Playing w/o the CD in?

[Rhino]

Is there some way to copy files to your hard drive or tweek something so you do not have to have the CD in while playing.

I am sure it is my CD-rom, but when I am playing, every now and then the computer will read the CD for several minutes and it is very annoyning. I am sure MP is afraid of pirating or something like that, but I'd never do anything like that... promiss

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Rhino

[John Possidente]

There's no way that I know of, but I have to admit that haven't actually tried to find one. There are a lot of clever people out there; maybe someone has cobbled something up.

[Rhino]

I found out how to play Civ2 TOT without the CD. "...check out www.gamecopyworld.com and select civ TOT from the drop down list on the right.
You need to patch the game first with the official patch then use the little 4kb patch on gamecopyworld to allow you to play without the CD.
It needs a full install and you won't get the music, but problem solved.
Please please don't do this if you haven't got the original game, as (a) it's illegal and (b) Microprose deserve your cash for this great game, and keeping the best game ever alive in another guise. " I got this from another civ2 forum. Thank you VIMMASK!!

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Rhino

[astrogator]

I am in your debt, Rhino, for posting this information and to the person who created the "no disk" patch for TOT.

I really hate having to dig through a stack of CD-rom's everytime I want to run a program on my 'puter. It seems to "retro."

[Archangel]

Most excellent! Thank you!

[tobyr]

Hacks like this make me uncomfortable. I'm a software developer, and I appreciate anything that makes people more likely to actually pay for the software they use. obviously this hack makes it easier to play the game without paying, but these days it's also awfully easy to copy the whole CD. (I did in fact copy the CD; I prefered to keep a copy, rather than the original, in my CD drive.)

Anyway I tried this patch to play without the CD, because I play on a laptop, and keeping the CD drive alive drains my power somewhat faster. To my surprise I discovered that it is MUCH easier to get the game started, as the patch skips several attempts by the game to play audio/video files.

I think I would prefer a game option to skip the initial playing sequences, but since I don't have that option, I'm hooked on the patch.

- toby



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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[John Possidente]

You know, that's a really elegant idea. (The option to just skip all the intro jazz without loading it at all.) I'm going to try to get that into our future games.

[Qilue]

SMAC has an undocumented option in Alphacentauri.ini for doing this.

DisableOpeningMovie=0 is the default and to enable, change to a 1.

John, something like this.

[John Possidente]

I was actually thinking of something along the lines of a "Laptop Install" option. No movies (especially intro movies), disable some other eye candy and maybe music or sounds to make the game run lean and mean (maybe give the user a menu to select from), and no CD required. The problem, of course, are the security & copying concerns--which naturally occur to folks who've invested their time into a project when you start talking about this kind of install.

[DaveV]

John - what if you had a "laptop configure" button that appeared after the install? This button would first check for the CD, then allow you to set things up so you'd never need it again. Still some copy protection issues, and someone with no way to attach a CD to his laptop is still stuck, but at least it prevents some bozo from downloading the program from warez.

Edit - but, of course, the warez sites would probably post the program already configured in laptop mode. No way to fight pirates, I guess...
[This message has been edited by DaveV (edited February 08, 2000).]

[tobyr]

Laptop install? You guys are totally off the mark. To support laptops, the number one priority is to make the mouse UNNECESSARY. There are many situations in ToT where a mouse is absolutely required, even in some DIALOGS. The degree to which keyboard alternatives are missing is very frustrating. (Just try bringing up a topic in the civilopedia without a mouse. If you can do it, please tell me how, I'd really appreciate it.)

Please allow me to CONFIGURE my alternative keystrokes for moving units in the 8 directions. Every laptop has a diffeent keyboard, and something different will be appropriate. On my current laptop, the 8 directions are laid out like this:

upleft
upright
downright
downleft
up
left down right

Give me a break!

- toby


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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[John Possidente]

Hmm. Good points.