Recently I had to relax, was playing Fallout 3, and realized that when you hack terminals in the game, you follow the same algorithm. So I wrote a tiny tool that will walk you through hacking. It should get it every time. I think.
60 responses to “Terminal Hacking Tool For Fallout 3”
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ammmaazziinnggg
Thanks a lot for taking the time to make this.
nice… though i don’t see you take into consideration the number of matches from previous guesses.
i see you encountered the same oversight as me… didn’t count on zero match words;)
you are welcome to check my tool – http://fo3.exofire.net
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. This tool takes into consideration lots of statistical data from previous guesses. And it always worked with zero match words. If you have zero matches – just type 0. The bug i fixed was with zero possible answers, not matches. It occurs when someone makes mistakes in their input and no correct answer can be found.
oh, then sorry i misunderstood.
nice job…
No problem. :) It’s good to have a choice. Good luck!
thanks for this tiny tool! helps a lot, as i am really baaad at this kind of stuff. rock on!
This tool is great. Sometimes I play and I really don’t want to engage my brain too much after a long day. Your tool takes the pain out of hacking. Thanks again!
thanks alot for this terminal hacking tool!! I hate those terminals.. =) This tool helps me alot!!
Nice work!
Worked well once I got my input right.
I’m lazy, I use this on every terminal. Works like a charm! Thanks!
good job!
shweet lil tool thanks! no longer will i have to randomly guess the pass till i get it right… and trying to figure it out makes my brain hurt.. yay
Failed… twice…
It doesn’t fail unless you make mistakes in input.
This is by by far the best hacking tool on the net, anychance of making a standalone version that runs from a html file or MHT file so we dont have to use the web to use it?
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/ would be happy to host it for you…
or if there is a way to download this app via the website please let me know i would love to snag it :)
Thank you. I will redo this in a nicer way soon.
Wow, this tool is a lifesaver for my wife. Thanks alot!! Any word on a stand-alone version? :)
Your program saved me from having fights with my boyfriend over how to guess the password. You rock!
i have been walking around over encumbered and i was wondering if i drop equipment on the ground during a fight so i can move faster will it still be there as long as i dont zone so i can fight the battle and still go pick it up with out anything missing?
Yes.
Nice tool :). Very nice indeed.
wonderful, wonderful tool!
Well, this tool worked awesome the first five times I tried it. However, there seems to be something different at the terminal in the Test Labs of Vault 87 (where you release the mutant to help you). I have tried, like, seven times and double checked my spelling and can not give me an answer. Other than that, GREAT tool. Thanks
Hm, I’ve been using this on every terminal I encountered including very hard ones and never saw a fail… If you post a sample input with the correct answer I will definitely look into this.
Fucking awesome thx man. have a question to u maxim. can u tell me if this program is a FAKE if not do u know where i can get it? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztSGQL-QjU0 plz must now if its a fake or not.
Thank you for creating and providing this. The terminals can be frustrating when I just want to play the game, and it’s satisfying enough entering the words into this tool and pretending I’m hacking. I really appreciate the work you put into this.
Just lists words in the order I enter them. Something’s busted.
I used spaces. Most stuff is comma delimted. Awsome tool; could be handier a tad if commas allowed for spaces too.Good job though!
Worked like a charm.
Thank you so much!
I built an even easier to use tool at http://fallout3hacker.appspot.com
Hi Nate,
Looks nice. But not easier. I couldn’t figure out what it does in about first 15 seconds of looking at it. It’s funny, because it’s so easy to make a better tool than mine, but nobody gets it. Here’s a free hint – keep it simple. Avoid spreadsheet, graphs and tables. If your system takes more than 15 seconds to figure out – I’d rather just figure out F3 terminal itself.
Just my humble opinion.
What do you think was hard to figure out about it? If you can help me improve it, that would be great! I figured it’s easy to type each terminal word. At the top of the page (beneath the image) it tells you what you should try next. Then you click what the computer told you (i.e. x/n letters correct) and it filters the results and gives you a new suggestion, until you find the right solution.
If you can give me an idea of how to make it simpler than that I’d gladly update the app.
Thanks, Nate
I wrote a different response, but decided to change it.
IMHO, best software is the kind that does the most with the least user’s effort. Sometimes it looks magical how many things can be found out on a basis of very little info. Look at google – one word – just a search box, but usually returns what you expect without knowing you personally.
I wanted to create a definite guaranteed cheat, which works magically. I’ve been fine tuning algorithm to the point where you can trust it completely – it doesn’t spam you with any kind of calculations or statistical data. It asks you to take these simplest steps ever.
1) See the screen? Enter all words. 2) Ok, try this word. 3) Ok now try this one. 4) Here’s your answer.
Absolutely minimalistic on the outside, yet smart inside. At least that’s what my intention was.
Most other tools help you resolve the puzzle by displaying helpful tables and patterns. Mine just resolves it. The only reason it even needs human interaction is because I can’t program PHP to hold gamepad and physically press buttons.
Anyway, seems like my response is overwhelming for such a simple little proggie, but it’s just a matter of principle.
Basically speaking if your user makes a mistake and chooses a different word you do not allow them to make up for their mistake. I wanted to allow users to remove words that were misspelled, remove words that they got rid of between bracket characters, wanted them to be able to make their own choice of a word to make (maybe they had already chosen two words). This allows them to do that without penalizing them for trying.
I will attempt to make my suggestion box more obvious, such that the user can completely ignore the table beneath it (unless they feel like looking at such a box).
Either way, it’s nice to give the user a choice if they feel like making one.
By the way your tool does not work correctly with the following parameters:
drip drag drop step stop
Limit: 2
It’s possible if the first word is stop. I’m sure you can work it on paper, but your tool suggests drop, which is wrong.
I’m pushing a new version of my tool; I’d be interested in your opinion (i.e. if it is simpler to use than before). Note, now you can go back/forward to undo/redo a change. (again: http://fallout3hacker.appspot.com/)
Can’t really verify this without knowing what you assumed to be the answer. : ) However, I know my tool isn’t perfect. It’s perfect in a sense that it fallsback on the “retrying” thing – which happens very rarely in reality, but happens. And it’s not even the logic of this tool that I’m worried about. In fact your logic seems to work better than mine – I’ve tried your tool with other examples which mine didn’t find – and yours did. What I’m worried about is how you present it.
Considering your tool’s logic being better, you can make it perfect by fixing-up interface to be dead-simple. I noticed you repositioned things a bit, but it still says “click calculate answers” which doesn’t exist; it still has the obscure table with statistics, and it still doesn’t feel naturally clear when you glance over. You give too much info and too many options. Remove 2nd, 3rd and 4th columns. Only leave words and delete-buttons. Then make the list horizontal, not vertical – and put the x buttons as a little superscript near each word in horizontal list ( like foo x, bar x ). The matching buttons should only exist near your “optimal choice” advice – and only for the word you’re suggesting, and only with single number – not fraction. (2) versus (2/5). And again replace “optimal choice foo” with “How many matches for foo? (0) (1) (2)”.
Once you fix it up I will gladly direct people to your tool from my tool’s page, suggesting it as a better alternative, since I’m too busy to maintain mine. (Initially I just threw mine together with laptop literally balancing on my laps in 1/2hr while fallout3 was paused). Moreover I don’t really play fallout 3 anymore, as I find Fallout 1/2 much more interesting. (Been a fan almost since 1997 – when it came out).
Speaking of your second comment – you have to think how much choice your audience wants. If you follow your rule – more choice is always better – you can end up with letting them program their own tool in their language of choice, which gives them all the choice in the world. Except, it makes learning curve that much steeper. In this case – it’s not choice that people are after. It’s quick and simple solution. Otherwise they’d be writing their own tools or enjoying solving it by hand.
This is GENIUS! Thank you for making this, it has made my gameplay much, much easier. My boyfriend and I don’t fight about the answers…it made both our games much more manageable. ^_^ Kudos.
Very nice, thanks a lot!
Tried using this 5 times now , not once has it worked for me.. Is there a special tip for this. I enter all the words, and fill in 4 guesses. It then shows me all the words to start with. I select a word and punch in how many letters are correct. It then tells me to select another word and how many letters are correct in it. I enter that in and it comes up with the password is etc etc. I try the password and Fail.
Are you comma separating your words? It should just be spaces.
Damn this is a sweet little web utility!! I got tired of trying to guess everytime. This thing works like a freakin charm!! You are the man for hookin this little tool up for everybody.
I was also going to say it really doesn’t matter if you seperate by “, ” (comma space) as long as there is a comma after all of them it basically means they all have the same “letter” or “character” it still works because the tool will see that they all have a “,” at the end and just eliminate that as part of the problem…i guess except for your last word you probably would not put a , at the end of that word so you might alter your results a little bit but not by much…
Thanks again pimp!
I usually have this open on my laptop while I play. Figured I could add another thanks.
brilliant work on making this as it works perfectly and will soon get me another trophy for ps3! :)
…to the random characters or the numbers provided by the terminals but try as I might, I couldn’t find a pattern. So I did a little searching and found this:
“When you’re hacking, the excess symbols between viable passwords selected and used to your advantage. You’ll need to find clusters of symbols bracketed by parentheses, such as (%$!^&&), which can be highlighted as a whole. Submitting this should result in a removal of a bad password or fully replenish your attempts. Remember: you can always back out and restart to avoid lockout. Happy hacking!”
Can anyone tell me if this really works? I’m currently out of town on a contract job and didn’t bring my PS3 with me.
this works EVERY TIME!!!! thanks SO much for posting this
spent time on the internet looking at plenty sites which ‘claim’ to help you hack the terminals on fallout. Really pleased with this one, its so simple and actually works!
Maxim, can you help explain what you need to do once you’ve entered in all of the words and your tool spits out a word and asks “How many matches for ___________?
I’m stuck at this point. How many matches of what??
nevermind, figured it out…i get it now, brain fart..
This works well for me. I’ve only ever had one rare occasion where it’s messed up, but seeing as I’ve used this program about 20 times that’s good. Thanks for posting this.
Any chance you could release this under GPL? I’m creating a stand-alone Java app that uses a database (JavaDB or SQLite3) to track statistics of all words and incorrect/correct answers. When I first started, it was unable to provide any answer. It then grew to over 50% correct and has now (apparently) stagnated at 78% correct on the first guess, with odds improving little as guesses progress. It’s got me stumped. I haven’t yet figured out how you do it, but I do imagine that once I know, I can adapt the code (naturally making the whole project GPL and readily available) so that the first guess will be correct far more often, and the second prediction correct 100% of the time. At that point, I’d like to release it as an app for the iPhone and Android. (And I could use another tester then…got an iPhone?) I’ve given some consideration to using OCR technology so a user could take a picture of the screen instead of typing all that text on a tiny keyboard/touch screen.
Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated!
how do you find out the number of matches for each word?
this worked the 1st time i used it, will use it everytime i find a terminal, thank you, good work
Hi there,
I just got Fallout 3 over Christmas in the Steam sales, and now I’ve played a fair way through it (the main mission and a few of the expansions anyway) the problem of the “right” way to solve this mini game struck me as a good programming exercise when learning a new language. had a look around the internet and have seen a few solutions (such as http://www.hack-boy.com/ ) which filter the out the impossible words for you when you input your selections, but I can tell that it really is important which one you actually select of the available options. In the interests of learning something new I decided to write a python app with a GTK+ based gui. I think I’ve got a sensible way of selecting the “best” option to select by checking all of the available options against all of the possible remaining outcomes and scoring them based on which ones have the lowest worst possible outcome.
When it comes to testing it, my first thought was to simply select random words from a dictionary, but it seems that isn’t what fallout is actually doing, because they often have words with similar endings present which random dictionary selections don’t seem to. I noticed that you seem to imply that you keep a record of the queries that have been input (you said “I’ve tried your tool with other examples which mine didn’t find” ) and I was wondering if it would be possible to get a copy of some of your test data so that I can test my WIP against some data without having to have my copy of Fallout at hand (been playing with it in my lunch hour at work) once I get my app working I intent to publish the source as an into to python/gtk and I’d be more than happy to share/discuss my algorithm with you if you’re interested.
Rob
My thanks!
Works like a charm everytime thank u soooooo much
Works everytime. Thanks
My PC doesn’t play well with task switching in Fallout 3, but your little program works every single time when I can manage to use it without locking up…
Thank you for this. Many thanks.