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Half-Life 2 Preloading from Steam
Nos. writes "For those of us using Valve Software's Steam platform, we can now begin 'preloading' Half-Life 2. The article explains that this will download an encrypted version of the game that you can unlock when you purchase it. They only say that purchase options will be available soon."
As if we didn't have enough problems getting Steam and the patches - they don't /. on their servers too!
And anyone who actually plays with Steam knows what I'm talking about.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
I wonder how long it will be till hackers find away to spoof half life 2's pre-loading authenticiation and users can play hl2 without actually buying it.
Interesting...does anybody here remember the a vaguely-similar route taken with id for the Quake shareware release? An encypted version of that game (and essentially every past Id game) was on the shareware CD, and could be unlocked when purchased. And then along came QCrack.
Valve's distribution idea is interesting, but I hope for their sake that the security's very strong, requiring all sorts of authorizations and whatnots. If not, Doom III's slightly-premature leaking to the internet might seem like a far more ideal scenario than a Valve-aided distribution of compromised content.
How can we delay HL2 again?
Lets release it with a fancy encryption scheme, when someone cracks it, we'll pull the shame-shame bs, sue some 'hackers' and the push back will 'teach everyone a lesson'.
Give me a break
what on earth is Valve waiting for?
Fixing bugs as many little bugs as they can, especially in level design I believe. They've said its very close to being complete, it's just being playtested to death at the moment.
I also have difficulty believing the status of HL2. Last I heard, which was a couple of months ago, HL2 was officially 'dead in the water' because they couldn't find a publisher for it. Are they self-publishing now or something? Presumably Steam would facilitate this.
Last year Bittorrent's creator Brahm Cohen was hired by Valve to improve Steam's content distribution system.
Also in terms of overloading servers, slashdot has nothing over the hordes of counter-strike players.
Yes I very much expect this to be the case. However for once, for a major release, I won't have to be bothered with putting the CD in my drive when I wan't to play it. That will truely be refreshing, as will not having to wait for the box's to hit shelves in Australia. Though Doom 3 coming out on August 3rd was a nice suprise, take that Europe! :)
Agreed.
I've made my stand by refusing to install steam - my mates and I now only play the older CS 1.5 non-steam version at LAN games.
I almost never find any cheaters while playing DoD. It might be a case of a less popular game catching fewer rodents, but I like to think the challenge-response mechanism helps a lot. Eventually I think people will figure out a way to circumvent such attacks, as you appear to have noticed. If Valve is worth their salt, they'll have to move to limit the information sent to players, giving them only what they should be able to observe and nothing more. Sending only the character positions you can directly observe would be one method, which would destroy wallhacks, but leaves aimbots unscathed. I think the only good way to counter aimbots longterm is to offload rendering to a server, but that's borderline insane. Both of these suggestions mean an increase in lag, but that's what we get for using a system where failures to transmit mean waiting for random milliseconds. If you've got a better way to stop cheating, I'd love to hear and patent it.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
I know this is OT, but this has bugged me for YEARS.
:P (the fact that NWN characters can be ported- gear and all- between NWN expansions is a major bonus. It's things like this that have completely killed console rpgs for me.)
When the Playstation came out, I creamed my pants at the potential of memory cards- finally, a company could make an RPG.... and release "add-ons" or "expansion packs" that would be new games or side games but which would use your already existing character. Or a sequel to a game that was ACTUALLY a SEQUEL- picking up where you left off... exactly where you left off, levels, equipment, and everything. I figured games like this would be out within a year.
Boy, was I FUCKING WRONG. Aside from some in-game tricks in games like Metal Gear Solid, memory cards are basically just an itty hard drive that serves as a dumping ground for save data that doesn't overlap or play between games.
WHERE IS THE INNOVATION IN THAT?
Shit, if I knew I could move my NWN character into NWN2 (without, you know, creating a new one...), I'd spend a couple of weeks prior to release leveling like a bastard. And if the game's built right, it should be just as challenging at level 20 as it is at level 3.
Woo. Rant complete.
" Already on it.
I got the game to boot using a kernel debugger and a little trial and error. SoftICE revealed the installer makes a call to something in _vis.dll, which in turn checks to see if hl2_acf.nfo exists within the steam install directory.
Decompiled _vis.dll with DisC, replaced the function call to a new function that always returns true. Recompiled _vis with Visual C++, nogo, then tried with Borland and the game booted.
Posting a crack tonight."
Damn, Valve made a very nice decision it seems.
20 bucks says a hippie hands out crack for free at the door of Valve meetings.
Plus, there's no guarantee Valve will always offer the game for download. Who knows, they could get "hacked" again and have to pull all the files down for another year (and call it Patch 1 :)
I really only have a response to 2. and 4. 2. Yes, you do. I had a LAN this summer and when the inet went out, no one could startup Steam to join the CS game. 4. Get your facts straight before you spaz out at someone. Aren't you supposed to be representing OwP as a member?
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
How do you know your CD and Key will be around next year? If Steam is still running you're covered for as long as Steam is running.
And frankly, I trust Steam to be running much longer than I could keep a CD in good shape and not lose the key.
Not to mention last I heard everyone has to authenticate through Steam no matter how you acquire the game.
Providing a download of the game, and online charging for the key to play it? Sounds like a nice way to stop the age-old practice of charging different amounts in different countries. Hopefully it'll catch on, and publishers will have to stop milking us Europeans... It was cheaper for me to import Unreal Tournament 2004 (special edition) from the U.S., including courier delivery, than to buy it in a shop, and even cheaper than ordering it over the net from a European provider.
What about the "just got lucky" factor? It may take thousands of years to run through all of the available keyspace, but what if the second key that I try just happens to be the right one?
It might take thousands of years or it might take until tomorrow morning, or anything in between. But I don't see any way to absolutely guarantee that it won't be tomorrow morning; it seems just as likely as "thousands of years".
In that case, why decrypt it at all? If you just create random strings of digits eventually you are GUARANTEED to hit upon the entire halflife2 game, complete with patches, and including additional, SUPER AWESOME content, such as the level that seamlessly merges the entire DOOM3 game and has a character that looks identical to a naked natilie portman who speaks directly to you, in your own voice, perfectly, and then relives your early childhood in grainy 35mm footage before showing that you were, in fact, abducted by aliens.
Sure, it MIGHT take a hundred quadrillion billion zillion years, but you MIGHT hit upon it on your second try, right?
Way back in the day when Half-Life came out, I played on a 300MHz AMD K6-2 (With 3D Now beotch!) I had 32 megs of ram and some 2MB video card not capable of hardware 3D acceleration. Half-Life ran fine in 640x480 in software mode. Eventually I bought a 3DFX Banshee, started playing the game with hardware acceleration and it ran perfectly at 1024x768 (max fps all the time shown in net graph). The game took a little while to load maps and that was pretty much all it would have to do to connect to a server. Time from double clicking half-life icon to joining a game I would like to play, 45 seconds.
Now I have a 2.4 GHz 3200+ XP with a gig of ram and a nVidia 6800 GT. I still get a good fps (although there was a time where I had a 800MHz PIII and the game ran pretty crappy, was one of the newer half-life versions.) It now takes 2-3 minutes to get into a server. Hey cool my favorite TFC server is active, wait damn I'm in counter-strike, I can't switch games. Oh sweet a CS server with my favorite map. Downloading security module, oh well it won't take that long. Damn the map changed while downloading, DAMN I was disconnected during the map change, I'll just reconnect, DAMN it's downloading the security module again.
Half-Life used to be my favorite game, well the mods anyway. Then Valve started to add some bloat, it started getting really bad when CS became available in stores. Now CS is so dumbed down and 10 year old friendly that it's impossible for me to play anymore. TFC has become very unpopular, and the half-life graphics are now total crap in comparisson to everything else. I supported Valve for a long time (till a while after Gunman Chronicles came out.) But with the way they've turned a game with little system requirements, with average FPS difficulty, to a game that won't run on it's system requirements anymore and has been turned into a Fisher Price version of a FPS, they can now kiss my ass. I will get Half-Life 2 to see where the story goes, but I won't be paying for it.
Interesting, though I notice Bram's avoided updating his donate, this is my only job page that pops up randomly when you use the bittorrent client.
Why do people think that the ^H thing is witty and funny?
i use linux and windows oh god how can i have an opinion
Has anyone considered that perhaps the download either is or potentially could be a demo? If they've just sent the content could they not send a temp set of executables that allow the first few levels to be played or maybe the hazard course or online games or something? Just a thought.
Actually I talked to Bram a few weeks ago and he said that he doesn't work for VALVe anymore. Just thought you should know.