knew the function call required, then i could re-enable it using a faster technique than the command-line allows. it seems to me that daemon.dll is hiding it's function list (API).


Regarding daemon.dll I've noticed a few things:
1. daemon.exe (user interface) needs it to start.
2. after you start daemon.exe you can rename the dll, daemon.exe will still run and be able to enable/disable emulation.
Now, usually dll's can NOT be renamed/deleted as long as the application that uses them is running. This means: either daemon.exe is using the dll _only_ at start, OR it loads it up at start, gets what it needs from there and then it closes the file.
btw, I know few about windows' dlls, I think I know probably more of how to load a driver, than a dll.

Regarding the only 1 function available from daemon.dll.
Since it is a way to command the driver you don't need more than one function to do that :)
If you want to mess with daemontools, try asking the people to wrote it, maybe they can help you with the API.

[LupinIV]

try Filemon (http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/filemon.shtml). it monitors all file activities (Open, close, write, read, flush and so on) running processes do. set the filter to daemon.exe and you should see what it really does with the dll. im currently at school so i cant try this out at the moment.
theres also a program called regmon, doing the same thing for registry operations, both programs might also be useful to find out what sacred.exe really does when it gets started.

[anya]

@LupinIV: I tried doing what you said, but Sacred won't start while either of these programs is running. It says "Unload debugger and try again". I tested version 21 but all versions must do the same. In fact, I think that people here had already said that this kind of thing couldn't be done. And now I see why.

[mellowbeat]

hello !

i fellowed this thread ... my sacred 26 worked a little time

but now i cant start it, nothing to do

if i look to the 1.0 crack, it comes with a dll file (base.dll) why ?

and would it be help to check the 1.0 cracked exe with the actualy exe ?

sry for my bad english !

[wasabadboy]

hello everybody, this my first post.

i read the whole thread, from the beginning, and i have just this to say.
u people are doing a great job, and i'd like to help.

i have a server of my own, of which i can contribute some space to this effort.
if anybody is interested, a pm or a email to hathe hariken @ gmail.com wil do fine.

[jimbot]

Hi there,

I followed the steps described to create the fake-cd but when I tried to run sacred 1.8, having alcohol installed, I got the message to remove "copy protection software".
I noticed that if, at that point, you remove alcohol but NOT reboot your computer, then sacred runs fine (with the fake-cd inserted).
Of course, if you reboot, you need to reinstall alcohol, reboot again, uninstall alcohol, DO NOT REBOOT and run sacred, which is a pain...
Nevertheless, it seems that if you uninstall alcohol without rebooting, alcohol is still in memory but it is untraceable by sacred.
Therefore, since any of you guys is incapable of removing the alcohol protection detection from sacred.exe, maybe you can monitor the changes incurred by the uninstallation of alcohol and re-apply them after finishing playing the game, so that you don't have to reinstall/uninstall alcohol everytime.

Hope this helps!

[fishman]

I know nothing about cracking/hacking/fake cd or stuff like that..

but if what jimbot says works. can you make a small program that you run before playing sacred that renames/hides whatever all the nesacery files that are asociated with alcohol (therefore when the cd checks it sees that alchol isnt on the machines and works)..

or am i just totaly off the track..

good work to all of you, if i new how to do what you guys do i would be helping..

cheers.

[TonyTheTiger]

I know nothing about cracking/hacking/fake cd or stuff like that..

but if what jimbot says works. can you make a small program that you run before playing sacred that renames/hides whatever all the nesacery files that are asociated with alcohol (therefore when the cd checks it sees that alchol isnt on the machines and works)..

or am i just totaly off the track..

good work to all of you, if i new how to do what you guys do i would be helping..

cheers.

Yeah but according to the elit guys the only file that is needed to rename is alcoholx.dll and we already tried that with a .bat and it didnt work

[fishman]

Yeah but according to the elit guys the only file that is needed to rename is alcoholx.dll and we already tried that with a .bat and it didnt work

that was 1 file. what if it checks for another file.. didnt somone say that when you rename that file the thought was that it will still work because its still held in memory but the protection searches for a physical file. and what jimbot said about his working when he uninstalled it but without rebooting.

how many files (hidden, regestry) does alchol install. can you run the bat file (for testing purposes first) and get it to rename every file before running the game and if it works then exit the game and rename the files back with another script... wouldnt that prove its looking for more than 1 file. then i asume you could narrow it down by renaming individual files...

just a thought.
cheers fishman

[Pun0r]

hi guys, just to help u a little out

if u didnt notice yet: sacred.exe in the .26 patch looks after 2dlls: alcoholx.dll and daemon.dll, if it finds them it wont work, but thats not all, one problem seems to be, that it worked for some users, but in a second try it fails. Try to look after some files, created by sacred in ur temp-directory located in ur localsettings dir.
Just for motivation: a friend of mine got it worked with the new patch but the method doesnt work on my computer.
Could it depend on the OS? He is using winXP while im using win2K. Any clues?

Pun0r

[TonyTheTiger]

Yeah that may work but i have no idea what files it installes and so on but i can make a .bat that renames them all (not hard at all) if some1 can type all the files needed to be renamed. don´t know what to do about the register. if it checks things in there (prolly do) then this won´t work but it will solve a part of the problem

[TonyTheTiger]

hi guys, just to help u a little out

if u didnt notice yet: sacred.exe in the .26 patch looks after 2dlls: alcoholx.dll and daemon.dll, if it finds them it wont work, but thats not all, one problem seems to be, that it worked for some users, but in a second try it fails. Try to look after some files, created by sacred in ur temp-directory located in ur localsettings dir.
Just for motivation: a friend of mine got it worked with the new patch but the method doesnt work on my computer.
Could it depend on the OS? He is using winXP while im using win2K. Any clues?

Pun0r

Can u tell us what ur friends did ?

[herpam]

Try with the spanish version. It doesn´t have protection so you can install the patches and it always works. The only problem is that the plus version will be available in febraury 2005. If you don´t understand spanish change the sound and text files with the english ones and thats it. If someone knows how to crack or something it would be nice to compare the spanish .exe with the other versions.
Good luck.

[TonyTheTiger]

Try with the spanish version. It doesn´t have protection so you can install the patches and it always works. The only problem is that the plus version will be available in febraury 2005. If you don´t understand spanish change the sound and text files with the english ones and thats it. If someone knows how to crack or something it would be nice to compare the spanish .exe with the other versions.
Good luck.

but if u cant install the newest patch then its pretty useless. :)

[mepl]

so here is what i did with .26 update
and it works every time on my pc
(win xp sp1)
im using alcohol 120% ver 1.9.2 (build 1705)
using the fake cd in my drive

1.if alcohol is installed, uninstall it (also click yes for delete reg entries)
2.reboot
3.install alcohol in expert mode and change the name of the bus and scsi devices (dont reboot after install)
4.start alc, turn all emulations on, minimize alcohol (i prever minimize in taskbar)
5.rename the alcoholx.dll (in the alcohol120 dir)
6.start sacred (in my case it checks about 10 .. 15sec and starts)

sometimes after quitin and restartin the game it doesnt work,
in this case delete the a00*.tmp and swp*.tmp files in ur lokal setinds/username/temp dir (the a00* files are about 1.3 mb the swp* about 1mb)

ok i hope it helps u guys, but it dont work on my friends pc :/ (win2k)


btw:
if u start sacred with alc installed, than the game gets more information from the registry and begins to check varios dll and driver files from ur windows and the aclohol sub dirs.
i think in this case it checks that the data comes from the emuletion output from alcohol or it knows that alcohol is runnin and emulatin (dont know).
i ve tried to search about the reg entries and compared them (before and after reboot) but it changes too much and after deleting some things alc wont start correct with the emulation, so deinst, reboot and reinstallin alc is a bit faster :D.

so good luck with ur tries guys

ps:
in the working case, sacred querries informations about alcohol.exe (succes). then alcoholx.dll (not found), after this daemon.dll (ot found). these steps will be repaeted some times, than it goes on initialising ddraw.dll and starts the game.

psps:
in the not working case (booted with alc installed) ccdmount.dll, pdimount.dll, nrgmount.dll, pftoc.dll (in some dirs) will also be checked.
and it repeats these steps for more than a minute. :P

[herpam]

i´ve been browsing some forums and i think there is a solution involving the russian version. It says that this version doesn´t use the vob5 protection, it uses starforce3 or something like that, so they change some things in the register and install the russian patches in the US or UK version and the game runs fine. Im going to investigate a little more and i´ll come back with more news.

[FL3JM]

Alright, ive been reading this thread from page 1 now, everyone seems to get the unpatched Plus version to work with the backup cd thingie. I am just wondering, where did you guys get your fake backup disc? Those two russian sites are down and have been down for quite some time. >.<
Could someone please host it? Or if it some super elite haxx0r secret url, would someone please pass it over by a priv msg? :)

[mf_y2k]

Russian forum is at www.knyaz.info.
If you know the russian, you can go there and read how to install russian version over english.

At first sorry for my english, i'm from Latvia.

I don't remember what I did exactly (step by step), but now I have working russian version with latest patch. All text in the game is in english.

If I remember right, what I did was:
1) uninstalled Sacred
2) installed Sacred (2CD English version)
3) installed Sacred Plus Eng int.
4) downloaded this (http://knyaz.info/sitefiles/instALL.zip)
There are some *.reg files and sacred.exe to change your version to russian, german and english. I ran reg file so it changed registry entries to russian version. Than copied sacred.exe (rus) to my sacred directory.
5) installed latest russian patch
6) removed all entries starting with "FONT" from settings.cfg. except FONTAA, FONTFILTER, FONTPAGES . There are something like 7 entries.
7) downloaded english global.res (http://www.sindica.ru/Sacred/global.rar) and copied it to sacred/scripts/ru
8) downloaded russian version cd2 image file here (http://vega-service.ru/34/Sacred_rus.rar), which is needed in order to play Sacred using daemon or alchocol. I mounted it using daemon tools. I don't know which protection emulation is needed, because I keep all turned on all the time.
CDKEY: HPTF3-7DRT8-AXG7H-3YNY3-93LHY

After these steps I got some wierd errors before every startup video, so I changed SHOWMOVIE from 1 to 0 in settings.cfg. It turns off the startup videos.

I can't guarantee that it will work this way, because I tried several times to install russian version over english and got some wierd problems: after cd verification dialog disapeard, display went black and i got error. I couldn't see what was the error, because only visible area was the taskbar and there i had one task Sacred and the other titled Error. When I closed this error box, I was back to Desktop.

I even downloaded russian 1.7 patch from here (http://www.ascaron.org/sacred/sacred_rus_1.7.exe) and it didn't even check what version I have installed so it installed without probs. After this I was able to install russian Plus and latest russian patch.

[wedge]

after Un-zipping the sacred.exe (rus ver) it came to 12kb..... the problem with that is it errors out a 'this is not a valid win32 exe...etc..do you have another location for russian sacred.exe?

[trysto]

Hi all,

I've been reading this since the start.
And it looks likle to me, That the new patch .26 isn't targeting the alcohol and deamon .dll It is actually looking the the windows Kernal for any emulators or virtual drives that are running and switches them off.


I am testing my theroy. i'll be back later on to night to explain more. I have to look at the code.

Good luck in the mean time

trysto

[chris61233]

Russian forum is at www.knyaz.info.
If you know the russian, you can go there and read how to install russian version over english.

At first sorry for my english, i'm from Latvia.

I don't remember what I did exactly (step by step), but now I have working russian version with latest patch. All text in the game is in english.

If I remember right, what I did was:
1) uninstalled Sacred
2) installed Sacred (2CD English version)
3) installed Sacred Plus Eng int.
4) downloaded this (http://knyaz.info/sitefiles/instALL.zip)
There are some *.reg files and sacred.exe to change your version to russian, german and english. I ran reg file so it changed registry entries to russian version. Than copied sacred.exe (rus) to my sacred directory.
5) installed latest russian patch
6) removed all entries starting with "FONT" from settings.cfg. except FONTAA, FONTFILTER, FONTPAGES . There are something like 7 entries.
7) downloaded english global.res (http://www.sindica.ru/Sacred/global.rar) and copied it to sacred/scripts/ru
8) downloaded russian version cd2 image file here (http://vega-service.ru/34/Sacred_rus.rar), which is needed in order to play Sacred using daemon or alchocol. I mounted it using daemon tools. I don't know which protection emulation is needed, because I keep all turned on all the time.
CDKEY: HPTF3-7DRT8-AXG7H-3YNY3-93LHY

After these steps I got some wierd errors before every startup video, so I changed SHOWMOVIE from 1 to 0 in settings.cfg. It turns off the startup videos.

I can't guarantee that it will work this way, because I tried several times to install russian version over english and got some wierd problems: after cd verification dialog disapeard, display went black and i got error. I couldn't see what was the error, because only visible area was the taskbar and there i had one task Sacred and the other titled Error. When I closed this error box, I was back to Desktop.

I even downloaded russian 1.7 patch from here (http://www.ascaron.org/sacred/sacred_rus_1.7.exe) and it didn't even check what version I have installed so it installed without probs. After this I was able to install russian Plus and latest russian patch.

This works for me! I installed the german Version of Sacred with Version 1.8.26 i think. After that i changed it into a russian version with your description. I downloaded the russian 1.7, because my modem is too slow to download the russian 1.8.26. The russian Version has Starforce I think and this Mini Image fools the copy Protection. For me it is working with Version 1.7. And I think it will also work with 1.8.26, but I can not test it now. Thanks for the description mf_y2k. great work.

PS: I have a german Windows 2000 SP 4

[gold24]

well just hope that soon the english fix crack will be out also :
great work

[ACDS2]

Many thanks,mf_y2k!
Your solution works for me after I disabled my IDE CDROM Driver.
I m currently downloading Russian V1.8.26.
I will post here if V1.8.26 also works this way. ;-)

P.S: I tested it on Win98SE with ENG-version of Sacred Plus.
I modified the registry manually instead of using XP-version5.0 .reg files from your URL.(REG5.0 doesnt work on Win98SE. :P)

Reply to someone said Sacred.exe from mf_y2k's url is invalid win32 program:
The 10kb Sacred.exes are used to fool the RUS patch detection,and they are not NOcd Fixs.

Great work!

[ACDS2]

Just downloaded and installed lastest patch 1.8.2.116 RUS(130MB) from Ascaron Official Site...
And...It WORKS!
As chris61233 said,the Russian Version of Sacred uses StarForce3 protection,and the mini image works perfectly fooling the SF3 protection.
Im off for a while...to play Sacred :P

[Placebo]

The fake CD method worked until the release of this new patch (1.8.2.6), now it turns off any RMPS emulation while checking the CD. I don't believe a no-cd crack will ever come out, Sacred has strong protection and besides it's not a popular game, if I wanted the orginial version I would have to import it, 'cause it's not for sale in my country.
But one thing I'd like to know is why the new plus patch is version 1.8.2.6 and my plus download is version 1.8.3.1. It's something like "downdating", not updating.

[Semnae]

I don't believe a no-cd crack will ever come out, Sacred has strong protection...
I hope your wrong. Once word gets out that Sacred's method of protection is uncrackable, or too difficult to crack, then it won't be long until every game is using this same sort of protection, including the popular ones. It would be the end of game cracks. :grayno:

[aika-san]

I hope your wrong. Once word gets out that Sacred's method of protection is uncrackable, or too difficult to crack, then it won't be long until every game is using this same sort of protection, including the popular ones. It would be the end of game cracks. :grayno:

it just means that hackers will write new tools which can't be detected by these new protection schemes. dtools and alcohol will also come in new versions which won't be able to have their options disabled via the techniques sacred is using. so basically, don't panic. ascaron and co. will actually make the situation for themselves worst. it's a vicious circle, and as always, the hackers will win in the end. sacred is detecting these programs much like a virus checker detects viruses, by their signature. new tools, new signature, which sacred won't be able to disable. all the meantime, they will be annoying an increasing number of their legitimate users as their forum shows and this can only hurt their sales/reputation. every second thread on their forum is related to their protection failing to allow a legit user to play. if a user has a problem running sacred, where's the incentive going to be to buy sacred 2.

also, take a look at other so called uncrackable protection schemes. they always end up being cracked. they can dongle this and cd check that, but in the end it doesn't hold the hackers out for too long.

BTW, excellent work mf_y2k.

[govmust]

@Placebo
You're missing a number in your versions. They should be 1.8.2.26 and 1.8.1.21(or 1.8.1.31 not 100% sure). To check it do: right click->properties->version on your sacred.exe

[trysto]

The fake CD method worked until the release of this new patch (1.8.2.6), now it turns off any RMPS emulation while checking the CD. I don't believe a no-cd crack will ever come out

Sorry mate but i think your wrong. At this moment many of my friends and I are exploring ways to trick the protection into thinking that the RMPS emulation is off. It's just a matter of time.

Nothing and i repeat nothing is uncrackable


Trysto

BTW just went to the ascaron site and checked what version the russian d/load was. It seems they aren't up to date with us yet. It is only 1.8.2.116.

damn hey

[trysto]

Delate this to please.....
It told me thier was a database problem, Tolkd me to refresh and i did.Then when it worked i had multipull posts of the top one.....

Intresting

[trysto]

Please delate this one to

[trysto]

Delate this please.....

[zeRax]

ok
just got it working sweet as straight forward didnt even follow the scrutiny other ppl have been

all i did was download Sacred.v1.8.Pack.GERMAN-Working100%
on ++++++++
unpacked the image, burnt it in the version of alcohol that is supplied in that pack which is 1.9.2 build 1705
burnt it with the correct options shown in the pictures~~
closed alcohol 120%

took out cd, put in sacred ones - deviance release
installed sacred, didnt run it, installed sacred plus,
ran alcohol120%
put in the burnt fake cd, double clicked autoplay and clicked play, it came up with cmd prompt scanning stuff , updchk files or whatever it is then sacred loaded, in main menu it says it is 1.8.31

no reboots were done and the whole time daemon tools 3.47 was running :P
first attempt, very happy ^_^

[dannyone]

I own the original, and if you look real hard you'll find that autoplay has something to do with it. If sacred is in cd and i click on shortcut if dont work, it'll only work with if i eject and reinsert the cd.

[zeRax]

checked properties on sacred.exe and it says version is 1.8.1.21
in game says 1.8.1.31, thought i might mention this seeing as page is still open

[trysto]

Can you play online. That is the test to see if it is the latest version.

[Seven077]

Hello everyone.

Its my first post at megagames.
I followed this topic all the way from page 1 :)

You will find a method in THIS post, which will work for most of you !!!

I was one of those guys who was not able to run sacred since "Plus-Version" came out (1.8.10). (The Fake-CD thing from aika-san never worked for me suprisingly.)
I am from germany and use german WinXP and Sacred, but all other language will work the same way (thanx to mf_y2k !!), just follow this post.

First of all I want to correct something, since there are people who are still confused (for example zerax):
The actual version in all languages is 1.8.26 (as you can see on sacred and ascaron homepage) !! This version cannot be played with the fake-cd anymore for more than one time !
The "Plus-Version" came out a little time ago and was
vers. 1.8.10 or 1.8.19. This Verison could be played (at least for some) with the fake-cd method (introduced by aika-san).
There was a beta Version: 1.8.21 for a short time. I dont want to go deeper in it.

Now here is the way I an YOU TOO are able to play the latest version (thx to mf_y2k):

1. It is important to know, that the russian version uses Starforce protection (which is easy to fool).
2. Install your version of sacred up till the newest version.
3. Make a copy from these files (as you will need them later):
- global.res (its in the "script" folder)
- settings.cfg (in main directory)
4. Now deinstall sacred (and make a reboot)
5. install your sacred version and update in your original language to "Plus-Version" 1.8.10 (NOT to the latest version 1.8.26 !!)
6. Now download the reg files (mentioned from mf_y2k) http://knyaz.info/sitefiles/instALL.zip
7. Copy the russian sacred.exe and install_rus.reg to your sacred directory (overwriting existing files).
8. double click the install_rus.reg file (as acds2 mentiones this doesnt work for WIN98 as it uses different reg-editor)
9. Now sacred thinks that you have the russian version installed.
10. Now download the latest russian update (1.8.26) from ascaron.com (klick on "english" on the welcome page). It weights 130 MB.
11. Install the update (it should work just fine).
12. Now copy over your global.res to "scipt/ru" folder (and the language is back to your original) !
13. Remove all entries, starting with FONT in the settings.cfg (except "fontaa", "fontfilters", "fontpages").
14. Your old settings.cfg is to solve the problem with the movies (see point 17.) for comparison.
15. Now download the Mini Image from russian CD2:
http://vega-service.ru/34/Sacred_rus.rar
16. Mount it with daemon 3.47 or newest alc120%.
As i told you, the protection is now Starforce 3 (so you maybe have to disable your cd-drives)
17. The last thing is, when you start your game now, make sure, that you tick: "Disable movies" in the starting window (or the config menu).
Because there seems to be a problem between russian and YOUR version. The game will crush, if you dont tick it !

The game runs fine now !!
use this key (from mf_y2k): HPTF3-7DRT8-AXG7H-3YNY3-93LHY

I told you to make a copy from your original language "settings.cfg" to find out, what is the problem, that the movies dont run (i didnt find out yet !).
But I am sure, that this great comunity will find out !

Best regards,
Seven

[Seven077]

One more word about the versions (and different languages):

On the official ascaron homepage (ascaron.com and klick on "english"),
you will see a list of all languages and their versions !
They are all the same. !!

The funny thing is, that the ingame number (shown on right bottom) seems to be different.
You shouldnt pay too much attention on this !!
Maybe it differes because of language version history.
But all the issues of the gameplay should be on the same level !!
(my ingame number is: 1.8.136)

...So just relax and play that game in YOUR language with my method (thanx to mf_y2k !!).

Greets Seven

PS: I have a mainboard with 2 S-ATA drives. My DVD-rom and Burner are on those ports.
So I dont even need to disable them to play starforce 3 games !!
Because starforce seems to check IDE drives only !! :flash: