| Step 1: | Realize that the cheat on the web is useless.
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| Step 2: | Boot Apshai, go into a dungeon, and enter debug mode in KEGS by pressing Shift-F6. Wander around in memory until you locate scraps of the fight dialogue.
HISTORY LESSON: In these old games, strings are often embedded right in the code. The CPU encounters a call to a 'message printing' subroutine and pushes it's present location onto the stack, then the subroutine recovers that value and interprets the crap in memory beyond it as text, incrementing the value as it goes. When it's done it shoves the value back onto the stack and tells the CPU to 'return' to it, executing the code right past the message. Wasn't that fascinating? |
| Step 3: | Replace the crucial 'monster has hit you' comparison branch with a bunch of NOPs. Now, monsters always miss.
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| Step 4: | Leave debug mode and test by playing the game. Whack hack!
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| Step 5: | Search for the relevant sequence in the disk image of game, using HexEdit. Make the same modification.
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| Step 6: | "Test" the game a bit more. >:)
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| Step 7: | Get really, really damn powerful. There doesn't seem to be an end to the game anywhere. No final rooms or super-baddies.
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| Step 8: | Accumulate a great heap of treasure and crap. Doesn't seem to matter how high your score gets. The dungeon levels reset as soon as you leave them.
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| Step 9: | Encounter the 'GEB'S SPIRIT', a cloud with a lightning bolt that hits you 25 times per turn. Thanks to the hack, he misses every time. Hit F6 to disable speed limiting on the emulator, and hold down the 'F' key to fight 'GEB'. Wait ten minutes. The bastard just won't die. This game just won't end -- at least in any way besides your death.
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| Step 10: | Pass on my character disk, and the hacked game image, for your "amusement". |
| Step 11: | Bedtime. |
P.S.: I'd do the same number on 'Hellfire Warrior', but I can't find a disk image of the game.
