There’s been a lot of discussion on these kinds of topics on recent games and I thought I’d give you our perspective on it.
No Copy Protection
Elemental, out of the box, like all of Stardock’s other games, has no copy protection whatsoever. However, you obviously need Internet access to get updates. But then, why should this be necessary?
Because Elemental, unlike our previous games, has really been designed to be a game that people can play for decades, this is something that has concerned us. Because we want to encourage people to have the latest version but at the same time, we are aware that some people are worried that 10 years from now, they won’t be able to get the “better” version.
So here is what we’re going to start doing on our developed titles: We’re going to start making archival DVD versions of the game that can be sent to customers. We already do this with Object Desktop (our most popular non-game product). This archival version would have no copy protection whatsoever. It would just be a DVD you can put into your machine.
So starting in October, what we will do is make archival DVD editions of our games starting with Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate Edition and Elemental. Roughly every year or so, if there have been updates, we’ll create a new archival version of the game that people can have sent to them (it’ll just be a DVD).
LAN Games
There’s been a lot of questions of how someone would play Elemental on their LAN with their friends. Here’s my suggested way to do it with minimum hassle.
#1 You’ll need to install Impulse on the machines that will be playing the game. But that’s all. Just install and go to step 2.
#2 Go to http://anywhere.impulsedriven.com which is the web interface to Impulse. From here, you would download the web package of Elemental. As long as Impulse is installed on the machine, you can install the game.
#3 When you install, type in your serial #. If it’s on a LAN, just use your single DVD key, Impulse::Reactor’s GOO uses smart activation (i.e. it doesn’t have a “activation limit” type system) so you can just install it on the various machines on your LAN.
#4 When your friends come over to play, they will need, once in the game, to logon with their own accounts (so they or someone will have to provide them with a serial # to attach to their account but they can use it at your LAN in game). This is because on day 0, the data from the game is handled by our servers (this way, when we update the game data for balancing players don’t have to update their game which would be a real hassle for LAN players). Eventually we plan to release custom servers so that players can make their own stuff but we won’t have that ready at release.
Heh, I guess so. Hey I am not the one that mentioned pirates and clients/servers in the same sentence. Sounds like it was a knock towards pirates to me. Oh wells.
No one really said it was unacceptable. The general theme was don't say this game supports LAN because it doesn't. Don't say it's DRM free when it, the ENTIRE game is not.
This was last time I saw someone from the stardock camp address custom servers, and I've not seen any of them say otherwise since. I've been bringing this up from the beginning so it should be no surprise my stance hasn't really changed.
32 player multiplayer. This is a big one and will take a lot of work but it we are requiring that the game handle up to 32 players playing together. To make this work, it also means that games need to be automatically saved (to our servers regardless of whether it’s on a custom modded server or ours) so that stopping and starting games later is easy. https://forums.stardock.com/373887
32 player multiplayer. This is a big one and will take a lot of work but it we are requiring that the game handle up to 32 players playing together. To make this work, it also means that games need to be automatically saved (to our servers regardless of whether it’s on a custom modded server or ours) so that stopping and starting games later is easy.
https://forums.stardock.com/373887
Waaait a second. Rereading the first post and Frogboy's responses, I think there may have been a fundamental misunderstanding here.
The first post literally states, "In order for players connected via LAN to play multiplayer, you need to go through such and such a process".
What a lot of people are getting from that is, "Elemental supports hosting a game over LAN. However, the game will not allow you to do so unless all players are online and connected to Impulse." If this were true, that enforced login would serve no purpose except as a form of copy protection.
But what he was ACTUALLY trying to say is, "The day zero release of Elemental WILL NOT support hosting a game over a local area network AT ALL. The only way to play multiplayer is to have it hosted by remote Impulse servers. Accessing them requires that each player be logged into Impulse. The game doesn't know or care whether or not the players are on the same network." (Hosting a game over a LAN using a "custom server" may or may not be possible when/if they're implemented; I'm not entirely sure what he means by that.) This ISN'T copy protection; every player would need to be connected to the internet to access the host server regardless. That's just the only form of multiplayer that Stardock had the time and resources to implement.
Most people would never think to wire their computers together for a game that only works with a remote server host in the first place, so the fact that he mentioned LAN at all has been throwing people off. I'm actually not even understanding what sort of group would need to go through steps 2 and 3.
Woohooo . That's the best news I heard All Day (ok so it's been a slow day lol). That IS Awesome though, thanks Frogboy!!! I shall never again be afraid of having to move back to the woods with no Internet connection. Hell, I'll even pay shipping and handling (figure I'll have to anyway)when I need an archived disk .
What's the word on us getting the Gold edition soon? Or is that still up in the air with the IT guys?
Yes, my friend. Yes there is!!!
Nesrie is right, man. Whether or not there is a model for it, there is a demand. I've lived in an area with next to no internet connection for 11 years and to my knowledge that area STILL doesn't have cable internet because the local cable company there says "it's not cost effective to run the cable" which is bullshit because the area in question, Lake Mack, has about 600 people who live there and who all want cable internet. Some day I may have to move back out there because the cost of living is so much lower than where I am now. I hope to hell I never see the place again for as long as I live, but we never know what the future may hold.
definitely seems to be a disconnect in understanding on how multiplayer will work .. (at least at first) it was my under standing that multiplayer would be handled by impulse reactor.. similar to steam, battlenet, and others handling of multiplayer.. there for no multiplayer with out being logged in to impulse..
they also hinted at eventual (as frogboy mentioned) of a future custom server.. how ever like last DragonRider862, i do not recall that there was any mention of actual lan play in fact all i got out of frogboys post was it could be installed via lan then when others came to said lan location they still needed to log in to impulse to play multiplayer and needed their own code..
at least thats what i got from Frogboys post.. not that the game supported lan play...
However we could always ask/hope that when custom servers are considered/worked on that it include a lan play style.
Frogboy since your in a talkative mood i know i've asked this before but haven't seen a reply to it. Any idea how big the Digital Download will be? are we looking at 1gb? 5gb? 10gb? 20gb?
While I purchase most games through Steam and the older games from GOG (Masters of Magic, MOO 1+ 2, etc.), I still put a high priority to purchasing games from Stardock. I have opted to get the Limited Edition of Elemental. With that out of the way, I noticed that good questions were not addressed among the debate that seems to be brewing here.
One of these questions was: Could an account with two registered keys on it allow for multiplayer to be played between the keys on a single impulse account? (multiple keys, 1 account)
My next question is, how will LAN work exactly (as in clarification). Can one registered impulse version of Elemental, play a direct connect version of LAN, without the aid of the internet? Among the occasional activities with my friends there are a wide range of examples from table-top Warhammer (Orcs here), to Starcraft and Civ 5 LAN Parties. Also the occasional DnD and Spellforce gatherings.
Civ 5 did not require Internet access for direct connect games. I am only curious, though for the most part, I am not buying this game for Multiplayer, as most of my friends are pretty much out of state and out of mind, everyone including myself is moving on to the future with our educations and our lives (some having even given up gaming altogether) and contact has been lost.
It would be nice for future considerations though for this title, I won't fret over not having it. LAN being taken out was one of several in a series of rather disappointing turns of events with Starcraft 2 and it's horrible naming system not to mention the attempt to jam Facebook and Twitter down everyone's throat, the game is still excellent though.
My last couple of questions is on the still murky jumble of information that is floating around the Faction Creator. This would probably be the only feature I would fume over a little. I do not particularly like using text editors, and am not in the modding scene all that much, I know others don't mind and that is perfectly alright, but one of the major draws of Galactic Civilization 2 was the ability to rather simplistically create my own faction (leader pics and all) without having to really dive into editors all that much.
Also judging by a previous poll not many including myself particularly care to play as one of the pre-made kingdoms, as we would rather make our own (as in Galciv 2).
Question 1: Will there be a working UI driven editor at least in the Workshop? Or are we all relegated to text for our Faction creation needs?
Question 2: Taking into consideration for the need to maintain multiplayer balance on official servers, will we at least be able to design our multiplayer kingdom's peasants and general color scheme with the inclusion of the ability to name our kingdoms? Also, will this include a simple heraldry editor to customize our flags?
I only want a simple editor that would operate kind of like halo's emblem system, and no custom pictures so as to prevent people from marching their "army of dongs" with their phallic flags into my territory making me a very unhappy and angry person.
Spore pretty much showed us the depths of immaturity that would be traversed by the masses if you gave them any kind of creative freedom and you didn't at least have checks and balances to monitor these idiots.
This concludes my list of questions. I hope to get an answer, and yes I still have my Limited Edition on preorder and cannot wait to play.
Not reasonable for a middle or lower class family where the father has 5 sons and/or daughters above 8 years old... $300.oo just so the family can play the game together... PLUS multiply the cost if they wish to play any expansions released. OUCH !! Seriously your design prevents this demographic from playing your game... guess they'll play some other PC game or a board game or pray for hotseat functionality.
NTJedi are you being sarcastic? It is difficult to tell.
I think the title really gave the wrong impression. No Copy Protection should never go next to Activation, or Activation next to LAN. There are too many automatic assumptions that we make. I think there would have been virtually no problem if Frogboy had titled the thread "Elemental: Minimal Copy Protection, Simple Activation Required for MP and more".
In other words, the title of the thread lead to automatic assumptions, and a great deal of fuss when those assumptions weren't met.
I think in this case the title of the thread causes juxtapositions, and juxtapositions aren't good for forum agreeability. Simple as that. Which is why I thought an easy solution would be to rename the thread. Would have as many people got upset if the title of the thread was:
"Elemental: Minimal Copy Protection, Simple Activation Required for MP and more"?
Sometimes you can summarise too much of the content of a thread and lose the detail.
Best regards,Steven.
I personally wouldn't mind seeing Stardock use a little DRM on their items. I would not want to see the same thing happening to them that happened to the developers of World of Goo (2D Boy) and Machinarium (Amanita Design). I just do not want to see them go overboard Ubi-style.
What we have here is more than acceptable and is even less intrusive than steam, if anything I think steam should probably be considered the standard for DRM. I wouldn't gripe really if Impulse had a little more security, just don't want anything that really acts like a Trojan at times (SECUROM). Or to be chained to the internet for a single player game (Ubisoft Online Services Platform).
Again, what we have now is quite alright. And I am guessing with the later inclusion of privately run servers you could probably start offline LAN games. Just have to be patient for this one. Again though I will mainly be playing this myself, so mulitplayer is not an issue (easy Kingdom creation is though). But just for an off the wall quirk, I would like to see a replay system, lol, yea I know it sounds insane but a replay system with the ability to shout-cast would make for awesome Let's Plays.
It may sound boring but I do like watching let's plays even while I am playing these games, would be good for passing down some pointers from the pros. Too many people were turning after action reports into fan-fiction threads, so much so that I was prepared to ask for the addition of a fan-fiction forum so as to filter these people out and keep the more professional AARs (AmazingBen, HydroAC and Wyndstar for example) where they belong.
Yup. I like that they are doing this though. I'll never use the service, but if Billy Someguy wants to be able to get a dvd of the latest version of the game, then its nice that they offer this service (logically with some sort of cost to the user). I think their patching strategy is brilliant and forces the attach rate of impulse. I, for one, wouldn't even have impulse installed today if patches weren't handled by it. But because I do, they can alert me to sales, etc, and I'll keep it installed as I want to have the most up-to-date version of my games. As a result, I get value out of having their client installed. Its a win-win imo. Anyway, this is nice for folks that want a hard copy of the latest ver of the game.
Too bad you scared froggie away I do agree on one thing frogboy said, but I probably disagree on everything else.
First of all what I agree on is that your 15 friends shouldn't be running off with your copy of the game after a LAN and having a full game, that's just wrong and I totally regret my former gaming days where this was just common. I recently even bought a ton of legacy games that I probably can't run anymore just because I remembered having copied them over a network share and playing them in multiplayer and when I got home I played it in single player. Sure that was fine for a 10-15 year old kids concious but it plagues me now and I'm trying to make up for those towards the correct companies.
BUT
The problem with a LAN is this single thing called 'space' around here, if it's a 3-8 person LAN you can usually fit it in someones garage or living/study room. But when you go above that you'll need more space these areas are usually more remote like some hall or bigger garage. Getting internet here is hard and when it's a private lan even if you do get internet there it's probably not going to be enough for that amount of people. GOGO Fiber into the dance hall a few km into woods!, that's actually a true place where we had a lan for 10+ people, no internet even tho most had adsl at home.
FIXABLE?
The only real way I have seen this fixable is the way Blizzard handled their early warcraft 2 and diablo I think. Basically you need one person with a real copy. This CD would have something similar as an activation for copy protection (YES, Activation is a COPY protection), if you do not provide the copy protection you could only install a restricted copy that would never a real copy as the server. So the guy who owns the game comes to lan and everyone goes "WOHA, Elemental" and he just shares a network drive with a restricted copy, everyone grabs it and connects to his server on the LAN (The only thing they can do with this copy). Everyone plays and this guy does free marketing to you and if anyone liked the game they'll have to ask him to pirate it to them or they'll buy it! This is pretty much the only solution I have to this problem
About your feature list:
No Copy Protection, do you mean "No Media Copy Protection" or what? Because activation/"multiplayer limitations" is most deffo something along the lines of protecting this copy. Sure it's a nice marketing thing to write that there but it really doesn't hold up. No copy protection would be freally being able to transfer registry settings & the game across computers and still being able to use full features without having to verify or activate anything (internet connection for accounts do belong in this section as well).
LAN Support? Errr LAN Support that requires internet, what is that? Somekind of joke? now your local house is LAN, the Internet is a really large WAN.... so you basically have "LAN Support with Access to Stardock WAN Required" feature.... Okay now that really doesn't sound very local at all. Is the LAN Support a feature where you can type the Local Network Address instead of the Internet IP to connect?Oh well enough for my ranting I have to go to work!
Of course it's a non-issue, when those that are having issues can't be measured - because they're having issues!
Contrary to what you seem to think, not every LAN has access to the internet, or even desire to have access to the internet. Outside of the major (commercial) LAN-parties I've been on, we've rarely had internet access or more than one computer (in another room entirely).
Quoting Frogboy, reply 69First, 99.9% of users of this game are going to play it single player only.
Do you even READ your own polls !! Gosh Darn last I saw on the developer journals the polls showed 10% wanting multiplayer not the 0.1% in your imagination. I remember the same multiplayer pains from Galactic Civilization_2 where 33% voted MULTIPLAYER from YOUR poll on YOUR FORUMS, but it was ignored and today those Galactic Civilization_2(SP_ONLY) forums are as dead as an asteroid in space. Your dislike and "almost" hatred for multiplayer has blinded your vision of the truth and pure facts.
IF you ever desire to create a game where friends and family will praise it on the same levels as Monopoly or Civilization or whatever then you need to make multiplayer simple and inexpensive. Take a glance at the original DIABLO... did they require multiplayer to have multiple serial#'s, a "reliable" internet service provider and logged into their corporate servers just to play multiplayer??? NO. Anyone could play as the warrior on other computers and those wanting to play the other two classes were then expected to buy the game. I came from a family where I was the 8th brother with 6 sisters... so I definitely feel annoyed your design does not consider the middle class and lower class families.
Well thats to bad about LAN. I was hoping to buy the limited edition and be able to play against my son but I guess not. I better go out and buy another copy of monopoly board game........................just incase..........................
Exactly!! Frogboy please be aware any LAN which "requires" WAN is not LAN.
Whatever type of programming nightmare(s) occurred which turned Frogboy towards "almost" hating the creation of multiplayer games must have been scorchingly hellish.... because I know he enjoys playing multiplayer games.
Those who respond to polls, and the general playing public- are not the same group. The poll responders tend to be the most hardcore fans, and much more likely to want MP then the general playing public.
That said, I do think for this game to be classic it will need a good MP, and what Stardock has set up now is not that.
Demigod launch was an exercise in everything that can go wrong with P2P (or non-central-server-based) multiplayer gaming. I can understand why Frogboy only really wants to deal with Server/Client multiplay options now.
If I was Frogboy, I would go crazy too. Elemental's LAN policy of each person buying a serial key is not insane. Besides, this game will be primarily single player anyways.
I still cannot believe that the one game I've been waiting for all year is coming out on the first day of the Fall semester. F. M. L.
So a family of 4 is expected to spend $200.oo so they can all play Elemental together and then if the first expansion costs $30.oo they are expected to spend another $120.oo so they can all play with the expansion!! Since money is obviously not a problem for you then you should setup a foundation/charity where you buy the game for normal size families and larger so they can afford to play the game.
In regards to singleplayer take a look at what it has done for the Galactic Civilization forums... barely any responses for months. Makes me almost want to use a shotgun and put it out of its misery. I can easily list many older multiplayer games where the forums are still buzzing with conversations and new stuff. While I definitely play BOTH singleplayer and multiplayer it's clear longterm love comes from the multiplayer communities.
If that family can afford PCs for every member of their family they can afford games for every member too. 12.5% of people know demographic statistics are made up.
Ok, to clarify so I can tell my friends the details: When I get my game, I can install it on all 4 computers here. I then tell my 3 friends that they all need to buy their own game too? But when they come over, they need to "log in" using the # from the game they each purchased, and then, we can all play on my Lan?
Actually it is mod communities that keep games alive longterm.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
