My Concerns

[AP514]

Sorry Mikesla..but I think you will buy the game and Norb will not drop the DRM any time soon.....So pull the Trigger...and start posting the Joy you have found

AP514

[BOSTON]

Never done burning, except out back in the springtime, once the game is DRM'd to the pc can it be burned to a CD?

BOSTON

[Janh]

I would also say that the DRM scheme Norb&Team finally decided on is "reasonable", given that they promise to be present here on the forums to help you for the next decade (if you run into problems to help you out) or patch the DRM out at some point. Sure better than a promise would be having something in writing that would force a company to support you as long as there is DRM included, just as a fair return. That would also make me sleep better when I would think about buying something.

In the end, DRM schemes in games & software(in contrast to music and film industry, which have in the past decade learned) are become more and more intrusive and suppressive and as the example of Ubisoft (Silent Hunter V, Assassins Creed II, Settlers 7) shows, customers are driven away from buying games with DRM. The customers of these games were really the ones who were screwed (server problems, resale of product suppressed...), and if you just check reviews or amazon ratings, you'd see that 80-90% of the customers turned them down and lots of them returned the games. DRM really sunk a couple of franchises for them because in return for taking the DRM, the game has to really offer much much more to make up for it -- and the games were good, but that wasn't enough!

If I think back to the days pre-DRM, where copy protection was a CD, a manual and some code questions, I bought many more games a year than now. Due a combination of DRM, lack of novelty of products (some game features, AI, but just new graphics and map? yearn...), lack of a nice thick printed manual etc. I am down to buying about 1 game a year, as compared to maybe 5/a. For me, software companies lost a lot of sales due to their own measures.

Same questions of course arise for SOW, but I think SOW seems like it offers something sufficiently good. At least the promise that the DRM will be patched out lets me compromise a little. Once the SDK is out and it is well patched, I plan to buy in.

[norb]

It was not too long ago that many people were complaining about CD protection. "What if my CD gets scratched?" There is no ultimate solution, you just have to settle on something that meets your needs and you are comfortable with.

[Michael Slaunwhite]

Hi Norb.

I'm very happy that you turned away from Steam (I was also got the flaming boot as well for expressing my concerns, boy do I know that feeling, you just can't have a good discussion with these folks).

My first unfortunate encounter with Steam was when I purchased a game called "HalfLife 2", and I purchased the game based on their previous game Half Life. I felt really ripped off, because not more than a week later I had to reformat my hard drive (not because of steam). I got everything set back up to where I had it, ready to play HL2, and I forgot my login name, and password (I know, I should have written it down), and I couldn't create another because the serial number was being used by another account(my real account)...and that was the start of my nightmare.

(Please be kind for what I'm about to say... )

It took about 4 years later (it took me that long because I tossed the game aside out of disgust, and anger) that I came across a non-steam crack just to play the game, and I know, the non-steam crack was actually created by those very same pirates that we all have a problem with...thanks to them, I was able to play Half-Life 2 without Steam.

I'm not condoning what pirates do, not at all. But they can serve a purpose, just like they were used by english governors (early caribbean) to protect themselves from the Spanish until peace was declared, then the pirates were outlawed. Governments have been forged from piracy, and no doubt will be used in the future.

Back then I knew that Steam was actually the future of the gaming industry, which is now what we all know as Intrusive DRM, Steam started it all in my opinion.

You are right about people thinking all DRM is bad. Trying to seperate whats acceptable DRM, and what is simply obscene seems to be now confusing allot of people out there.

I have come across a few posts on other forums, that are really scaring the new gamers out there, they are simply terrified, because they don't want to waste their allowance on something they may not be able to play out of the box, and I fully understand their fear. I've tried to explain to some of them out there, but they simply were just too scared to even listen.

Oh well...

[norb]

I know that many legit customers turned to CD cracks so that did not have to swap CDs. I hate carrying around CDs. I was very happy when games turned to DRM because of this reason. But I think that DRM is getting out of hand. Steam is actually very friendly to indie developers and provides a huge audience of customers. But as I gamer I still can't stand having it launch everytime I want to play.

[honestabe]

mikesla wrote:

Hi.

I use a program called "Defend-Reloaded". It's a fantastic program for playing older dos games. You can even use this program on Windows 7 with no problems what-so-ever.

Here is the Link: http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/

For games that require Dos 6.22, Win3.1, Win95, or Win98, or Windows XP, I use a Virtual OS program.

It's called "Microsoft Virtual PC", of course you must have the older operating systems to use this.

Outside of that, I have all angles covered so I can enjoy what I fully own.

later!

Thanks again Norb.

Why not just use DOSBOX as it works so well on everything I've thrown at it that is dos based.

I would be interested in a link and some instructions for using that Virtual OS program though for Win95/98 as I have some old games that use them that don't work on Vista64.

[Michael Slaunwhite]

Hi Honestabe.

Search for "Microsoft Virtual PC 2007", there are full free 32bit/64bit versions. Just make sure that it's with SP1. The download is actually quite small, so if you own a Dialup, takes no time at all.

Hope this helps...

Oh, Defend-reloaded has all of the files required such as the newest DosBox (which it uses), but I can tell you is this, once you do use Defend-reloaded, you'll see why I, and so many out there prefer this software over anything else..trust me, you'll like this software.

Cheers..

[honestabe]

Thanks Mike. I tried that Defender Reloaded and got a game I never could get to work on Dosbox to run: Full Metal Plante an old Amiga game I have but of course couldn't play it on the PC until now.

But, Privateer 2 didn't work it tried to load but just flashed back to desktop.
Now if I could just get Heart of Africa to work and find a copy of Rails West for the PC I'd be in heaven.

I can never seem to figure out or get these Commodore 64 emulators to work for me and Heart of Africa and I believe also Rails West were C64 specific games and maybe Apple IIe's.

[Michael Slaunwhite]

honestabe wrote:

Thanks Mike. I tried that Defender Reloaded and got a game I never could get to work on Dosbox to run: Full Metal Plante an old Amiga game I have but of course couldn't play it on the PC until now.

But, Privateer 2 didn't work it tried to load but just flashed back to desktop.
Now if I could just get Heart of Africa to work and find a copy of Rails West for the PC I'd be in heaven.

I can never seem to figure out or get these Commodore 64 emulators to work for me and Heart of Africa and I believe also Rails West were C64 specific games and maybe Apple IIe's.

Hi honestabe.

Good to hear that the games you wanted to play are working. There are games that will still give you trouble. But Defend Reloaded will work 99 percent of the time. Just learn, and play with the (huge) settings available, and believe me, you most likely will get it too work.

To tinker fully with the settings, make sure you have the settings set to advanced. then you can tweak further.

I have games that will not work with Defend (for whatever reason), so I have Windows virtual PC (you must have to have the older os's to use) installed to allow me to use those titles.

I know (emulators com64, appleII) those can be bothersome. Unfortunately I only run dos games, so I have no knowledge of those emulators. Sorry I can't help with those.

I know a bit much to run games, but you do what you have too do.

Cheers...