Slashdot Mirror

I also agree with what your saying. The real problem lies in not the game developers, but the publishers.

The developers, while money is always welcome, mostly just want to see their game played. And, if there really nice, their game modified and kept 'current' so it can 'live' forever. The whole Quake->HL->CS Mod thing.

Its the publishers that want the game to make the most money. And rightly so: they've put a lot of money into advertising and keeping those developers happy with their coding, just to get the game out.

So its really two different angles out there. You got the developers who just want their game to be played--much like a kindergarten teacher, who just wants to see their students grow up and become famous... and the Publisher, who wants to make as much money as (in)humanly possible from the game--much like a overbearing parent, forcing their children to do insane things to become famous and bring home money for them.

AFAIK, the game developers don't want to have any more hassle than they need to, when programming the game. Anyone remember the "KISS" rule? Keep It Simple Stupid? That's what most programmers _live_ by... as simple code is easy to debug code. Which we all know is really the best kind of code.

The only time I've ever used a actual game CD is when I'm installing them. And even then, most of the time I don't. I just make an image of them in Alcohol120%, and mount them using DaemonTools so I can install them from my HD.

The basic procedure is put in the Retail CD, and open Alcohol. Copy the game based on its copy protection scheme (easy enough to google to find) and select the settings for the most exact backup for your CD-ROM. Save the MDS and Image file for all the discs (takes about 45 minutes for a 4 disc set, if you've got a decent computer, and a good CD-ROM) and then mount the first disc in DaemonTools, and install as normal. 90% of the time, I don't even need to find the NOCD crack, as the copy protection is 'emulated' in DaemonTools, and therefore the game runs as coded.

I'm not condoning piracy. What I am condoning is having a backup of all your games on your HD so that you can play them without having the discs on you (good for you laptop-gamers--battery life is extended, because there's no CD to spin) and so that you have a backup in the case of catastrophic damage to them (such as little children, tornados, or Gridbugs) and so that you can keep your game in its box, in mint condition, forever.

Some would argue that what I'm doing is illegal. I'm 'modifying' the game in someway... I look at it like this: I've paid my 54-dollars-and-ninty-four-cents for my game--I can play it any damn way I please.

Later.

P.s. Half-Life2 is going to rock the cashbah!

I used a combination of USB 2.0 and Firewire external drives. Maxtor 250Gb were around $230.00 retail (CompUSA purchase); Maxtor 200Gb were around $190.00 retail. The last few I put together were Belkin external USB 2.0 conversion cases with 160Gb drives I had taken from a failed RAID array.

I've got ten drives right now, performance is phenomenal, and I no longer have to worry about my son destroying the CDs or DVDs he plays with. Using Daemon Tools and Alcohol 120% I'm able to emulate the common CD protections and mount images; using scripts I can simplify the task for my son.

I have one drive dedicated as my Vault storage. It's where I keep local repositories of open source code that interests me.

The biggest problem I've run into is merging the drives seamlessly under Windows. Under Linux it's no problem. Symbolic links massed in one central directory takes care of the problem; you can schedule the script to run using cron and create the links so it is always up to date.

Under Windows it is a bit more of a pain in the ass since shortcuts aren't "true" files. A nifty piece of software I found called Winbolic Link lets me make links that behave more like symbolic links do. The only downside is I've yet to find a way to script Winbolic Link but I'm probably going to switch my fileserver over to Linux soon *anyway*.

For what it's worth I have over twenty years of games, both CD and floppy (I have Might & Magic on bootable 5.25", if you can find the drive). "Finding" a game is a disaster for me. Thankfully imaging does exist, and I can still play the original Pool of Radiance when I want.

I've been using similar software, Daemon Tools, for a number of years now, and it's worked pretty flawlessly (well, except when I realize that I have a 6 GB hard drive, and no room for a bunch of CD images laying around...).

One obvious advantage to Daemon Tools is that it's free.
The other obvious advantage is that the website used to have on its front page, in large, friendly, letters, "THERE IS NO ILLEGAL MATERIAL ON THIS WEBSITE." It's not quite as reassuring as "DON'T PANIC," but ... well, actually it's not really reassuring at all.

But it's still free.

I don't know about you, but I use Daemon Tools to handle copy-protected software. Not only does it let me run even CD-Based software from the HD, it has the option to emulate many copy protection programs.

For example, with SafeDisc enabled, you need only install the software and run it once with emulation on. Daemon-tools will memorize which sectors are bad, and auto-skip them allowing you to burn a fully usable, copy protected version of the software in question.

You can also make a copy which would fail the copy protection check, then enable the emulation. The software will then pass, even if the CD is a copy.

I couldn't agree more! The noise is the reason I rip every single CD I get (and why I get pissed off with the latest and greatest copy protection that makes it a pain to rip - mind you, it hasn't actually prevented me from copying anything yet). Once ripped, I use Daemon Tools to mount the image on a virtual drive. Works like a charm, and reduces noise by heaps.

I might lose a bit in access speed since I put the CD image on my fileserver, but on the other hand I gain in noiselevels since the server is at the other end of the house, and I don't care how much noise the disks make over there :)

Kerio Personal Firewall - great software firewall, a must on any Windows box
F-Prot AntiVirus - another must have, antivirus software
Tray Wizard - extentions to 2K system tray
DAEMON Tools - mount ISO images off your harddrive to virtual CD drives
FlashFXP - FTP Client with loads of nice features
UltraEdit - must have text editor, nice features such as syntax highlighting
IrfranView - multi-format image viewer
Media Player Classic - replacement for WMP that blows it out of the water
WinRAR - multi-format archive app
PuTTY

There's no reason to pay for a CD-ROM/DVD-ROM emulator when you can get a good one for free. Daemon Tools mounts common CD image formats, and emulates the most common copy protection programs. The only problem that I can think of is that the default GUI isn't very user friendly, but I think you can get frontends for it.

This is entirely irrelevant. If you're complaining because you can't install your program to the hard drive, and want your game to perform better, download a copy of Daemon Tools, rip the CD to ISO, copy the ISO to your hard drive, and play it from there.

If you're going to complain, complain about something that *can't* be remedied, or worked around.

Don't even have to burn the downloaded ISOs of a PC game -- just mount it with Daemon Tools install, play, unmount, delete ISOs. Frighteningly practical.

Deamon tools is free and works well. No need for a crack.

Yes.

Download Page for Daemon Tools.

DVDDecrypter

You need to read a little bit on the dvddecrypter page about how to install it (ie, you may need to download and install a dll or two in addition to the main program) and then you'll use one of the menus to specify an ISO output file. It's pretty straightforward. I also use it to rip audio streams from movies so I can put them on MP3 cds and listen to movies.

Daemon tools is likewise straightforward. After installation, start the program (if it didn't autostart) and a tray icon appears. By default it has one drive (you can enable more) Left click on the icon, select "device 0" and it'll open up a file dialog where you can select the iso file you want to load into the drive. Look in file explorer and there it is.

Command line options are detailed in the help, the one you'll want to use is
daemon.exe -mount 0,"c:\My Images\nameofimage.iso"

-Adam

Without reading the whole tree to see if somebody already suggested this, the simplest thing I can think of is to rip the DVDs as .bin images (like with CDRWin, for example) and mount the images on a virtual device using Daemon Tools or the like. Good luck.

Use DVD Decrypter to rip to ISOs, removing Macrovision as you do so. Then get Daemon Tools to mount the images. There are a number of good third-party automounting tools with menus, and if you're a programmer you can get the API from the DT developers to make your own. You will, of course, need to install a DVD player app if you don't already have one.

It'll be time-consuming to set this all up, as just the DVD ISOing itself will be a bit long.

Instead rip straight to image files.

Then use Daemon Tools to mount those image files dynamically.

Windows sees Daemon Tools drives as a real DVD-ROM, so it'll autoplay that DVD with your dvd player of choice.

When you're done, simply Eject and it unmounts.

The nice thing is, since you have no intention of burning those images to DVDR, you can rip the WHOLE disc, straight to an image of whatever size, and Daemon Tools will mount it as if it was a real disc.

With a little scripting (maybe even active-x controls w/VB) you can even automate the whole process.

- JD

Daemon Tools does the same thing, and it's free for non-commercial use.

You didn't mention whether you were looking to run Linux or Windows or OS X, but I think the principles are the same.

This is a good Windows-only setup using mostly freeware tools:

DVD Decrypter to rip the DVDs to macrovision-free/region-free ISO images

Daemon Tools to mount the isos as virtual drives on demand

MyHTPC as a TV-friendly filesystem shell (in combination with some simple batch scripts to control Daemon Tools, several of which can be found in the MyHTPC forums)

Zoom Player to play the DVDs (it's fast, full-featured, and you can turn off the GUI entirely which is nice on a TV.

You will also want WinDVD: not to play the DVDs, because the interface is so bulky and slow, but because you will need good MPEG-2 codecs and I don't know of any free ones as good as the filters that come with WinDVD. Zoom Player has a feature that automatically finds the codecs and registers them for you. (AC3Filter is a free AC3 audio codec that is comparable to InterVideo's.)

There are loads of ways to do it in OS X and Linux. Somebody who knows better than me is sure to post them.

I recommend ripping all the DVD's to your hard drive, then mounting whatever movie you want with a virtual DVDRom like this one: Daemon Tools You get to keep all your menus, extras, etc with no loss of video quality. Play them with PowerDVD or WinDVD and use a TV out from the computer to your plasma screen.

Check doom9.net for details on this approach... use DVDDecrypter to rip the DVDs as an ISO image, then use Daemon Tools to mount the ISO in a virtual DVD drive. Works perfectly.

In a similar sort of situation, I ripped all my DVD's to a HD, then converted them into ISO files; I then mounted these with Daemon Tools. The result is that the OS doesn't know the difference from there being an actual DVD in your drive.

Of course, this assumes you're using Windows...but maybe a similar approach could be used on other operating systems.

• #1. Get FlashDesktops, you have to pay for it, but it is utterly wonderful. Multiple desktops on windows as fast as Xwindows.
  http://flashdesktops.com/
• #2. Get UxUtils, NATIVE ports of lots of great unix apps.
  http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/
• #3. Get The Bat!, it is a wonderful email client, fast, simple, can be totally driven by keyboard. http://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/
• #4. Get FireFox, it is a wonderful browser on linux AND windows (I actually prefer the windows version). http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
• #5. Get gVim, vim is great on linux, great on windows too! http://www.vim.org/
• #6. Get OpenOffice, great on both platforms. http://www.openoffice.org/
• #7. Get WinSCP, a wonderful SCP/SFTP client for windows. http://winscp.sourceforge.net/eng/
• #8. Get Putty (and friends), wonderful ssh client and other utils. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
• #9. Get everything from sysinternals, a ton of wonderful stuff here, too much to mention, but will let you track every file access, every registry write, every debugging message. Look around, it gives you control of your box like you expect on a *nix. Ton of great command line tools too. http://www.sysinternals.com/
• #10. ClearTweak, a tool to let you customize your ClearType settings (a must for LCDs). http://www.ioisland.com/cleartweak/
• #11. Daemon Tools, lets you mount up to 4 ISO's as drives, and can emulate security protection. http://www.daemon-tools.cc/portal/portal.php
• #12. Memstat XP, lets you monitor memory usage in tray, small and simple. http://memstat.sourceforge.net/
• #13. NetMeter, lets you monitor network usage in the tray, small and simple. http://readerror.gmxhome.de/
• #14. TrayMeter, lets you monitor cpu usage in the tray, small and simple. http://www.thmundt.com/traymeter/
• #15. TweakUI, get control over some things you might want (like hover-to-focus, autologin, other). http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/p owertoys.asp
• #16. WinRoll, lets you roll up windows just like in lots of windows managers on linux. http://www.palma.com.au/winroll/
• #17. XP Log Reader, lets you watch the XP firewall logs. http://www.winxpcentral.com/windowsxp/fwlog.php
• #18. WinRAR, unzip anything you want, supports tar.gz, zip, rar, arc, and much more. http://www.rarlab.com/
• #19. Beyond Compare, best tool for comparing directories or files, great for syncing backups. http://www.scootersoftware.com/
• #20. Nero, the best CD writer for windows. http://www.nero.com/us/index.html
• #21. WinDVD, watch movies! http://www.intervideo.com/jsp/Home.jsp
• #22. WinImage, create images from CDs, very

Get yourself a copy of Daemon Tools, which will allow you to get past the protection issues for your games. Just turn on emulation modes and your originals should be able to run.

With the one exception that I don't believe the CD image mounting will emulate bad sectors and other protection schemes. However, like you said, that's generally not an issue under Linux.

It has to be said, though: Daemon Tools is a windows user's best friend. I always write ISOs instead of straight to disc for my more complex disc types, so that I can test the image before wasting a blank. I also use it for a lot of my games-- I've got all three of the UT2003 discs sitting on my HD right now, though I almost wish I hadn't wasted my time since UT2004 is everything they promised in UT2003, but with a completely new pricetag.. *sigh*

Whoops, got offtopic there a sec. Anyway.. Daemon Tools is highly reccomended. Just keep checking for new versions every so often as the software companies blacklist it frequently. There's usually a new version within a DAY or two of such, though.

As long as they can do a proper raw dump of the formats, Daemon tools is a very nice piece of software to emulate the copy protection schemes. I am not sure how the linux side of things are, but lots of games require windows to run well at this point..

Try something like the Daemon Tools game database, for example.

Now, I would just like to be able to legally remove the CD check from my Battlefield 1942 installation. I've got a $450 DVD burner and wasting it's spin-life while the damned game makes sure I'm not stealing every MP game launch and every level change

Well I think there is a 100% legal way to go about you over-using your DVD drive.

It's my understanding that you are allowed to make backup copies of your software. Then exercise this right and use something like diskdump to make a 100% copy of your CD on the harddrive.
Then use Daemon-Tools to mount your ISO image as a CDROM volume.

That's it, and as an added bonus your game will event start up faster, and without your drive making aeroplane like noises too :)

Murphy(c)

I can only give you my top 10 and hope it ties in with other peoples:

Anti Virus - AVG - Updated regularly and free for non commercial use - FREE
Browser - Mozilla - A stable and standards compliant browser, and not tied in with the OS unlike IE! - FREE
Compression - PowerArchiver - Freeware ZIP/RAR/CAB/LHA/TAR/etc/etc! - FREE
Security - ZoneAlarm - For piece of mind when connected - FREE
Email - MailWasher - Eliminate spam without downloading to your computer - FREE
Registry - RegCleaner - An invaluable registry tool - FREE
MP3 - WinAmp - Still my fav MP3 player after all these years - FREE
MPEG - VLC - A very comprehensive media player - FREE
CD - Daemon Tools - A CD emulator, once a gamer has used this they never uninstall it! - FREE
Games - MAME - An arcade emulator... essential for people over the age of 25! - FREE
FTP & Download - LeechFTP - Unintrusive, easy to use, hard to crash (unlike BPFTP) - FREE


Well thats my two penneth anyway :o)

I use daemon tools. It lets me mount up the warez ISOs..^W^W

Have you considered the fact that the shared folder could be on a CD-R or CD-RW? What about DVD+-R/RW? What about virtual cd drives?

One of the most annoying things yes... try Daemon Tools and keep a CD image repository on your server. Works with every game I've had so far (though a few need a little tweaking), including the really really new SecureROM version.

You may keep and use the original disk(s) and/or CD-ROM (the "Storage Media") only for backup or archival purposes
Which means you can't use it to play so you can't play at all :-)
Of course the problem is that the CD is required to run the game
Daemon tools is great to run a game from hard disk only.

Why can't the OS read an ISO9660 image natively? It's not like it's that hard -- ISO 9660 is already in the OS for cds.

I quickly stopped bitching about this once I found DAEMON Tools. Get it, install it, love it.

Also go here and download awxDTools, a great shell extension addon that allows you to mount any supported image type by right-clicking it.

Why can't the OS read an ISO9660 image natively? It's not like it's that hard -- ISO 9660 is already in the OS for cds.

I quickly stopped bitching about this once I found DAEMON Tools. Get it, install it, love it.

Also go here and download awxDTools, a great shell extension addon that allows you to mount any supported image type by right-clicking it.