Very nasty surprise.

[Gandalf Parker]

Everything has its pros and cons. With Dom1 the price was something like 20 and I bought 6 copies. All my machines (5) had one and one frined who was determined to "borrow" it so I just bought him a copy. I was very unhappy to see the pricing on Dom2 since I knew I wasnt going to do 5 or 6 copies.

On the other hand, as a programmer I understand the difficulty in having this kindof game understand multiple LAN copies and still tell the difference between that and multiple computers across the net. And I WONT say that its not worth the money. Definetly try the demo first but IF you can get past the learning curve then I can pretty much gaurantee that it will live on your machine 10 times longer than any other game you can buy now for the same price. Its worth the money and Illwinter does deserve to get paid for it.

I did suggest to Shrapnel (they actualy control things like pricing and cd keys) that a way to pay less money and download a key (not get a disc or manual) might be good but apparently its not cost effective.

[Beorne]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
Beorne,

While I might agree that the MP license policy is a bit restrictive (and counterproductive), your friends could always install and play via the demo Version. True, they'd be limitted in their choice of races, magic research is capped, and the game ends around turn 40 - but that would probably allow them to decide if they enjoyed the game enough to buy it.

On the other hand, I fail to see why you refer to a "Very Nasty Surprise" - you bought one copy, not three, so why would you expect it to allow three (or 10, or 20) people to be allowed to install and use it?

Finally - there's several other Italian players out there; I've run into at least 2, Cohen and one other.

Yes, you are right.
But several things made me think at least mp would be allowed:
- the game is costly
- the "no big company" atmosphere around the game (very much like that of freeware or shareware games), a game that is a forever work in progress with great enthusiasm and feedback between fans and autors
- I think, but i could be wrong, that another great Shrapnel game I have (SEIVG) allows mp gaming with one licence
- the fact that a game like this has no advertising apart that of fans
- the fact that lovers of turn games are almost disappearing, and is difficult to pull any other real time high graphic junk fan to access this sort of "steep learning curve" type of game.

Ok, i think something like the cited spawn install, where I and only I could be a host should be the best.

[Gandalf Parker]

Ok, i think something like the cited spawn install, where I and only I could be a host should be the best.

I slap myself on the forehead for the obivousness of that statement but I dont think anyone ever brought that scheme up specifically before. I would be worth a discussion.

So the host would still check IDs but would allow other machines to play if their CD keys matched the host? Hmmmmmmm

No come to think of it someone would probably setup a site where they would host games and say "download this" so that hundreds could play for free. mmmmm I dont think that would work well.

The "big company" thing you mention usually means they can have programmers who will work on headaches like "lan recognition while not allowing other computers not on the lan". Thats not as simple as it seems and gets harder every day just like any other protection scheme.

[Beorne]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

quote:

---

Ok, i think something like the cited spawn install, where I and only I could be a host should be the best.

I slap myself on the forehead for the obivousness of that statement but I dont think anyone ever brought that scheme up specifically before. I would be worth a discussion.
[...]

---

Sorry,
I intended what Cainehill told:

it allowed one purchased copy to allow, typically, two other computers to play the game, but only in MP mode, and only with the machine with the "master" installation hosting the game

for me it would be good

[Cainehill]

[quote]Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

[qb]
So the host would still check IDs but would allow other machines to play if their CD keys matched the host? Hmmmmmmm

No come to think of it someone would probably setup a site where they would host games and say "download this" so that hundreds could play for free. mmmmm I dont think that would work well.

Actually, it'd be easy to make it work well.

First - these "spawning" games would limit how many other human players were allowed - something like 2 or maybe 3 would be reasonable.

Second - spawning servers would definately check with Illwinter to verify the CD keys. One CD key per IP address, period - this keeps multiple people from doing this with a single pirated, er, "shared" copy of the game. (Actually, all server games should do this, probably, Norfleet's concerns (and my own lesser ones) be damned.)

The server might also pass on CD key and IP information to illwinter, only for the spawnees. [IE, the reporting only gets done when the same key is used for multiple players.] This makes it easy to track abuse if it turns out 37 different IP addresses are using the spawn capability, but might not be necessary.

Third, and more complicated to implement, would be to limit the number of such spawned games being run concurrently by a server. Again, possibly not necessary - there probably isn't a huge black market area for MP games limitted to a max of 3 or 4 players. But if done, it'd make it tougher for that hypothetical site hosting dozens or hundreds of bootleg games via the spawn functionality.

"Spawnees" wouldn't be allowed to play unless they allowed the packets to go out to Illwinter - they didn't pay for the program, they can't complain if they tell Zonealarm or routers to do egress filtering. No communications to Illwinter, no comm for MP games - they could still legitimately play hotseat.

[ April 08, 2004, 19:48: Message edited by: Cainehill ]