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RTC.exe that skips intro

Posted: Thu Aug 13, 2015 11:19 pm
by ZalewaPL
Hi all. Having great fondness for this game (and all dungeon crawlers, really) I've always found RTC to be a fine piece of software. While it only emulates the original game mechanics, I found appealing that it does this very well, it merges all DM games into a single one and it enables lots of cool features in its dungeon editor. Very, very long time ago I had made two (rather mediocre) dungeons for original DM game and very, very long time ago I also attempted to learn RTC editor and its mechanics. Unfortunately, I was very quickly put off by the horrendously frustrating, unskippable intro.

While RTC's intro isn't very long, it becomes extremely annoying when you want to test your work in progress in frequent cycles. I quickly became bored of having to suffer through the animation every 5 minutes and dropped the work altogether.

Having recently acquired some new skills in computer science field I've suddenly also remembered this particular annoyance and today I decided to fix it once and for all. And so, here it is:

1. Mirror 1
2. Mirror 2

This is a cracked RTC v0.49 executable. Just drop it into the directory with RTC and run. If you're unsure of whether this is safe or not, then you're wise. However, if you do a binary comparison between the original executable and mine you will see that I only had to change one byte. Simple PUSH 2 opcode changed into PUSH 5 fixes the annoyance. If anyone of you wishes, I can make a video showcasing how I did this.

So, here you go. I see that RTC editing forum is still more or less active so I hope someone will find this useful. Enjoy.

Re: RTC.exe that skips intro

Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 9:31 am
by Gambit37
Goodness me, this is a great idea!

I no longer do RTC editing, but I'm sure all those who do will be very grateful for your little tweak. I know that would have saved me a lot of time and frustration in the years that I worked with RTC...

Great job, thank you! :-)

Re: RTC.exe that skips intro

Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 2:05 am
by Sophia
This is handy. It's also problematic, because it's almost certainly a copyright violation to distribute a modified RTC.exe like this. While it may seem somewhat hypocritical to care about such matters given the nature of RTC (and DM clones in general) RTC's code is an original work, so the standards of an original work should apply.

That said, I'm certainly not advocating that this be taken down or anything, because it isn't anything harmful, and RTC is basically abandonware anyway.

As an aside, it also seems like if RTC ever did anything during its introductory animations (as was stated many years ago) this hack seals the deal that it doesn't any more.

Re: RTC.exe that skips intro

Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 1:39 pm
by ZalewaPL
Sophia wrote:This is handy. It's also problematic, because it's almost certainly a copyright violation to distribute a modified RTC.exe like this. While it may seem somewhat hypocritical to care about such matters given the nature of RTC (and DM clones in general) RTC's code is an original work, so the standards of an original work should apply.
If such laws apply by default then why does all closed-source software come with an EULA that explicitly needs to forbid doing such modifications? I even remember that manual for Doom 3 had entire section covering what kind of modding you can do, which was something like "You can use the editor we provided, but thou shalt not crack the .exe". RTC doesn't have EULA, or any kind of license for that matter.

Re: RTC.exe that skips intro

Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 10:32 pm
by Sophia
ZalewaPL wrote:If such laws apply by default then why does all closed-source software come with an EULA that explicitly needs to forbid doing such modifications?
That's precisely the distinction. Copyright law is concerned with only distributing modified versions, but says nothing about what you can do for your own personal use. EULAs try to forbid doing the modifications, period. (Which I'm not sure they're actually allowed to forbid, but that's a side rant, because, as you point out, RTC has no such EULA)

With that in mind, one way to get around any issues is to distribute your hack as a patch file or something, rather than as a full modified RTC.exe. But, again, I'm not advocating that your files be removed, or anything. I'm just alerting you to a potential issue.