Vuvuzelas Blare On Pirated Copies of Music Game 320
An anonymous reader sends this quote from Wired:
"A novel anti-piracy measure baked into the Nintendo DS version of Michael Jackson: The Experience makes copied versions of the game unplayable and taunts gamers with the blaring sound of vuvuzelas. Many games have installed switches that detect pirated copies and act accordingly, like ending the user's game after 20 minutes. Ubisoft has come under fire multiple times for what players have seen as highly restrictive anti-piracy measures that annoy legitimate users as much or more so than pirates. But some more-mischievous developers have used tricks similar to the vuvuzela fanfare to mess with pirates. Batman: Arkham Asylum lets unauthorized users play through the game as if it were a normal copy, with a single exception: Batman's cape-glide ability doesn't work, rendering the game impossible to finish — although you might bash your head against it trying to make what are now impossible jumps. If you pirate Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, brace yourself for an explosion, as your entire base will detonate within 30 seconds of loading the game."
It needs copy protection? (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, people would copy a game playing Michael Jackson? Seems like the vuvuzelas are redundant.
Re:It needs copy protection? (Score:5, Funny)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
M$ should add removeing the old DRM to malware rem (Score:5, Interesting)
M$ should add removeing the old DRM systems that don't work in X64 to the MS malware remove windows update.
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Seriously, people would copy a game playing Michael Jackson? Seems like the vuvuzelas are redundant.
They will now, just to see the Vuvuzela meme -- thus giving them a great piracy figure to justify even worse things down the line.
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Michael Jackson's Moonwalker is one of my favorite old-school games. Dancing your enemies to death and transforming into a robot to save captured children from overtly sexual enemies. It's such a ridiculous game that it can be a lot of hilarious fun to play with friends.
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A game where Michael Jackson saves captures children from overtly sexual enemies... doesn't this strike you as just a little bit ironic?
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Re:It needs copy protection? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever medication you are on, adjust the dose. More, less, just pick a direction and try it for a while.
In between your struggles to "keep you and your future generations alive", I would try to get some bed rest. Oh, and yes, we know that Monsanto is a bunch of asshat tried to take over the food world by patenting everything and sue farmers who put back seeds, but in between anxiety attacks, we like to read about video games.
And good luck with the music career.
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I'm not OP, but I've always thought Michael Jackson was overated.
I'm pondering whether or not to use my other account mod points to mod you funny, or just sit right here and bitch you out for being such an ignorant piece of shit musically
Look, Michael Jackson did some decently catchy songs... but seriously, you've got to be deluded to claim he did anything revolutionary. I was but a kid when Thriller came out, and I already saw it was cliched and populist. Seriously, listen to a bit of Banarama... you
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Seriously, listen to a bit of Banarama... your mind will be expanded.
Well, technically correct. Actually, your head will explode, but technically...
butbutbutbutbut (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:butbutbutbutbut (Score:5, Insightful)
It turns it into a demo, which could lead to an actual game purchase.
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Real demos led to actual game purchases. That is how shareware worked back int he 90s.
Now? Demos lead to consistent monthly rip-offs of money.
And people wonder why the industry is said to be dying?
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Now? Demos lead to consistent monthly rip-offs of money.
You're paying a monthly fee for demos? I think you're doing it wrong.
Re:butbutbutbutbut (Score:5, Informative)
Believe it or not, most pirates don't sit there and play through the games they just cracked. The ones that do the pirating usually do it so they can disrupt it with their name attached saying "We're the first to hack XYZ". This is why Razor 1911 has a wiki page, because they're so damn famous. [wikipedia.org]
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Because it takes longer for the crackers to figure out if they're "done" or not. There have been things like purposeful crash bugs that lead to multiple releases and such of cracked titles. Anything that keeps an uncracked version out of pirates hands theoretically extends sales, as the sales aren't competing with a free version.
Re:butbutbutbutbut (Score:5, Insightful)
I see two problems with this kind of approach though
1: the code may get triggered by accident leading to a legitimate user getting frustrated at the games apparent buginess/uncompletability.
2: pirates may not realise that the problems they are experiencing are a result of antipiracy meausres.
Either way you have users who think the game is buggy as hell telling their friends to avoid it.
Re:butbutbutbutbut (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a third option that I see here... and makes me personally affected.
See, each DS game is a big piece of plastic. If I want to take my DS complete game collection with me in each trip, I would need to carry all of them in a big bag.
By format-shifting said games I bought, I am able to take just ONE cart inside the DS and have access to all the games I and my wife like.
So, for me, buying a game that is "uncrackable" is a no go, because it means to play that game I would need to take the piece of plastic with me wherever I go.
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pirates may not realise that the problems they are experiencing are a result of antipiracy meausres.
They might as well. If a game dumped me to the desktop with no error message within the first 30 seconds, I automatically assumed the copy protection on my legally purchased game failed. First thing to do was get a NoCD crack and retry. Almost every time, that fixed the problem right away.
If I get an error message, then I assume it's a hardware compatibility bug or some other kind of glitch.
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Law enforcement is not really going to care about a user running a cracked game...
Actually distributing cracked games, potentially for profit perhaps, but simply running one isn't worth their time.
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Re:butbutbutbutbut (Score:5, Interesting)
For the lulz?
About 15 years ago a friend of mine had a game called "Settlers 2". Pretty standard RTS in a medieval/fantasy setting IIRC, quite cute.
The CD it came on had visible pattern burned into it that would screw up reading the disc very easily. Using various blind copiers I managed to get a decent iso image off it. Of course the burn patterns weren't just to stop you reading it....
If the game code did not detect the burn patterns in the CD it was running from it was very clever. Tricksy.
In the game you had an economy based on a few things, one of which was iron. Another was pork. You needed farms to get pigs, and an abattoir to turn that into ham. The ham was then used as food for the settlers. Specifically the miners. They ate ham then went mining for iron ore, and the foundry turned out iron which you could then turn into weapons and other soldier equipment.
After about half an hour of playing I tried to figure out why I had no army. After a lot of squinting it turned out that the iron was coming out of the mines and being carried to the foundry, which was producing.... pigs.
I just had to laugh and mentally congratulate the developers for that.
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if they can tell it's pirated... why all the crazy piracy schemes in the first place? Why even LAUNCH the game? how can they tell?
Clever logic bombs are harder to circumvent.
Secrets and Traps - a cracker's bread and butter (Score:2, Interesting)
Leaving aside the inevitable flamewar about piracy and sales and that endlessly retrodden path of discussion, to interject some technical details: to a cracker they're usually called a 'trap', 'flag' or, if you will, a 'logic bomb'.
Some of them might be obvious, but of course if they're obvious they'll be found right away. The idea is that by making the traps subtle or to require you to actually play the game to some extent (and essentially playtest it) to uncover them, they'll be harder to track down becau
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Ideally, developers would stop putting logic bombs into their code deliberately. It's poor ethics, bad programming practice and can occasionally be incredibly dangerous (especially in non-gaming fields).
Ideally people would pay for the software they liked. Ideally the filesharing of copyrighted material would only be used as evaluation, followed by deleting the software (after an evaluation period of a week or so) or paying for it. Ideally the distribution of disks would be stupid, because it's cheaper to set a filesharing server to send it over the interwebs.
The companies have reacted wrong, but the pirates incited the reaction.
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AutoCAD had a "bug" where the lines in drawings would become fainter and fainter with every save - *only* in cracked versions. Obviously the trick is to have a big obvious "NOP me out!" block of code that clearly deals with copy protection - and something sneaky tucked away out of sight.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:butbutbutbutbut (Score:5, Interesting)
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It was covered on /. back in 2001: http://slashdot.org/articles/01/01/25/1343218.shtml [slashdot.org]
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3d Studio 4 (not max!) from thee same company would randomly corrupt your meshes in most cracked versions, but only if you had more than 500 vertices. So it would pass initial cracker tests, but fail for actual use by 3d artists. It was quite clever.
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And consequently, sales dropped due to the reports of significant issues with PCB printing
Funny how that doesn't seem to happen. It certainly didn't happen with AutoCAD. Anyone reporting problems with faint drawing just got told to go and buy a real one.
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I don't think such subtlety is very clever when used for copy protection. What exactly are they trying to achieve? They are getting a kind of revenge against people pirating their game, but it doesn't give them any more customers. When copy protection is obvious and remains uncracked for months that may encourage people to buy a game, but if the protection is subtle it will just make the pirates dislike the game and think the developers are incompetent. They won't be thinking, "Well, maybe I should have bou
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That kind of measure seems clever, but if unpublicized and subtle, it will make the program appear buggy. They need to make it very clear you've got a playable demo on your hands, rather than a buggy full version. Playable demos sell games. Buggy full versions put people off.
I've been misled! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Batman: Arkham Asylum lets unauthorized users play through the game as if it were a normal copy, with a single exception: Batman's cape-glide ability doesn't work, rendering the game impossible to finish — although you might bash your head against it trying to make what are now impossible jumps. If you pirate Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, brace yourself for an explosion, as your entire base will detonate within 30 seconds of loading the game..."
So how is this different then the purchased, bug-ridden, unfinished versions that are pawned off on us with every release?
Re:I've been misled! (Score:5, Funny)
That's the joke
In reality, the game is broken for everyone, they just now have a new scapegoat to blame the bugs on: piracy!
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It's a potential new strategy for them to deal with bug reports. The "that isn't a bug; you're just a dirty pirate" defence.
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woooooooosh
Detection (Score:2)
Anyone know how they detect pirated copies?
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I'm assuming they intentionally leaked the bugged game to torrent sites, etc.
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I'm assuming they intentionally leaked the bugged game to torrent sites, etc.
But that wouldn't be "detection"... (then again it wouldn't exactly be a surprise for a slashdot summary to use a wrong word)
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And it doesn't need to be. Of course, they can't prosecute anyone who "pirates" the freely disseminated version, but then.. maybe they don't want to prosecute people who obviously like their product and therefore might become customers with a small nudge, and if they displace real pirated copies, then they cut down on piracy either way, although the recipients might still think their copies are, in fact, pirated.
Re:Detection (Score:5, Informative)
The same way they always have for the last 30 years. Bury some code that's supposed to toggle some hardware effect in the cartridge or media, check for the side effect, then crap out if it fails.
Another way is just using attributes of the cartridges against pirates. Copies are often made on read-write media, but legitimate cartridges are read-only. So you have legitimate executable code that says "DO_MUSIC: call PLAY_MUSIC", and you add a statement that says "write to address DO_MUSIC 'call PLAY_VUVUZELA'". A legitimate cartridge can't overwrite the ROM, so it fails, and the call to PLAY_MUSIC remains in place. But on a rewritable cartridge it does overwrite it and zzzzzzzzzzzzzz happens.
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The cards emulate the game card and they don't permit writing from the console side. I have an Acekard for my DS so that I don't have to carry carts or my mp3 player while I am using the DS.
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The flash carts do allow writing to the SD card from the DS. There's homebrew that does it. That probably doesn't hold up for whatever memory space they're using to load the ROMs from though. In any case, this will be worked around with a ROM patch in no time.
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"Vuvuzelas Blare On Pirated Copies of Music Game..."
Not anymore. Easy enough to make all the game files read-only (just leave the save files alone).
Thanks, dude(ette).
Re:Detection (Score:5, Informative)
Copy protection is generally a module that's linked into the system, gets called at start up, does some validation / checksumming / decryption etc. Crackers tend to attack the validation so that it returns 'all good' even when its not. Or they wait until the relevant bits are decrypted and then copy those in and bypass the validation/decryption entirely. ... its more complicated than that, but that's sort of the gist of it.
Crackers attack the copy protection, and then once its defeated release the cracks/cracked copies.
This piracy detection is essentially a separate redundant anti-piracy module, with the same sort of detection/validation stuff as the primary one. However it doesn't get activated at start up. It gets activated later, sometimes much later,and instead of throwing up a "not a valid copy" it instead modifies the game rules or parameters slightly.
The idea is that the crackers won't find it. They are attacking the primary copy protection which inevitibaly falls... but often they are only interested in cracking the game, and being the releaser; they often aren't actually all that interested in playing the game itself. So once the protection appears defeated and they appear to be able to play the game they release.
However the 2ndary copy protection is still intact, and messes with players who actually try to complete the game.
Its not really any harder to defeat than the primary copy protection; if anything its usually easier. But since it gets missed its gets to mess with pirate copy players for a few months while it gets identified, defeated, and then new cracks are released. Meanwhile there are now bunches of people running the old cracks who might never figure it out... especially if the impact is subtle.
The main problem with these copy protections is that like any copy protection, some times it doesn't work and legitmate customers are affected. This can be particularly troubling if the impact is subtle... so they come to think the game is just defective (which I guess it is).
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Of course once the crackers get good at figuring out and bypassing this security, then developers will start using similar secondary DRM that doesn't activate until a couple days past the official release date.
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That seems highly unlikely - days, maybe weeks, at best.
The chaos lasts for months, because once the torrents and cracks are out, there's no unreleasing them... so they are floating around out there.
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Re:Detection (Score:5, Informative)
One very old scheme is to embed a checksum of the code segment inside the binary itself and then check it at runtime. It's not foolproof but it will identify most pirated copies with zero chance of false positives.
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"Anyone know how they detect pirated copies?"
One very old scheme is to embed a checksum of the code segment inside the binary itself and then check it at runtime. It's not foolproof but it will identify most pirated copies with zero chance of false positives.
That would prevent modification, but how does that prevent it from being duplicated?
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Red Alert 2 (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, yes, I remember that. It was always fun to uninstall and reinstall the whole fucking game because the DRM flipped a shit over nothing at all.
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Happened to me a few times as well. Genuine retail copy on my shelf, real disc in a real CD drive - base explodes. I got bitten by Operation Flashpoint's over-zealous FADE DRM as well.
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Happened to me a few times as well. Genuine retail copy on my shelf, real disc in a real CD drive - base explodes. I got bitten by Operation Flashpoint's over-zealous FADE DRM as well.
Legit copies crapping out? that is really lame; luckily I've never had that problem.
"If you pirate Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, brace yourself for an explosion, as your entire base will detonate within 30 seconds of loading the game"
I know for a fact that this statement is false.
I have this friend who had a pirated copy. I....oops, I mean "he"....played it all the time back in the day, and never once had his base explode on him.
It worked fine, other than the music and videos were all missing.
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Well, the bottom line is that with many cracks, the exploding base phenomenon was real.
Detection = failure (Score:2, Insightful)
If the game can detect that it was pirated, the circumvention isn't good enough. These little pranks will fool the 0-day groups, but within hours a "proper" fix will come along, and these childish stunts will have been in vain.
The thing to remember about warez crackers, is they tend to be more skilled than the people who release the games. Trying to outsmart them is a fallacy.
Re:Detection = failure (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing to remember about warez crackers, is they tend to be more skilled than the people who release the games. Trying to outsmart them is a fallacy.
Then why don't they try, I dunno, maybe writing their own games instead of leeching off the work of others!
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Then why don't they try, I dunno, maybe writing their own games instead of leeching off the work of others!
They aren't necessarily more skilled than game developers in general, they are just more skilled in the area of DRM.
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That's like asking why a safecracker doesn't manufacture safes.
Re:Detection = failure (Score:5, Insightful)
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Trying to outsmart them is an often plausible argument using false or invalid inference?
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Apologies in advance for being a little confrontational about this topic ...
The thing to remember about warez crackers, is they tend to be more skilled than the people who release the games. Trying to outsmart them is a fallacy.
Sorry, but popular meme is utter bollocks. Crackers are (mostly) good at cracking software and while I agree that successful cracking is quite a technical task or challenge, and that not many people are capable of that skill there are at least two very obvious problems with what they do.
There are plenty of examples of software available that has never been completely cracked - yes, the software works to a point but it's not 100% cr
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Trying to outsmart them is a fallacy.
I don't think you know what that word means...
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The thing to remember about warez crackers, is they tend to be more skilled than the people who release the games. Trying to outsmart them is a fallacy
how did you come to that conclusion? do you think defeating the copy protection is more complex than writing the game itself?
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More skilled? Hardly. They have a few, well-defined tweaks to make to an existing codebase. That's quite a ways apart from a finished work. Even the best art vandal who draws a genre-appropriate mustache on every bit of art they can get their hands on is hardly displaying skill compared to someone working from scratch.
I'm guessing you haven't seen any of their demos.
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Even the best art vandal who draws a genre-appropriate mustache on every bit of art they can get their hands on is hardly displaying skill compared to someone working from scratch.
Which is not to say that they're necessarily untalented, or even not displaying any skills, just that they're not displaying the same skills. [wikipedia.org]
Vuvuzela (Score:2)
False premise (Score:5, Funny)
The vuvuzela noise isn't a copy-protection technique. It's just that the South African version of the game was the first to be cracked; it's in the legit .za copies as well.
So? (Score:2)
Am I the only person outside of South Africa who wasn't annoyed with the sound of vuvuzelas? CBC seemed capable of keeping them low, but audible, in the live mix.
That said, disabling game functions strikes me as preferable to draconian DRM schemes that end up causing unnecessary frustration for paying players.
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Am I the only person outside of South Africa who wasn't annoyed with the sound of vuvuzelas?
Yes... yes you are!
Uh (Score:2)
GTA IV (Score:4, Informative)
GTA IV had a copy-protection prank too: the pirated game plays fine until you get in to a car, which then accelerates uncontrolably while handling as if the character has been drinking.
Pretty funny, but it did bite a lot of legit, paying customers, contributing to the general verdict that the game was much too buggy at release.
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praiseworthy (Score:4, Insightful)
Surely if it did some cool undocumented thing in the pirated copy you would be impressed enough to pay for the full version - kind of like a "tip" for a job well done.
I dont think they should put annoying stuff in the pirated copies, but if it subtely made winning impossible, yet by the end of the game it becomes obvious, then I think credit where credit is due - the developers are really trying to win you over. and a job well done should be rewarded.
Much better than the stupid "check the internet every time you load the game" piracy prevention techniques. Either its a pirate copy or it isn't. There's no point going after all illegal downloads etc. - just the ones where people were too lazy to go to the shop and pay. Getting the target market right in the first place is half the battle.
By the end of the game Tetris becomes hard too (Score:3)
but if it subtely made winning impossible, yet by the end of the game it becomes obvious, then I think credit where credit is due - the developers are really trying to win you over.
But then how do you distinguish this from a game that's genuinely difficult, like Tetris The Grand Master 3 [youtube.com] that gets ungodly fast starting around 3:00, and then turns off the lights around 5:00 and you have to beat the game by sense of feel?
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But then how do you distinguish this from a game that's genuinely difficult, like Tetris The Grand Master 3 [youtube.com] that gets ungodly fast starting around 3:00, and then turns off the lights around 5:00 and you have to beat the game by sense of feel?
Not by sense of smell ?
EarthBound (Score:3, Interesting)
The old school RPG EarthBound for the SNES had a similar, albeit HORRIFYING copy protection mechanic.
If the anti-piracy measures flagged, it would jack up the encounter rate twentyfold--the game would literally be swarming with monsters.
Worst part: if you make it all the way through to the final boss, after his first form the game will lock--the only way out is to reset it, only to find that every single one of your save files have been erased. Starmen.net has an entire page dedicated to this at http://starmen.net/mother2/gameinfo/antipiracy/ .
Great marketing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Great marketing? (Score:5, Interesting)
The only thing in my head is "vuvuzela".
Using a Flash Cart "Cheat" function... (Score:3, Informative)
Old school trick (Score:5, Interesting)
I found one of these when I was a teenager. Freaking subtle. Brilliant.
Steve Jackson's OGRE, for the Commodore 64.
I bought it. And did what any good geek would do. Made a backup and played that. And I could never beat it. But I did eventually screw up that disc - the old 5 1/4 discs did mess up fairly often. Especially in the 1541 drive.
So I played the original. And beat it. Made another backup. Couldn't beat it. A light went off.
I did a statistical analysis. All I did was fire at treads for several games. They're supposed to be hit 33% of the time regardless of weapon or circumstance. On the backup copy, it was close to 17%. On the original copy about 33%.
They built a single column shift into the game if it detects its a copy.
EVIL.
Especially seeing as how - wait for it - I was a paying customer. Thanks guys.
On the plus side, I did get really good at that game. You had to be playing at a column shift disadvantage.
Re:Old school trick (Score:5, Interesting)
Steve Jackson here, posting as Anonymous Coward. Fnord.
I had not heard that story, but it could be true. Origin was under no obligation to discuss copy protection stunts with me, so "I didn't know" /= "It didn't happen." Still, if this is the first I've heard of it in 20-odd years, it held up pretty well.
A column shift on the whole CRT would have been trivially easy to detect, as attacks that should hit 1/6 of the time will now hit exactly never. A good player will wind up making some of those 1/6 chance (1 to 2) shots every game, unproductive though they are, just to use up odd bits of firepower. So perhaps, if this is really going on, it is a shift only on tread attacks, or only on attacks with odds of 1 to 1 or better?
Re:Old school trick (Score:4, Interesting)
Steve! So good to hear from you! Been a fan for a long time now. Was just throwing some Illuminati around my table last weekend. The expansion with the artifacts positively rocks. Oh, and we've already got rules for the Zombie Dice drinking game. We have not found players suicidal enough to try it though. Yet.
Anyways, as to the business at hand, I have no idea as to the rest of the chart. I tested treads only, and this was some 20 odd years ago. It's a fuzzy memory at this point. I do recall playing 3-4 games only firing at treads. Initially the idea was "I'm going to stop this damned thing no matter what." Then I added an illegal number of units. And still couldn't stop a Mark 3. That's when the light bulb kind of went off.
Played 3 or 4 games (not a great sampling I know) firing only at treads. Counted them up on a piece of grid paper. Number of times fired, number of hits. And came up to about half what you'd expect. That's when I knew the thing was cheating.
I'll tell you what though. I do have a project in the works. A disassembly of the original C64 Ogre. It's something I've always wanted to do. The copy protection was obvious - a bad sector read early in the boot. It was obvious. The "gronking" noise a 1541 disk drive makes when it hits something it dislikes is well known. My theory is that if it didn't find the magic bad sector - wham! Bad combat tables. A disassembly would prove this out.
Perhaps someday I'll do this. It would be wonderfully old school.
BTW the book included with Ogre where the programmers explain how they programmed the AI is one of the finest programming documents in the universe. It should be a must read for game designers. It really is brilliant. I still have mine, in my original box set. Only thing missing is the radiation badge.
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You could, y'know, just...do that....
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I have played a pirated copy of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 for years.
While true, you just suck at it so much you lose every game in under 30 seconds so you wouldn't have noticed the explosion. :)
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I have played a pirated copy of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 for years.
I can vouch for TFA's claim.
I played RA2 quite the last year or two of high school with some friends in one of the computer labs. We ran into a problem though because the C: of the machines was re-imaged each night (via Deep Freeze). Ironically, the school wouldn't buy a full copy of Deep Freeze and relied on the trial version, which only let you Freeze one partition, and limited the size of that partition. Since the computers had extra room (as the D:\) we installed the game on there.
Unfortunately, the g
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Often enough that I stopped buying games with copy protection. I may try again with the new Civilization, though. I hear it can be played through wine, and that's an attraction. But I haven't yet researched how well it works, or whether it can be installed. And whether it's picky about just which versions of the OS it uses. (I'm still playing Alpha Centuari, but these days I need to play it in an emulator. It's not compatible with a modern Linux.)
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You don't need a net connection if you put Steam into offline mode.
A few months back I had a dodgy internet connection that would only work occasionally and even when it did the signal strength was pitiful (computer on 2nd floor, router on ground). I played Left 4 Dead 2 quite a bit while offline.
The problem for me was when my computer got a connection for long enough to start downloading an update but not long enough finish downloading. I was then unable to play left 4 Dead until the download had completed
Did the Jackson family demand it, or did Sony? (Score:2)
Really though, why bother protecting the Michael Jackson game?
Probably because either the Jackson family or Sony Music, each of which owns half of the copyright in the game's music, demanded it as a condition of licensing the music for use in the game.