Slashdot Mirror
Blizzard Patches No-CD Support Into Warcraft III
Rock, Paper, Shotgun notes that in Blizzard's never-ending quest for perfect balance, they've added a handy feature for still-dedicated Warcraft players. Players will no longer need to have the disc in the drive in order to conquer Azeroth. This kicks off a discussion by blogger Alec Meer about the role of copy protection and anti-piracy in PC gaming: "I don't need the Paint Shop Pro disc in my DVD drive whenever I want to butcher my holiday photos, after all. It was always doubly unnecessary for a game like W3, which also employs serial number checks if you want to play it online. Having the CD check as well seems like leaving a polite post-it note on the windscreen of a driver prone to double-parking. Don't bother. Just wheel-clamp the bastard. While there're still some reasons to be circumspect about online distribution systems, they do spell an end to miserably sorting through quivering towers of plastic discs or popup-heavy crack websites. This brave new world, in which the data already installed upon my hard drive is all that's required to play a game I've paid for, is one I know I want to live in."
I just went to http://www.megagames.com/ for the no cd patch. Oh this is the official no-cd patch. Well, that's a bit better. Kinda late though.
I really hope this sort of thing happens more often. I remember some games I used to play only required the CD if you hadn't copied the CD onto your hard drive, and that was because the normal install didn't include all the data needed for the game to run. But now that hard drives are so much larger, it'd be nice for more games to do that, even if they are on DVD.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
Feature Changes
- StarCraft and StarCraft: BroodWar no longer require the CD while playing the game. To play without the CD, please follow the following instructions:
Windows Users:
- Make sure you have "Hide extensions for known types" unchecked under Explorer Folder Options.
- If you own only StarCraft, copy "INSTALL.EXE" from the StarCraft CD to your StarCraft folder and rename it to "StarCraft.mpq".
- If you own StarCraft: Brood War, copy "INSTALL.EXE" from the StarCraft:Brood War CD to your StarCraft folder and rename it to "BroodWar.mpq".
The 1.21b patch notes can be read as:
- The game no longer requires the CD to play.
Or as:
- The game no longer requires a no-CD crack to play.
I never really understood the CD check. I mean, why can't the "signature" of a CD being present just be emulated? And that's indeed what all the pirated game downloads come with. I don't think I've seen a game where you actually have to have to actual game CD in order to play it: an image of the disc could be mounted using some program and the game played thinking that it is the actual CD.
I agree with the summary--CD checks for exclusively-online games are pointless. Epic did it with UT2003/4, but after just a few months removed the CD check in a patch. For single-player games, I can understand it better. For me, a CD-check is far more preferable to some of the other (almost always ineffective) copy-preventing schemes out there. For example, I find Steam overly heavy-handed. Not only must you have a internet connection just to play the single-player game, but you can't sell the game to somebody without also giving them your Steam account. And the TOS specifically disallow that. For someone like me who would only use Steam because he has to, this is unacceptable, and squashed most of my interest in purchasing the Orange Box.
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
The benefit to No-CD patches is that it makes it so much easier to play games under WINE on Linux. While I never had an issue with War3, other newer games give me grief such as Supreme Commander and C&C3. Both of these require a No-CD hack to run as neither will recognize the DVD sitting in the drive. (Yes, I do have the CD mapped to WINE D: drive) Removing the CD-In-The-Drive requirement would really take many of the barriers to playing these games under WINE and would open up that 1% of the market that are Linux users!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
They annoy me to no end. It was one thing to keep the disc in the drive back when the data had to be pulled off (I wouldn't want to install Wing Commander 4 and it's 6+ CDs on my hard drive back then). Recently, this has been driving me nuts though. Valve has done such a good job with Steam, that it makes the problem even more obvious.
I bought Sam & Max Season One in the retail box, and it uses copy protection. I use a Mac and the game isn't available for my platform, so I have to play the episodes in Windows. I can't use Parallels because the copy protection thinks I'm using a copied disc. I can't use a disc image for the same reason. I can't play it under OS X. I have to boot into Windows. That takes a long time to shutdown OS X, start Windows, start the game, check the CD, then get into it. It's an amazing pain.
Sam & Max is not an intensive game at all. Even with the lowered performance of 3D stuff in Parallels, it should work fine. I understand Half-Life 2 not running well (it likes a beefy system), but there is no good reason I shouldn't be able to play Sam & Max that way.
But I paid for the physical media, because I prefer that. And because of that, I get copy protection. I'm seriously considering not playing Season Two at this point.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
If only other developers would spend about 10% of Blizzards amount of support to their games I'd be spending a shitload more money on purchasing new games.
WCIII is almost 6 years old now, and still Blizzard looks for ways to improve the experience.
This dedication to strive for perfection is the sole reason I have every single game they released sitting on my shelf.
Alternatively, this is also the reason I have only one EA game sitting on that same shelf. I got fooled once, won't happen twice.
You could argue that this patch is long overdue, but the fact that they even spend some resources on it is something to be hailed.
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
Give me a no-CD patch for Diablo II that doesn't lock into some weird windows API so that I can finally run it on wine without a headache.
The article says this is a "brave new world" to not need the CD... How old is this guy? Does he not remember the days before they required the CD to play? This isn't a brave new world, it's a return to the way things used to be. Funny, wasn't it Blizzard that started the "Disc Required" movement? I may be wrong, but I think it was Warcraft 2 or Starcraft.
Last year, I moved to Ubuntu as my primary OS. I would still boot into Windows XP to play BF2 online. I bought a legit copy, and had registerd the serial, all that goodness. I bought and downloaded several expansion packs online. My DVD Drive died in my desktop. I couldn't play anymore. Didn't replace the drive, because I use USB pen drives for everything now. So now, EA won't get anymore money from me, because I can't play that game. (and I haven't booted into Windows XP More than 3 times since September.) Now, If more companies would allow you to download ISO's or whatever, and then install, I would be very happy. Been playing the ET:QW demo for Linux. I really like it, but don't want to have to go buy a Drive, plus the game. Since the game is pretty much online only, why don't they just check the keys when you come online like Steam does?
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
what really annoys me is that you have to leave the DVD in the drive, but the game insists on installing everything to the hard drive and doesn't actually pull any content of the DVD for no reason what so ever.
I don't care if it take 15% of the load time I don't want my disk space wasted and have been able to setup games under Linux+wine with links so that the games pull the data of the CD instead and they work perfectly fine.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I remember the old days when the games asked you to find the 23rd word in the 7th paragraph on page 18 in the game manual.
That really sucked when you didn't actually buy the game. Because it didn't come with a manual, you just copied a floppy.
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
All maphacking programs are currently fataling the game after the patch. This most likely has to do with the version number and not the programs itself, but it does kill off a few of the older MH programs that are no longer updated. I've used my lovely 32kb no-cd image for WC3 for a while, and it will be a chance to not have to have daemon tools running in the background all the time! (I have several legit CDs, I just don't like popping them in and out).
I disgree entirely. I care about needing the original disk. Moving towards a steam-like system of DRM where you don't need an easily malable sub-gigabyte coaster to unlock usage of your software license is a step long overdue.
MMOs caught on to this secret early on - when the value your game offers is mostly or completely through online play, you don't need a disk, you can do a much much better job checking accounts as they authenticate with your server.
And consoles are being released with built in HDs rivaling those in gaming PCs now. I wouldn't be at all surprised to be less than ten years away from never needing the gaming disk there, either.
Kudos to Blizzard, though as was stated above, a few years too late.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
I still play fairly often -- it's one of the few multidimensional RTS playable in under 15 minutes on average. I've tried newer games (the new C&C/AoE. Supreme Commander, World in Conflict, Warhammer, Total War), but none of them seem to have the balance of playing both a quick and varied game -- with the exception of WiC.
Maybe I'm just old school, but I keep coming back to it (and Starcraft to a lesser extent) even though I played since the beta program.
This certainly is going to do nothing but encourage me;)
Anyone else still play often?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Epic games has already done this with UT3, previous UT games had the cd detection removed. Doom 3 and Quake 4 also got protection removed with patches from ID.
Whats good is lots of games are available through Steam, which means no protection at all, if its one thing i do hate is having to get a new no-cd crack for an updated version of a game. Adding no-cd features to a games v1.1 update or initial release should be mandatory imho.
I care. These days, a consumer can reasonably have a terabyte of storage on his PC. With that kind of storage, I should be able to have hundreds of games sitting on my hard drive waiting to be played on demand. However, because of this stupid "CD required" garbage, I have to maintain a stack of CDs that have no purpose other than to verify I actually bought the game (never mind that in most cases, I also have to enter a license key during the install phase anyway).
Requiring a CD may not be a big deal if you only ever play one or two games, but if you're like me and have a varied taste in games, and may play even 5 or 10 different games in a week, having to switch around CDs is a major pain.
there had been a suddenoutbreakofcommonsense, but you have to ask yourself, whatcouldpossiblygowrong?
Gaming on OSX (enjoy the laugh for the moment) has one advantage very few of the CD checkers check the actual hardware only the mount point for required data. I can create a disk image of the cd in question and mount that before playing. It does take up some storage space but generally you only need one disc in particular in a multi disc set.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
All of the Stardock games have had this for awhile. Galatic Civilizations II was awesome, and apparently the new Sins of a Solar Empire is awesome too. It's nice to not be treated like a criminal.
consoles don't have serial numbers, or 30 minute installs of hundreds of megs of data either.... They assume possession of the disc is proof of "ownership".
Here's hoping other companies follow this lead. I am getting tired of swapping CDs.
What a wordy way to say, "cool"....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Often they don't even verify that the disk contains the correct data; only that a disk is mounted with the correct name. Many games will work if you simply rename your hard drive to match the CD volume name. Others only verify a single folder or file on the disk (again, often only by name), and/or that the disk is removable.
If you're worried about disk space is may be worth checking -- just create an empty disk image and name is correctly. If that fails try adding the file/folder structure from the original disk using empty files. It doesn't work with everything, but it works with enough games to be worth checking, at least on space-limited devices.
Hopefully this heralds a change in Blizzard's stance on distributing Warcraft III/Frozen Throne online. Currently, the only way to acquire them is to pay for hard copies. I have been reluctant to purchase ANOTHER Battle Chest after losing my first copies of TFT and WC3-- yes, I've purchased both games TWICE. A digital copy would help space cases like me endlessly.
I'm funny. If you come see me perform, I will make you laugh.
I care quite a lot when the game's check fails due to some weird SecuROM system that determines my drive isn't really a drive due to a bug.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
WC3, NOT WoW. I can't even RTFS. Please mod me down. I must be purged.
Not only did you not RTFA, and not only did you not RTFSummary, but you didn't even RTFTitle!
We're talking about Warcraft III, not World of Warcraft.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Warcraft III != World of Warcraft
I wish all companies did this with their old games. For the brief stint on x64 vista, I had trouble playing some games because the copy protection was not patched for vista (64bit). For instance, you can't play age of empires II conquerers (expansion) in vista x64, but supposedly macrovision released an update for 32bit vista. It's very annoying that I have all these games and can't play them. I ended up going back to XP for this and other reasons.
I could get the game to install, just not run without crashing.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Warcraft... not WoW.
Damn I feel old.
MacBook Air and other no-optical systems will require this.
.dmg for the original game and a 480 MB .dmg for the expansion right now. This way I can play the game anytime I like and not have to worry about carrying my original CDs with me. I'm happy for this news because it will allow me to delete these as well as the Starcraft .dmg files. A few GB on a laptop is a big deal.
Disk Utility -> Create Disk Image -> mount image -> play game.
I am looking at a 631MB
It's taken far too long for the gaming companies to figure this out. Ten years ago games would have no-cd patches out the same day that new copy protection came out. The really invasive ones took maybe a month or two but the crackers could play them. The only people who suffered were the legitimate buyers. Blizzard really should have learned this lesson back in 2000 when Diablo II was causing issues with legitimate disks but pirated copies worked fine.
In some cases it is simple, just checks for the CD and yes, you can copy the CD in any software and the copy will work. Not a lot of people that will weed out. Usually, it is a much more intense check. These days it is often a program like Safedisc 4 or Securerom 7. These check a lot of things to try and ensure it is the original disc. For example they'll ask the drive what kind of media it is (burners will report if something is pressed, burnable, or rewritable) and only run if it is pressed media. They also check various characteristics of the disc that are difficult or impossible to copy. They'll check areas of the CD that aren't normally copied (like sub channels) or things that are properties of the physical disc (like the ATIP). If they don't match, it won't run.
Regardless of the levels of checks, that's the purpose behind them. They are just trying to prevent you from making copies of the disc. It isn't because there is any useful data needed off of the disc.
Oh, c'mon. My UID's bigger than 500K. What do you expect from me?
Well they were hinting at this in the forums last week after they did the same for Starcraft. Sadly, there's no mention of doing this for Diablo II. They're also planning another balance patch for release at some point, which might add some features to Battle.net for the game as well.
This isn't exactly uncommon though. Epic Games usually disables the cd-check very early on in their patch cycle. I believe the DRM is mandated by publishers, while the developers seem to be more sympathetic to gamer's wants.
Insert Sig Here
Try using a "no cd crack" instead. They've existed for nearly a decade and I've used them on every single one of my games that try to force you to put (and keep!) the disc in even though it's not accessing anything off of it. Copy protection via a present disc is not only a complete hassle, it's also dangerous. The more you move a disc around (from case to tray and back again), the more likely it is to acquire scratches and become unplayable in the future.
Online distribution (such as Steam) is just as annoying. Why should I have to run an external program that bogs down my CPU and bandwidth just to play a game? I shouldn't. Simple CD Key checks are good enough for online play, and no such protection at all is best for singleplayer. I'm not told to turn off any virtual drives I may have when trying to watch a movie on DVD in my computer. Game developers need to get over themselves.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Consoles also have longer load times on average... not to mention once the console is a couple years old, PC games surpass the graphics capabilities. Besides you can't tell me that if you could put your game CD in your console only once when you bought the game, then never have to swap out again that you wouldn't do it. Same goes for DVDs.
I can finally unmount the virtual CD drive and free up the 600 megs that the ISO was occupying on my hard drive. :D
/* No Comment */
My son has a Reader Rabbit game that requires the CD to run. Every time he wants to play that game, he's got to have either me or my wife get the CD out, put it in, skip where it tries to reinstall the program because the CD was reinserted, and then start the game. It's a major PITA.
Any howto's on how you got these to work? They're pretty much the only games that I still reboot to windows for...
That's because until quite recently, consoles had no secondary storage system large enough to store a CD (much less DVD) worth of data. And when they did, hacks appeared immediately that let you copy a game to the hard drive and play it without the disc entirely. (pirates loved this - no discs to burn, AND faster load times)
However, now that hard drives are becoming more and more standard in consoles, games are beginning to use them for caching data (to improve load times) or in some cases, "install" the entire game ala PC. One of the biggest complaints about 'Devil May Cry' for the PS3 is that it literally needs 20 minutes to copy the game to the hard drive - and then you STILL need the disc to play. Just like the drain-bramaged model that PCs have used for years. Meanwhile, 360 owners can simply pop the disc in and start playing the game. Immediately.
I can't tell you the number of games I've lost over the years due to damaged CDs. Yeah, you try to protect them, but when you end up switching CDs every few days because you wish to play a different game for a bit, sometimes the CD sits on your desk for a few minutes.
My copy of Temple of Elemental Evil worked fine for the orignal release, and the first patch. The second patch to come out wasn't compatable with DirectX 9.0c, so it was pointless. Applying the third patch to fix the second patch made my CD fail its check. So, the game worked out of the box, and through the first patch, but the 2nd/3rd patch broke my CD? You've got to be kidding me! And SecureROM analyzed my data, and said that it was because I had Daemon Tools installed. So, I uninstalled that, re-ran their program, and they said I must have a copy of an orignal CD. Since it's an Atari game that isn't being supported any longer, I can't get a new CD from the company.
Heck, my current copy of Hellgate: London acts up in single player mode (which requires the DVD to be in the drive. Multiplayer does not, as it should be.) Half the time I have to reboot my system, because SafeDisc doesn't recognize the DVD being in the drive. It spins, then stops and hangs. It's even told me that my OS isn't high enough, and I need to upgrade to Windows 98SE or 2000. I have XP installed. Some of that was the multi-language support, which can be clicked off, but the bottom line is, the copy protection makes the game sometimes unplayable without a reboot.
With the way today's games are, with the zero-day release always having a fatal bug (I believe intentionally) that requires a patch to be downloaded, there is no real need for this. Very few if any gamer systems aren't internet connected, so just make a simple verification check go out on the serial number, and let them play. No connection or a failure of that check, and no game.
It's one of the reasons I play MMOs so much, even though it is often solo. No copy protection to annoy me, no CD/DVD to keep track of, and less clutter in/on my desk.
Just an fyi since you mentioned the game: they released a patch to remove the CD check for Supreme Commander just a couple weeks after release.
Why, yes I have been touched by His noodly appendage. And I plan to sue.
Consoles also have longer load times on average
Not if you play on a Nintendo console. Wii games usually take a few seconds to load at startup and then rarely have noticeable load times after that.
Likely because the more casual player base expects low load times, and on a Wii you have typically smaller textures anyway, however that is besides the point. If you could load in all your Wii games in just once (not counting Virtual Console games), then never have to swap CDs again, you would probably come to like that little bit of convenience. And thats all it really is, convenience. Plus there's the added benefit of less chances of scratching or otherwise maiming your game disc, especially helpful since all consoles have gone out of their way to make sure you can't make a legal backup copy.
Regarding Diablo II ...
- On PC Daemon Tools or Alcohol 120% works great.
- Does this Disk Utility trick work on an old Mac running OS X 10.3 ?
It's not even the space fact. People like me ( I am a student in a university). I am always on the move, and one day last week I had the urge to play some dota in between classes, and alas I couldn't becuase I don't carry my WC3 cd around with me. Or Diablo2, etc. I think this should be implemented right away in all programs, seeing as how it would actually have people like me... play more. That simple.
Blizzard cares, they are looking to put forward some goodwill out for the benefit of players, and are sooner realizing that unmitigated piracy is not as rampant as the accountants are claiming(at least in terms of damaging their bottom line). Considering that the major draw for games nowadays is the online play, it's relatively trivial to track down who is a legitimate player and who isn't.
Back in the day when online gaming was the novelty, companies were trying to lock down who can play their game or not. That is now the obsolete mindset, as companies with half a brain are now looking to lockdown who can play their game _online_, which is much much simpler to control with the benefit towards consumer convenience.
I just read on an rss feed that Steam just broke the 15 million users barrier, and I believe Blizzard is looking for a peice of that cake. And if Blizzard is looking to widen their audience with regards to their other products, they are going to need market penetration. This move means they are trying to literally going to 'give' their game away - they want their game to be pirated. Because in the long run, if the consumer wants to get the full experience(the online play as opposed to the single player stuff), he's going to need to buy a copy sooner or later. This also means that Blizzard has faith that the products that they release are that good.
However, the disturbing trend may be that the single player experience may be compromised, since it would be considered a freebie at the cost of developers making the single player stuff. More and more games are either going to have a crappy single player experience or it's just gonna be too damn short (like an hour of solid gaming).
But overall, companies are soon realizing the benefits of offering 'the first hit free.' But l2drugdealing will only work when their product is of real quality, so it better be a damn good first hit.
CD-check is just a really basic, broad-spectrum, anti-casual-pirating deal in most cases. It's become increasingly common to patch it out at some point in a game's lifecycle. You want to have it present during the bulk of your sales (ie, early on) but particularly with a game that has a significant online component (that is, vocal users), you also want to get rid of it sooner than later (of course, Blizzard is a special case, and mmo's are a different story).
Last game I worked on, we had the CD-check already removed for the 1.1 patch (which itself was completed before the game even hit the shelves), and we released it in less than two weeks from the date the game appeared on the shelves.
The easy to circumvent things like this really are just there to discourage casual copying amongst average Joe's. While of course this and pretty much anything else can be gotten around, the people who do, know how to do, or would make the effort to do, these kinds of things are a subset of the larger market. So, studios/publishers will add in some of the basic old school protections as a kind of first order protection.
These kinds of things are kind of annoying, but the idea is to not have a Tribes 1 experience (zero, and I mean *zero*, copy protection of any kind: you could literally drag-and-drop the install folder into ICQ, so to speak, and send the whole thing to your buddy). It was sad to see the sales-vs-players numbers for Tribes 1: seventy thousand copies sold with 350,000 players online has got to bring a tear to the eye.
Do you know if there is an official NoDVD patch for Forged Alliance?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I posed this question when the Starcraft No-CD patch came out: What is Blizzard's motivation?
My hypothesis was that it was going to be part of a promotion for Starcraft II. Make original Starcraft a download for cheap or free to bring back old players and introduce new ones. As a map maker, the influx of players would be exciting.
But the more likely explanation is that the Mac Book Air was just released and has no CD drive. Blizzard is good at supporting Macs and keeping old games playable, so this is probably just a continuation of that policy.
Likely because the more casual player base expects low load times, and on a Wii you have typically smaller textures anyway, however that is besides the point.
It's just better coding & higher standards from Nintendo. Remember, the N64 was cartridge based because Mario 64 off a 2x CD drive would've sucked due to load times. The GameCube generally tended to have almost invisible load times in anything that wasn't a half assed port, yet its graphics were significantly better than the PS2's and almost on par with the Xbox's, both of which tended to be worse with load times.
If you could load in all your Wii games in just once (not counting Virtual Console games), then never have to swap CDs again, you would probably come to like that little bit of convenience.
Sure, if it's not required. I like being able to grab a game off my shelf and bring it to a friend's house to play and having it just work. Of course, it's also assuming that the console has sufficient space that I don't have to worry about managing it. Once I have to start uninstalling & reinstalling games, it's no longer convenient.
We've had to use daemon tools for years, why they didn't do this sooner is beyond me because we need a GENUINE CD KEY.
Ugh.
Sure, if it's not required. I like being able to grab a game off my shelf and bring it to a friend's house to play and having it just work.
:)
an excellent point I could not argue with. This is where the ingenuity of the developers would have to come in. Would they allow you to play games either from the disk or take a few minutes to load first, then take the disk out and never do it again? Could you start playing the game while all the data loads in the background while you play? Could you have it so it loads in the background, then have to option to simply overwrite the temporary files when the next game is put in for it to load its temporary files, or to keep it so you can play again without the CD? There's so many possibilities that are simply untapped because of the control that is generally exhibited over consoles. Oh well, whats a few seconds anyway
Yes, Forged Alliance's DVD check was removed in 1.5.3598, which is about 2 months old. Run GPGNet and it should grab the latest for you.
There are many, many cases where the copy protection schemes will cause legit copies of games to refuse to function. They are incompatible with a given drive, or a utility installed on the system and so on. Securerom in particular has a lot of problems with various hardware and software (including a number of version have Vista compatibility issues). So they are a hassle when they work, but when they don't they stop legitimate customers from using their software. This is more true these days since they are more aggressive, and they rely on some rather tricky things (like trying to accurately read ATIP) to validate discs.
I'd argue that it was more like
One of the most widely used illegal distributions was dubbed DaJackal. New players with this release (who had neglected to properly configure the game before going online) could be easily identified by the altered default player name "DaJackal". A few mods (notably Shifter and sub-variants) even included code which would automatically kick any player with this name attempting to connect to a server running the mod. Similar code was included in one of the later official game patches, which would kick the player and then send the following message: "The FBI has been notified. You better buy a legit copy before they get to your house." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starsiege:_Tribes#Piracy
Geez, caps AND bold AND bolded caps - so I take it I can assume that we've discovered your hot-button topic?
Turn off autorun?
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
http://www.alcohol-soft.com/
...
(And I'm sure there are Free solutions out there that do the same thing, I just prefer this setup as it's what I'm used too)
1) install Alcohol 120
2) create a 'fake' "cd-rom"
3) "Rip" Reader Rabbit to an ISO on sons Hard Drive
4) "Mount/Insert" the "ISO/CD" on your new "CD-Rom". Set A120 to Auto-Remount (reloads "CD" on computer reboot)
5) Put Reader Rabbit CD back in its safe case, never to be touched again.
6) repeat process for any other program that 'requires' CD.
7)
8) PROFIT!!!
Hurray! or not, from now on, i got a free DVD drive that isn't doing anything in my computer...
All because i had to buy a second drive because of my Warcraft 3 CD taking a drive permanently over the years, and i didn't want to bother switching the CDs around so many times to always put back the same CD...
Anyone want to buy a cheap DVD reader? only spinned a couple thousand times to check if my Warcraft 3 CD was inside when i start the game...
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/02/06
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
The trade-off of course is having to submit to a serial number inspection upon every loading of the game.
Daemon Tools is an excellent utility for doing just that in Windows. I highly recommend it.
I discovered Daemon Tools when my legal, purchased (pre-ordered, even!) copy of Command & Conquer 3 suddenly stopped recognizing the disc. The disc is pristine and had worked for about a month with no issues, and there had been no changes to the system at all (I only use the PC for C&C and Half-Life) I tried using 2 different drives, applying the official updates, etc., etc., etc., to no avail. I easily wasted three full nights trying to get the game to recognize my disc and had no success whatsoever.
In desperation I looked for no-CD cracks, and stumbled upon Daemon Tools. In less than 10 minutes I was up and running. In a bit of irony, after all the time spent wrestling with the game to get it to run I'd lost my "inertia" with it and mentally moved on to other things. I played a couple of maps that evening and haven't launched the game since.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
This is all fine and dandy, but what happens when I reformat?? Just today I had trouble activating some offline software online after a fresh XP install (the software doesn't need the net for anything except activation). If it just checked a CD, I wouldn't have such trouble.
The government can't save you.
Sweet! Gonna have to try that out -- I'm running OS X on an old PowerBook G3 (Bronze Keyboard) :-)
Thx for the info!
Gaming on OSX... oh, so you mean Warcraft3?
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
Forged Alliance Patch
We have released a patch for Forged Alliance. This patch only removes Secure-Rom. It will not invalidate existing replays.
Why, yes I have been touched by His noodly appendage. And I plan to sue.
You can still get cdkeys at http://www.mmoexchange.com/ so you no longer need to even go to the store. Everything is digital! Rob http://www.gamertex.com/
Pretty much ... it's just so stupid, and in such a pettily annoying way. Making entertainment products too annoying to use really gets to me; I'm driven to similar foaming fury by DVD CSS region coding (read: regional price protection with bonus unreliability) with control locks, often misused or incorrectly applied to do things like prevent returning to the menu from the main page.
At least with a DVD you can just rip it or use a player that's been fixed (or written in the first place) to ignore the stupid parts of the standard.
It all comes down to locking me out of products I've bought and making them harder to use. Things like hardware dongles on software are bad enough (can you say single point of failure?) but the very notion of adding highly user-hostile features to entertainment products is nigh incomprehensible.
My friend recently convinced me to try his copy of Quake Wars and i was a little nervous thinking i might get his CD locked out or something, but when i finally got around to trying it, it turns out you dont even enter the CD key in until you decide you actually want to play online. Considering this is really an online only game (some would argue this of WC3 too) as single player is the same game but with bots, it makes a lot of sense to do it this way. So basically, you can lend the game to someone have them install it, you dont have to give them the CD key, they dont need the CD to play and they can try the game, if they like it, go out and buy the disc or get it off Steam. Its almost like having a demo but it dosent restrict any part of the actual game, only the ability to play against real people! Kudos to id and Splash Damage for setting up Quake Wars that way.
A no-cd crack for Diablo II would finally eliminate some of the hacks required to get the game working in WINE.
:)
Plus, if the no-cd applies to the Mac version too, people can play Diablo II on their new MacBook Air without the need to lug an external optical drive around everywhere
It's not like requiring the original media has killed any console. Console gaming is larger than PC gaming these days.
Who cares?
Adults.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Starcraft isn't just a game - it's the South Korean national sport.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Not requiring the original media was a fairly significant driver for modding the first xbox, you can fit a larger HD and copy all you're games to it. Far more convenient than juggling a stack of physical media... Ofcourse, the high price of games do tend to keep the quantity of games people have down.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The license key itself is a pretty stupid way of trying to verify you bought the game...
It only takes one to leak onto the internet, and every pirate can use it. Meanwhile legitimate owners who need to reinstall the game for whatever reason find that they lost the little piece of paper with the code on and thus cannot play the game they legitimately purchased.
I know many people who were bitten by this, and the original vendor was unwilling to help - if they don`t have the code they wont even talk to them, and told them to buy another copy. The solution presented to people in this situation is to obtain a pirated copy or a crack... Even the most die-hard of anti piracy zealots don't usually have an issue with this, since they bought a legit copy in the first place. But it also gives a fair few of these people a taster for warez... It blows away the often spread myth that warez copies are somehow inferior, and shows them that the opposite is true - warez copies are usually better, as they get rid of ridiculous restrictions like license codes and keeping physical media in the drive.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Even worse, online activation ensures that the vendor can expire you're software whenever they want. Also if they go bust, you lose the ability to activate.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
yep after it is installed create a DMG of the expansion disc. I can mount that and load the game on my laptop. what I haven't tried is to install it on an intel mac but it works great under 10.3 10.4 on PPC.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Quake's model was ok, nothing to stop you playing a pirated copy offline, but it didn't work online...
I believe you could play on a LAN, which seems fair.. I remember a game on the amiga which explicitly stated you could run a temporary copy on another system in the same location for lan play purposes. It's certainly not worth buying a game for such a quick casual play anyway.
I also like eve's model, give the program away but charge a subscription for the online play - you're buying a service which costs money to provide, instead of a collection of bytes that costs nothing to copy.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
There are two additional angles to this. First angle is that the checker almost always checks for the presense of one specific file at a specific path. UT 2004 checks for the background picture that shows up in the CD's first file window. If that file exists, it assumes the disk is in the drive.
.dmg (assuming you can FIND what file it wants, otherwise you will need 4.7gb for the whole DVD) in addition to the 9gb the game already occupies on your HD. Silly. If you're going to do that crap, RUN it off the CD, don't just require it because you're paranoid about piracy and waste my HD space.
UT takes things one step further though, it only searches mount paths that claim to be DVDs. If you create a disk image for this, you will have to image at least 600mb of data to make it post as a DVD and not a CD. I found a "no cd" disk image that was a hacked compressed image, 48k, that showed up as a big empty DVD with one file on it.
Fortunately, in one of their more current updates, the silly requirement for the disc was removed and now I can play in peace. The problem I had was that when you started to play, the disk spun up and stayed spun up. This was to prevent you from ejecting the disk and inserting it into another machine to launch the game, to prevent passing a disk around at a lan game I suppose. But that's just paranoid. The problem is, this is a laptop (yes I know not the best gaming choice) but laptops don't do so well keeping a disk spun up. The entire deck vibrates because the disk is at high speed, and the machine gets a lot warmer. Those were the reasons I sought the "no cd crack" disk image.
Disk Utility doesn't do a good job at posting media type on disk images. In most cases it posts it as a generic media, which is usually not what the software is looking for. (UT would not go for this) Toast however, is very sly at mounting images and does a very good job of spoofing a CD, DVD, or whatever, when it mounts an image. So for most games nowadays that require CDs, you have to use Toast to mount the image to get the monkey off your back.
So unless you know how to hack a disk image, you're stuck with a 700MB
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Back when I played a bunch of games that had the "CD in the drive" requirement, I got a product called Virtual CD. It allows you to create a set of virtual CD drives on your system, and mount images of the CDs you need on those drives. (You have to create the images by copying the CDs or DVDs first, of course, and store them on your hard drive.) This meant I could take my laptop anywhere without lugging around a bunch of discs and fiddling with them every time I wanted to run one of these programs that insisted on seeing its installation CD before it started. It was a bit of a hassle to configure Virtual CD so that it would automatically mount the appropriate CD when you double clicked on an application, but once I set it up, it worked flawlessly.
These days, I don't run much software that has this requirement, so I haven't used Virtual CD (http://www.virtualcd-online.com/) for a couple of years. But I'd highly recommend it if you do have this need.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
The best is when you double-click on the game's icon (after SUCCESSFULLY installing it) and nothing happens. You fail the drm check for an arbitrary reason, and it doesn't even bother to tell you that. I'm looking squarely at Overlord, being the only game I've bought in the past year that I've NEEDED to crack to play. In my case, the most common problem is "what do you mean I can't load a 32-bit DRM driver on Window 64?", which is still very very rare. For some people it's "traces of cd emulation software detected, so I'm going to block you playing from your REAL DISK", which is just as annoying.
Out of the pc games on my shelf at the moment (about 30), at least 13 are either DRM-free (6, most of them guild wars + expansions) or have had a patch released that removes the drm requirement, and all but 2 or 3 of the rest have a no-cd/dvd crack available. Only one I've needed a crack to play, and it fortunately wasn't one of the ones with no crack available. That's not bad odds, but it could be better.
The scary thing is that I now have more games in steam than boxed on my shelf.
I just read on an rss feed that Steam just broke the 15 million users barrier, and I believe Blizzard is looking for a peice of that cake. And if Blizzard is looking to widen their audience with regards to their other products, they are going to need market penetration.
Hm...interesting...they should make an online version of Warcraft... give the game to people for free or very cheap for a month, and just charge them for online play...yeah, Steam is definitely on to something here....They did the same patch to StarCraft!
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
Countless times I've wanted to replay SC and see if I can still hold my own against a zerg rush but everytime i get that nostalgia im confronted with 2 problems, 1)I don't have the disc and 2)im far to lazy to go track down an actualy copy of the disc, if I do actually go through the trouble of getting a copy playing the game only makes me miss D2 and WC so the problem was very cyclical however now that I don't need those pesky discs I can start destroying people online again. fear the !Tsoat