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PS2 Controller Hack Nets Codes for GTA

Posted by Zonk on from the imaginative-gaming dept.

glengineer writes "Gotta love edisoncarter for his cheesy, brute force, and effective hack of the PS2 controller to discover cheats for Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas. He used the parallel port of his PC connected to relays on the PS2 controller to step thru the combinations of button pushing needed to obtain cheats that were not released by Rockstar."

29 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Wow... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    By FAR, one of the best things to come about from A.D.D.

    1. Re:Wow... by WormholeFiend · · Score: 2

      I think I must have some form of ADD, because at first I thought the initial missions in GTASA were very tedious, what with the difficulty of getting around fast in the starting area... too much urban clutter.

      Yea so I cheated to get the jetpack to get past the tediousness, but I stopped using it as soon as other flying vehicles became available.

  2. Apparently... by eviltypeguy · · Score: 3, Funny

    Apparently the webserver's connection is over a parallel port connection too.

  3. huh. by xerxesVII · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I remember being a little kid, looking at Nintendo Power's codes section and wondering where all those codes came from. Did kids like me just sit there all day punching random codes in and seeing what happened?

    Looks like someone figured out a way to do just that.

    --
    "We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
    1. Re:huh. by xerxesVII · · Score: 4, Funny

      I remember being a little kid...
      Yes, I know that now. But thank you for your pedantry.

      --
      "We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
    2. Re:huh. by crow · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There are several ways to acquire cheat codes:

      * Leak from an insider

      * Lucky guess or brute force

      * Analysis of the code

      This looks like a new method of brute force. However, it would be easy for the game to detect it and disable all cheat codes--all they would have to do is have a bunch of extra special codes that instead of giving you more power, silently disable cheat codes.

    3. Re:huh. by daveo0331 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Mod parent up! I'm surprised there's people that read (or used to read) Nintendo Power and don't realize Nintendo publishes it, or that can't figure out how a Nintendo publication would go about getting cheat codes for Nintendo games...

      Anyway, Nintendo Power also used to publish glitches, like World -1 in SMB1 or the jumping-over-the-top-of-the-screen-and-using-fairy -magic glitch in Zelda 2. Since these things wouldn't have been put in deliberately, I'm guessing these were sent in by readers. The magazine actively encouraged people to send in stuff like this, and with over a million readers, it's not hard to see how a few of them would accidentally stumble upon some glitch even if the likelihood of doing so is very low.

      --
      Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
  4. Why do they exist? by crow · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why do these cheat codes exist in the final product? I can understand having them for development--they need to be able to test different parts of the game. Buy why would they still exist in the released version?

    1. Re:Why do they exist? by superpulpsicle · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That is the best part of the game. I know so many folks who bought GTA san andreas just to blow shit up. While I really enjoy the missions and the plot, IMHO few people actually play the game straight.

    2. Re:Why do they exist? by chudgoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Is the art of the Easter Egg lost on you or what?

      It's a long standing tradition among game makers to leave little presentsin the final build of the game,
      and much like real presents it's up to you whether or not to open them when you should (after you've beaten the game)
      or to completely destroy the experience by using them early on.

      In this age of big business and artificial limitations I find it very refreshing that developers remember where they came from.

    3. Re:Why do they exist? by captnitro · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Even better, it's the presentation. You play a game once without them, and you play it with cheats the second or third time around -- it's an entirely different game.

      Last year when bored I became a fan of turning my UT2003 single-player speed ('slomo') down to something far below normal, like 0.001, 1.0 being normal. At that speed it became more like an elaborate chess game, where you had minutes to decide where to go or who to shoot first. While it's not for everyone, it made for some very interesting matches -- you savor the triumph of a frag a little more, and then kick your own ass for not noticing the guy behind you for four minutes.

      There's something that we like in games that's more about situations than strictly playing. Cheat codes allow us to get to the parts we really liked about the game.

    4. Re:Why do they exist? by milkman_matt · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Damn right. I never played VC or SA but in GTA 3 I eventually got bored of all the stupid missions and would see how long I could stay alive with the army hunting me down.

      You know it's funny, when I BOUGHT VC I played it for about 25 minutes, other than that, my old roomie and I were just plugging in cheat codes and seeing who could last longest. The funny part is, I eventually got sucked into the plot (I -love- Scarface). Went and started playing the game, realized once I took over half the game, that I had so much damned money that the cheat codes couldn't compete with my arsenal :) But yeah, playing for survival is fun.

      You know what I miss though? Is that in GTA1 it gave you a REPORT once you finally got hospitalized or arrested. How many misdemeanors, felonies, cops you killed, civilians you killed, etc... Made it a hell of a lot more fun for going on rampages ;)

    5. Re:Why do they exist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting
      I can understand having them for development--they need to be able to test different parts of the game. Buy why would they still exist in the released version?
      There's a non-zero chance that the two executables could behave in different ways. Since that's the case, it's easier to leave cheats in the game than re-test the entire release version of the game (which can take a few days).
    6. Re:Why do they exist? by SansTinfoilHat · · Score: 2, Funny

      Last year when bored I became a fan of turning my UT2003 single-player speed ('slomo') down to something far below normal, like 0.001, 1.0 being normal. At that speed it became more like an elaborate chess game, where you had minutes to decide where to go or who to shoot first. While it's not for everyone, it made for some very interesting matches -- you savor the triumph of a frag a little more, and then kick your own ass for not noticing the guy behind you for four minutes.

      So you were basically playing Halo?

      I kid because I love. :-)

  5. Will PCs Be Outlawed? by blueZhift · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Heh heh heh! I love these kinds of hacks because they cut to the reason that PCs are both so useful and at the same time the bane of the movie, recording, and to some extent, the gaming industry. As far as I know, this hack to get the cheat codes doesn't violate any current laws (maybe the EULA for the game), but I can imagine the legal types at Rockstar not being too happy, especially if Rockstar planned to profit by publishing the codes later. In their zeal to protect IP like cheat codes, I'm sure that some would love to be able to ban PCs altogether or at least control access to various ports with DRM schemes. There's already at least one DRM enabled BIOS shipping.

    --
    To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
    1. Re:Will PCs Be Outlawed? by blueZhift · · Score: 2, Informative

      Hmm, who's ranting? I'm well aware of why the cheat codes are in there, but in case you had not noticed, there are plenty of publications that later publish the cheats. My guess is that in some cases they pay the game publisher for the privilege of publishing the cheats. Given that, it is not a long stretch to imagine a company not being happy that someone publishes these cheats without paying them to do so.

      Yes I know, you already bought the game, yadda yadda, but in fact you bought a license to play the game on the platform it was made for. Reverse engineering is generally prohibited by the end user agreement. I don't like these licenses either, but right now that's the way it is. Rockstar could even argue that unpublished cheats are trade secrets.

      --
      To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
    2. Re:Will PCs Be Outlawed? by prockcore · · Score: 2, Funny

      I don't know what your experience with programming is, but Rockstar BUILT IN these cheats, they didn't just materialize.

      "Bob, one of our playtesters just discovered that if you hit Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right A B Start, you'll get 30 lives"

      "Woah, that's strange. I'll classify it as a showstopper bug. I mean that's just eerie.. what are the odds?"

  6. Sounds fishy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting
    He used the parallel port of his PC connected to relays on the PS2 controller to step thru the combinations of button pushing needed to obtain cheats that were not released by Rockstar

    So, how did the "relays" know when he'd actually found one? I'd read the article, if it was actually available.

    SUre, it's easy to program some i/o lines to just twiddle all combinations of the buttons, but you have to have something that confirms that you actually hit something interesting.

    1. Re:Sounds fishy by KDR_11k · · Score: 2, Insightful

      He could watch the screen and tell the computer something happened and then slowly replay the last few seconds of key presses and do some further experimentation to narrow down which keys were involved in the cheat.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    2. Re:Sounds fishy by pluke · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not having read the article either or even played the game, i can only go on my prior knowledge of such games, which cause the controller to vibrate when you have correctly input a code. So if that was the case it would make automating the process very quick indeed.

      --
      "all through my house i set up traps, it seems like the rats have a map, so now i feed the rats crack" - Donald D
    3. Re:Sounds fishy by burns210 · · Score: 4, Funny

      A large tank falling from the sky is a good indicator.

  7. random button pushing? by drxray · · Score: 5, Funny

    I bet his system also plays a mean game of Tekken!

    (joking, I love tekken...)

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    Slashdot - Mutual Assured Discussion
  8. Re:article text by gotmemory · · Score: 3, Informative
    K^2 posted this diagram that he made in paint. The post is buried in the forum, so I'll just put the link here:

    http://server3.uploadit.org/files/KSquared-edisonc ircuit.jpg

  9. Source code? by cgenman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've been looking for a way for a long time to record inputs to a PC and play them back directly over a controller line according to a script, but I don't have the experience necessary with parallel ports to do such a thing. It would make QA much easier.

    Did he post the source code somewhere? I'd love to have working base from which to, well, work.

    - Chris

    --
    The ______ Agenda
  10. Re:article text by prockcore · · Score: 3, Informative

    But the real question is my understanding of the playstation controllers is that they speak a serial-uart communications to the ps2. Wouldn't it more elegant to rig up serial-out from a computer to the ps2?

    The nice thing about the parallel port is that it is pin programmable. You can individually control any of the pins directly. Where as with serial you need to talk UART

  11. Trying all buttons? How fast? by LordOfYourPants · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Since all I see is a pic of the joystick on the main page, I wonder if he's trying out all the buttons (L3, R3, and the directions on the analog sticks as well as select and start)

    Even with the 12 "buttons" he's pressing and an assumed maximum code length of 12 presses, he's got 12^12 possibilities -- 8916100448256. Testing that number of possibilities (with 12 button presses per possibility) means that if he can spit out something like 48 button presses a second that leaves him with 2,150,000 days to find all the combinations.

    If the game has been out for 120 days (I don't know the real amount of time, I'm estimating), that joystick would have to be sending 1 million plus button presses a second to have a complete code list as of today? Anyone know how often the PS2 probes the joystick for button presses?

    There is one key error in my math that might shrink the figure by a bit: if you have a range of 24 button presses that the joystick is sending, that could actually be a test of 12 different 12-lengthed codes. My *guess* (I can't prove it mathematically -- maybe someone else can) is that it would shrink times/sizes by a factor of 10. Meaning at 48 button presses a second you need 215,000 days or to have found every code as of today you would have need to be sending input at ~100,000 button presses a second. Even then, assuming the analog state of the joystick can be packed into a byte somehow, that exceeds parallel port speeds.

    Add *ALL* the buttons into the mix, R3, L3, Select, Start, and the directions on the analog sticks and the problem just gets a whole lot harder.

    Someone please correct me if my math is off. I really am curious to know how the guy discovered so many codes so quickly.

    1. Re:Trying all buttons? How fast? by t2h3c · · Score: 2, Informative

      The directions on the analog sticks are the same as the D-pad when entering cheats in GTA, so it would not be necessary to test both the D-pad and the analog stick. Select and start are not used for cheats because they pause the game, so it would not work.

  12. Because the game is too damn hard? by EnglishTim · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Maybe I'm too old and lame to be playing it, but there were a couple of missiong on GTA: VC which were just too hard for me to complete without using the 'slow motion' cheat codes.

  13. Re: Catching Button Inputs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    From what I can tell, he leaves it on all day. He's using cheats and convienent locations to muffle or get rid of all the other sounds, and when the Cheat Confirmed box pops up and blips, Cool Edit catches it. Then, he just looks for the spikes in the otherwise flat sound wave, and cross-references to the program to see what code was entered at that time.