[codezero]

When I was a kid, this is the first thing I did that I'd call programming, but it was to use a hex editor on my Warcraft (the original game, yeah) save files to give myself more gold and wood. I had a friend teach me how to convert to hex, learned about LSB/MSB then away I went.

It's amazing how cheating or tweaking a game can spark a lot of interest professionally.

[phs318u]

Back in the earliest part of my career (late 80's), I had a love for single-byte hex hacks, especially for apps that were timed to stop working after the trial period. Changing the date-check comparison branch instruction so that the apps would only work _after_ the trial period ended. Used this on various C64, Amiga, and VAX/VMS(!) apps. I thought I was so clever :)

[1_player]

When I was 16 I helped my father and his friends by cracking a laser scanning software they got their hands on which required a hardware key.

Thanks to Ollydbg, I just had to open the executable, find the error message and change a JZ to a JNZ *. Incredibly easy if you know how to, but you look like a cool HACKERMAN to everybody else.

Sadly, my professional life nowadays as a full stack engineer is much less glamorous than cracking software for street cred.

* A NOP would have been preferrable in retrospect, though I like the idea that with my patch you'd get locked out iff you have the hardware key.

[Agingcoder]

Same here. First use pctools, get tired of firing your hex editor every time (and make mistakes) then automate the procedure by writing a program which patches your save files!

I also discovered signed/unsigned integers at this time : give yourself too much money in the save file, it overflows, and you end up with negative money in the game...

[Agentlien]

My first foray into the world of programming was as a kid, trying to learn how to make games in C. My first debugging experience though, was a few years later using a GameShark for the N64. That was a lot of fun!

[PeterisP]

Ah, I recall in high school we made a localized version of Warcraft by hexediting the strings in the executable - though with this approach it was a pain in cases when you needed longer words than English had.

[codezero]

Wow that’s so amazing! I bet it was a bit like code golf trying to find appropriate words to fit in the space. It’d be funny if you had it all still around.

[AndyMcConachie]

I did this exact same thing with this exact same game. Good times.

[codezero]

That's pretty wild if you think about it, Warcraft sold 100k copies at release and maybe 300k copies total (according to Wikipedia) so of the nearly six billion people on the planet at the time, you and I were two of 100k of six billion, and we both hex edited the save game for money.

[codezero]

And we crossed paths after some 30 years on this obscure website that definitely has a bias towards people like us.