rotberg@dms.UUCP (Ed Rotberg) (04/23/91)
I had another run in with Sir-tech software this weeekend. After reading the traffic on Knight of Diamonds, and after Bane of the Macintosh turned out to be such a disaster, I decided to give Sir-tech another try, so I purchased Knight of Diamonds, the sequel to Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (especially as the original game was done so well that it STILL works). I installed the software, transfered my characters, and sat down to what I thought was going to be a few hours of entertainment. I had my code book handy when the program asked me to complete the spell that started MIIR EAIR (or something like that). I opened the reddish-brown book with dark blue print (making it not only un-xeroxable, but darn near unreadable as well) and lo and behold, NONE of the magic words started with the letter M. They all started with K instead. "Probably just a glitch" I thought to myself, so I tried to exit so that I could re-boot and try again. Well, no go -- the program just keeps asking you to try another password -- ad nauseum. I finally used TMON to interrupt the program and exit to shell. I then reran the program and tried again. Guess what? That's right, no glitch. It asked again for a spell starting with the letter M. By this time I was annoyed. I noted that it was after hours for the Hotline (not that they could do me much good) so I decided to pop back into TMON and "fix" things myself. I just intercepted the ModalDialog trap and after that it was less of a challenge to modify the program than killing Werdna in Proving Grounds... Now I can make up my own "magic spells" to appease the "Spirits Protecting Against Piracy" (the SPAP demons). All in all, it was more fun than the game has been so far, but I've only finished the first level. I expect it will improve. I sure wish Sir-tech's act would improve... Please note that I would not have even tried to do this had they sent me a program with a copy protection sheme that worked properly. I don't believe in breaking these things unless it fixes the program to work in a situation where it would otherwise fail for reasons other than piracy. I BUY MY SOFTWARE (and return it if it sucks)!! - Ed Rotberg -