Re: Star Wars: Empire @ War

Shawn Wilson wrote:
"Gwen Morse" <goldmooneachna@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

I have a copy of Star Wars Empire @ War that I bought for my son.
After installing it, I get an error message that I can't play because
of emulation software I have installed.

I have Alcohol 52% installed so I can play The Sims 2 without carting
the disks everywhere. I don't have _any_ software on my computer that
I don't have the original disks for.

Do I have any effing options to getting the game working? Otherwise, I
paid $50 for a game I can't play and that I can't return.

So far as I know there's no way around the install problem but to remove
Alcohol before you install.

As another respondent said, you can use stuff like Pr0tSt0p or CureROM
to fool the game into thinking that Alcohol isn't there. Sadly nothing
works with 1.03 at the moment.

Fortunately, you don't need Alcohol- what you need is a no-cd patch for The
Sims 2, which you can get at http://www.gamecopyworld.com/ .

Yup. Last I looked they had no-cd patches for all the expansions too.

I refuse to shuffle disks as well, so I no-cd patch every game I get. (and
2 of them (Dungeon Siege, Planescape Torment) required hex editing the
executable and I *still* haven't found one that works for StarCraft)

Dude, I have a noCD exe for StarCraft (assuming you have BroodWar
installed too) - let me know your email and I'll send it to you.

Unfortunately, there's no patch out for SW:EatW version 1.03 yet. There's a
1.02 no-cd patch, but the game will automatically patch itself to 1.03 when
you run it, so that doesn't help. Every day I check to see if a patch has
been posted.

I fear it won't be. The game is just too old for the crackers to bother
with. Same problem with Knights Of Honor 1.03

The solution is the new version of CureROM, which is supposed to be
able to fool the updated protection introduced in 1.03 - unfortunately
you'll need a maxi-image, but it's better than swapping discs.

Anyway, no-cd patches are the way to go, but depend on someone else doing
the work (the above mentioned hex editing was done with very explicit
instructions (go to this address and replace this value with that value), I
don't have the skills to crack games myself). Alcohol et al you can do
yourself, but many games are written to be intolerant of their presence.

I prefer mini-images to cracked exes. Almost every patch to every game
changes the main exe, which means someone has to crack it again. A
mini-image will work for every version. I'm learning about making
mini-images - it's not easy, but certainly no harder than cracking
exes. You start with a maxi-image (the entire CD or DVD) and cut it
down to see what you can get away with leaving out. Most games will run
with an image no bigger than 5 or 10 megs. Admittedly mounting the
mini-image and hiding the mounting software is more hassle than
double-clicking on a cracked exe, but you can automate it now with
CureROM so I still reckon it's a winner.

Avoid Starforce protected games like the plague they are, but they have
patches just like everything else.

Agreed.

I no longer buy Ubi games no matter what, because some of their games use
Starforce. I have refused to buy the Freedom Force sequel because it uses
Starforce.

I won't even buy games which require the CD/DVD in the drive (which is
now almost all of them) until I have downloaded a noCD crack or a
mini-image which has been verified to work by someone I know. I will
not tolerate copy protection which inconveniences legitimate users.

CC

.

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