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Lowen SoDium posted:Gabe Newell (Valve Software, Steam) said that piracy is a service problem. Basically he thought that as long as you offered a good user experience, people would be willing to pay a reasonable price for it rather than pirate it for free. Before Steam, Windows gamers would download cracked versions even if they bought the game because the copy protection was so terrible.
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Aug 12, 2016 19:04
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I remember once in the late 90s/early 2000s Blockbuster Video offered rentable PC games. Does anyone remember those? I don't think I ever remember renting one, but being curious as to how it would work. Also I remember marking boxes of RPGs that my friends and I would rent from the local Blockbuster so we knew where our saved games were.
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Aug 12, 2016 19:09
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I used to crack games i bought just so i wouldnt have to put the cd into the drive for no reason other than to prove i had the game disc
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Aug 12, 2016 19:13
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Bonzo posted:While we are kinda on subject, why do radio stations still pretend to take requests? Do you really think we believe that someone in TYOOL 2016 would make an actual phone call and ask them to play the same AC/DC song that's on a 48 hour rotation? The only radio station I've heard mention taking requests is the local all-classical station.
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Aug 12, 2016 19:16
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axolotl farmer posted:Before Steam, Windows gamers would download cracked versions even if they bought the game because the copy protection was so terrible.  
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Aug 12, 2016 19:19
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axolotl farmer posted:Before Steam, Windows gamers would download cracked versions even if they bought the game because the copy protection was so terrible. This is totally true. I bought Need For Speed 4 (High Stakes? I don't remember the sub name), and immediately applied the NoCD crack because screw waiting for it to verify my CD was in the drive and occasionally deciding it didn't like the smell that day or something. CD/DVD based copy protection was terrible. The fact that it just plain didn't work with some models of drives was really dumb. I used to love the challenge of cracking old Apple II software because that poo poo was so wacky sometimes. There were schemes that would look for a physical hole in the disk (try to read that part and the drive would consistently throw out a hard error which meant it was legit), look for purposely-inconsistent spots on the disk (like a track sorta half-written so that every time you tried to read the track it came back with different data on it, so if the routine could read the same bytes every time it knew it was a copy), or store the game data in a completely foreign format that regular DOS couldn't make sense of. The Apple II gave you so much control over the disk hardware, it was possible to do things like this. Some games went to such great lengths to protect themselves, and it would turn out the program itself was a one-shot load, so you could literally interrupt the game after it had loaded and just dump the memory to a file that you could just run. Games like Choplifter and Star Blazer (both by Br0derbund) were like this, and it was awesome to crack them because instead of having 2 or 3 disks with a game on each, you could fit them all onto one DOS disk and just run them at will. Sometimes, they'd have an occasional check built into the program to make sure you weren't doing this, but then you'd go and hunt down that routine and disable it. Good times.
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Aug 12, 2016 19:19
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axolotl farmer posted:Before Steam, Windows gamers would download cracked versions even if they bought the game because the copy protection was so terrible. Copy protection nothing. It was bad enough that a lot of games required their discs in the drive despite the entire thing being copied during installation. Some of us just wanted to play Age of Empires or whatever without having to fish around for the CD that we stashed god knows where.
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Aug 12, 2016 19:21
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woodch posted:I used to love the challenge of cracking old Apple II software because that poo poo was so wacky sometimes. There were schemes that would look for a physical hole in the disk (try to read that part and the drive would consistently throw out a hard error which meant it was legit), look for purposely-inconsistent spots on the disk (like a track sorta half-written so that every time you tried to read the track it came back with different data on it, so if the routine could read the same bytes every time it knew it was a copy), or store the game data in a completely foreign format that regular DOS couldn't make sense of. The Apple II gave you so much control over the disk hardware, it was possible to do things like this. https://twitter.com/robert_a_cook/status/741371015805034497
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Aug 12, 2016 19:26
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Senor Tron posted:
The phone on the left looks like it's running something similar to the old Macintosh "Vanlandingham" bouncing ball demo. At the UCLA student store we used to run it on the Macintosh Portable to show off the swanky active matrix screen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3fybaJ9qRg
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Aug 12, 2016 19:36
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freeranger posted:
That takes me right back to the mid 90's. I distinctly remember all the hype about the VFX-1. It was showed off in a lot of the gamer magazines back then. One article had the VFX1 paired up with TFX, a European flight sim. That was my goal in life back then and I thought it was only a year or two away. And now that the Occulus and all that stuff is here, I am not even interested. gently caress.
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Aug 12, 2016 19:39
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TotalLossBrain posted:And now that the Occulus and all that stuff is here, I am not even interested. smart
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Aug 12, 2016 19:50
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I liked when they made you look up the answer to a puzzle in the manual. That was my favorite copy protection. God help you if you lost your manual to King's Quest VI.
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Aug 12, 2016 19:53
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Metal gear solid 1 had something similar where you couldnt advance beyond maybe 1/4 or so of the game without a code that was written on the cd case or the manual. I cant remember which but i rented it from blockbuster and was provided neither and i got really really frustrated as a kid
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Aug 12, 2016 19:57
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Interesting read on the developers and the rise and fall of the Gopher internet protocal they created: https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher-protocol
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Aug 12, 2016 20:09
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I used to have a game on my Palm 5 in like 2000 where it was ancient China and you owned a trading ship, the game play was a lot like star trader or drug wars. Anyone know what it was called?
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Aug 12, 2016 23:04
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Cracking games you bought was part of game ownership. Loading System Shock 2 without using the CD was more rewarding than the drat fool "achievements" kids have these days.
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Aug 12, 2016 23:07
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Wooten posted:I used to have a game on my Palm 5 in like 2000 where it was ancient China and you owned a trading ship, the game play was a lot like star trader or drug wars. Anyone know what it was called? http://www.mobygames.com/game/tradewinds Tradewinds?
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Aug 12, 2016 23:14
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In the time before Steam PC games shipped on CDs much longer than they should have. There was a comic-themed shooter called XIII that came out years ago which shipped on multiple CDs and the game's copy protection would ask you to insert certain CDs at different times during the game. The non-cracked version of the game was considerably more annoying to play than the cracked version. That probably qualified as an actual rootkit. I had to wait months for a crack so I could play whatever Splinter Cell game came out in 2005 or 2006 because I had 64-bit XP and the Starforce driver wouldn't work on it. The game itself ran fine once cracked, but the copy protection wouldn't let me play something I paid money for. I remember looking at the Ubisoft support forums back then to try and find a solution and anyone who had trouble with the copy protection was actually treated with contempt by the turbo-spergs there.
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Aug 12, 2016 23:22
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axolotl farmer posted:Before Steam, Windows gamers would download cracked versions even if they bought the game because the copy protection was so terrible. I haven't done it yet but I'm pondering doing this for Blood Dragon because I'm loving pissed that it makes you use Origin as well as Steam gently caress you game
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Aug 12, 2016 23:30
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SquadronROE posted:I remember once in the late 90s/early 2000s Blockbuster Video offered rentable PC games. Does anyone remember those? I don't think I ever remember renting one, but being curious as to how it would work. my local library rented and might still rent games. mostly educational and puzzle games from the 90s n poo poo. still need the disk for most of em also blood dragon really isn't all that great, its exactly the same boring rear end gameplay from far cry 3 but with the bizarre neon asthetic which is cool but only for about 15 minutes
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Aug 12, 2016 23:37
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thathonkey posted:Metal gear solid 1 had something similar where you couldnt advance beyond maybe 1/4 or so of the game without a code that was written on the cd case or the manual. I cant remember which but i rented it from blockbuster and was provided neither and i got really really frustrated as a kid its the codec number for meryl which is on the back on one of the screenshots. its kind of clever in a way thats not clever in any good way and dumb as hell
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Aug 12, 2016 23:40
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SquadronROE posted:I remember once in the late 90s/early 2000s Blockbuster Video offered rentable PC games. Does anyone remember those? I don't think I ever remember renting one, but being curious as to how it would work. I remember wanting to rent n64 games at this one place and the dude was all "lol consoles are dead we only rent PC games" and I'm thinking "yeah, once maybe" since you could just rent and rip the drat things. thathonkey posted:Metal gear solid 1 had something similar where you couldnt advance beyond maybe 1/4 or so of the game without a code that was written on the cd case or the manual. I cant remember which but i rented it from blockbuster and was provided neither and i got really really frustrated as a kid I once rented and played through the PSX version of the Evil Dead game and marathoned it all night...and was suddenly asked to insert a disc 2 that they never gave me.
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Aug 12, 2016 23:50
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didnt mgs1 have another dumb gimmick like you had to plug your controller in as player 2 to beat one of the bosses 
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Aug 13, 2016 00:35
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thathonkey posted:didnt mgs1 have another dumb gimmick like you had to plug your controller in as player 2 to beat one of the bosses Eternal Darkness on the Gamecube would do weird stuff like this too. It was a psychological horror game that IIRC would gently caress with your controls when you started to lose your grip on reality. It was similar to what they did in MGS1, but Eternal Darkness was a loving badass game (MGS1 was too i guess).
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Aug 13, 2016 00:54
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I missed phone chat a few pages ago but I remember how incredible it was to go from a phone with a 120x80 pixel display to a 320x280 or whatever weird dimension phone screens had. I bought a wallpaper for a Nokia phone I had and it looked like some weird abstract art. It was better than the NOKIA logo so I said gently caress it. Then I switched phones and found out it was actually a picture of a dragon. It was so loving cool, too.
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Aug 13, 2016 01:01
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woodch posted:The Apple II gave you so much control over the disk hardware, it was possible to do things like this. I used to enjoy going through my C64 games with a sector editor, just looking at what was in the code. Their disk format was also neat in that the file table was a linked list so you could point the last sector to the first one and your directory listing would loop forever.
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Aug 13, 2016 01:01
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thathonkey posted:didnt mgs1 have another dumb gimmick like you had to plug your controller in as player 2 to beat one of the bosses I mean maybe its silly now but I remember at the time not a lot else broke the 4th wall like that, and it was actually pretty cool
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Aug 13, 2016 01:15
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Copy protection chat: the SNES game Earthbound had some neat copy protection tricks coded into it. There were basic checks, then a system that loaded tons of additional enemies if it was bypassed, and a final catch that would freeze the console and erase all save data just before the final boss.
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Aug 13, 2016 01:23
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thathonkey posted:Metal gear solid 1 had something similar where you couldnt advance beyond maybe 1/4 or so of the game without a code that was written on the cd case or the manual. I cant remember which but i rented it from blockbuster and was provided neither and i got really really frustrated as a kid The codec frequency for Meryl, and they tell you in the game to 'look on the back of the box' iirc. I actually rented it from Blockbuster too, but I rented the Gamecube re-release and at that point in time they were actually doing like, hints on the back of the box. Gameplay strategies. For that they just outright told you the answer to the little puzzle  It was kind of charming.
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Aug 13, 2016 01:27
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Gromit posted:I used to enjoy going through my C64 games with a sector editor, just looking at what was in the code. Their disk format was also neat in that the file table was a linked list so you could point the last sector to the first one and your directory listing would loop forever. I used to go thru sectors on the Apple II, too! Their directory was a dedicated track, usually Hex $11 (out of a total of hex $22 tracks), why do I remember that poo poo? Thing is, you could change some bytes in the DOS code and put the directory (VTOC -- Volume Table of Contents) on pretty much any track you wanted. I don't remember exactly how files were linked together other than the first track/sector that a file lived at was in the VTOC. I think there were similar tricks you could do with the file locations that would either make files load forever, or make directory entries point at the wrong files, but it's been a long time. Then ProDOS came along and made everything weird. I mean, they HAD to if they ever intended to use anything bigger than the 5.25" single-sided disks of the day, but I remember being a little bummed that everything had changed so drastically after I'd pretty much mastered DOS 3.3.
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Aug 13, 2016 01:28
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X3: Reunion had Starforce. In order to play the game I had to disconnect my CDR drive or else it would refuse to run. This offers good protection against people who want to burn copies of the game while playing it, I guess.
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Aug 13, 2016 01:33
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i'm not googling and I haven't played MGS in probably 10+ years but is it 140.25? or maybe 141.25
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Aug 13, 2016 01:36
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SquadronROE posted:I remember once in the late 90s/early 2000s Blockbuster Video offered rentable PC games. Does anyone remember those? I don't think I ever remember renting one, but being curious as to how it would work. It sorta called some grief if they didn't copy the serial number for the install or the photocopy was pretty bad. But the practice died out as games began to move online and keys were being actively checked for duplicate uses. Buy yes savvy kids were able to effectively rent and make copies of games, but often the selection was pretty poor and often brought months after release and anything big like Half-Life or GTA 3 you'd never see.
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Aug 13, 2016 01:36
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I remember occasionally renting NES games that would contain a photocopied and stapled together manual. A sort of instruction manual Tijuana Bible thing.
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Aug 13, 2016 01:38
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WebDog posted:There were a few indie stores here that did that. While the game box was out on display you got the actual game put inside a replacement case with a photo copied manual and so on. My dad rented Leisure Suit Larry: Love For Sail for the PC once. It didn't work
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Aug 13, 2016 01:39
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Three-Phase posted:I remember occasionally renting NES games that would contain a photocopied and stapled together manual. A sort of instruction manual Tijuana Bible thing. I think the good stores would copy the manuals and hand them out with the games as a courtesy maybe? I remember getting those too.
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Aug 13, 2016 01:39
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Three-Phase posted:I remember occasionally renting NES games that would contain a photocopied and stapled together manual. A sort of instruction manual Tijuana Bible thing. I remember Blockbuster would have lovely summarized instructions on the inside of the case It was like "we don't trust you to return the manual, so here's what the buttons do - lol if you need anymore help than that"
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Aug 13, 2016 02:48
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EugeneJ posted:I remember Blockbuster would have lovely summarized instructions on the inside of the case drat i forgot all about that. i remember it clearly
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Aug 13, 2016 03:02
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did anyone mention that the voodoo 3 video card produced 60 fps and the xbox one averages 26 or something
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Aug 13, 2016 03:12
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EugeneJ posted:I remember Blockbuster would have lovely summarized instructions on the inside of the case Oh god I forgot this Yeah gently caress them this was the worst
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Aug 13, 2016 03:17
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