Gears of War Message Board  

After trying out both the Gold trainer by sheep and the trainer by caliber, I noticed that the game crashed at random points. (a LOT more with Sheeps and a lot less with Calibers)
But I'm seeing a pattern too; This game, like Halo 2 and the few other LIVE enabled games, are having crashing issues with trainers too (though, to their offense, they seem to crash a lot without the trainers too in many peoples cases, but that's another story regarding LIVE...)
It seems that the new anti cheat methods are getting more brutal and and are threatening the future of trainers, unless we can think of another way of making them, or if Microsoft gives up on their delusional grand plan to gain control over the PC game market as well...
LIVE has been a disturbing matter for me and many others these days, I've discussed about it over at Halo on Windows Vista forums, the Gears of War forum and gamefaqs, and no doubt there seems to be some main objective behind Microsofts actions and they aren't giving up on it too easily either.

*Gets dragged away by Microsoft officials*

[Edited by Caboose666, 12/18/2007 1:44:25 PM]

Yes, we're fully aware of this trend and are taking measures to combat it. For now, it's as simple as disabling Windows Live (such as we did for Universe at War) but we're working on some new methods to get around these types of issues for future games and trainers.

Don't worry, we have an extremely talented programmer and we plan to continue making trainers as long as they continue making games. Our techniques will continue to evolve as the games and anti-cheat protections do.

We could actually make it much easier now, but it would circumvent the game's built-in protection for multiplayer and that crosses a line that we have promised to never cross. That's why we're researching and finding ways to make it work without jeopardizing online or multiplayer matches and giving people unfair advantages in these types of games.

Yes we need to also take into consideration that Trainers are meant for single player use only, and using them in multi player is not only wrong and unfair, but illegal in my opinion.
I'm glad to hear from you that you're working hard to get the upper hand on this situation.
Not only is this new trend working it's way to get rid of trainers, but sadly of modifications too...
Take Crytek for a good example: The devs said that they've acknowledged the fact that mods are a big part of what makes games last longer and that's why they made the CryEngine2 so easily moddable.
But all these LIVE enabled games are a lot harder, if not impossible to mod due to all these new anti cheat methods and having all the game content locked. And with LIVE being almost a beta software, it will not hope to keep up the multi player experience like all the other games not using LIVE.

[Edited by Caboose666, 12/18/2007 2:18:23 PM]

[Edited by Caboose666, 12/18/2007 2:19:27 PM]

"For now, it's as simple as disabling Windows Live (such as we did for Universe at War)"

If I take the same approach in GOW that you did in Universe, then I can't save any progress.

Right now, my main problem is that GFWLIVE causes GOW to crash whenever I reload a checkpoint. I don't think its the trainer's fault, though I should probably try without it. I really believe that People Can Fly delivered a good working port to Epic, and that the hasty cobbling on of GFWLIVE is what is causing all of these problems. Not that Microcrotch would ever admit it.

I agree.
After witnessing so many similar problems in all the GFWL- titled games it's painfully clear that LIVE is behind most of our headaches.

Disable Live and second sheeps trainers are packed with PEBundle, which isn't working properly under Windows Vista. Try unpacking the trainer and than run it again.

How do you exactly "unpack" a trainer? It's a exe file, so what are we talking about here?
And like JerseySeven said, disabling LIVE disables checkpoints...

[Edited by Caboose666, 12/19/2007 5:51:08 AM]

while most people pack their trainers to make the exe smaller. It would still be an EXE file, but it will be a lot smaller than the exe after you compiled it. Sheeps is packing his trainers with PEBundle which isn't working properly under windows vista, and it could even be that it causes problems under XP. I have GOW installed and without LIVE disabled the game is constantly crashing and I am not even using any trainer. To unpack a trainer there are lot's of tools around. A common used packing method is using UPX and there are plenty of UPX unpackers.