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Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

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Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#191

Post by KellyCriterion »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #52
ekelsen wrote: post #11

Was there anyway to make this work unless every CD was burned with a different key used to do the encryption?

No. That cracking group would have known a priori the phone call was a pretense, because id was very unlikely to press distinct CDs. So they could focus on conventional cracking techniques.

Wouldnt you need different master-CDs for doing that, as AFAIR when pressing CDs commercially, you usually have exactly only one master?

(maybe a different one per geo-locatoin, if at all)

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#192

Post by ranger_danger »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #151
ranger_danger wrote: post #2

Is it really fair to call these such algorithms "security through obscurity"? By that logic, wouldn't real symmetric crypto also be considered the same, since it's still just math that similarly swaps the data with other bytes, based on an "obscured" password or key?

If I ask you to pass on a message from me to someone else, and the message is encrypted using a symmetric key known to me, and to the recipient, but not to you, there's no security-by-obscurity in place. If I ask you to pass on a message to someone, and the message is encrypted using a symmetric key known only to me, and I expect the recipient to be able to decrypt it because he knows that the key is written on the b…

But all parties are able to bruteforce the key, it's still just math, still obscured. The only difference is how complicated the math is, and how long the attack takes.

Changing from a simpler substitution algorithm to a "real" crypto cipher IMO is still just as symmetrical, and still technically obscurity, only more complicated this time.

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#193

Post by Dan42 »

I'm upvoting this just for the blast-from-the-past anachronistic hype intro.

> With their capacity of 640 MiB (three times the storage of PC HDD at the time), CDs allowed enthusiasts to step into a world of multimedia, made of high-resolution 640x480 256 colors palette-indexed photos[1], VOC soundtracks, and play with Video For Windows butter-smooth 12 fps 240x179 videos[2][3] lasting up to several seconds.

Deliciously worded, and highlights how far we have come since then.

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#194

Post by user_of_the_wek »

beloch wrote: post #33

"For video game developers, the CD-ROM was an odd beast. The capacity far exceeded the quantity of assets they were able to produce. A few titles, like 7th Guest (1993) or Phantasmagoria (1995) introduced Full Motion Video (in a world where only part of the screen could be animated). " ------ The title that made me go out and buy a CD-ROM drive was "Wing Commander III", released during the holidays of 1994, a year an…

> like Mark Hamill

I just wanted to add, it also had John Rhys-Davies and Malcom McDowell! Crazy cast for a video game, especially back then. And these were not „just“ voice roles.

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#196

Post by breezybottom »

986aignan wrote: post #36
doubled112 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data track never sounds very good. A little too industrial for my tastes.

Now I'm curious if it's possible to make a data track that has at least some resemblance to actual music. That could be an interesting challenge if it can't obviously be ruled out.

Well all digital music is data, so yes.

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#197

Post by nekooooo »

fipar wrote: post #172
beloch wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uncompressed audio tracks may have been necessary to get acceptable performance. e.g. GTA 1 came with some PCM tracks on the CD. If you didn't like them, you could pop in a different CD and get different music on the radio in-game. Playing mp3's was, in the early to mid-90's, actually pretty intensive. There were still a decent number of 386's around that could barely run a mp3 player in a Linux console-only setup. Y…

Even as late as in 2008 I had such a slow machine that when I had to use NetBeans and I wanted to listen to music at the same time, I'd just play music CDs with headphones plugged into the headphones port of the cdrom drive :)

jeez, were you running a cyrix 6x86 in 2008??

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#198

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

beloch wrote: post #33

"For video game developers, the CD-ROM was an odd beast. The capacity far exceeded the quantity of assets they were able to produce. A few titles, like 7th Guest (1993) or Phantasmagoria (1995) introduced Full Motion Video (in a world where only part of the screen could be animated). " ------ The title that made me go out and buy a CD-ROM drive was "Wing Commander III", released during the holidays of 1994, a year an…

> Games were still being released for the SNES at this point, so imagine the contrast!

SNES games aged a lot less than those silly DOS games.

(I mean that SNES games look more sleek and "modern" today.)

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#199

Post by MBCook »

user_of_the_wek wrote: post #194
beloch wrote: post #33

"For video game developers, the CD-ROM was an odd beast. The capacity far exceeded the quantity of assets they were able to produce. A few titles, like 7th Guest (1993) or Phantasmagoria (1995) introduced Full Motion Video (in a world where only part of the screen could be animated). " ------ The title that made me go out and buy a CD-ROM drive was "Wing Commander III", released during the holidays of 1994, a year an…

> like Mark Hamill I just wanted to add, it also had John Rhys-Davies and Malcom McDowell! Crazy cast for a video game, especially back then. And these were not „just“ voice roles.

I hated Malcom McDowell for years because of the game. Probably one of the first celebrities I had a strong opinion about.

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#200

Post by benj111 »

RobotCaleb wrote: post #181
benj111 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess to save on installed size?

It's not about size or file count or disk space consumed. The question is about why would you require the extra overhead of playing the compressed version which involves decompressing it on the fly in some way, versus just playing the already decompressed version. In this case it was stated that both the compressed and decompressed versions live side by side. So there is no install size saved.

The OP stated

"The game Titanfall on PC has the audio in it twice, compressed and decompressed."

'has it twice' could just be on the install media, and compressed/ uncompressed chosen as a trade off between install size and performance.

Anyway searching around the OP seems to be misrembering. Titanfall seems to be well-known for 35gb out of the 48gb install being uncompressed audio. I couldn't find a reference to it also having compressed audio also.

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