Tides of War

I have to say it's now giving me grief too.

I just upgraded my pc, and have 5 HDs in there now. Unfortunately, to get it all in there, I had to move the DVD drive with the ERT disc off IDE and onto a USB interface. That wouldn't be a problem, except for the fact that Starforce refuses to recognize the disc now. I see the drive spin up and it seems to be seeking, but then Starforce says it's not there. Googling my symptoms, I see that it's a Starforce problem. Either they haven't yet supported USB optical drives, or refuse to.

Others complain about Starforce for different reasons, but this is a truly major problem. There is no video game that I play as much as ERT, in fact, it's pretty much all I play, and now I can't do so with ease.

Starforce does indeed suck.

But our systems are kept up to date, we observe best practices and no issues. It hasn't even bothered our Nero system.

That is a slight problem. Not all of us have the time nor the means to constantly update our systems. Although after this winter I'll have less time but more means to do so. I have given up on chapter 1 completly. Every time I go to play the game starforce wants me to install it again. Using starforce will be a rather serious mistake and will be one of the largest considerations when I go to buy this game.

I still stand by my previous statement, but with a less preferred internal configuration, I was able to get the crucial DVD-RW drive back on an IDE controller. (To the detrement of an HDs access time)

Having a piece of software dictate where my drives go is pretty galling. If it were anything but ERT, I wouldn't have done it. I love ERT that much.

We will be much more careful with our choice of copy protection next time. That said, starforce has been a good system for us and prevented piracy extremely well, I'm sorry to see that it's caused so many challenges for people (real and imagined).

I just posted this over on Chapter 1, but since most people are probably just checking on Chapter 2, I'm also posting it here. Especially since my previous post several months ago under the "CD Check" topic disappeared.

Starforce is a problem, no matter what the fanboys say. Just because some people don't seem to have problems, doesn't mean there aren't any. I'll give you a couple of items to mull over to support this.

First, UbiSoft, one of Starforce's largest supporter/customers, has dropped Starforce from their future games.

Second, Starforce themselves recommends that producers/developers issue a patch to remove their protection after a few patch cycles "to enhance system stability", etc..

Check out the SH3 forums for more info.

I'm waiting for Enigma and SH3 to remove starforce before I install them on my system. Especially considering the problems some are apparently having get it completely removed from their systems.

Unfortunately, I guess I'll also have to wait for Enigma Chapter 3, sigh.

There is a version of Enigma Classic that is available in Germany that has no copy protection beyond a pretty standard CDCheck - starforce is not on it. While it is in German, the version will patch up to the International Gold Version.

Please do not pirate it. Halcyon is our distributor and is one of only 2 publishers we have worked with that are honest, trustworthy and all-round good people.

I believe it's available from GreenPepper as a download (might be the once who did a repackage...data isn't in front of me at the moment).

-East

There is a version of Enigma Classic that is available in Germany that has no copy protection beyond a pretty standard CDCheck - starforce is not on it. While it is in German, the version will patch up to the International Gold Version.
Please do not pirate it. Halcyon is our distributor and is one of only 2 publishers we have worked with that are honest, trustworthy and all-round good people.

I believe it's available from GreenPepper as a download (might be the once who did a repackage...data isn't in front of me at the moment).

-East

Hi East,

Thanks for the info, and a BIG THANK YOU for dropping Starforce.

I do have a coupe of questions that I hope someone can help me with.

Since you've decided to drop Starforce, is there, or will there be, a patch/way to remove it from the original US Dreamcatcher version?

Does the patch for the German version to the International Gold Version that you mentioned above change/add English? Unfortunately I'm not familiar with the differences between the US and International versions. If so, does anyone have a link to that website?

Thanks again.

We can't patch the current USA version to no starforce. It's all added by our publisher and we dont have the right to release a patch without their approval (this kind of patch)

The german language version will patch up to IGold which adds french, spanish and english to the mix.

We can't patch the current USA version to no starforce. It's all added by our publisher and we dont have the right to release a patch without their approval (this kind of patch)

Tragic.

Do you think your relationship with Dreamcatcher will improve to the point that they'd approve one?

We can't patch the current USA version to no starforce. It's all added by our publisher and we dont have the right to release a patch without their approval (this kind of patch)

Tragic.

Do you think your relationship with Dreamcatcher will improve to the point that they'd approve one?

East, do you think there's any chance of this?

I'd really like to play Enigma again, but after I reformatted and reinstalled my system awhile back, I decided not to put Starforce back on it.