{"id":54,"date":"2025-03-29T01:45:48","date_gmt":"2025-03-29T00:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/szczepan.gawkowski.com.pl\/?p=54"},"modified":"2025-07-12T14:53:31","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T13:53:31","slug":"bug-in-tomb-raider-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/szczepan.gawkowski.com.pl\/index.php\/2025\/03\/29\/bug-in-tomb-raider-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Bug in Tomb Raider III?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!<\/p>Luke 13:3<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For Tomb Raider III players \ud83d\ude80<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you came here by accident because you can’t play Tomb Raider III and get the error message “Tomb Raider III CD ?” even if your CD is in the drive, try using this patch<\/a>. In addition, after applying this patch, you can play the game without any CD by copying the files from the disc to the game folder without overwriting existing ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For geeks \ud83d\udc68\u200d\ud83d\udcbb<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by the computer game industry, in which I have recently become involved, I decided to dust off one of the games I used to play and take a closer look at how it is made. My choice fell on Tomb Raider III. Unfortunately, after installing the game, when I tried to run it, I got the following error (with the disc in the drive): “Tomb Raider III CD?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Hold on! My CD is in the drive!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This was interesting because I was almost certain that in the days of Windows 98 SE or Windows ME, TR3 worked correctly\u2026 Well, why not look inside and try debugging this problem? In addition, I hadn’t re-engineered anything for ages (is SoftICE <\/strong>still trendy?), so let’s have fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I opened Ghidra<\/strong>, created a new project containing tomb3.exe<\/strong> and ran the CodeBrowser<\/strong>. My developer’s intuition suggested that we shouldn’t expect any complex logic behind CD checking. I expected the following behaviour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n