Regarding Premium modules offline authentication...

[Legacy_Grani]

               I hope no one will get angry at me for messing with game files in hope of getting premium modules to work offline, but...

I've noticed that Diamond Edition premium modules (the ones which authenticate offline: Kingmaker, Witch's Wake and Shadowguard) have specific .dat files in "Premium" folder. The other three modules do not have such files. I got curious and found out that these are the only files responsible for skipping online authentication of the first three premium modules.
So just to check whether it could work, I copied one of them and renamed it to "Neverwinter Nights - Wyvern Crown of Cormyr.dat". 
Online authentication for WCoC was skipped, indeed, but I got an error during the unpacking of the module.
The same happened when I used for example Kingmaker .dat file to try to work with Shadowguard. (I have both of those modules from DE)
That means that each of these .dat files has info of the module's files to unpack, so that they cannot be used interchangibly.

Now, I'm most likely not the first person to notice that these .dat files are responsible for skipping authentication but if anyone is willing to help, do you know of any way to read these .dat files so that other premium modules' data can be put there, thus allowing offline authentication for all the premiums?

I understand if you'd rather not delve into it, as it might be considered illegal, but frankly to my mind this online authentication is nowadays just a nuicance as it does not prevent pirates from playing those modules anymore, now that master server is down and it's not like Bioware or Atari is going to lose anything when we finally get these modules offline.

What do you think about it?
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Grani, 10 décembre 2012 - 04:40 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_HipMaestro]

               Since the MS went down no authorization has been necessary for anyone who DL'd the content.  I believe the links to the non-Diamond Premiums is still floating around here somewhere.  Whenever you start loading one of the "other" Premiums, it appears it is being validated but it is not, obviously (No MS).  Once the dummy authorization screen flashes by, you can disconnect and play like any other module in your NWN folder.

But thnaks for the information nonetheless.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Grani]

               Yes, but that's not my point.
Authentication is a nuisance for some (like me). While it's true that you don't need to stay connected to the Internet all the time, you need to be connected when starting or loading a premium module.

Diamond premiums are installed with three 1KB .dat files which remove the need of online authentication (the modules are instead authenticated via cd-key).

If these files could be read somehow, we could probably create similar ones for the other three premium modules, which would come handy to some, I believe. Well, at least to me, that's for certain.

Does anyone have an idea how to accomplish that?
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Grani, 12 décembre 2012 - 04:36 .
                     
                  

            

[Baaleos]

               I will have a look at this when I get home - out of curiosity of course, not in any attempt to breech copyright or EULA etc

If you want to read the contents of the dat file,
I recommend using CheatEngine - it has a good memory viewer.

Just open the dat file via CheatEngine, and you should be able to see the byte and hex / string information contained within it.

If indeed these dat files are expected to be present in all versions of the premium modules, then we should be able to garner enough info to create our own version of the dat file for other modules.

That of course is assuming that the information inside is NOT a lengthy array of random key/strings etc

If it is a serial key of some sort, then cracking it might not be so easy.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Grani]

               

Baaleos wrote...

I will have a look at this when I get home - out of curiosity of course, not in any attempt to breech copyright or EULA etc

If you want to read the contents of the dat file,
I recommend using CheatEngine - it has a good memory viewer.

Just open the dat file via CheatEngine, and you should be able to see the byte and hex / string information contained within it.

Yep, I actually managed to open them with FreeFileViewer and got the hex info. *cough* I'm no expert with that, though... *cough*

If indeed these dat files are expected to be present in all versions of the premium modules, then we should be able to garner enough info to create our own version of the dat file for other modules.

While I cannot prove that these .dat are present in each Diamond Edition (because I have only one, my own), I'm more than sure this is the case. When I removed these three files, all of Diamond premiums authenticated online, just like Infinite Dungeons, Pirates of the Sword Coast and Wyvern Crown of Cormyr. As all Diamond Edition packs come with offline-authentication premium modules, all of them ought to have these .dat files as well.

Not only that, when I uninstalled Kingmaker (but still retained its .dat) and installed a non-diamond version (from social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/199/index/4746466/1) the module STILL authenticated offline, which means that these .dat are not linked to any specific premium module files from Diamond Edition only.

That of course is assuming that the information inside is NOT a lengthy array of random key/strings etc

If it is a serial key of some sort, then cracking it might not be so easy.

Well, I hope that's not the case. 

Anyway, I'll be glad for any news regarding this if you decide to take a look at it. Thanks!
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Grani, 12 décembre 2012 - 06:54 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Tim.G]

               could this mean that they could be opened in the toolset?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Grani]

               

Tim.G wrote...

could this mean that they could be opened in the toolset?

Unfortunately, the answer is no. The .nwm file of each premium is in fact only a file which unpacks the module, stored somewhere else (probably a hak pak).

Creating custom .dat files would only allow for playing all premium modules without Internet connection at all, even for authorization.

Of course decrypting the modules altogether and creating normal .mod files out of them would be much better but editing .dat is probably easier. Probably, because I don't know how to do this myself, hence this thread. 
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Grani, 12 décembre 2012 - 08:47 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_HipMaestro]

               Well, I've done a Hex diff between Shadowguard and Kingmaker dats which accurately found the very few anomalies between the 2 but unfortunately, there is no way to convert to text unless you know the app that was used to create the original binary file.  Trial and error perhaps.  Or a C++ compiler?  Dunno.  Just substuting random Hex values would be rather tedious.

There's got to be module-specific information embedded within because if you just make a copy of a dat and rename it with the non-Diamond premium name, it identifies the module as a corrupt file. 
               
               

               

                     Modifié par HipMaestro, 13 décembre 2012 - 05:56 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Grani]

               Yes, I've noticed that each .dat is module specific.

The fact that anomalies are few is some good news but too bad there seems to be no way of understanding the differences...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Grani]

               I've also noticed that the installer of the offline premium modules (Kingmaker pack) actually creates .dat files that correspond to the CD-keys currently installed in your nwncdkey.ini

It probably doesn't matter but I thought it's worth to note down as well.