                            Corrupster!

                             by Disch
            that's right...the same guy that made Hackster
            disch_@yahoo.com       http://hackster.cjb.net


What is Corrupster?!?
_____________________
Corrupster is a little proggy I whipped up when I was trying to find
some offsets for FF1... I had trouble finding a decent file corrupter,
so I made my own!  Anyway, I think it's pretty good considering.


Why would you want to corrupt anything?!?
_________________________________________
Say you want to hack a ROM and change it's maps (like in Zelda, or
FF1, or SMB1).  Well... if you don't know where the map data is
stored..you could run into problems.  That's where a file corruptor
comes in!  Corrupters are great because they alter (to your liking)
any range of data in a ROM (or any file for that matter).  So you can
try messing up some stuff and see what it changed in the game!


Why is Corrupster so good?!?
____________________________
Corrupster has some features that I liked but couldn't find on other
corrupters like being able to hunt out and change only certain bytes
(or a range of bytes).  Plus, it has a pretty solid recovery system,
so you don't need to keep a backup of your ROM because it backs it up
for you!  You might want to just in case you don't trust me ;-)


How do I use Corrupster?!?
__________________________
Easy!  And pretty self explanitory.  When you boot 'er up.. you need
to supply a file to corrupt.  It defaults to looking up .NES files
(because that's what I designed it for), but you can use it to
corrupt anything.  Even .exe files! (though I don't recommend it).

Once it loads the file... a backup will automatically be created in
the same directory as the ROM.  This file should be called "Corrupster.dat".


Range of Corruption:
   This is the area of the ROM that you want to mess up.  Put in the
starting point and finishing point here.  Remember to put ALL values
in hex.  If you don't know hex... you're not going to make a good
hacker.  If you want to learn hex... there's a million tutorials out
there that teach it, but if you just look at some numbers for a while
you could figure it out.

Search For:
- Specific Byte:   This will hunt out and change ONLY bytes that are
     equal to whatever you type in the field.  Useful for tracking
     palette entries and map coordinates.
- Range of Bytes:  This will change all bytes between the two
     specified values.
- All Bytes:       This does absolutly no searching and just changes
     everything.

Replace With:
- Specific Byte:   Simple enough!
- Increase/decrease by:  even simpler.
- Random byte:     Random number between 00 and FF.

Results:
- Total bytes:     The number of bytes altered (the only part of the
      program that isn't displayed in hex)
- First byte:      The first byte changed.
- Last byte:       The last byte changed... useful for hunting down
                       elusive bytes.


The buttons:
- Re-Corrupt:      Restores the program, then corrupts it again. Nice
                       for narrowing down your range of corruption.
- Corrupt:         Doesn't restore... and corrupts the rom.
- Restore:         Restores the rom to the state it was in when
                       Corrupster was opened.
- Exit:            Quits the program... asks you if you want to
                       restore the rom first.



After the app closes... the backup file (Corrupster.dat) will still
remain, but it will have a 0 byte size.  This is a programming flaw
on my part.  I would like to delete the file altogether, but I don't
know how.  So you'll have to delete it by hand.



How do I get in touch with you?!?
_________________________________
E-mail me with bugs, I guess... this was kind of a side project, but
whatever.  If people like it, I'll probably maintain it.
EMail - disch_@yahoo.com

Oh, yeah... don't forget the ultimate Hacking tool ever... FFHackster!

Homepage  http://hackster.cjb.net