Manual Protection in "World Circuits" (MicroProse)

I just bought the renowned "World Circuit" from MicroProse, and its copy protection is quite bothering me. It requires me to type a word in a line in a paragraph in a page, everytime I start the game. According to its manual, they had to use this scheme to protect the illegal copies. But I do not think that it is quite right to annoy innocent people from which they get money. I have purchased about 20 games, but this MicroProse product is quite obnoxiously irritating. In case of SimEarth, it asked only when I started the game for the first time after I installed it, which is reasonable. I am returning this idiotic software to Best Buys. I will not buy any product from MicroProse either. What an obnoxious software company. Another thing is, how come this World Circuit, which is known as a good driving simulator in PC, is much worse than more than 10-year old "Pole Position" (I think that this game is 12 years old) in game rooms ? Better to spend quarters from time to time in game room and enjoy quality auto simulators/games. This World Circuit is not worth while to waste one's valuable time. If you know any products which uses this "manual protection", please let me know - so that I never buy them.

Quoted text (8 lines)

|> I just bought the renowned "World Circuit" from MicroProse, and |> its copy protection is quite bothering me. |> It requires me to type a word in a line in a paragraph in a page, |> everytime I start the game. According to its manual, |> they had to use this scheme to protect the illegal copies. |> But I do not think that it is quite right to annoy innocent people |> from which they get money. |>

Personally, I find this to be a rather unobtrusive copy-protection scheme. Until EVERYTHING is on CD-ROM you have to give the software developpers a break. If I spent the amount of time and money it takes these days to develop a top-notch program, I would probably try to do something to discourage pirating, and manual lookups are a lot better than copy-protected disks. Also, there is a well known crack for WC that bypasses the manual lookup. If you think manual lookup is a pain, try using a big-buck package (ie. ANSYS finite element analysis) that requires a hardware key to run and that key is on someone else's PC at the other end of the building.

Quoted text (7 lines)

|> Another thing is, how come this World Circuit, which is known as |> a good driving simulator in PC, is much worse than |> more than 10-year old "Pole Position" (I think that this game is |> 12 years old) in game rooms ? |> Better to spend quarters from time to time in game room and |> enjoy quality auto simulators/games. |> This World Circuit is not worth while to waste one's valuable time.

World Citcuit: first-person visual perspective, highly accurate depiction of six*** real world tracks, reasonably good modelling of vehicle dynamics, useful car set-up screens, opponents that drive like real drivers (except for timid braking). A program that rewards smooth, consistent driving and punishes you severely if you F#$% up your entry into a corner. Pole Position: cheesy "chase view" depiction of car, ultra-flat topography that depicts real-world GP tracks in name only, only two gears, take any line you want driving style encouraged, idiotic swervo-matic opponents. Just put it in high and bash the other guys off the corners. I think you'll find little sympathy here. If I charged myself a quarter for every time I've booted up WorldCircuit I'd be a very poor man by now. I can think of no program I've come across that still has my interest over a year after purchasing it. |> If you know any products which uses this "manual protection", |> please let me know - so that I never buy them. |> IndyCar, GP Unlimited, Wing Commander, probably lots more. Stephen

Quoted text (15 lines)

> I just bought the renowned "World Circuit" from MicroProse, and > its copy protection is quite bothering me. > It requires me to type a word in a line in a paragraph in a page, > everytime I start the game. According to its manual, > they had to use this scheme to protect the illegal copies. > But I do not think that it is quite right to annoy innocent people > from which they get money. > I have purchased about 20 games, but this MicroProse product is quite > obnoxiously irritating. In case of SimEarth, it asked only when I > started the game for the first time after I installed it, which is > reasonable. > I am returning this idiotic software to Best Buys. > I will not buy any product from MicroProse either.

[.. parts deleted ..] [parts deleted..] And all the pirated versions are played with no inconvenience of password lookup. Its like a punishment for those of us "playing by the rules." But, after playing through X-Wing, and the 2 add-ons Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing, I read a post about how to edit one of the files to bypass password checking. Even though I now only play the odd historical mission, what a difference it makes to not have to retrieve the password. Now I won't hesitate to seek out a crack for games I purchase. All the games I have bought lately, i.e. Comanche, Syndicate, EANHL hockey, Falcon 3.0, don't have password checking. I hope there is a trend to get away from this. One more thing, it was so easy to alter B-Wing that I was wondering if LucasArts intentionally made it this way. Are all password protections this easy to break? I don't care if the next X-Wing add-on (if there is one) overwrites the crack, because I can just re-install everything (and then crack the new one). Gary

Quoted text (11 lines)

>|> I just bought the renowned "World Circuit" from MicroProse, and >|> its copy protection is quite bothering me. >|> It requires me to type a word in a line in a paragraph in a page, >|> everytime I start the game. According to its manual, >|> they had to use this scheme to protect the illegal copies. >|> But I do not think that it is quite right to annoy innocent people >|> from which they get money. >Personally, I find this to be a rather unobtrusive copy-protection scheme. >Until EVERYTHING is on CD-ROM you have to give the software developpers a >break.

I think that buying software is kind of "mentality". People who pirate will either pirate or not buy. People who buy software will buy it even if they are able to pirate (from friends/relatives). So, I don't think that software company will really lose significant amount of money because of pirating. Instead of wasting their money in protecting their software, they might better donate the money to schools in order to teach students about software copyright. Another thing software company can do (and shoud do) to prevent pirating is to make good comprehensive manuals. In case of "World Circuit", I consider its manual one of the best. I am sorry that this software uses so stupid copy protection. Maxis's Sim* series have very good manuals also. In case SimAnt, I just bought it, because I think that its manual is excellent (but I found that I really don't play it often 8-) ). Yes, I could pirate it since I can easily access it in this University. Sincerely,

GPU has manual copy protection BUT it's not the look-up-in-manual approach. Instead you have a " wheel " where you match a particular F1 personality with a track item. It takes two seconds to figure out and is definitely better than the manual look-up method. If i had to have manual copy protection, this would be it. As for GPU, who esle out there has/plays it??? I haven't seen much said on this game. I played it a lot until i got ICR. I guess WC is way better than GPU. I know ICR is better, BUT GPU gives you the option of track creation which is what kept me going back to play it. Now if ICR or WC could do this IMAGINE!!!! Pascal

I think part of the piracy problem is the "pirates" lack of money. Also, the high prices of stuff cause this problem. Nintendo and Genesis games are $70 when pc games were $40, now pc games have been jacked up to $70 as well. This will probably cause more piracy. I bought World Circuit and find it annoying to take the manual out everytime I want to play. The manual is on the shelf with the disks. The game is "installed" on my hard drive. That's the reason I installed it, so I can play it at will (not load it up on disk) Looking up words in a manual is like playing a game from floppy. Same thing with Dungeon Hack. I know the game. I play it everyday. I don't need to use the manual anymore, so why do I have to keep looking up words when I go down a level? (one good thing about DH's manual, onscreen it puts the first letter of the word you have to type in so you know what it is...defeats the "do I count titles? problems) -- +------------------------+ | Viamar Systems | | Kirk Membry | | rutgers!viamar!kmembry | +------------------------+

[...stuff deleted...] No they are not. I've spent many a long hour with a disassemblers and de***s trying to get rid of the annoying manual protection. I agree with the original poster that it is really annoying. I've got five different manuals sitting here on my desk that I have to hunt through depending on what game I want to play. I'm not sure why LucasArts made theirs so easy. It's sort of like looking for your 'cash' save in Privateer save files. (backward hex of your actual amount if you are wondering) I think that software companies should go to the one time asking on install or something along those lines. <---------------------------------------------------------------------------> |---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | "Who in the hell thought up this Christmas thing anyway? BAH HUMBUG!" | <--------------------------------------------------------------------------->

>I just bought the renowned "World Circuit" from MicroProse, and >its copy protection is quite bothering me. Then you must have an extraordinarily low tolerance for things in your life. Having to enter a word every at the start of the program is hardly a traumatic experience. Sheesh. You'd probably have a different opinion if adding such a feature to your own software product gave you and extra $300K per year, huh? Get used to it. Oh, bullshit. Let me get this straight. You consider Pole Postion to be a better racing _simulator_ (as opposed to "game") than World Circuit? Hahaha. I suspect that there are many here and in the racing community that would differ with you. Do Formula One drivers use Pole Position to study race courses? I think not. We all have better things to do than run interference for you in the real world. You're young aren't you? Sheesh++ -- Brian Jackson Account courtesy of Commodore. Words and thoughts my own. 1 2 3 4