Monday, October 10, 2016

I need help

Update: With help from Marco from the comments of this post, I have managed to make some changes to the exe and now it should not appear as a threat for antiviruses anymore. But I need people who had this problem to confirm if the fix worked, so please, if you had security problems with the mod's exe, update, check again and report here.


For the past month I have been working on one, if not THE biggest update the mod ever had.
I have a total of 18 new maps, focused around Africa and Oceania, some incredibly awesome stuff and I am really excited to finish everything and release it.

But for all the excitement and pride that I have working on this project, there is also a lot of sadness and helplessness.

As some of you might know, for years AoE3 modding has been very restrictive and many times when someone suggested something radical or even somewhat simple looking, many times the answer was the same: "AoE3 modding is very limited and we can only do so much with what we have".

But a while ago this changed. Two very awesome guys joined forces and released the Unhardcoded Patch, a tool which allows us to do things which were impossible before, like adding completely new civs without replacing any existing civs, including population increase and so much more.

But this awesome patch has a nasty side effect, being applied on the game's exe, it makes the exe lose its official digital signature from Microsoft and this makes it show up as a threat for antiviruses.

I don't know how to fix this, and what I found on the internet, it all costs money, money I cannot pay and even if I did buy a new digital signature I have no idea how to implement it.

I don't want to deal with all this mess, I just want to mod and make awesome content.
I need help, or else the mod will suffer for absolutely no reason.
If anyone has any idea how to work around this or any other info, I'm all ears.

You can check the mod's exe HERE, and if you click on File Detail you can clearly see the problem, which is:

Signature verification  The digital signature of the object did not verify.


There's more to this though, the mod's Patcher also used to show up as a threat, and still does for some, for the same reason.
Shyke, the Patcher's creator did all he could to improve the Patcher so that wouldn't happen anymore, but...

We need help.

39 comments:

  1. What if you erase age3m.exe ? and making all changes to age3y.exe also delete digital signature?

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    1. Yes. age3m.exe is just age3y.exe with a different name and some file paths changed inside it.
      But the changed file paths is not what breaks the digital signature, it's the Unhardcodded Patch which we really need.

      Just to be clear, I am not asking for financial help... I am asking for alternatives, for solutions, for help from people who know this kind of stuff.

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    3. I have played this mod for 2 years. Just do what you have done before. In the past, you are not able to adding ner country AI. Howover now, you can. So I'm sure that you and AOE3 modding community will get over this problem which is not big but for now try just modding.

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    4. And again Thanks to you for this great mod.

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  2. Damn, I wish I could help, but this is not my expertise. Good luck, man. Can't wait to see the next changelog.

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  3. Good luck media, your mod is just great and i'm sure you'll keep going !

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  4. The signature has exactly this role: certifies the file is original and unmodified. If you modify it (with the above patch), the signature breaks and the antivirus will become suspicious.

    I see 3 options here:
    1) Don't modify the file (All us surely disagree with this!)
    2) Create a new signature (but it will cost money)
    3) Erase the signature (it's better an executable without signature than an executable with a broken signature). I saw some free tools online which erase the signature from a file

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    1. Oooh, you can erase it completely?

      I really wondered why this signature thing became such a big deal all of a sudden, since a lot of programs (the programs I use to mod the game for example) have no signature whatsoever.

      Now that I think of it... How do cracks avoid this? For example, the AoE3 cracked exe, it doesn't show up as a virus although it's modified. It simply doesn't have a signature, like what you suggested?

      (and before someone thinks about it, no, we can't use it, it runs on a very old version of the game)

      Finally some useful help, thank you.

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    2. Many NO-CD cracks are created by the same developers(not sure if the software house approve this or if some developer secretly do it).
      Anyway, this means the crack is created BEFORE the signature is applied, so the NO-CD exe is effectively "original and unmodified".

      I never used those tools, so I don't know if and how they work.

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    3. Ok so, I found a program that removes signatures and I'm gonna make a quick update with the new exe.

      But now I need people who had problems with the exe to confirm it's not showing as malware anymore.

      Delete
  5. For me the exe is still showing up as malware. It works fine after I allow it, of course.

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    3. You updated using the google drive link?
      No no no, use the patcher man.

      And the new maps were not released yet, only the fixed exe.

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  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. It should work, everything checks out.
      But why do you guys keep deleting comments... I can still see them you know.

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    2. Ahah, yea. I deleted them because I later realised that no new content has been added in yet. And yes, I used the google drive link to download another pather and used that one. I'm now using it and it works just the same as the previous one. What needs to be done?

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    3. wrong clicked, Armas you should use the patcher instead of downloading it from Github

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    4. Oh so you got the patcher from google drive and used it to update? And the exe still appears as malware? Are you sure it's "age3m.exe" and not the patcher that appears as malware?

      Because if so, the fix didn't work... But there's nothing else I can do unless someone comes up with a better idea.

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  7. Yep, got the patcher from google drive and used it to update. It's the patcher that appears as malware, not age3m.exe.

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    1. Well why didn't you say so in the first place! This post is about the mod's exe, not the patcher.

      The patcher is pretty much unfixable unless I buy an actual digital signature, because the patcher modifies the windows registry in order to make the mod's exe run in windows xp compatibility mode (it needs this to avoid some bugs with settings; and also, Steam does the same thing with the original exe).

      Now, I could tell Shyke to take out the registry thing from the patcher and it will stop showing up as malware, but then people will not know/read/remember to set it manually to compatibility mode and then they will complain about bugs with the game's settings...

      There's just no fucking winning solution for me here.

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    2. My mistake then! It is indeed the patcher, I never had any problem with the age3m.exe (there was just this one time when it magically disappeared, dunno how, but that was long ago), so I guess it's better news.

      Indeed, there doesn't seem to be any winnable solution here. Mandos, how can we help this mod become even more noticeable? Besides obviously being good having more players, it would probably also attract guys that have great expertise in this topic, who knows. I've tried sharing it in the aoe3 subreddit, and it got some views, but not that much. Nowadays there seem to be more aoe2 players than aoe3.

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    3. Also, I have a question. Is it possible to make a human player being able to delete an allied ai's walls (thes same way as if it was a wall of the player that wants to delete it)? Generally I like my allies to build walls, but sometimes they make it across my god damn town, essentially splitting it in 2. I know this is a topic that has been talked about a lot in the past, but it still can be annoying in the fews times it does happen.

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    4. At this point in time, I'm not even sure it's a good thing to make the mod more popular... Because the more people discover it, the more people will say it has viruses...

      I don't even know man. I'll just keep working on it and even if 10 people play it then I'll be happy.

      As for your idea with AI walls, it is not possible, sorry. It's one of the reasons I disabled the AI to build walls, but people wanted it back so I added it back.

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  8. After the last update, I just can play when I stop de Antivirus because if it is on, when I use the age3m.exe appears a window with the message: "Failed to load required library uhc_wrapper.dll".

    Mandos, continue doing this great work. Thanks!

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    1. Yeah, now the extra dlls from the Unhardcodded Patch appear as malware... Fuck my life.

      I will upload a version which doesn't need those dlls right now.

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  9. Replies
    1. Well, I spent like 2 freaking weeks trying to add homecity water flags to New Zealand because yes, it was that hard.

      And then I came up with this genius idea to give Australia caves, something only seen in the campaigns. But they are so hard to make I kinda gave up for now...

      So instead I'll just make a simpler version of Australia and be done with it.

      The big update might come this weekend but not sure.

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  10. Wow, even more than anticipated, that's awesome!
    Please do, even if just in a simple way, a changelog when you release the big update.
    And no worries, take your time. Good luck!

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    1. Oh I will do more than that, I will also do a video preview of the update, it's THAT big!

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  11. Having a few problems with the latest patch. I have reinstalled the game and tried, it installs fine. The problem is with Skirmish and Campaign. The game seems to crash upon completion of the first level. I have tried both the normal one and the Japanese one, it applies to both. Will try the War Chiefs later. Skirmish lets me create town centers and such but I can't play a game. (I think you have to complete campaign first). Because of this, I can't try any of the Civs that you don't play as in the story. Also, I know that you turned off shipments a while ago for campaign, but it ruins several things like the Consulate for the Asians and the fourth level of the second campaign where you have to play on two sides of a map and shipments are the only way to send military units across. I read the population/naval post and agree with most of the points. I would make the Russian blockhouses give more population (as they already do what you are intending). As for naval battles, there is just a lack of diversity in ships. Sure, there are Monitors, and Frigates, but there isn't any real counters like there are for land troops. I agree with the classification idea but there just need to be more ships for that too work.

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    1. Excited for the new big update. Hoping it fixes things. Good luck!The patcher was not malware for me.

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    2. Ah, so you posted here as well.

      I wanted to let everyone know that I tried fixing his game but he has this weird problem where, the game cannot access the "My Documents" files and folders, and because of that the game can't save progress, settings or even his ingame name, which doesn't let him play skirmish.

      It's very horrible and if anyone knows why this happens and how to fix it please let us know. It might be windows related but I'm not sure.

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    3. does it have administrator rights ?

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    4. It does, yes. I mean, there might be some hidden administrator problems with windows but I did everything to give it admin rights.

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    5. and does it have to be "my documents" ? couldn't you change the folder location to a new one (one you'll be sure you've the rights to modify files)

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    6. Oh no. It's not the file location, the game is just denied access anywhere, it's weird.

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    7. starnge indeed, if this happens on every pc...

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