NBA LIVE 2006

[WalleO]

This has been my most anticipated game of the year. i upgraded my entire computer for this title. Now i can't even enjoy it because it looks very stretched at 1280 * 1024 which is the highest i can go. please someone crack the EXE file to allow 1680 by 1050. please.....

[WalleO]

com'on hackers. please help us out. i will do this myself it i could. i'll learn how to if i knew where to look. please can anyone point me in the direction to learn? i dont mind learning to hack this exe myself to get to play in my native res. i just dont know where to begin. can anyone out there please help us out. NBA LIVE 2006 need widescreen 1680 by 1050 support please....

[WalleO]

Is this hopeless? is there no wayu around this? i see people looking into this thread but no one is responding. Im I the only person who wishes for this more than anything else in the world?

[dementor]

You're not the only one... but if there's no coders actively working on fixes then there won't be any. There are many games in the same situation. Just it seems no one is actively trying to fix it like in the past. :(

[Paradigm Shifter]

I recieved a PM from WalleO. This was going to be my reply, but I'll put it here.

-

DISCLAIMER: Make sure that you've read the help file for whatever hex editor you are using if you are unfamiliar with them. It also helps to at least learn what some of the basic functions do. Finally, it is entirely your decision to try this. Do it at your own risk.

-

I don't own the game, but I'll try to give you a general idea for some things to look for, OK? :)

First, make sure that when you're just experimenting, you've backed up a copy of the .exe before you started changing things. ;) If you make a mistake, delete the messed up copy and replace it with the original again. If you don't, it will mean you've got to reinstall the game.

After that, what sort of resolutions does the game support? If one of the (theoretically) available resolutions is 1600x1200, that's one of the easier ones to look for, although in a large .exe, there will still be duplications throughout the file.

If the game was compiled on an Intel system (which is likely) numbers will be stored in Little Endian, which reverses the hex bytes - for example, in the Windows calculator, 1600 (decimal) converted to hexadecimal is 0640. In little endian, it's 4006.

First job would be to search for all the instances of '4006' in the .exe. Hopefully if it keeps to reasonable conventions, it'll store the data in 4 byte sets, so the next two hex bytes should be '00' then should come 'B004' (1200 in little endian hexadecimal)... so hopefully it'll be something simple like '4006 0000 B004' (without spaces, obviously).

If there aren't any references in the .exe, it's probably going to be dealt with by a .dll instead. If there is a dxwrap.dll file, it might be covered in that, since Tiger Woods has the res's in that file.

Once you've located the res info, for 1600x1200, you'll want to change it to 1680x1050. From the above section reading '4006 0000 B004' you'll want to change it to '9006 0000 1A04'. (9006 is little endian 1680, while 1A04 is little endian 1050). Hopefully it'll be as simple as that.

I don't know, however, whether this will stretch it, or whether the engine will adjust the aspect correctly.

Short of buying the game myself, that's most of the help I can give. Just make sure that any file you try editing, you have a backup of. ;)

Hope this is of some help. :)

[WalleO]

Thank you for your reply. First, the maximum the game supports is 1280*1024. i tried to hack 800*600 to do 1680*1050 by following your instructions to hack the exe. i calculated 800*600 to be 0320 and 0258. The little endian for 800*600 is 2003 0000 5802. i did a search for 800 and 600 in the exe and it found 120 entires. I replaced them all with 4006 0000 B004 according to your instructions. it only crashed the game. I also did a search to see if there was some sort of dll file like in tigerwoods that had the res timings in, but there wasnt one. which means, the res is within the exe. can anyone else jump on this? maybe if we work together we can fix this. i have the exe file if anyone wants to play with it

[Paradigm Shifter]

The reason I warned about the multiple entries problem is that the most likely cause is because some other point in the game uses that series of hex bytes (for whatever reason). They won't be repeats of the res settings, and as such you shouldn't change more than one entry. Often the res entries will all be near each other, so there will be long sets of bytes in a group...

Kinda like this:

Code: Select all

0000 2003 0000 5802 0000 0004 0000 0003 0000 0005 0000 0004 0000 4006 0000 B004

Where the res's run from 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200.

I expect the game does support 1600x1200, but the res won't be selectable because it's greater than the max res of the monitor, if its 1680x1050 native. If you changed it to 1680x1050, it would appear in the menu. Hopefully. ;)

[WalleO]

well thanks. i only wished it was that easy. i couldnt find the code "0000 2003 0000 5802 0000 0004 0000 0003 0000 0005 0000 0004 0000 4006 0000 B004" anywhere in the live.exe code. i wish snork ( the guy who did the NFSU 2 crack) could give a little insight into this. i know its probably the same principal in play here :cry:

[skipclarke]

Hi, I used the information provided here to find a solution for Tiger Woods 2006.
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/node/#comment-
They key to finding the resolutions is that they are seperated by "00 00 C7 00" rather than just "00 00". Perhaps you can use that info in this game too. I'd test it myself but I don't own this game.

[dementor]

No luck on my end looking at editing the nba exe... could the resolutions be in a different file?

[WalleO]

Hi, I used the information provided here to find a solution for Tiger Woods 2006.
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/node/#comment-
They key to finding the resolutions is that they are seperated by "00 00 C7 00" rather than just "00 00". Perhaps you can use that info in this game too. I'd test it myself but I don't own this game.

Thank you soo much for looking. Im happy this thread i started was at least able to help someone out. Unfortunately for us NBALIVE owners, that solution wont work. The resolution is definately in the EXE. i tried and tried several times to look for the cited code in the exe but to no avail. i can upload the .exe for LIVE if anyone wants the challenge. if anyone sucessfull breaks it, there will be a paypal donation to such a person 8)

[WalleO]

I sent an email to EASPORTS and they finally repied me. here' s what they wrote " Response (EA Tech Marc C.) 10/03/2005 03:37 AM
Hello,

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts.

I’m sorry for the difficulty that you are having with NBA 2006.

Unfortunately the game doesnt support widescreen resolutions the maximum resolution of the game is 1280x1024. This is an issue that has been requested by a huge portion of the community, so EA is evaluating it for an update. Unfortunately there is no certainty right now when it will be solved, sorry.

Should you require further assistance about this or any Electronic Arts games in the future please visit our website and review our extensive Self Help knowledgebase (http://support.ea.com)

Marc C.
Electronic Arts
Technical Support

[Paradigm Shifter]

You mean they released a game that doesn't support UXGA? :shock:

I can understand the lack of widescreen resolutions - after all, that is standard EA practice, unfortunately...

[WalleO]

well, i don't want people to be discouraged. The same has been said about PGA Tour 2006 and as we all know now, it was recently cracked to support widescreen. As far as this guy knows( EA Tech guy) the game does not include WS. However Playing the game on my 46 inch WS HDTV i know this game's engine supports WS cause it spaces out the game properly and it looks perfect. So please people looking into this, dont let this be a setback or discouraging. im not giving up yet

[greg]

sorry to dig up an old thread but I am back to playing online with some friends recently since i have more time to spare and I was wondering if we have any news on a solution for this game. I am playing on a dell 24" and i eagerly awaiting a fix for a 1920x1200 or even a 1680x1050 resolution setting. I am tired of playing 1600x1200 using an the aspect mode of my screen. It's just such a shame that the whole screen is not utilized.

thanx in advance

[jhonnypolak]

i have some good news and some bad news.
I used a Memory editor to find the hex values of memory blocks that the resolution is stored.
What does this mean ?
That by changing the values there i was able to switch from 1280x1024 resolution to 640x480.
I have given links to the screenshots of the effect.
Sorry im running 3 monitor setup and it comes out as if im playing NBA in windowed mode. I am not. It's full screen. Interesting thing is that the scoreboard and player labels are all shifted ????

Either way i tried changing resolution from 1280x1024 to 1280x720 and no go :( Game just crashes.

http://home.exetel.com.au/dyjakon/nba_proof1.JPG
http://home.exetel.com.au/dyjakon/nba_proof2.JPG

The program i used to edit hex values in memory can be downloaded here:
http://www.hot-shareware.com/games/game-tool-editor.html

And below are the tables with hex addresses where u need to change the values to get different resolutions:

http://home.exetel.com.au/dyjakon/nba06_x.GW
http://home.exetel.com.au/dyjakon/nba06_y.GW

[greg]

well the fact that someone is looking into it is good news on its own. I hope someone can do something more with the info u provided m8. Thanx a lot for the attempt

[jhonnypolak]

ok i forgot to mention last night that i also snooped around the files a little bit ... and i found a reference to a render.cfg file. Problem is this file doesnt exist, even when you execute the game and TAB back to the desktop.

THe reference to the render.cfg file is in:
NBA Live 06maincscripstsxstartup.cfg

this is what it says in the file:

// Default render configuration
exec render.cfg

[jhonnypolak]

I really do hope that any kind of information helps :/ as i want to play this game in widescreen really badly too.

I also tried doing another thing....

I searched up all the instances of:

800
600
1024
768
1280

in the NBA Live 06.exe file and i recorded the list of addresses each of the instances were found. I then imported them into MS Access where i tried to find matches of hex addresses where each of the numbers are found. So for example if 800 and 600 were next to each other they would have been at the same address im guessing. However the queries in MS Access prove otherwise. No returns upon SQL query execution, so .... i guess thats not very good.

http://home.exetel.com.au/dyjakon/db1.mdb