Bass strings e a d g

It took a loooong time but I'm finally able to do my BPT (Bullet point thoughts) on BN3! Keeping the tradition going as I've done for MMBN1 (discussion post here) and MMBN2(discussion post here). If you've completed either of these games and want to share/read other discussion points feel free to post a reply to any of these threads, regardless of when you come across them. Unless I've edited otherwise, I'm still accepting new notifications for these kinds of posts. There is ALOT to talk about here and I honestly am forgetting some things. If you get tired of reading, skip to the bottom for the TLDR.
MMBN3 was probably the game I played the most on GBA. My cousin was randomly playing it on GBA emulator and I was like "hey, that looks like MMBN2!" and the rest was history. I think we eventually had three GBA carts we played on? Though we interestingly really never got that far and that's saying something, lol. MMBN3 not only had a postgame, it had a postpostgame!! From 20 years ago! And its postgame itself was already as long as a real game! Soooo much freaking content in this one title and it made sense as it was originally intended to be their Swan Song ... until Capcom said "No, develop MMBN4 ASAP" and then MMBN4 became the highest grossing MMBN title riding off the coattails of BN3's success. ._. But that's neither here nor there for this conversion so without actual further ado, lol:
SPOILER WARNING for MMBN3! I've easily over 150 hours in this entry alone and that's 93% my fault but the other 7% ... I blame the changes. Going to recollect my thoughts and emotions from the beginning as best as I can so there'll be moments of praise and criticism randomly structured together.

• the game opens with new scilab which is canonically explained by an investment for renovation, that's fun stuff. As a kid, I never realized that BN1 2 and 3 technically shared that same setting (especially when BN2 called it the Center in the localization for some reason). One of the investors is Chaud's father's company which is nice setup for a later chapter
  
• The school also returns with an expanded setting in order to set up Flashman's scenario. Honestly? kinda not a fan, the school was already used enough in MMBN1 with its endgame being tied there and going through the comps again was meh to me. And i know it's a kids game but Flashman literally telling Lan and co to die only to hypnotize them to walk around as zombies is .. silly lol. Don't include the die line if you're not trying to kill everyone? Also, why is such an amazing SUPER PROGRAM found in a random elementary school!? we're doing this shit again of hiding massively important programs in ordinary places a la Lan's over from MMBN1?
  
• I loooved seeing ACDC at night time. Such a great time exploring what you're used to with a totally different atmosphere. The fact that they cut the music really added to the ambiance, and even NPCs changing their dialogue just for that portion was great. Imagine if they had space on the cartridges to do an actual day/night more like they do with Persona, with battle NPCs only available during night time. It'd be really tough to structure but I enjoy thinking about the hypotheticals here
  
• Net design. MMBN2 nets were better, easily. MMBN3 went back to smaller pathways and felt a little too sterile for my tastes. I get that there's this aesthetic with the highlighted Main ST but MMBN2 didn't need that and the level design very clearly dictated what a Main ST was naturally. It was also a bit weird that some of the cybertrains (which are a dumb concept) took you next to the square in the first place. Those areas were called Beach/Yoka 2, so to go deeper into Beach and Yoka nets, you were going to Beach/Yoka 1. Also, F*CK YOKA. I hated this net so much and hated going back to it over and over. in MMBN2 I loved exploring the net for the sake of exploring, I did not want to do that in MMBN3 because of Nets like Yoka. AND THE GODDAMN PRESS PATHS
  
• Press is easily one of two--actually three--four biggest demerits for MMBN3 for me. I had Shadow style first (more on that later) and if I wanted to run my fun Shadow exclusive NCPs, along with Sneakrun, along with buster upgrades (which I needed since Shadowstyle can't attack without WeaponLv NCP) I never had room! I basically never used UnderShirt the entire game, because there was never any space. And the Press paths themselves? Holy f*ck, we've regressed to MMBN1, All these labrynthian twists and turns, and the paths are tiny so you spend more time on them and so you run into more battles, lose your bearings, take the wrong turn again, etc. Just awful, awful gameplay design for me. The fact that they put a Press path on the way to the Bugfrag Trader in Secret-3 was one last gutpunch lol. I will say, it was a good way to introduce Cossak as a genius programmer, storywise. Since it was him who modified Lan's PET while his father was out.
  
• The other biggest demerit? Zenny drops. in MMBN2 when you S-Ranked a navi, you had a 100% chance of a chip drop. In MMBN3, it was reduced to 50%, just like MMBN1. Are you seeing the pattern of regression here? I play my MMBN games with a completionist attitude from the very beginning. I S-Rank everything I can, complete PAs on my way, and hunt Navi chips before the next story event. I hate the idea of leaving things incomplete and having to wait until the very end of the game to go back to things that should have been attainable when accessible. i.e. if I can fight BubblemanV3 and beat him, I should be able to get his V3 chip. It took over 8 hours to get his V3 chip, 2-3 of those hours were spent in actual fights. I S-Ranked him 8x in a row and ZENNYS EVERY F*CKING TIME. The funny part though? I managed to get his V3 chip on a rank 9 kill which has about 3% odds. That's probability for ya. Point is, I shouldn't have to wait to get and run Collect in my Navicust. Collect is an inconvenient solution in search of a manufactured problem.
  
• The other 5 hours, though? RUNNING AROUND FOR HIM. In MMBN2, Sneakrun was a very simple mechanic that let you find ghost navis easily. In MMBN3, sneakrun unlocks a new tier of enemies to fight which is such an asinine concept. I turned on Sneakrun to find BeastManV3, NOT to find upgraded SpikeyViruses that can't be run away from! That's the ridiculous part, even at 1000 max HP, you can't run from a Mettaur1+Eleball1+Bunny1 encounter in ACDC2 when you've equipped SneakRun looking for FlashmanV3. It's so silly! All it did was lengthen the search process. Another downgrade compared to MMBN2.
  
• I appreciate that you got the Navicust so early, dungeon 2. I liked Okuden better than Yoka as a whole, though. Also I remember thinking Zoo comp was lame as a kid ... still think it's lame, lol. I dreaded having to come back here every time for later sidequests. Bubbleman's quest was the worst cause it was backtracking everywhere AND having to run Press. Glad I got the Style change I was looking for, at least.
  
• The whole early game of the N1GP plot, I didn't mind. Honestly, I kinda didn't care for it much, investment wise but it did serve a great way to break up the story. I noticed that in BN1, the storybeats are rapid and fasthitting, just terrorist attack after terrorist attack. In BN2, and now 3, they introduced these "trendy" things Lan and his friends are doing (License exams, N1GP) to serve as almost a palette cleanser before the next terrorist attack and this worked really well for me pacing wise.
  
• The actual N1GP was a mixed bag. Storywise was a lot of fun, you finally get to see Koetsu in person lmfao. He's been on BBS since BN2, I believe and the whole stakes of people falling (to their deaths...?) blew 10yo me's mind back then. Great way to bring back rematches for Metalman and Gutsman. No shot that Sharkman lost to Kingman, though. ._. I remember Sharkman... Dude was a cheater. Oh I almost forgot the whole plot of Chaud and his father! ...that kinda was like 2 sentences long? His father doesn't like him, Chaud saves him, his father doesn't hate him. Would have loved to see that developed a bit more.
  
• Hospital chapter. I loved this chapter. the Hospital scenario is easily top tier across all the BN games as far as writing goes. The idea of a life-threatening surgery jeopardizing Lan's new friend, who happens to relate to MegaMan on a fundamental level, is sooo good! Especially when MegaMan goes "if Lan's dead brother were still alive, he'd be proud of you for being brave and accepting the surgery" ,, I minutely got emotional with that. Disclaimer: Though I should add... If Hub died at the age of 1, there's no way in hell he remembers anything from his childhood sooo that's very silly. My headcanon rewrite is that as MegaMan.EXE, he sometimes imagines what his life would have been if he lived past 1 and _that's what he mourns.
  
• Flameman chapter. Holy fuck, no censor, is Mr. Match VILE. His terrorism and manipulating Lan to help him by taking advantage of his Hero status was super well developed, it flowed seamlessly from the prev Hospital chapter. But to phone Lan and show him video of his father dying and then taunting him for it? That's SO FUCKED UP. Absolutely heinous. There was an earlier thread that dicussed this in detail so I won't go to into it here, just wanted to know how freaking atrocious and irredeemable Match is a BN villain for this chapter. Worst (or best) villain in the series.
  
• Loved the chapter of Lan exploring his PTSD and guilt for nearly killing his own father. I don't think the game does a good enough job selling that guilt, however, Lan was just doing what he thought was right. Had his father or a scilab employee warned of Match rather than a total stranger, and Lan ignored that warning cause he wanted to show off his heroics to someone else, that would have been a better sell to me. Regardless, the scene of him sitting on his bed and kicking out his friends was great, and having Chaud be the one to snap him out of it was perfection.
  
• Forgot to mention, the Dex moving away arc was legitimately kind sad, lol. Good way to explain why Lan was so invested in Mamoru though, he wanted to fill that void. Dex coming back to save MegaMan during the Rankings was fun although, again, very silly. You're telling me Gutsman who can't even get his Navicust right can solo Ranks 4, 5, 6 all by himself? Foh lmfao.
  
• Undernet Rankings, I really enjoyed this! 100% I figured out anything in this game without hints or a guide is because I had some memory of things from 20 years ago. Like when you investigate the Origami in Mamoru's room, it unlocked a memory of me needing that for a plot point later so when I got that hint about birds, it all clicked. I kinda wish Blackmind had a gameplay benefit, though.
  
• Ugh that reminds me, EnergyChange sucked. Everyone said Freezeman's scenario was bad (and I agree) and that BN3 has it even worse with the Flameman flames and honestly... I didn't think so? I'm not sure why, on paper it seems like it'd be worse but I didnt mind it that much. I think this highlights that the problem with Freezeman's scenario was that it was back and forth between the same exact areas whereas in BN3 the backtracking is at least giving you diversity so it doesn't feel as repeitive.
  
• GODDAMN BOSSES BEING RELOCATED IS THE WORST THING. This shit was so hard to figure out with a guide and I couldn't do it. Had to jump on discord for hints. There are some navi hints in-game but a lot of them are straight up useless. I shouldn't have re-Jackin to all the comps to see if there are new NPCs giving new hints for ghost Navis. Removing ghosts from the Net is my least favorite BN3 decision and I'm glad the series reverted this call for the later games but it was way too incovenient for my playstyle. Players complain about getting ambushed by the V3 navis, I've a simple solution: Don't beat the v2 Navi then, lol.
  
• Endgame, I like the idea of a prototype Internet that infected all devices. I don't like the idea of reusing the concept of these superprograms because that's just BN1 rehashed. I like the idea of Tadashi Hikari being digitized away in Alpha and maybe that's the reason Lan's father never had to heart to outright delete Alpha. I don't like the idea that they pussied out of Cossak not dying after his encounter with Bass in the digital world. Basically, lots of hits and misses, but thankfully more hits. It's a shame they never actually used the GigaFreeze program that was hyped. I think they could used that as a lore reason for why MegaMan and Bass were safe after Alpha was defeated, alongside the explanation of being found by Tadashi's digitized memory.
  
• Ending, man the scenes of Lan trying to move on without MegaMan was great! Loved the maturity and character development that happened there. It was really a great bookend especially from the fakeout in BN1 right before Hub.batch was used.
  
• Postgame. I'll say it before and I'll say it again, BN3 doesn't just have a postgame, it has a postpostgame. And I freaking love it. SO MUCH CONTENT. My only gripe is that doing this 100% blind is too sysphean a tasks. There were not enough direct hints on where to find remaining V3 virus chips. In typical BN3 fashion, everything was too vague. The bugfrag trader at least helped fill out library holes but that's more a bandaid kind of solution.
  
• Serenade was unfortunately a little too gimmicky a fight, I wish they had one more move as part of their toolhit. It was fun learning their trick but then the fight got trivial after so I'd end up just refighting them over and over again with new folder ideas. Same with BassGS.
  
• Postpostgame. this was so much fun! I enjoyed most of the timetrials but they were a bit too easy for me with fastgauge and apprenticefolder and cust style. The only exceptions being Drillman and Darkman, those two were rough. V5 navis were thankfully easily discoverable because they were on the NET and not random comps (unlike some Virus families...). To enjoy my time more, I also gave myself an additional challenge of S-Ranking V5 navis with different folders.
  
• PvP Gigachip. I got lucky, lol. I got mine 2 battles. ._.
  

TLDR: I think BN3 is overrated and I've a loooot of bones to pick with it.
I also think BN3 is peak BN and for now still remains as the one I consider the best.
But BN2 is still my all time favorite.
(We'll see how I feel after I get through Vol2)

I need to override one of the return addresses on the main function to the address of print_flag function. The code is shown below.

#include  #include  #include  #define STDIN 0 #define STDOUT 1 char flag[0x100] = {0, }; void print_flag() { int fd = open("/home/bof/flag", O_RDONLY); if(fd < 0) { printf("[!] File descriptor error\n"); exit(1); } unsigned int fsize = lseek(fd, 0, SEEK_END); lseek(fd, 0, SEEK_SET); read(fd, flag, fsize); write(STDOUT, flag, fsize); } void setup() { setvbuf(stdin, 0, 2, 0); setvbuf(stdout, 0, 2, 0); setvbuf(stderr, 0, 2, 0); } int main(void) { setup(); char buf[0x100]; read(STDIN, buf, sizeof(buf) + 0x100); return 0; } 

Using IDA, the address of print_flag function is 0x004011F6 and the disassembly of main function is as follows:
Disassembly of main function
Interestingly, segmentation fault only occurs when input length is 265 and above. E.g. python -c 'print("A"*265)' ./code
I tried running these but to no avail: python -c 'print("A"*264 + "\xf6\x11\x40\x00")' ./code and python -c 'print("A"*512 + "\xf6\x11\x40\x00")' ./code

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Transitioning changes the way people treat you. We often talk about the negative aspects (e.g. sexism), but I'm curious about what feels gender affirming... What are things that do to you post-transition that feels like, "oh damn, they really see me as a woman."