Quote:
Originally Posted by BigWalleye
(Post 2231067)
The people who made the patches for SH3 and Sh5 invested an enormous amount of work and talent in those products. The modder has to use a program to decode the machine language (ones and zeroes) into a best-guess approximation of what the low-level programming language might be intended to look like. That's far more difficult to work with than the high-level language the developers used. No comments, no variable names, no guarantee you aren't looking at a "translation" of a bit image that had no code in it. It takes skill, talent, patience, and cleverness beyond what I possess. And I made my living for 25 years designing and building operating systems. (Like Windows, only better! :D) You may notice that exactly one person has reverse-engineered sh5.exe and one person has done so with sh3.exe (although h.sie passed on his hard-won knowledge to Stiebler, who continues to carry it forward.) There was never enough interest in SH4 by people with the skills and motivation to do that kind of work. And, unless someone falls down from Heaven and decides to take on sh4.exe, what you are asking for will probably never be done.
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I have about 2.5 years of time invested currently in reverse engineering SH5's files and that time continues to build every day. SH5 is multiple orders of magnitude more complicated than SH3. If I was reverse engineering SH3 I'd been done with it probably around a year's time frame.
I only use one program to reverse engineer software - OllyDebug. I don't need those fancy apps like SoftICE or equivalents like most people need (FBI's cyber crime division for instance :03:) due to a solid understanding of Window's OS, the compilers used to compile the high-level code to machine code, and the CPU instruction set. Plus OllyDebug is FREE! Reverse engineering software is 50% knowledge of the OS, compilers, and CPU instruction set, 45% skill, talent, and ability, and 5% luck (for those wild guesses to get you started when reverse engineering a new piece of software).
I started writing my own software at 8 and reverse engineering software at 9 (I'm currently in the 30-45 yr. old demographic). My dad was instrumental in fueling my curiosity for computers at a young age. Since I was writing software/REing it during the 'boom' years of computers (DOS, Win 3.1, Win 95, Win 98, etc.) I have an advantage that most people do not - I was continually keeping up with all the advances in them by reading all the books I could get my hands on (Microsoft's tech bulletins, MSCE books, etc.). I still have multiple book cases filled in my library of those books along with other related books (game engine design and architecture, 3D game programming, AI programming, etc.). I have followed the progression of software from it's infancy to where it is today and thus have seen all the errors, pitfalls, tricks, traps, etc. that software developers encountered/developed (anyone remember the buffer overrun problems of using the unsecure versions of C++'s instructions?)
What this all means is it's a trivial matter for me to RE software but for the person just getting started in the black arts it's a monumental undertaking. I don't want to discourage any of you from taking the challenge on but realize that your chances of success are slim to none unless you have some previous experience in OSs, compilers, computer languages, computer science, CPU design and theory, and RE skills/methods.
As the years pass on there are fewer and fewer people like myself who can do what we do. Majority of them have been sucked up by the US government for cyber security and other classified programs. There are still a limited few who remain 'free' - we are the great equalizers. We keep those others in check and give them the occasional slap on the wrist when they over-reach their bounds :D
Here's a quick test to see if you know anything about REing: what is the 'this' pointer? Where does Microsoft's compilers place the 'this' pointer (hint: think CPU registers)?
