Review copies arrived

[kalbear]

Well, the important thing to me is that y'all are able to play it so that I can hear more about it. Though it does make me wonder about the font, if it is that bad.

Bah, who am I kidding. You live in Oregon, right? It's not _that_ big of a state...I could probably find you before the game gets published...

[JonahFalcon]

Whoa whoa whoa. I'm not going to reveal spoilers in the game, ya know.

[TheMaestro]

Originally posted by JonahFalcon
I loved the two hours I played before the copy protection kicked in my review copy. :smile:

Some law magazine I was reading said that copy protection is being sued in court...cause it's been proven to hamper actual CPU performance.

This is the USA, people sue over everything -- lol

[JonahFalcon]

There's a way to defeat piracy - huge, thick manuals of 200-300 pages, and NO online documentation at all.

[Dracil]

Actually some copy protections (not all) DO hamper game performance. The one that comes to mind is Morrowind's copy protection, which actually had noticeable decreases in game FPS (just try it with the No-CD exe to compare).

The other way it hampers game performance is by causing the game to not even work, which was a big problem for Neverwinter Nights for awhile, until they just removed it in a later patch.

So they do actually have some sort of case.

As far as no online documentations..... that will work for awhile, until some guy decides to scan it and put it up for grabs with a file-sharing program.

And most of the time, the walkthrough/FAQs you find at gamefaqs are better anyway.

[campfreddie]

Well, my computer won't run games with securom or safedisc copy protections. I don't know if it's the DVD drive, mobo or some corrupted dlls. I am talking about the original copies BTW, not back-ups.

Looks like I'll have to go to megagames or gamecopy world and wait until someone cracks it. Hopefully it'll be cracked by the time it's released in the UK and the game won't be localised.

I'm totally with Jonah F that cool documentation is the best way to stop piracy. Since I essentially have to crack every game I *buy*, I know that it's very easy to do even for the computer-illiterate. It's just a pain-in-the-arse download for every game I buy.

[warden]

Originally posted by leiavoia
It's dirty and scribbly looking. It doesn't anti-alias correctly so some parts of letters look solid while others look fuzzy and soft. It would appear that it was someone's first attempt at making their own font from scratch, know what i mean? I don't understand why they couldn't just plug in some standard TT font.

That was my impression too - that it wasn't as legible as MOO2. The galaxy map doesn't seem as easy on the eye either.

Andrew

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by campfreddie
Well, my computer won't run games with securom or safedisc copy protections. I don't know if it's the DVD drive, mobo or some corrupted dlls. I am talking about the original copies BTW, not back-ups.

Its almost certainly the DvD drive. A little bit of net searching should be able to confirm that. There are quite a few sites that will list which makes or models won't work with the various releases of Securom and Safedisc.

[Pax]

When you complete your review are you going to compare it to Space Empires IV, CIV III, or EU II?

[MasterDave]

ARGH!

This thread makes me feel like the only poor sap without Moo3 at home. Always the "last to know" etc. etc.

[Pax]

What is IG/Quicksilver going to do if the copy protection prevents people from playing on certain systems the way a lot of games do?

[JonahFalcon]

Originally posted by Pax Africanus
What is IG/Quicksilver going to do if the copy protection prevents people from playing on certain systems the way a lot of games do?

Ever heard of "patches"?

[Pax]

i have several games that never got patched, and the manufacturers were only willing to send replacement discs.

[Dracil]

If the copy protection makes it so the game doesn't work for people, IG/QS have 3 options.

1)Remove it in a patch
2)Force their users to just get No-CD exes and face increased tech support requests by people who don't know what they're doing and downloaded viruses and trojans instead.
3)Have their games returned.

Options 2 and 3 also include increased # of tech support requests by people complaining.

So the best course of action for them is #1.

If it comes down to this for me, I'll probably go with Option 2 if they don't do Option 1.

[JonahFalcon]

Okay, this time I got the OFFICIAL CD's (the ones that are gussied up - one green graphics, the other purple graphics - that will be in the boxed game) and a REAL manual - the manual is the typical "small but very thick" type that are prevalent these days.