RockPatch

This is legacy information, included here for historical purposes.

The RockPatch is an unofficial patch or "exe hack" created by modder pd for Westwood's Yuri's Revenge. Major code contributions were also made by jonwil, and Marshall frequently wrapped the releases into a convenient patcher before he eventually created an automated program for the RockPatch coders to do this themselves. RockPatch gained fame through the fact that, for the first time ever, someone overcame rules(md).ini limitations and modded YR in a way that could not be done via INI modifications¹. It was also revolutionary in a different kind of way: It finally proved that the key to extending or modding the engine were not the often-cited .TLB-files, but the game(md).exe itself.

Though set back through several computer-related issues and datalosses, periods of not-being-in-the-mood-to-hack and the fact that jonwil doesn't have much time at the moment, the patch is actually still making progress, now being more than one year old.

The current RockPatch version is 1.10, incorporating features such as the option to use custom cursors for weapons, the ability to add entirely new, customizable superweapons and countries, working spotlights and EMP, and much, much more.

The original thread(s)

"Who needs TLB files to modify the game?" - these were the magical first words spoken by pd to the DeeZire community, closely followed by "gamemd.exe hacked - new country added!", the name of his now legendary thread. Although at first greeted with a little suspicion, due to the dozens of n00bs having claimed game hacks before, he talked more convincing than anyone before and, as the first one so far, actually provided proof for his claims. The Modderz celebrated. But this wouldn't be YR modding if it was that easy. Quickly, the usually lazy and workophic moderator-henchmen of DeeZire showed up, and, instead of protecting our holy grail from the n00b armies, laid waste to our hopes and closed the thread.

Luckily, this is the internet. Forums are replaceable. Within mere hours, a new thread was opened at Renegade's forums, and word was spread through instant messengers – when the thread was reopened not even 28 hours later, we had already migrated.

The new thread

Sheltered from DeeZire's evil influence, developement skyrocketed. Soon talks of a "real", community-issued YR 1.002 started, and more and more features were added to the game. The thread spawned a wishlist and several other pages at ModEnc², and is currently the most-visited, most important and most-posted-in thread at the Renegade Projects Forums (1,267 replies, 64 pages).

The Next Generation

On September 15, 2006, pd resigned from writing RockPatch, citing a lack of time and no motivation to continue working on it as the reasons.
RockPatch is currently continued by CnCVK, who's simultaneously coding The Extended Tiberian Sun Engine.

¹ ↑ Truth to be told, there were actually some projects re-enabling the third campaign button through a similar method. However, there's a big difference between looking at game.exe, looking at gamemd.exe, and then filling the gaps, and adding entirely new code and features into the game.

² ↑ At the time of the original writing, the page "YR 1.001pd Wishlist" was actually the most popular page on ModEnc, with 7,589 views, followed by the Main Page with 5,025 views, and then by the other two RockPatch pages, YR 1.001pd Votelist (3,757 views) and YR 1.001pd Status (2,899 views); due to the deletion of these original pages after moving RockPatch to its own namespace, these statistics are lost.

Trivia

• After the closure at DeeZire.net, it actually took DeeZire one month to come by and state that he didn't have that much of a problem with the discussion. We were long gone.
• Back when the key to perfect normals was discovered, Renegade actually predicted full game hacks as the next big discovery - albeit still thinking of the old way. (Post lost through The Backup, the uttered line was close to "Wow! First [x], now perfect normals...what's next? TLB hacks, anyone?")

See also

• Original "TLB Editors" thread at DeeZire.net
• Original "gamemd.exe hacked" thread at DeeZire.net
• Current RockPatch developement thread
• Original farewell thread at RenegadeProjects.com
• Rock the Battlefield, pd's website
• Rock the Battlefield at the RenProj/STX File Fortress
• Open screenshot gallery for mods using RockPatch