SPORE is out, finally

[Grogyan]

Just bought my copy, SecuROM or not, reason I have got it is simulate gaits for robots

[T_S_Kimball]

Yes, I also got a copy (I'm a sucker for shiny collector editions of games that are interesting), but probably will not install it until I can find a way to avoid the multi-install nonsense.

I heard that Bioshock had the same issue, but the version bought from Steam did not (instead it required Steam to run, which looks like a reasonable trade-off).

Note that EA has stated that every future game of theirs will be configured this way - including Red Alert 3. Rather miffed about that too...

--TSK

[Grogyan]

I saw the demo of Red Alert 3, I was a big fan of Red Alert in the mid 90's, and i'm glad someone is tackling strategy with navel, Supreme commander did a fair job of it, but the ships were just too expensive and took too long to build to be of actual use.

I like the real time fluid physics in RA3, as well as te build animations, other than that, it looks dull, come on game developers, what are you doinf, all this power on GPU's and real time hardware physics rendering, should mean that they come up with something more to add to the game play, see in Ageia's pack for UT3 one map is fun because of a fairly random thing whirling around, a tornado that affects everything.

Spore is great because it tries to handle a whole galaxy at once, the creatures walk adaptively to how many legs it has and how they are designed.

I have so far created 3 strange races lol that can only be described as alien

[T_S_Kimball]

Well, after the horrible experience my roommate had with Starforce (uninstalling it removed both the VirtualDrive CD and his REAL one - down to the *driver* level - and disabled them from auto-configuring again!), I'm in no mind to have auto-running software milling about my PC. In particular when I can't find out that they're even running, because it hides from everything, and also goes and prevents 3rd party tools from running (I'm not paranoid about that statement, current SecuROM has been found to do all that).

I'm also an 'old school' Oblivion player - you know, the folks who like to see exactly how low they can get their XP memory footprint to be? I'm currently down to about 200 meg if I leave ZoneAlarm off (which is required for Steam actually); Don't mind doing that since I use a high-end router/firewall (preferably SOHO models when possible, but D-Link's GamerLounge router is a nice trade-off).

--TSK

PS - I'll add that I still play games from many, many years ago (i.e. Original HL1, non-Steam, RA2-Collector, RailRoad Tycoon, and the Myst series of course) and if they had these same restrictions I could not play them today...

[Goofy]

simply put the only way to get the game producers to not use these kinds of things is to not buy their product. if people hit them where it hurts the most then I think they will think twice about it. I doubt people will. Some people out there are kinda clueless about these things.

Also if average users computers break they either get another one or reformat and reinstall. So it really doesn't bother these people. Personally I don't like it when a program adds another program to monitor what I do. to me that is kinda dishonest and invasion of privacy.

[Grogyan]

Well I can tell you I was very disappointed that A LOT of stuff was stripped out from the demo in 2005, and there is 2 patches already out and an expansion on the 18th of November, that only adds a small amount to the game play, but adds nothing for the adults who play it.

There is another expansion slated for early 2009, that addresses the space part of the game

And i'm still waiting on someone who feels like the game has a chance and writes a plugin for Bender so you can make anything you want.


The tribal stage and the Civ stage are too short and can be done in less than 2 hours, 1 hour for Tide pool, creature stage takes about 12 hours depending on the length you want to go through to get all the parts, but the space stage, I spent about 1 and a half weeks on and only just finished it, but not got everything.

And yes Sol is there, and you get an award if you find it, ironically you get another award for blowing up Earth

[Metabasalt1]

I hear Securom issues are not just limited to Spore, but also Mass Effect and Crysis. Maybe will bring players back to the older games (like URU!) which can be installed an unlimited time without any issues!

[ddb174]

MystV also contained SecuROM v7. It didn't originally run for me, so I had to get a no-cd patch.

[Chacal]

Ha! So THAT'S why I'm stuck with hidden Securom keys in my registry. I was wondering how I got that.

[Grogyan]

I simply can't understand these guys, the answer is so simple.

When you install the game, it asks you for your registration key, this key should never be stored on your hard drive as that just allows hackers to compromise it, instead, for you to install the game it has to send the CD key with your personal IP address back to a server that compares both your cd key and IP address in its, and if it doesn't on their server, the game won't install
any changes to your current install or moved house, if an error occurs you call up the help desk to verify that you have moved house for example

when the game starts the disk must be in the drive, which can be taken out at the game menu, if the cd key doesn't match the IP address the game won't run either


There is overwhelming evidence that SecuROM is an actual fact a virus which we must live with


This same method I believe can be cross platform too, for better security against pirates of movies too