timothyb@crash.UUCP (Timothy Burleson) (11/19/86)
My friend bought Ultima III and now his game disk won't work. He showed me his ORIGINAL game disk, so this is not due to piracy. In fact, due to the fact that he doesn't have any of those copy programs like MIRROR or QUICK NIBBLE, he was unable to make a backup and had to use the original as his game disk!!! To top it off, Ultima III won't work with the write protect on as it writes to the disk constantly! I can't believe that a company would make you do this to your game disk. Anyway... His problem is that whenever he goes into ANY town, the people will not do business with him. When he tries to buy food or supplies, they say, "Honesty is a virtue. I will not trade with you". Naturally, not being able to buy food, his characters all die of starvation. We tried deleting EVERY character on the disk, disbanding the party, and even (using a backup I made for him) tried deleting some of the files. I have two theories. 1. Somehow, his disk was altered and now the program thinks it is an illegal backup. or 2. The program was written this way to react to thievery or decietful behavior. Either way, I think its pretty crappy to make the game un-usable when he paid over $40 dollars for it and HAD to play on the original disk. If anyone can help, PLEASE send E-Mail to me... Thanks. Timothy B. Burleson San Diego Swamplands {akgua,hplabs!hp-sdd,sdcsvax,nosc}!crash!timothyb
hutchson@convex.UUCP (11/22/86)
I too bought Ultima III (for an unnamed but non_Amiga-compatible system.) After playing it for awhile (with, of course, a copy of the game disk--as any idiot knows better than to use the MASTER copy!) I noticed the precatory shopkeepers also. After some of the same experiments and some others (like patching the history files!) I observed that the master copy would allow purchases, but a working copy with presumably the same data would not. I took Ultima III back to the store. I told them it would not work on my system. I did not elaborate: my system includes not only my hardware but my environment and the procedures I use to protect, load, and use data. I got my money back. As a programmer, I find their way of allowing people to make demonstration disks by copying the master disk ingenious. And I admit it amused me for an hour or three. But that's not the kind of puzzle I pay for.