Hack Information

Jedi Knight Hacking for Dummies

Introduction

In a computer game, such as Jedi Knight, many decisions about what is happening in the game world have to made. The game itself determines what is occuring based on your actions and your virtual environment. Questions a game such as Jedi Knight may ask itself, if they were put into English, would be:

1. Is the player alive?
2. Did the player just pick up a powerup?
3. Does a certain part of the level have gravity?
4. Can the player move?

As you might have noticed, all these questions can be answered with a simple yes or no answer. Yes or no questions are the only questions a computer program can ask itself. Once the answers are determined, the program usually saves the results somewhere and comes back later to the results when the time is right. The program in a way makes little sticky notes for itself as reminders of what it needs to do. These little reminders are commonly called flags.
Jedi Knight has many flags it uses for reminders and Hackers are modifying these reminders that Jedi leaves for itself. The game is totally stupid to this too and in many cases the game has purposely been made to allow this! So, like a president with no recollection, the program is totally ignorant of its past decisions without the proper reminders. When these reminders are modified by a hacker (one of the many things that can be modifed through cog programs,) your game behaves in unexpected ways.

The Fade Hack

One of the simple questions Jedi Knight asks itself is, "Did the player fall down a bottomless pit?" If the answer is yes, you know what the game does to you. Your screen slowly turns black, you die, and you respawn with a familiar message such as "Tiberius has become one with the force." The game decides whether you fell, makes a reminder, and then kills you at the appropriate time. What would you think of the game if it did this to you when you weren't falling? You would definitely be upset and probably send Lucas Arts a bug report. Now, what if the game decides the answer to the question was "no, the player is not falling" and a hacker changes the answer to "yes?" This is called the Fade hack or "Fade" for short.

Partial Immobilization

Now imagine what happens when someone uses Force Grip on you. You can't move forward, backward, or sidestep but you can turn and force jump. The familiar message "You are taking Grip damage!" appears on your screen, your health is decreased, and a short time later after the Grip stops you can move freely again if you didn't die from the damage. Part of that process I just decribed is the inability to move forward, backward, or sidestep. Jedi decided that you were Gripped, made a reminder, and immobilized you at the appropriate time. This is another example of a flag that can be hacked by someone within the game. What if Jedi decided the answer was "no, the player is not to be made partially immobilized" and this was changed to "yes?" You can imagine the result! There is no proper name for this hack, but it is a common thing hackers can and will do. Lets just refer to it as "Partial Immobilization."

The Delete hack

Surprisingly, like if partial immobilization wasn't enough, the game can also decide whether or not you can move AT ALL! Imagine you are playing MOTS and someone uses the freeze gun on you. You are completely inable to move, your screen turns blue, you turn into carbonite, and after a short time you thaw if you weren't shattered into pieces. MOTS decided you were totally immoblilized, made a reminder, and froze your movements at the appropriate time. If MOTS answers whether or not you are totally incapable of moving with "no" and this is changed to a "yes" by a hacker, then this is called Delete. The Delete hack also works with Jedi Knight even though there is not a freeze gun or anything that I can think of that totally immobilizes you in Jedi Knight. Jedi still asks itself the question. Not only does the Delete Hack have the capability to freeze your movements, but it also turns off your Heads Up Display making it impossible for you to type or do anything besides hit ESC and quit!

The Disco Hack

Have you ever hosted or joined a game where the tint inside a portion of the level was changed to some radically different color? Have you ever experienced a loss of gravity suddenly when you jumped after a cheater has entered the game? This hack is commonly referred to as Disco and what really makes me upset about it, is that even if you kick the cheater out, you are still left with the hack!

The Flood Hack

Has a cheater ever turned your level into all water? You cannot see the water, but you begin swimming when you enter a section that has been hacked. This is called the Flood Hack and it also leaves its remains even if the cheater is kicked out.

Build Hacks

Build hacks are one of the most widely used hacks that cheaters use to ruin your game. What they are is a mistake made by the cog programs used to make your guns function correctly. Most I have seen replace normal gunshot objects with weird and annoying objects like the column that holds up the walkway around the pool in Canyon Oasis. When a gun program has its normal gunshot object replaced in this way by a hacker, the new gunshot object is not removed by the game and it stays in your game even after you kick the cheater out. So, you are left with, for example, tons of columns everywhere or whatever they inserted into the game. Too many of these added objects can make your game run very slowly and sometimes the lag caused by these objects causes everyone to get kicked out.

Level Texture Hacks

One of the newer types of hacks I have run across are hacks that change the level textures in your game. Although these do not cause the game to fail, they cause the level to turn into a total eyesore! These hacks usually alert everyone to the presence of a hacker and 99% of the time everyone will leave the game due to the "new look." For most non-hackers, anything that distracts from a normal game is enough to quit and find another. As with most of the hacks I have described on this page, these hacks also remain after the cheater is kicked out.

Overview

Most of the hacks out there are of the type I am describing. A flag is modified by a hacker and you have to live with the consequences. Among the player flags are also level flags that are used to determine various things about the virtual world like whether or not a certain part of the world has gravity. When a flag is disturbed by a hacker it makes the game behave in a strange way.

I have fixed a portion of this!!!