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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

#81

Post by mook »

ColdStream wrote: post #74
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…

I find it so funny that there are new games that are are smaller than Wing Commander 3 despite the 32 year gap. To be fair, they obviously pack their data very differently.

Meh, in the early days of DVDs I recall a game that came with uncompressed 48kHz audio. Compress it to mp3 (which the game naively accepted if you had the correct Windows filters) and it fits in a CD.

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

#82

Post by samplatt »

doubled112 wrote: post #17
jonhohle wrote: post #3

It’s worth getting the Quake shareware disc for the NIN soundtrack. Official track names are now available following the vinyl release a few years ago. This is the only CD release of the soundtrack. Just don’t forget to skip track 1.

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

Honestly that'd probably appeal to Reznor's aesthetic.

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

#83

Post by bombcar »

zf00002 wrote: post #45

I remember Microsoft had a time limited version of Office on cd-rom that was sold for a couple bucks at Kinko's. You could replace a .dll in it and that removed the time limit.

There was something similar (but I can't recall what) where you just set your clock far in the future (like 2010!) and then the trial would last that long + one month.

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

#84

Post by wbl »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #69
shoo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there isn't a market for gamers buying games on CDs these days, so it's not really a problem that needs to be solved

Well how does Steam do DRM?

Its easier on a system that doesn't need to do broadcast distribution and with servers available.

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

#85

Post by charcircuit »

shoo wrote: post #55
brcmthrowaway wrote: post #39

If you were to do this today, how could you make it foolproof?

there isn't a market for gamers buying games on CDs these days, so it's not really a problem that needs to be solved

The same problem exists with PC games released on DVDs.

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

#86

Post by mook »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #62

> Upon contacting the operator, users were to also communicate a "SOURCE CODE". It played no part in generating the Unlock code. It may have been a way for the distributors to claim a transaction fee. Browsing eBay, I found many with names indicative of past/present retailers. 12-BSTBY BestBuy, 24-CCITY Computer City, 22-CUSA CompUSA, 88, 11-1111, 38-EB Electronic Boutique, 44-FTRSP Future Shop (Canada), 34-EGGH Eggh…

Presumably MCTR was MicroCenter as well.

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

#87

Post by gbil »

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…

Ah Phantasmagoria, that was an interesting case with my CDROM drive at the time, I think it was a Mitsumi one and there was a compatibility issue with specific discs from the 7disc bundle, so I buy the game, going home and start playing with some friends - that was common practice back then - we finish day 1 and I enter the 2nd disc and the FMV is choppy as hell! Try again and again and again and I assume the disc is problematic, so we go back to the shop and they ask what CDROM drive I have, I say Mitsumi and they tell me that it is a known issue with some drives and there is no workaround, so they offer to exchange the game for a different one, oh this "Harvester" game looks intriguing :) Fun times!

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

#88

Post by palmotea »

> By June 1996, after three years of hard work, id Software had completed their next title, Quake. As for their previous title, they were going to release both a shareware version and a full version of their game. Since it used a mere 22 MiB of storage, people at id Software had the idea of leveraging the remaining capacity of a CD-ROM. Why not include encrypted versions of the full id catalogue of games? Not only this would cut out the middlemen, it would give instant access to gamers with a simple phone call and a credit card.

That wasn't a new idea at the time. In 1994 Apple distributed a "software store" CD-ROM called Software Dispatch that implemented the same idea: https://68kmla.org/bb/threads/apple-software-dispatch-from-1.... The thing was full of demos, and if you wanted to buy the full version, you just had to call some number to get an unlock code.

I think I had at least one other CD-ROM that implemented the same concept. I'm sure there were tons of others.

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

#89

Post by merb »

charcircuit wrote: post #85
shoo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there isn't a market for gamers buying games on CDs these days, so it's not really a problem that needs to be solved

The same problem exists with PC games released on DVDs.

there isn't a market for gamers buying games on DVDs these days. BlueRay the same.

Of course there are voice that do want real disks but sadly that time is over. Digital sales won.

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

#90

Post by prmoustache »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #60
986aignan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds like the sort of thing Aphex Twin would do.

That's how I tentatively "imitated" Aphex Twin and Autechre when I was a teenager using impulse tracker. Selecting random files as samples until I would find a section that sounded the way I wanted.
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