Messages

51

Completely Unrelated / Re: Square Enix

« on: 2011-04-11 02:08:28 »

Thank you all.

I also wanted to learn bass and drums but my motivation was really with piano.  I only wish I had started sooner.

Here are a few more I hope everyone can enjoy.
Moonlight Sonata Adagio Sostenuto (1st Movement)
Waltz
Rei Ayanami’s Theme


Related to Square Enix:
Aeris’s Theme
Zeal Island
I wasn’t trying to be too original with these.  My goal was to make them how they might have sounded if the composer was not limited by the MIDI playback of each respective system.  Of course he would have done much better than this too…

I am hoping at some point to be able to meet Nobuo Uematsu at Square Enix.  It would be amazing to meet the man himself if he ever goes back for a meeting or contract work etc.


L. Spiro

52

Completely Unrelated / Re: Square Enix

« on: 2011-04-10 03:07:54 »

A friend of mine came to Japan through JET.
If you (and your wife) can stand teaching English that may be one way to go, but you better hurry: http://www.letsjapan.org/shawn/2010/07/05/will-the-jet-program-get-the-axe.html (That Shawn is not me, by the way.)

You could also take a class and get a student visa.  That would give you a bit more control over where you landed so you could synchronize with your wife.


L. Spiro

53

Completely Unrelated / Re: Square Enix

« on: 2011-04-09 03:12:39 »

I do have plans to move to Japan with my wife and currently unborn child in the future.

To live forever?
How do you plan to do that?
Starting your own company is the easiest way to guarantee yourself and your family a visa, but is also the riskiest financially.


L. Spiro

54

Completely Unrelated / Re: Square Enix

« on: 2011-04-07 23:56:50 »

Thank you.


I will certainly have to sign an NDA probably on my first day on the job.

As for asking a girl to be your girlfriend, you usually don’t say it, it just happens.  If you are looking for a Caucasian way to go, you can just say whatever comes naturally to you because they are going to enjoy your foreign ways (it is part of your charm in Japan).


L. Spiro

55

Completely Unrelated / Re: Square Enix

« on: 2011-04-07 17:16:34 »

Thank you.


I never consider relationships with celebrities to be permanent.  They have too many choices.
But I am glad for whatever time I get to spend with her meanwhile.


L. Spiro

56

Completely Unrelated / Re: 8.9 Earthquake causes Tsunami to hit Japan

« on: 2011-04-07 17:05:23 »

My room shook violently enough that I evacuated it, but nothing was knocked off shelves or my refrigerator.
Undoubtedly more will follow, closer to Tokyo.


L. Spiro

57

Completely Unrelated / Re: Square Enix

« on: 2011-04-07 12:46:07 »

Thank you.

I want to see what is happening on the Final Fantasy VII front for personal reasons anyway.


Acting is a weekend job, and I don’t have to do it every weekend.
Also at my previous company I could take days off whenever, but that will not be the case at Square Enix, so my acting may suffer.

I am somewhat sure at least some in Square Enix know about this forum, but in any case I will not be talking about it to anyone.


L. Spiro

58

Completely Unrelated / Square Enix

« on: 2011-04-07 10:41:57 »

It has been an exciting few weeks in Japan for me.
An earthquake messed up my room and office, convenience stores emptied of all snacks, dark eerie streets, and more.
I started acting as a doctor on a Japanese TV show, and my girlfriend left me.
Only to be replaced (at least temporarily) by a celebrity singer, model, and fashion tycoon named Himeka Shirosaki.
Her singing.
Her Wikipedia Page
Her
Her with Me

But the highlight is my new job at Square Enix, where I will be the next core game engine programmer.
By coding the engine they use for all of their major products, I will in effect be working on all of their next Final Fantasy games, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, and more.


All of this in just 3 weeks.  Tokyo is an exciting place and I will definitely be staying here for life.
I hope to meet many gaming celebrities at Square Enix, and will do my best to put out the highest quality engine for their upcoming games.


L. Spiro

59

Completely Unrelated / Re: 8.9 Earthquake causes Tsunami to hit Japan

« on: 2011-03-25 14:31:38 »

I think we can all agree that the real threat is snakes on a plane.
Now let’s talk about earthquakes or make a new thread for flaming each other.


L. Spiro

60

Completely Unrelated / Re: I wrote a song.

« on: 2011-03-24 02:39:09 »

I know we are supposed to use this space to do our best at making others laugh or shocking them, but to my great shame I just have an actual song that I made.

http://memoryhacking.com/My%20Music/Heart%20of%20Uha.mp3 It was for my girlfriend.  The one who left me during the earthquakes.

Before her I was dating a Chinese woman.  I made this song for her.
http://memoryhacking.com/My%20Music/Yoo.mp3
And our relationship ended.


L. Spiro

61

Completely Unrelated / Re: 8.9 Earthquake causes Tsunami to hit Japan

« on: 2011-03-22 02:21:26 »

Historically speaking, large earthquakes come in pairs with the second one typically (but not always) being a magnitude lower.

The 9.3 Indonesian earthquake was followed 3 months later by an 8.7 (which shook my office in Bangkok).
In November 2006 an 8.3 earthquake in the Kuril Islands, followed 2 months later by an 8.1.
An expert was able to give more examples than I can in a video I can’t find right now.

They are called doublets, and the expert I saw on video mentioned some that occurred 2 years apart.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m483323n3684h50v/


The “big one” is expected to be closer to Tokyo, and is expected within the next 2 years.  I personally expect it within the next 7 months.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110315-japan-earthquake-tsunami-big-one-science/
Scientists tend to agree that the Sendai earthquake will be linked to more large earthquakes in the same area in the near future.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928043.000-the-megaquake-connection-are-huge-earthquakes-linked.html


L. Spiro

62

Completely Unrelated / Re: 8.9 Earthquake causes Tsunami to hit Japan

« on: 2011-03-18 08:33:32 »

My room and office were trashed.
Building next to my room (9th floor):


My office:



My $3,000 Yamaha MOTIF XF8 was thrown off its stand and laying on the floor.  PC monitor scratched beyond repair.

My office continues shaking even now as I type this reply.
Radiation has several of my coworkers and myself feeling dizzy/sick, but the levels are not high enough to cause real damage.

Convenience stores are empty, and the streets at night are darker and more barren than ever, as many have evacuated.

And just because my week wasn’t quite bad enough, my girlfriend left me.  I mean, why not, right?


But I am among the lucky.
Nowhere in my story did I mention how I drowned in freezing cold water, got smashed by debris, or burned to death while trapped.
None of my friends or family got hit too hard, and my radiation poisoning is only temporary.


We will just see how long that lasts, given the upcoming 8.X to hit Tokyo fairly soon.


L. Spiro

63

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: Request. Assembly help. I have not got a clue how to do it.

« on: 2011-02-19 12:57:26 »

I didn’t pay close attention to your original code.
Looking back I noticed you did not specify the register/size of the MUL and it defaults to 32 bits on x86.
If you want it to operate on AX then use MULW and 93 00.

This may not be recognized by all disassemblers (I assume that is what you are using).
Either load the 16-bit value into a register and operate on that or use 32-bit values to keep things simple.


L. Spiro

64

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: Request. Assembly help. I have not got a clue how to do it.

« on: 2011-02-19 06:11:19 »

Are you sure it is reading 4 bytes?
It reads the number of bytes that matches the size of your register.
Make it 2 bytes.

http://www.drpaulcarter.com/pcasm/pcasm-book-pdf.zip


L. Spiro

65

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: Request. Assembly help. I have not got a clue how to do it.

« on: 2011-02-18 04:53:19 »

Why does mul[address] take 4 bytes from the address when the lower register ax, that it uses, is only 16 bit?  If it is storing the result in ax (16 bit), then what is the point of it trying to multiply 32 bit values?

Because the data stored at the given address is 4 bytes in size.


L. Spiro

66

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: Request. Assembly help. I have not got a clue how to do it.

« on: 2011-02-17 20:32:05 »

Ok, mul does not like to be passed values unless it is from register or memory address so:

xor eax,eax
mov ax,[edx+ecx+1B]
Mul [00400380]
sar eax, 08
006DD6B4 - 50                         - push eax

Don’t mix signs.
If you perform an unsigned multiplication, perform an unsigned shift (shr).


L. Spiro

67

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: Request. Assembly help. I have not got a clue how to do it.

« on: 2011-02-17 19:06:25 »

Use shr instead of sar.  Shift right without carrying the sign bit.
Be sure to shift only AX, not EAX.

Also you are working primarily with AX but returning EAX at the end.  There may be trash in the upper bits of EAX.  Be sure to clear it.


L. Spiro

68

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: Request. Assembly help. I have not got a clue how to do it.

« on: 2011-02-17 05:04:16 »

006DD6A8 - 99                         - cdq
This seems to change a number into 64 bit?  But why is it here, I can nop it and have no problem.

Unless the highest bit set in the 32-bit starting value is 1, EDX will be filled with 0’s and your end result will not be changed.  This represents most cases and thus you will mostly never see a change.


0xFF590CA0 after cdq =

Code: [Select]

EAX: 0xFF590CA0
EDX: 0xFFFFFFFFBecause EDX is filled based off the value of one bit, it will always either be all 0’s or all F’s.

006DD6A9 - 81 E2 FF030000             - and edx,000003FF
EDX seems to be 0 by this point anyway? (well that might just because I can only see 32 bit addresses with this debugger)  I need this explaining too.

And if it is not 0 (see above) it will be a regular AND.

Code: [Select]

EDX: 0xFFFFFFFF & 0x000003FF = 0x000003FF
By this point EDX will either be 0x00000000 or 0x000003FF.  Always.

006DD6AF - 03 C2                      - add eax,edx
No idea what is going on here.

Adding either 0x00000000 or 0x000003FF to EAX.

Code: [Select]

EAX: 0xFF590CA0 + 0x000003FF = 0xFF59109F

006DD6B1 - C1 F8 09                   - sar eax,0A

This is the crunch code.  It shifts the bits in eax 10 places to the right.  So if a character has FF00 at this point (limit break) it will first look like this:

Shifting down 10 bits as you say.
Notice however that 0x3FF is HB 00000011 11111111 LB (first 10 bits set).
Coincidence?

Code: [Select]

0xFF59109F >> 0xA = 0xFFFFD644 (Sign bit preserved). -10684

If they did not add EAX and EDX you would get this:

Code: [Select]

0xFF590CA0 >> 0xA = 0xFFFFD643 -10685


EDX becomes FFFFFFFF when the high bit in EAX is set.
The high bit in EAX is the sign bit.  If it is set, the number is negative.
Therefore EDX becomes FFFFFFFF when EAX is negative.

The code basically means that if EAX is negative, the result will be one value larger than just shifting off the bottom 10 bits unless all of the 10 lower bits of the original number are 0.

In other words, integer truncation towards 0.
Positive numbers (not divisible by 1,024) round down, and negative numbers round up.


Knowing that all the alien code is simply performing a rounding operation should help you to finish your task.


L. Spiro

69

Completely Unrelated / Re: Corrupt-A-Wish

« on: 2009-01-25 00:18:16 »

Granted.  Many good things for which to wish suddenly appear, but you have already used your only wish and are unable to wish for them.

I wish to get the job for which I am applying now.


L. Spiro

70

Completely Unrelated / Re: Whats your level of experience??

« on: 2009-01-16 23:24:41 »

That would explain why its message was actually on-topic.  But it is hard to imagine a guy going around trying to advertise a retarded site by manually posting one-by-one.
This guy is even stupider than I thought.  Not to mention having used no sense at all when picking his target audience.  Why in the **** would people on a site for Final Fantasy care about shoes?


L. Spiro

71

Completely Unrelated / Re: Whats your level of experience??

« on: 2009-01-15 22:59:32 »

I didn’t even notice the link.  So what wasted energy went into making that bot.  Bot makers are really stupid.


L. Spiro

72

Completely Unrelated / Re: Whats your level of experience??

« on: 2009-01-15 22:26:45 »

This topic is 2 years old.  Please do not revive dead topics.
Good luck with your interest in programming.


L. Spiro

73

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: Battle info and algorithm.

« on: 2008-10-04 16:08:15 »

You are working through this with a debugger right?


L. Spiro

74

Completely Unrelated / Re: What addware or virus is on my computer?

« on: 2008-02-12 16:49:43 »

Disable all browser plug-ins.
Turn off Java Script and all ActiveX controls.

Since it works in both of your browsers I doubt this will fix it.  Sounds as though it is a DLL set to be injected into every process at start-up.


If you are using Windows®:

http://memoryhacking.com/download.php
#1: This can see processes running on your computer even if they hide themselves and do not appear in Task Manager.  Your first task should be to look through the File/Open Process/All list to see if any processes look strange or if there are any <unknown> processes.  You will see 3 <unknown>’s followed by a single process name (while every other process simply has 4 process names).  These are processes trying to hide themselves.  If MHS is started before the hidden process it is always guaranteed to be in the All list.

#2: While browsing the list of processes, check window names.  Look for AutoIt v3 specifically.  It may be msnmsgr.exe or any other normal process name, but actually it is an AutoIt v3 virus that has come out lately in various forms.  You may not have this, but using this as an example you should examine the titles of all the windows carefully to be sure they are what they should be.

#3: If you can not find a suspicious process, double-click your browser in the list of processes to open it with MHS.  Once MHS is attached to your browser, press Ctrl-D to open the Disassembler.  In the Helper window (which is floating at first), you will find an Exports tab. This lists all modules loaded by your browser.  Scan this list for oddly named DLL files that shouldn’t be there.  If you find one, you can search your drive for it and delete it, or you can enter the file name (including the dot and extension) and try to search for more information on it through Google (assuming you have a way to do that, seeing as that is what is bugged for you right now).


L. Spiro

75

Completely Unrelated / Re: Qhimm.com Foreign Counterpart?

« on: 2008-02-12 05:40:00 »

There isn't

What we are doing is illegal in Japan. There are no "fair use" rights there, and the open dissection of copyrighted material could get you a visit by the police. I made a post on 2Channel in the Square section about Q-Gears once and got darn near assaulted and "sage-ed" off the BBS.

Also it would seem Japanese otaku don't appreciate us "destroying" FF7.

That's why

Then I better stop using my “Something Something VII Online” as résumé work for Japan.
In fact I might find it difficult just to stay there at all if I can’t hack…

It probably is on the way out, since with asymmetric cryptography, game hacking is basically impossible on the current console generation.

Haven’t kept up with the console scene but I doubt game hacking will ever be out.  Maybe they just need better tools. 
Besides, game protection costs money (unless I am just that outdated).  Maybe the large companies are willing to shell it out but there will always be hackable games, even if they aren’t always the ones you want to hack.


L. Spiro