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Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Mon, 26 January 2004 06:02

schpat

Crewman 2nd Class

Messages: 19
Registered: January 2004
Location: Cape Town, South Africa

Hey all,

I was just wondering if there was a way to see the "source" information that is passed in the .m file and stored in the .h file. IE does anyone know how to un-emcode these files?

Thanks
Schpat

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Mon, 26 January 2004 07:15

True-Chaos

Crewman 1st Class

Messages: 26
Registered: October 2003
Location: Canada

I think the quick and easy answer for the .m is no.

LEit has mentioned in FreeStars! that the encoding on the files was never released.

For the host file Maim has decoded parts of it, so has some not so truefull people... (Summer's Game)

~The World be black and white except for the shades of gray~

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Mon, 26 January 2004 10:31

schpat

Crewman 2nd Class

Messages: 19
Registered: January 2004
Location: Cape Town, South Africa

I ment the .H# file, the history file, not the host file.

How would one go about trying to un-encode it?

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Mon, 26 January 2004 11:58

Kotk

Commander

Messages: 1227
Registered: May 2003

The security of stars! is not so great. The files have information in them that allows to cheat.

Cannot say anything more because there are some guys who love to annoy their playmates by cheating secretly in the games. The few tools that are released for hacking Stars! by now have already been used by cheaters.

Fortunatelly cheaters themselves are rarely smart enough for such simple things like un-encoding few little files. Wink

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Tue, 27 January 2004 01:19

schpat

Crewman 2nd Class

Messages: 19
Registered: January 2004
Location: Cape Town, South Africa

I know that the security is not that great, but I'm only talking about the .m# and .h# files. These files, I assume, are responsile for all the info that I can see in my stars UI. All I want is a more detailed report than the one I get by dumping the data to txt file. If anyone can help I'd appreciate it.

thanks
schpat

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Tue, 27 January 2004 02:40

Sotek

Chief Warrant Officer 2

Messages: 167
Registered: November 2002

If you can decode the .m#, then you can see everyone else's turn.

If you can't figure out how that could break the game...

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Tue, 27 January 2004 07:49

Captain Maim

Lt. Junior Grade

Messages: 492
Registered: March 2003
Location: USA, Mesa, Arizona

Clip

For the host file Maim has decoded parts of it, so has some not so truefull people... (Summer's Game)

Actually.. As far as I know I'm the only one to do anything with the HST files.. The Summer incident was (as I understand) done using Stars Ed to cheapen things to zero cost.. Therefore the cheaters would have to be A) the host or B) in league with the host... Which is probably why you thought it was done via host file editing.

[Updated on: Tue, 27 January 2004 21:18] by Moderator

Rule 1: "Pillage, THEN burn!"

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Tue, 27 January 2004 08:34

schpat

Crewman 2nd Class

Messages: 19
Registered: January 2004
Location: Cape Town, South Africa

>If you can decode the .m#, then you can see everyone else's >turn.
>If you can't figure out how that could break the game...

Hey, I understand that there would be a problem with seeing everybody else's turns if the .M# file was unencoded, but surely not if the .H# file was. All I basically want is all the information that I can see in the UI dumped to txt file. Now if someone were to write unencode the file and write a util that required a password to dump that info, would that be so bad?

Now personally I don't have the skills to unencode the file, but I would be willing to learn them if someone was able to give me a starting point.

The problem I have is that so many people are worried about other players cheating. I've only been playing Stars! for about 3 months now so I'm new to the comunity, but is cheating really that prevalent? Other multi-player turn based games that I have played have been far less secure than Stars!, but I never found a cheater in any of the games that I played. Basically I tink that the vast majority of players are honest and really wouldn't cheat, after all that takes the fun out of the game.

Just my opinnion
schpat

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Tue, 27 January 2004 14:54

Captain Maim

Lt. Junior Grade

Messages: 492
Registered: March 2003
Location: USA, Mesa, Arizona

Well from what I understand from expirence, the H file contains approximately this:
1) Planet data (no big deal), Not even sure it stores anything besides planets you can't now but have at one point seen.

2) enemy fleet data (ships you've seen, designs you've fought, etc...)

3) graph histories. (Probably a series of points...)

4) Filter & probably other minor settings (how do I know? Logic. Plus I know they aren't in the M files.)

5) some sort of racial Identifyer so you can't just rename it to see someone elses data.

6) almost curtainly the same encryption scheme used in ALL encrypted stars files. (But I haven't verified this, though I suspect it to be the case)

7) The year.. (I wrote something to check years for ALL dated Stars files, wrote it to keep my ally's H files upto date and to inform me when I'd slacked off. Also says when someone's been skipping turns.)

I'm not sure what else is in the H files, but I haven't so much as checked to see if they used the same encryption for 2 simple reasons:
1) I don't see the point in trying. (Minimal useful information)
2) it would be a real pain to figure out.

That's my take on it.. Also as for ship data, you could probably have an easier job writing a program to use keystrokes and auto visually record and scan through all designs and then do a visual analisys on the images and pick out the parts that way.. Probably be easier than trying to find the same data and decrpyt it in the H file.

That's my 3.14 cents on the matter Smile

Rule 1: "Pillage, THEN burn!"

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Tue, 27 January 2004 19:13

Sinla

Warrant Officer

Messages: 132
Registered: February 2003
Location: the Netherlands

Captain Maim wrote on Tue, 27 January 2004 20:54

4) Filter & probably other minor settings (how do I know? Logic. Plus I know they aren't in the M files.)

I think this is found in the stars.ini Rolling Eyes

Could be wrong though Wink

Edit: Well, I am right I think. Easiest to see when you open 2 different stargames one after the other... same settings.
When you open the .ini file you see the lines which take care off all 'general' starssettings(zoom, filters, window etc.).

[Updated on: Tue, 27 January 2004 19:26]

If you can't beat me... Run away...

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Tue, 27 January 2004 19:22

Sinla

Warrant Officer

Messages: 132
Registered: February 2003
Location: the Netherlands

Captain Maim wrote on Tue, 27 January 2004 20:54

2) enemy fleet data (ships you've seen, designs you've fought, etc...)

While I'm at it... Wink

You're right in that when you remove the h-file, you lose all shipdesigns... But only what weapons they have! (in my little test anyways).
You still see the hull and the weight... Confused

again a couple o' cents

If you can't beat me... Run away...

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Tue, 27 January 2004 19:50

Sotek

Chief Warrant Officer 2

Messages: 167
Registered: November 2002

That's because you can scan hull and weight.

Did your test include designs that were no longer extant, or were out of your sight?

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Tue, 27 January 2004 21:22

Ron

Commander
Forum Administrator
Stars! AutoHost Administrator

Messages: 1232
Registered: October 2002
Location: Collegedale, TN

schpat wrote on Tue, 27 January 2004 08:34

Hey, I understand that there would be a problem with seeing everybody else's turns if the .M# file was unencoded, but surely not if the .H# file was. All I basically want is all the information that I can see in the UI dumped to txt file. Now if someone were to write unencode the file and write a util that required a password to dump that info, would that be so bad?

The encryption scheme is the same for all Stars! files. If one is cracked, they all are. If someone released a tool to decode .h files, it could easily be reverse-engineered to decode .m and .x files, and that would mean (almost) the end of all multiplayer Stars! games.

IF that happened, I would have to require a password entry to download .m files, .m files would not be publically available anymore, and ONLY .def and .r files would be accepted to start new games.

Ron Miller
Stars! AutoHost

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Wed, 28 January 2004 02:15

iztok

Commander

Messages: 1210
Registered: April 2003
Location: Slovenia, Europe

Hi!

schpat wrote on Tue, 27 January 2004 14:34

The problem I have is that so many people are worried about other players cheating. I've only been playing Stars! for about 3 months now so I'm new to the comunity, but is cheating really that prevalent? Other multi-player turn based games that I have played have been far less secure than Stars!, but I never found a cheater in any of the games that I played. Basically I tink that the vast majority of players are honest and really wouldn't cheat, after all that takes the fun out of the game.

Unfortunately it has been proven way too many times that if there is a possibility to cheat there will always be the cheater(s). They measure fun with completely different scale than the rest of players.
Stars! is hit by cheating much more severely, because it requires an investment of several dozens of hours to finish. You can play several RTS games per DAY, but most Stars! games are measured with months and years. To throw away such an effort you need just ONE cheater. The worst part of cheating in PBEM game is YOU CAN NOT PUNISH HIM in any other way but to make his cheating and name/email public. Then he uses another name/email and continues cheating. That almost makes Varley's "Press Enter" a desirable course of action.
BR, Iztok

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Wed, 28 January 2004 02:58

schpat

Crewman 2nd Class

Messages: 19
Registered: January 2004
Location: Cape Town, South Africa

Hey folks,

I'm glad so many ppl are respondig to my post, makes me feel special.

I can see that the security thing is a pain because of cheaters, it's just that I see so many possibilities for information sharing that are unavailabl because I can't get the information out into text files. For instance I'd like to pass habitaility information about planets arround me to my allies, but can't because the actual Temp, Grav and Rad settings for each planet are not dumped, only the value as it relates to my race. This is just one of the problems I like to get arround, but can't because the info dumped into the .pla isn't compleat.

Does anyone know why it was decided to dump only limited data into these files or was it perhaps just an oversight.

The only way I can think of to get arround the security issue to everyone's satifaction would be to create a patch that changed the data that was extracted. But because I seem to be the only person out there that want's this detail it probaly isn't going to happen.

I suppose I'll just continue going through my allies turns manually.

Thanks Though
schpat

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Wed, 28 January 2004 03:55

gible

Commander

Messages: 1343
Registered: November 2002
Location: Wellington, New Zealand

If you add newreports=1 to the misc section of Stars.ini (in the windows directory) it will output the specific hab values(current and original)..I'm not sure what else it add data wise. The obvious different is that you get .pxx (& .fxx) files instead of .pla (& .fle) where xx is the player number.

schpat wrote on Wed, 28 January 2004 20:58

For instance I'd like to pass habitaility information about planets arround me to my allies, but can't because the actual Temp, Grav and Rad settings for each planet are not dumped, only the value as it relates to my race. This is just one of the problems I like to get arround, but can't because the info dumped into the .pla isn't compleat.

Well I'm sure a lot of us would like some of these things...but we'd rather have S:SN Very Happy

schpat wrote on Wed, 28 January 2004 20:58

But because I seem to be the only person out there that want's this detail it probaly isn't going to happen.

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Wed, 28 January 2004 08:43

schpat

Crewman 2nd Class

Messages: 19
Registered: January 2004
Location: Cape Town, South Africa

Hi, and thanks. I'll try that. Being new to stars! I have yet to find all of these things out. Are there any other helpful hints you can offer for reporting?

Also talking about S!SG I've done some reading on this and other site and the last mention I can find about the progress of S!SG was about 7 months ago, does anyone have any new news. I would be first in line, after the rest of you, to buy this game.

ta
schpat

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Wed, 28 January 2004 10:00

overworked

Lt. Junior Grade

Messages: 403
Registered: November 2002
Location: Pittsburgh, PA

There are a number of existing utilites out there that generate useful output based on importing information from those .pxx files. (A few older ones work on .pla format too I think.)

Search around a little bit here in the downloads section and forums, on the web, and maybe a Google search in the "rec.games.computer.stars".

You might also want to find a copy of "Posey's Spreadsheet" and/or the "Stars! Calculator" since they both contain useful calculators for various facets.

"Posey's" also has a list of the turn order of events that is fairly accurate (wormhole exit shifting being incorrect for one). I put the name in quotes since there are different versions of it about and some have additional worksheets. The version I have is mainly used for calculating overgating damage - and I can vouch for the general accuracy of the calculation from experience.

- Kurt

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Re: Un-encoding the .m and .h files

Wed, 28 January 2004 10:23

Captain Maim

Lt. Junior Grade

Messages: 492
Registered: March 2003
Location: USA, Mesa, Arizona

Another thing P## files have that PLA don't is Stargate and Packet Launcher statistics. Which allow a program such as Xtreme Boarders to accurately plot out multi-racial stargate networks... The only thing the F## files really lack is 1) to perfectly seporate spesific designs out of mixed fleets and 2) details on the designs themselves.. Oh.. and they don't show Wormhole, MT, packets or debris.. So sad. But there's no easy way I know of to search for these things either. Except visually.

Rule 1: "Pillage, THEN burn!"

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