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Domain: relicnews.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to relicnews.com.

Comments · 7

  1. Re:no patience for this by A+Friendly+Troll · · Score: 5, Interesting · on EA Denies DRM Problems With Sims 2

    Company of Heroes doesn't require [the disc], and is A-list. Unfortunately, that is not true anymore. With the recent release of an expansion (Opposing Fronts), Company of Heroes was retrofitted with DRM and now requires you to either login to Relic Online or use the DVD for authentication. The game also sends various statistics back to Relic, and you cannot opt out of that. It gets worse: if Relic's authentication servers are offline, you have to *disable* your network connection to have the game check your DVD. If it detects a network connection but cannot connect to the servers, sorry, you are not allowed to play.

    CoH on Wikipedia also says this: "Patch 2.102, released on October 12, 2007, revealed that the preceding 2.101 patch introduced a requirement of having the game patched up-to-date if the user has an active internet connection - users are not allowed to play the game at all until they download and apply patch 2.102, as the game never even enters the activation phase."

    Reading Relic's forums confirms the above.

    Company of Heroes seems to be the first game ever to be retrofitted with DRM... I hope enough people get to read this.
  2. Re:The problem with anti-cheat software.. by vecctor · · Score: 1 · on Fighting Online Game Cheating in Hardware

    I agree, there hasn't been a strong attempt by the actual game company, but the fans have tried to use existing AI APIs to do some awesome work. Some examples:

    The Skirmish AI mod for Dawn of War: http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=15300 9

    Sorian AI (and a host of others) for Supreme Commander: http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=14325

    I wish the actual companies would put some effort in.

  3. Re:Pedantic if not downright false by Pyrion · · Score: 1 · on No iPhone For 64-Bit Windows
    Actually, it's pretty much exactly as previously described.

    From the Company of Heroes DX10 FAQ:

    Running at very high resolutions and anti aliasing settings

    Due to the limited address space of Vista 32 if trying to run at very high resolutions and/or anti aliasing settings the driver may consume so much virtual address space the application crashes. Running with -novsync for performance testing will disable triple buffering to recover a tiny bit of memory, but the best solution is to run Vista 32 set to give applications three gigabytes of virtual address space or to just run Vista 64 which gives all 32bit applications a full four gigabytes.
  4. Another Award Winning PR Move by Sierra by swdunlop · · Score: 2, Insightful · on Half-Life 2 'Interview' - False Activation Claims?

    Sierra seems like they are trying to beat out Activision and Electronic Arts for pissing on its customers, lately. First, the public relations debacle that culminated here, with one of Sierra's PR reps calling his customer base miniscule and sophomoric, and now an adoption of a licensing scheme which, like every scheme before it, won't hinder pirates but will annoy legitimate users to no end.

    I was on the fence about buying Half Life 2, since I really enjoyed the mods for HL1 more than Sierra's game, but I don't think Sierra will be getting a piece of my entertainment budget for a while. It's a shame, because I really like Relic's games.

  5. Re:determinism = free will? by Wraithlyn · · Score: 1 · on The Computational Requirements for the Matrix

    I don't think predictability has to be at odds with free will.

    Well, I think I would respectfully disagree with that, but perhaps this revolves around different ways of defining "free will", an elusive term if there ever was one. (The proof I mentioned offers a concrete definition) In any case, I don't think it's something we're going to solve here :) Thanks for the stimulating discussion though.

    If you are interested, I looked up the original proof and discussion I have been referring to, it can be found here (on a gaming forum of all places, heh):

    I have a couple replies on the second page, posting under the name "Morwynd". Yikes, it's grown quite a bit since I last read that thread.

    Cheers.

  6. It's about time by Hilleh · · Score: 1 · on Another Look At High-Tech Fabrics

    It's about time that pants tried to regain their market share. I am all for crazy digital pants. Maybe then, they'll have a chance to compete with the Homeworld engine.

  7. Also check out "Sigma", from Relic by dstone · · Score: 3 · on The Making of Black & White

    Sigma is a game being developed by Relic, the studio that created Homeworld (Game of the Year by some accounts, etc, etc.) Anyway if you dig B&W, you might also dig Sigma (when it's out, late this year?) It involves crazy creatures, a B-movie plot, genetic wackiness, a pretty impressive rendering engine, etc. I'm sure the dev team of Sigma has watched B&W closely (it's been in development for about as long), though the gameplay and objectives seem to be different enough. Homeworld cameras and gameplay were great, so I have high hopes for Sigma!

    In the words of Relic's CEO, Alex Garden, (who has brushed shoulders with Peter Molyneaux)... "We prefer to think of Sigma as what happens when a geneticist smokes far too much crack."

    Some links for more info...
    http://forums.relicnews.com
    http://pc.ign.com/previews/14840.html
    http://firingsquad.gamers.com/features/gamestock01 /page2.asp
    http://www.gameweek.com/features/gamestock01/pc/in dex3.shtml
    http://gamepen.ugo.com/gamepen/Features.asp?itemid =92&pageid=5
    http://www.gamesmania.com/articles/PC/sigma/previe ws1.asp

    How does Relic afford to fund a game that has also been something like 3 years in the making? Microsoft dollars. Sierra funded Homeworld. Not sure why MS is backing this one, and say what you want about the evil empire... but they've got money to risk on crazy games like Sigma. And I think that's pretty goddamn cool...