anyone here use gametap?

[lord of the mark]

arghh - ive been having technical problems with gametap. I got a corrupted save, and cause all the saves are encrypted together in one file, it looks like I will lose everything ive done to this point.

I can start afresh, but to keep this from happening again I will have to do something awkward, like periodically copying the whole encrypted file to a backup. Not even certain that will work.

I may just put Deus aside and go back to age of sail.

[Nostromo]

That sucks Needless to say, I will not be trying out Gametap.

[DrSpike]

Why do Gametap have your saves?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Why do Gametap have your saves?

the saves are on my hard drive, but theyre encrypted together with the game. The game is encrypted, so I can only play it with the Gametap player, and cant just keep the game and play without them. I dont know enough coding to know if having the saves unencrypted would make hacking the game easier. I DO think its stupid that the saves arent encrypted invididually, so that I could delete an individual save OUTSIDE the game itself.

I may just go back and play again, and do the backup thingie, which apparently other folks do as well (according to the mod in the Gametap community, who did his best to be helpful)

But I probably will rule out paying for a subscription.

[DrSpike]

Just goes to show you should follow my advice above.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Just goes to show you should follow my advice above.

to play age of sail pirate scenarios - Ive been playing AoS, but really, the pirates play the same as everyone else - its a tactical naval combat sim. And there arent any mules in the game.

[DrSpike]

That's a shame - mules are very useful. Mules on the internet are often referred to as e-mules.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DrSpike
That's a shame - mules are very useful. Mules on the internet are often referred to as e-mules.

kind of the way commerce on the internet used to be called "e-commerce"?

Shouldnt piracy on the internet be called "e-piracy"?

[DrSpike]

Not really, although no one on this site would condone such actions, it's a well-known fact that nearly all piracy involves the internet in one form or another.

So it's more like piracy that doesn't should have its own label.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Not really, although no one on this site would condone such actions, it's a well-known fact that nearly all piracy involves the internet in one form or another.

So it's more like piracy that doesn't should have its own label.

So these folks should be called analog pirates?

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2008/04/2008525144819214687.html

[DrSpike]

Yes.

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


the saves are on my hard drive, but theyre encrypted together with the game. The game is encrypted, so I can only play it with the Gametap player, and cant just keep the game and play without them. I dont know enough coding to know if having the saves unencrypted would make hacking the game easier. I DO think its stupid that the saves arent encrypted invididually, so that I could delete an individual save OUTSIDE the game itself.

I may just go back and play again, and do the backup thingie, which apparently other folks do as well (according to the mod in the Gametap community, who did his best to be helpful)

But I probably will rule out paying for a subscription.

Steam is also weird in the way it works, and a Steam game is not the same as the regular game you may get at retail(so patch problems etc).

I did bring this up at quarter to three, but some steam guys(or fans of) got all sniffy with me and ****ed my pc.

I really have no idea why on-line delivery has to be so cumbersome and anti end user? Even stardock has it's issues(my retail galciv gold was strange to update via stardock - i ended up with two versions of the same game on my pc) and this is the least intrusive on line delivery system from the ones I've tried.

Steam is the most commercially successful of these systems, but I think for pure on-line delivery to really take of someone is going to have to come up with much less draconian methods, and one that mesh's much better with the high street retail product.

e.g. Would I buy Morrowind through steam when I know most of the mods won't work on that version? erm no.

[Nikolai]

You're kidding me, it's not the same games? GamersGate does not work that way, the games' the same as the retail versions.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by El_Cid

I did bring this up at quarter to three, but some steam guys(or fans of) got all sniffy with me and ****ed my pc.

That doesn't sound very likely.

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by Nikolai
You're kidding me, it's not the same games? GamersGate does not work that way, the games' the same as the retail versions.

I'll have a look at GamersGate in that case

But yeah it seams almost common practise to have an on-line delivered game be different from the pure shop retail version. Probably to do with making pirating more difficult, but from a gamers/customers point of view you end up with a gimped game(un-modable/limited patches etc as they have to all be rewritten).

@ Dr.Spike, yeah it seemed unlikely to me also...until I realised just how focused an attempt it had been.

It was aimed specifically at the bowser i was using at the time, Opera. It gave me one little pop up saying 'I needed to click ok to refresh the page', being new to opera at the time i broke a golden rule and clicked then bamm! a quick download of lots of nasty ****, some found by my anti-vir but some not. And then some of my games started playing up, games I had talked about playing on the QT3 forums, so for my particular DVD ROM player on that PC Morrowind would no longer recognise the disk, same with FM2007, but that same DVD ROM would run them when in one of my other PC's, or they would run fine on other PC's etc etc

Lots of stuff like that, oh and deleting all my windows restore points. A good and thorough job to whomever booby trapped my Opera like that :b

And it could have been anyone I suppose, just hot on the heels of my steam rant.....well 2+2 can equal 4 sometimes?

But I'm more interested in why the leading pack in on-line delivery systems, a system that can really breathe new life for small devs in the PC game market, feel they need to use such restrictive methods, or just non customer friendly techniques to sell the games this way? Not every system requires an on-line connection to play(even single player) but some do, and what happens if that system ever goes down, maybe for good? what do you do with a game you paid for but can't play any more? Is this the promise that on-line delivery is all about, who's best interest does this serve?

Stuff like that. I think it can/should be better than that.