Many of you typed in last month's Hacker, and then discovered that you didn't have the foggiest idea of how to use it. That was our fault, so, better late than never, here goes: Hacker needs a game to operate on. This game must be in an unprotected form - so forget all those with fancy flashing loaders etc. cat the tape or disk you want to hack: a fall list of files must appear (eg a loader program, to load in the other pans and get them working; a loading screen (a picture to relieve the monotony); and the game program itself). It's the last program that you're after (usually the biggest). Contained within it are the routines which run the game, including the life or time counter. It is the counters that Hacker looks for: and it gives a list of pokes to disable them. Once you have this list, how do you put it in? There are two ways. If the loader program {sometimes called the header program) is written in Basic, then it's a simple matter to alter it, eg:- 10 LOAD "SCREEN",&C000 20 LOAD "MAIN", &800 30 CALL &800might become10 LOAD "SCREEN", &C000 20 LOAD "MAIN", &800 25 POKE &4E80,0 30 CALL &800If the header is written in machine code (ie if it's a .bin file) then it's better to load in the main code and put in the poke by hand.1 You can then resave the main code onto a fresh cassette, which saves retyping the poke again and again. You will need to know how long the code is. and where it goes: you can use the Binary Loader for this. For exampleLOAD "MAIN.BIN", &800 POKE &4E80,0 SAVE "MAIN. BIN", b,&800,&3400AA#44 |