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Re: Eagle's STARS! Abandonia Review |
Sat, 03 October 2009 00:42 |
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Eagle of Fire wrote on Sat, 03 October 2009 12:53 | The cheat protection relate mainly to the Emperor "bug", which is in fact the cheat protection in place to (try to) prevent what is commonly refered as "sitting".
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The copy protection is all about trying to stop people sharing serial numbers... I think it's supposed to be a per-computer license.
Use the same serial number of multiple computers, and have different people submit turns from those various computers to the same game, then you get problems even though no one is 'cheating' except in context of the the EULA.
If one person submits turns for multiple races from the same computer, then you don't get problems, even though this would typically be cheating.
Ergo... It's copy protection, not cheat protection. It's designed prevents the same serial from being used on multiple computers for the same game, not to prevent any form of what we would consider cheating in the game.
The unfortunate side effect is that when coordinating with allies you can accidentally trigger the copy protection, if you updated their orders (I don't remember the exact details... But it's something along the lines of 'serial hash is put in x file when it's created, hardware hash is put in x file every time it is saved', or the other way around. So if you save a x file on one computer, that was created on another... You can end up with it looking like the same serial was used on two computers, even though that wasn't the case. This problem is avoided by deleting the x file before you save and submit (good for dodging a bug too) or by just not editing your allies x files - tell them what you want and have them do it.)
Not sure what you mean by 'sitting'. If you mean what I know as 'hotseating', this is explicitly ALLOWED by Stars. As long as the x files were created on the same computer, multiple races can be submitted to the same game safely.
[Updated on: Sat, 03 October 2009 00:50] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Eagle's STARS! Abandonia Review |
Sat, 03 October 2009 02:20 |
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Eagle of Fire | | Lt. Commander | Messages: 809
Registered: December 2008 Location: GMT -5 | |
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Quote: | The unfortunate side effect is that when coordinating with allies you can accidentally trigger the copy protection, if you updated their orders (I don't remember the exact details... But it's something along the lines of 'serial hash is put in x file when it's created, hardware hash is put in x file every time it is saved', or the other way around. So if you save a x file on one computer, that was created on another... You can end up with it looking like the same serial was used on two computers, even though that wasn't the case. This problem is avoided by deleting the x file before you save and submit (good for dodging a bug too) or by just not editing your allies x files - tell them what you want and have them do it.)
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This is what I was talking about and is usualy refered to as the Emperor Bug.
Quote: | Not sure what you mean by 'sitting'.
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Sitting is usually refered to when someone created several accounts to play a game which restrict the number of accounts you can have at the same time for the same person (usually restricted to only one account per person). Someone cheating and creating several accounts would then be considered as "sitting" on several accounts. As you can guess, this usually give out great advantages to such a player, depending of the type of game being played.
Related to STARS!, sitting would simply be someone who plays two races at the same time in the same universe without having been invited to do so.
What I really meant in my review is that you can easily take your half completed turns on any computer. Like you said yourself, you'd get problems if you save the same turn on two different computers and using the same serial. But if you know that you can simply delete the .x file before you save your changes then this problem completely disapears.
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I am on a hot streak... Literally.Report message to a moderator
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Re: Eagle's STARS! Abandonia Review |
Sat, 03 October 2009 04:02 |
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Eagle of Fire, you're missing his point. The "Emporer" bug isn't really a bug at all - its a fully intentional and deliberately coded set of consequences that are triggered when the same serial is used on more than one computer - it has nothing to do with cheating and everything to do with copy protection. Frankly, EA could learn a lot from Stars! copy protection, as its code is threaded throughout the game and its effect is a whole lot more game destroying than simply refusing to run the game.
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Re: Eagle's STARS! Abandonia Review |
Sat, 04 May 2013 08:59 |
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Splendid review.
And a good idea to provide the older i-version together with serial codes which won't work with the newest patch. Probably saves us a lot copy protection problems.
One downer, though: By now every single link listed in the very good Readme.txt is broken. Because Stars Wiki has a new URL and our forum here, too. Would it be possible to update this?
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