G'day.

I reckoned Myst I, II and III were the best ever, but was p****d off when IV was brought out on DVD as I couldn't justify the cost of a DVD drive for my PC just for one game. So instead of rushing out to buy it I flagged it (and Myst V) and played something else.

However bought a laptop a few weeks ago with a DVD drive, and so bought IV. It will install and play on the laptop, but the specs are marginal while my PC has the speed, graphics, display and sound-card etc to get the best out of Ubi's game.

I can map the laptop's DVD drive to the PC and the game seems to install OK, but when I try to start it I get asked for the Disk in the drive, regardless of the disk that's actually in the the laptop's DVD (disk or 2).

I tried the no-disk patch, but when I tried to start the game I won a "The proceedure entry point ?ResolveLocalPath@DiskDrive@Ubi@@ etc in the dynamic link library base_rd.dll" or something.

I tried copying from the DVDs into a folder on the PC and setting up from that, but still get asked for a disk in the drive.

I can play it on the laptop, but it would be heaps better on the PC. Is there a way of getting the game to recognise the mapped-network-drive it was installed from?

Q. Is there a way of getting the game to recognise the mapped-network-drive it was installed from?
A. No, and that's to prevent entire offices/networks from playing the game from one purchased disc. Which is what's commonly known as software piracy!

You can't justify spending a few $AU on a DVD-ROM drive, but you can pop for a new laptop? Sounds a bit dodgy, that...!

Hi Heimdall.

I needed the laptop for business and I only have one of those. Buying a DVD drive for just one game - albeit a good one - when there are plenty more good games on the market on CD-ROM is a nonsense. Myst is good, but not that good.

quote:

that's to prevent entire offices/networks from playing the game from one purchased disc

So instead of the office buying one copy of the game and sharing the enjoyment of playing it the office buys no copies at all and no-one plays it. Who wins?

Actually I solved the problem by getting a copy of Farstone's "Game Drive", making virtual copies of the disks on the laptop and xferring them to the PC, where the game now plays perfectly well from a virtual drive.

Call that software piracy if you like - I say it's just enabling me to play a game I purchased on the machine which gives me the best gaming experience - but that anti-software piracy is so easily evaded merely means that the game producers get up the noses of honest fans while causing the pirates no more than a minor, temporary annoyance.

No. If you install and play Myst IV the way it was meant to be played, with a DVD drive, the consumer goes through no pain at all. If you choose to pirate the game, say, through a network drive, you will go through the same pain that you have experienced. Though the fact that you could afford a US$30 game, but not a US$20 DVD drive is a little suspicious to me.

quote:

If you choose to pirate the game, say, through a network drive

How can I be pirating a game I paid for and am playing myself on my own machine, just because I use a drive on another machine across a network? Is there any substantial difference between this and using, say, an external DVD drive?

Does it say anywhere in the game licence that the drive you're running it from has to be internal to the machine you're playing it on?

I'm not arguing for what I regard as piracy - buying (or borrowing) a single copy and then burning copies of it onto hundreds if not thousands of blanks for sale. But Myst isn't a multiplayer game you play across a network anyway - which does make sense of Heimdall's example of people 'sharing' a single copy on an office network (tho' I don't know how well Quake, say, would run like that even if it ran at all.)

The logical extension of Heimdall's argument is that if a friend at work saw me playing Myst on my machine (during lunch, of course) and says: "Gee, that looks like a great game. Can I borrow it when you've finished?" I'd have to say: "No, go buy your own. You're trying to turn me into a pirate."

No doubt game manufacturers would like people to do that but I'm quite happy to lend games to folk when I've done with them, and expect them to replay the compliment. Sorry, UbiSoft.

However, it's interesting that I played the original Myst on a borrowed copy, and was so wowed by it that I went out and bought my own, plus (later) Riven, Exile and now Revelation. If lending games to friends was an accepted no-no I probably wouldn't even have heard of Myst!

Nontheless and although I've managed to get round it fairly easily in the end, I still don't know why I can't play Myst IV off a network drive as many other games run OK like that. Is it really a deliberate (neurotic and self-defeating, in my view) ploy by UbiSoft or just an oddity with its format which can in fact be got round if you know what you're doing with networks?