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hi everyone. i wanted to edit street rod. i think if i get a decompiler that can give me the source of the .exe i can edit the game. am i right? well i looked online for a bit and i cant find one. can someone help me out?

Well...that IS true if you have the compiler's decompiler that MADE the program AND the program is made a debug version ( very most likely not!).

The closest way of seeing it's code is to ask the author, or to disassemble ( see the asm code ) of the program.

if you want to do disassembling, NASM comes with a disassembler that goes with its assembler. it's a very handy tool.

there is also a hex editor i use called "Hackman" which has a built-in disassembler. it's slow and not really the best there is, but it serves its purpose.

there really aren't any decompilers that are any good. there was one for Visual Basic 3 that i used years ago, and there may be more recent versions of that, but it would be useless to you.

honestly, decompiling a game produces over a hundred thousand lines of code and hundreds (if not thousands) of randomly-named functions and variables al thrown together in a single C file. it's very hard to sort through all that code and make sense of it, much less modify it.

This question sounds familiar. I think I explained to you before that released executables do not store the names of variables or functions and that getting usable source code back from the executable of a large program is difficult if not impossible.

DOS TC++ debug .exe files had the source code in the debug version....

Tom wrote: DOS TC++ debug .exe files had the source code in the debug version....

Yes, but that feature of the executable format is intended to allow for symbolic debugging; most commercial production releases strip out the symbol table to save space and prevent reverse engineering. It is notable that this is not a standard practice open-source software, because one of the goals is to encourage users to debug the code (and reverse engineering isn't an issue, since the source is already available).

BTW, you may want to check on the laws in your local jurisdiction; there have been some severe laws against reverse engineering (regardless of the purpose) passed of late in several countries, and in the US Gov't in particular is cracking down hard. It may not be worth the trouble and risk to you to do this, even if it's just to fix a bug you found.

well if i want to see and edit the source of this game, what can i do?

ask the person(s) who made the game...

i dont know what ever happened to this company. this game was like from 88 and 90. i think the companies dead. anything else i can do?

Hack it ( if there are no more copyrights on it ).

Steps to hacking:

I almost became a hacker...I don't like it now though ( although you can become a hacker and help Linux! ).

I don't remember.

And DON'T LEARN TO HACK!

Once you learn hacking...you start to want to be a bad hacker! [glow=green,2,300]There is a better to find another way to get the source...[/glow]

What programming language is it in? If you WinRar the file to me...I can find out....

what the hell is WinRar?

RAR is another compression format, like ZIP, except that they can't be opened with WinZip.

RAR is an archive format.

Tom, what the heck are you talking about. I don't want to get on a high horse, but the whole AGI community came about because the source was hacked. That's not to say that Peter Kelly or the Russians who created AGDS were attempting anything malicious. They weren't. And what the 4377 do you mean that after a while you want to become a "bad hacker"? Today, it's making up Game Shark codes, tomorrow, it's taking down CERT?

P.S. Often, it's just as easy or easier to create a clone of a game you like. Also, if the genre or format is a familiar or common one, you may be able to find the source to a familiar project somewhere. Check sourceforge and freshmeat, as well as gamelan. You'd be surprised how much info you'll get if you simply type "free game source code" into google.

grey wolf wrote: if you want to do disassembling, NASM comes with a disassembler that goes with its assembler. it's a very handy tool.

there is also a hex editor i use called "Hackman" which has a built-in disassembler. it's slow and not really the best there is, but it serves its purpose.

there really aren't any decompilers that are any good. there was one for Visual Basic 3 that i used years ago, and there may be more recent versions of that, but it would be useless to you.

honestly, decompiling a game produces over a hundred thousand lines of code and hundreds (if not thousands) of randomly-named functions and variables al thrown together in a single C file. it's very hard to sort through all that code and make sense of it, much less modify it.

I went to the site..what is the actual decompilier that i should donwload?