pochron@cat52.cs.wisc.edu (David Pochron) (12/12/90)
All this talk about game incompatabilities and copy protection made me wonder if there is a better way to distribute the program disks. Here's something I thought of, I haven't thought it all through yet, so there are probably some liabilities involved: 1) The program comes out of the box on a disk in custom-track, COMPRESSED format. Putting a custom boot block on this disk would probably be needed. The disk would be heavily copy protected. There must be a custom serial # on every copy of this disk. 2) User boots this disk, and an installation screen comes up, asking whether the user wants to: A] Install on a diskette in fastload format B] Install on hard drive using AmigaDOS files. Then, in the second series of prompts, it would ask: A] Install using keydisk copy protection (user must insert this disk in order to boot the new game disk) B] Install using manual lookup C] No copy protection - call company and give ID info about yourself and the serial # on the disk. User must enter password given by company to access this feature. Password is different on every disk. This would allow floppy users to get the most loading performance they can, and still let HD users run it off the HD. If users became tired of the copy protection, they can make a non-copy protected version, for a small amount of trouble, very quickly, with just a phone call. Since the installation disk has the program compressed on it, the company saves a little $$$ by using less disks. Personally, having to install a program is no big deal to me, and the benefits outweigh the delay between opening the box and playing the game. Since you can install the program several times on different disks, no need for backups is there. You still need the key disk or manual. If the key disk goes bad, you can switch to manual copy protection, or call the company and install a copyable version. PROBLEMS: Slightly more expensive duplication, more company phone support needed, more "doors" for pirates to hack open the copy protection, (though the compressed code would probably help prevent this) still doesn't solve bad programming practices w/ 68030 machines, etc. Comment on this if you like! -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- David M. Pochron | from Rescue Rangers, _A Fly in the Ointment_ pochron@garfield.cs.wisc.edu| Gadget to Dale: "Keep the hands off the body!" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
scott@next-5.gac.edu (Scott Hess) (12/12/90)
In article <1990Dec11.205242.12917@daffy.cs.wisc.edu> pochron@cat52.cs.wisc.edu (David Pochron) writes:
1) The program comes out of the box on a disk in custom-track, COMPRESSED
format. Putting a custom boot block on this disk would probably be needed.
The disk would be heavily copy protected. There must be a custom serial
# on every copy of this disk.
This is acceptable.
2) User boots this disk, and an installation screen comes up, asking whether
the user wants to:
A] Install on a diskette in fastload format
B] Install on hard drive using AmigaDOS files.
Oops. I'm not letting that thing _near_ my computer. We're talking
about someone who list tar.Z files before untarring them to make sure
they aren't going to overwrite his already developed ~/usr/bin
directory. I will let programs by people I trust install themselves,
because generally people I trust are smart enough to watch out for
"oops"s.
I don't trust most game companies.
Still, since I don't run copy protected software, anyhow . . . :-) The
install problem is still a problem. Many people don't like invisible
happenings. Even if they let a program install themselves, it's
nice to be able to see what it did when you're out to undo what it just
destroyed.
--
scott hess scott@gac.edu
Independent NeXT Developer GAC Undergrad
<I still speak for nobody>
"Tried anarchy, once. Found it had too many constraints . . ."
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Richard Simmons . . ."