My game just went modified - but why? POSSIBLE REASON FOUND

Allan F · Post by **Allan F** » Wed, 22. Feb 12, 01:58

AP didn't give me the 2 billion achievement, so I checked my personal status, and true enough - the modified tag was on.

I've played this game for weeks, and I'm not really interested to abandon it and start over. I'm not using any scripts or mods, just the bonus pack. I've played TC and R for years, and never seen this before. Is there a way to go back from the modified status?

VincentTH · Post by **VincentTH** » Wed, 22. Feb 12, 02:02

the only way is to resurrect older save games, after doing a Steam Local Cache Verify.

To prevent further incidents like that also include the Steam directory and Egosoft Save directory to your AV exception list

Allan F · Post by **Allan F** » Wed, 22. Feb 12, 02:04

I've been building, so all my savegames are pretty recent, so none of the savegames are un-modified. I have verified the local game cache, and no problems there.

jkjklkl · Post by **jkjklkl** » Wed, 22. Feb 12, 02:24

I don't remember if it was for AP or TC, but a recent thread mentioned that certain antivirus software can trigger the *modified* tag, including but not limited to AVG

Allan F · Post by **Allan F** » Wed, 22. Feb 12, 02:26

I'm using Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2011.

Catra · Post by **Catra** » Wed, 22. Feb 12, 02:28

which can still cause it.

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Wed, 22. Feb 12, 05:17

This happened to me. One day, when checking out my Pilot screen, I noticed my game had the "modified" tag. I never installed any mods for X3. Yet, there it was. /shrug

There's nothing to be done for it. If there was a way to remove that tag that Egosoft wanted to let us know about, it'd defeat the purpose of having that feature around, anyway.

werewolves? · Post by **werewolves?** » Wed, 22. Feb 12, 09:04

I think whatever detects "modification" is just over sensitive, I've had it happen and the steam cache/game files were fine and the only anti-virus I had installed was common sense.

I just always check my pilot status before I save now...

Allan F · Post by **Allan F** » Mon, 19. Mar 12, 15:47

There may be a reason.

I've just seen my game go modified. I hadn't saved for about 10 minutes, and when I checked my status I had the modified label on.

I reloaded, and the game promply crashed. Restarted the game, reloaded my latest save, and all was well again.

I suspect some memory managment problem, possibly fragmentation, or some other internal error causing the problem.

But I check everytime I save my game now.

gecos · Post by **gecos** » Mon, 19. Mar 12, 16:10

jkjklkl wrote:I don't remember if it was for AP or TC, but a recent thread mentioned that certain antivirus software can trigger the *modified* tag, including but not limited to AVG

Didn't happen to me with either AVG 2011 and 2012. There must be an additional factor coming into play for "modified" to show up.

kurush · Post by **kurush** » Mon, 19. Mar 12, 16:44

Allan F wrote: I suspect some memory managment problem, possibly fragmentation, or some other internal error causing the problem.

This just one more time proves that *** modified *** ::= *** corrupted ***

I had excluded the steam folder from my antivirus check, hacked my Windows to never check any signatures so I can basically run any script or mod without getting this label and it still comes back once every other week. I am really curios now what kind of memory corruption routinely triggers this in addition to signature checks.

Jumee · Post by **Jumee** » Mon, 19. Mar 12, 21:08

why are people so afraid of having a ***modified*** tag?

its awesome

kurush · Post by **kurush** » Mon, 19. Mar 12, 22:21

Jumee wrote:why are people so afraid of having a ***modified*** tag? its awesome

Basically, it proves that something is broken in your game as we just discovered. Memory corruption, unsigned mods, you name it

I am also personally hoping for a new bodycount competition in AP, which admittedly should become more challenging because the Kha'ak are gone.

kgkosio · Post by **kgkosio** » Tue, 20. Mar 12, 02:08

Memory corruption is often a hardware problem. Bad RAM, aggressive overclocking.

Triaxx2 · Post by **Triaxx2** » Tue, 20. Mar 12, 02:39

There's really only one way to get rid of the modified tag. Your computer must be purified in: 'Unholy Fire, Aggh!'

Ahem. Yeah, it's best not to worry about it. All you're losing is achievements.

Virtualaughing · Post by **Virtualaughing** » Tue, 20. Mar 12, 04:48

Allan F wrote:I'm using Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2011.

I Has Norton 360 and NON of the Norton products caused ANY PROBLEM at all !!!

EternalSpace · Post by **EternalSpace** » Tue, 20. Mar 12, 04:59

Can't you simply edit the memory of the game while it's running and change it back to being unmodified? I used to hack game codes frequently and if there's somewhere in the games memory that gets switched to set the game as having the modified tag it should be able to be undone.

Allan F · Post by **Allan F** » Tue, 20. Mar 12, 05:43

The game crashed, and I reloaded my latest save, and all is well again. This time. First time it happened, I restarted from the beginning.

No, I don't overclock, and the machine is totally stable. Only now and then, X3 crashes.

kurush · Post by **kurush** » Tue, 20. Mar 12, 06:39

EternalSpace wrote:Can't you simply edit the memory of the game while it's running and change it back to being unmodified? I used to hack game codes frequently and if there's somewhere in the games memory that gets switched to set the game as having the modified tag it should be able to be undone.

Not that easy with X3. At least it was much easier to disable all signature checks in my case. But the issue with spontaneous ***modified*** apparently has not relation to signed content and there is no easy way to find where it is in memory (I tried but abandoned the effort for the lack of time). I can spawn new types of ships or wares in a running game using it, but can't beat the modified flag just yet.

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