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Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

mrwint.github.io

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Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#71

Post by skocznymroczny »

Interesting, I remember the speed skating issue being a problem in the copy I had back in the 1990s, but I don't remember the issues in other games like downhill and such.

People usually find these gameplay based copy protections amusing as in "hehe stupid pirates let them play a broken game", but I have bad memories of them because I often had them trigger when playing legit copies of the game. All it took was having CD emulation software installed (not even running) and some games would already flag you as a pirate.

Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#72

Post by GuB-42 »

throwaway7894 wrote: post #59
GuB-42 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Razor1911 is still active! Both on the demoscene and on the warez scene.

Sorry for the lazy question, but would you be able to share some links or pointers to where these guys are active? I've been out of the loop for a few decades but enjoyed the scene when I was a teenager.

On the demo part: https://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=158

One the crack side, I don't really follow much but you can find the occasional release, for example Red Dead Redemption.

Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#73

Post by fipar »

Not mentioned in the article is Sid Meyer's Pirates! (the exclamation mark was part of the name, though I do get excited when talking about the game so I'd add it myself if it weren't).

This was one of the 2 (!) games I had as original at that time(the other being Sub Battle Simulator), and it had a beautiful map and book. The book would include some details that were asked before the first fencing fight, like "When did ship X leave port Y?" and if you got the answer wrong, as best as I could try (and I did intentionally try to beat that part after giving the wrong answer) you'd always lose it and not be able to start your career.

Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#74

Post by cevn »

miek wrote: post #22
Ayesh wrote: post #21

Not a DOS game, but one of the early Prince of Persia (circa 2007) had an evil DRM trick: after a few hours into the game, there is a pressure pad activated door that does not work on cracked versions. So if you are in a cracked versions, and if the crack is not good enough, you will spend a lot of time frustrated unable to go past that door. It is possible that the crack itself broke the game, but I want to believe…

Since you mentioned "early Prince of Persia" being 2007, I thought I might blow your mind by pointing to the 1989 game :)

I loaded this up recently on Genesis and it actually blew my mind how smooth the animations were for the 'parkour', to find out it was all mo-capped and faithfully recreated into pixels. I had no idea people were doing this in the 80's.

Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#75

Post by abra0 »

skocznymroczny wrote: post #71

Interesting, I remember the speed skating issue being a problem in the copy I had back in the 1990s, but I don't remember the issues in other games like downhill and such. People usually find these gameplay based copy protections amusing as in "hehe stupid pirates let them play a broken game", but I have bad memories of them because I often had them trigger when playing legit copies of the game. All it took was havin…

Tbh it still puzzles me why gameplay degradation specifically was chosen as a way to try to discourage piracy. I imagine many more people hit the degradations, thought the game was just buggy and abandoned it, compared to people who were motivated by bad gameplay to give the developers money.

The mindfuck angle is pretty effective though. This article wouldn't have been written otherwise.

Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#76

Post by mschuster91 »

watusername wrote: post #43

I always find official cracks* like this to be amusing and worrying at the same time. Worrying because it could mean that the current owners don't even have access to the source code anymore, and it's sad to see the source of those games lost to time. Tangentially, this phenomenon isn't limited to retro DOS games: Rockstar was caught shipping a pirated version of Midnight Club 2 [0], and Sinking Ship [1] is another e…

> Worrying because it could mean that the current owners don't even have access to the source code anymore, and it's sad to see the source of those games lost to time.

This is way too common. It even happens to the best and largest games - the code for CnC Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 is supposed to be lost to time [1].

Often times it's just IP rights that get passed on when a studio collapses or gets bought out, and in other cases source code for dependencies (e.g. music or video player SDKs) isn't available any more.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43197320

Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#77

Post by crtasm »

GuB-42 wrote: post #72
throwaway7894 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for the lazy question, but would you be able to share some links or pointers to where these guys are active? I've been out of the loop for a few decades but enjoyed the scene when I was a teenager.

On the demo part: https://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=158 One the crack side, I don't really follow much but you can find the occasional release, for example Red Dead Redemption.

https://predb.me/?group=razor1911 more active than I imagined, though it looks like most of them are basic steam DRM so no cracking work needed

Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#78

Post by wildzzz »

cevn wrote: post #74
miek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you mentioned "early Prince of Persia" being 2007, I thought I might blow your mind by pointing to the 1989 game :)

I loaded this up recently on Genesis and it actually blew my mind how smooth the animations were for the 'parkour', to find out it was all mo-capped and faithfully recreated into pixels. I had no idea people were doing this in the 80's.

More like a rotoscoped bitmap animation than what we consider 3D motion capture now.

Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#80

Post by p0w3n3d »

candl wrote: post #34

Not DOS, but I remember playing a copy of Settlers III and was surprised when iron smelters produced pigs instead of iron.

That one was quite famous. Also the CD came with some sub-channel data, that only one program was able to copy. It had sheep on it but forgot its name
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