OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely

[PrinzMegaherz]

Same story, different thing:

Derek Smart wants to buy the Freespace license.
OH MY GOD DEREK SMART.
Freespace Cruiser 3000 ahoi!

Lets see, Freespace is not that old... so reviving it might produce a soulless. Still bad, but it could be worse

Edit: spelling

[ July 16, 2004, 13:28: Message edited by: PrinzMegaherz ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Blitz:
The saddest thing is that I get 90% of my (purchaced) game patches from a site like ........... In fact, much of the crap I've bought requires a CD in the drive or some kind of asinine registration to get patches. Why game companies insist on making owning a legal copy of a piece of software more tedious than simply stealing it is beyond me.

Apparently you dont understand, that is the purpose of copy protection. Not worded quite that way but there are plenty of studies in the software publishing world that says copying/running legally owned software is the main problem. Piracy is a minor side-target.

Copy protection is to avoid "casual copying" of friends giving software to friends. Its an effort to keep up with software that is provided with CDs or available on shelves which "allow copying those problem CD's" without making it clear that the user might be violating an agreement.

Of course if it throws a stumble in the path of pirates for abit, thats good too but they know thats a shortlived win. Its usually worded as trying to turn a 1-day sales-to-crack time into a 3-6 week sales gap.

[ July 16, 2004, 17:26: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Blitz]

As far as what they have done with it is to release what is a mod of Jagged Alliance called "Jagged Alliance 2: Wildfire". It is a mod created already in the strong mod community for Jagged Alliance by this russian guy named Popov. It adds more guns, notably a lot of russian type ones, makes the game harder in that the easy setting for "Wildfire" is harder than the hard setting on the original game. By harder I mean they throw more men at you, make town loyalty harder to gain and easier to lose, and the AI will tend to dogpile you in daylight ops. Dressen airport, for instance, is extremely time consuming and difficult to take now and the AI makes damn good use of roof-tops. It is also designed so that you can run it on windows xp and down. Other than that it is essentually the same game as the original JA:2. It also has some really annoying bugs such as the sam site number 8 crash, game corrupts saves if you quick save and if you save in mine areas of a town and unfortunately because of a legal dispute between the russian modders and Strategy First over not getting payed there will be no patch fixes to the game forth comming except those fixes the JA community have been able to come up with.

That's Wildfire, which came on the Heels of Jagged Alliance: Gold (Repackaged old material). This mod, which I did not buy, is something different. For the first time since JA2: Unfinished Business, some actual new content is coming out for the game. There are two announced games, one is Jagged Alliance 3D, which is essentially the third time Strategy First has repackaged JA2. Apparently this will be the same story as JA2, but incorperated into their new engine. Finally, we have JA3, using the same engine, which is finally some new content after JA2, JA2 Gold, JA2 Wildfire and JA 3D which are all the same game. Hysterical.

Apparently you dont understand, that is the purpose of copy protection. Not worded quite that way but there are plenty of studies in the software publishing world that says copying/running legally owned software is the main problem. Piracy is a minor side-target.

Copy protection is to avoid "casual copying" of friends giving software to friends. Its an effort to keep up with software that is provided with CDs or available on shelves which "allow copying those problem CD's" without making it clear that the user might be violating an agreement.

Of course if it throws a stumble in the path of pirates for abit, thats good too but they know thats a shortlived win. Its usually worded as trying to turn a 1-day sales-to-crack time into a 3-6 week sales gap.

Oh I understand the purpose of copy protection, but in the same way I now understand why your forums are backwards. Regardless of your reasoning for inconveniencing me, it's irritating. Before buying another game from say... Strategy First, I will remember that every one of their games requires a CD in the drive and therefore the company has made a choice to inconvenience their paying customers in an attempt to prevent the inevitable.

Casual copying may have been the primary issue back in the 1990's, but today every game is available on P2P systems the same day it is released into stores. You speak of a 3-6 week jump on the pirates, this is nonsense. What is more common is a leaked gold master resulting in a 3-6 week jump for the pirates. No protection known, even the very newest Versions will give you anywhere close to a 3-week head start. If you are lucky you might get 3 days with a brand new top-end scheme from Securom that hasn't been used on any other games. The only games which are truly free from piracy are the Online games, such as Warcraft 3, or Everquest. Coincidentaly these are also the best selling games, a factor not of their popularity, but of the simple fact that each has virtually unbreakable copy protection due to the need to connect to a central server to play. The decline of the single player game is as due to piracy than any choice made by the buying public. Many Users simply steal what they can, and buy only those games which they are forced to.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Blitz:
Casual copying may have been the primary issue back in the 1990's, but today every game is available on P2P systems the same day it is released into stores. You speak of a 3-6 week jump on the pirates, this is nonsense. What is more common is a leaked gold master resulting in a 3-6 week jump for the pirates. No protection known, even the very newest Versions will give you anywhere close to a 3-week head start. If you are lucky you might get 3 days with a brand new top-end scheme from Securom that hasn't been used on any other games. The only games which are truly free from piracy are the Online games, such as Warcraft 3, or Everquest. Coincidentaly these are also the best selling games, a factor not of their popularity, but of the simple fact that each has virtually unbreakable copy protection due to the need to connect to a central server to play. The decline of the single player game is as due to piracy than any choice made by the buying public. Many Users simply steal what they can, and buy only those games which they are forced to.

I said it was an effort to change one day to a greater gap. But the battle isnt quite as lost as you predict. There is really not as much piracy as you think. Just because its every game doesnt make it every user. Piracy isnt doing enough damage to make game developers pay enough attention to it. P2P isnt much of a factor as long as efforts are succesfull in making it clear that its piracy.

As long as it cant be casually copied, it will cover the losses or costs of implementing the protection. As long as their are clear lines between legal and illegal then it will be controllable. The dangers they are watching now are misuse of words like "backups" or "abandoneware" or "shared copies". If a friend is not able to copy a game for a friend with plausable deniability that its anything illegal then the business world is safe.

[Nappa]

I still play and love MoM. I actually built a system from older components once I gave up trying to get it to run on Windows XP Pro.

[vigabrand]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

There is really not as much piracy as you think. Just because its every game doesnt make it every user. Piracy isnt doing enough damage to make game developers pay enough attention to it. P2P isnt much of a factor as long as efforts are succesfull in making it clear that its piracy. [/QB][/quote]
-------------------------------------------------
(ugh I suck at html or whatever)


That's only true in the U.S. It's gets real crazy once you get out of the country. Here's a link I found real quickly.

http://global.bsa.org/usa/press/news...-10.1129.phtml

Granted it includes all kinds of software (and it's a little dated), games are still a major factor. There's been a big movement towards cleaning Asian software piracy, which is the highest in the world. The fact that the Chinese gov't is now cooperating with Western software companies to crack down on pirates, means there's a lot money at stake. I have a friend who went on a business trip to China and saw Warcraft 3 for sale two weeks after it's release here, for $3.00, IN CHINESE! Though I see the reasons for copy protection, I believe it to be ineffectual. It only stops the most ignorant of computer Users, and only in the U.S. I've never had a problem copying, or cracking a CD, and I'm not that savvy at this kind of stuff. IMO, the only reason it's not so bad here in NA, is because our culture respects the idea of copyrights and such, and most of us are affluent enough to go and buy them. I don't think it's because of copy protection in any effectual way.

Vig

[ July 16, 2004, 23:03: Message edited by: vigabrand ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Nappa:
I still play and love MoM. I actually built a system from older components once I gave up trying to get it to run on Windows XP Pro.

Hmmm it runs on my WinXP Home Edition

[djtool]

I loved MoM. the hooded guy that chucked that fireball ruled over everyone.

after reading that thread I want to know if any of you have played that galactic civ game. It sounds promising.

[quantum_mechani]

Originally posted by djtool:
I loved MoM. the hooded guy that chucked that fireball ruled over everyone.

after reading that thread I want to know if any of you have played that galactic civ game. It sounds promising.

I have, it was so-so, but great AI.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by djtool:
I loved MoM. the hooded guy that chucked that fireball ruled over everyone.

after reading that thread I want to know if any of you have played that galactic civ game. It sounds promising.

Its been around a long time and is famous as an AI game. When I heard he ported it to windows I snagged one quick but I wasnt as impressed as I had hoped. It lived about a month.

Ive had much more fun with Space Empires IV (available here from Shrapnel). I like it for alot of the same reasons as Dom2