# Cracking VB6, compression, and editing memory in games

Here is my little tidbit for the QBXP. First, cracking VB6. All you need is notepad (or equivalent). Open it in notepad and search for what you are trying to find… let me elaborate. Lets say you have a program that needs a serial number (most are located normally… so… lets go!) and it says “Serial:” then has a text box. Search for the word “Serial:” (case sensitive is best) and in this area, because of the way VB6 is programmed, the serial number will be near by. 90% of the time it is not encrypted. For examples, check www.hackthissite.com, numbers 1 and 2.

Now for the QB/FB related part: Compression. I can explain this mostly through example. Lets say we have this file that we are compressing.

“Hello, Golem,” said the man.

“Hello… who are you and where did you put my cheese?” he asked the man.

What would we do? Basically, we find certain things that repeat. For example, “d the man.” is said twice. First your program needs to detect this. Then, you need to find a value for this that the program does not contain, for example 1. So, your program has found this equivalent value and found that this file does not contain the character 1. So, where it was, you put the number 1, and at the beginning (or end, depending on your program) you put “1=d the man.” or something like that. Then, for your decompression file, you find that the character 1 means “d the man.”, so you have your program go through and change all the occurrences of 1 into “d the man.”. After this… your compression and decompression files are done. Why don’t I give you an example program? Because it is good programming practice for you, and I am too lazy.

Now, editing memory. I recommend a program called ArtMoney, and although it is shareware, the free version is very good should suit all your needs. Best of all, it is very low-level: great for the programmer. You can download ArtMoney at www.artmoney.ru. Here is what you do. First open the game you want to hack and ArtMoney. Select the program you want to hack in ArtMoney, and find the amount of money/arrows/what ever you want to hack, and press Find in ArtMoney. Put that value in, and select what you think it would be (text, integer, float, etcetera) and press find. Odds are, it will find more than one value, so change the amount of whatever you are searching for and press Filter, and search for the new value. Repeat this until you have 1 or 2 values left. Change the value, and you have more of whatever it is, or change the value and press the F column (it stands for freeze) to freeze the value there: infinite gold right there. Why did I write this? Because someone wanted a QB gameshark type thing… well here it is.

How does a gameshark work, you may ask. Well, all it does is record the memory address of your health/gold/whatever and changes the value… just some quick information for you all. Anyway, I will shut up now and let you get back to whatever else is in this magazine.