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Jutland from Strorm Eagle Stuidios


thewood

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That's the problem if you have it on your laptop and are travelling for several weeks or more without internet access you effectively lose your ability to play the game after 7 days.

This is where an SB dongle or similar would be the better option. I can understand your frustration. Bummer, because it's a great game. Perhaps they'll be persuaded to change the DRM by market forces (though i can't believe there's a huge market for this sort of sim...).

Pity.

smith

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Bumped this to see if there are any recent experiences with the DRM issues, or other rants. I've been looking at this with some longing, having just read Steel Castles. But I have no desire to get bogged down in DRM headaches, either. I've looked at their forums at gamesquad and noticed a rant from the developer there that is pretty wild - accusing people of piracy and all...can't he simply check his own database to see who has bought the game? It's not like he sold zillions of them, I'm sure.

Anyway, feedback, anyone?

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In a nutshell...we were the beta testers for the DRM.

The game is great. A few niggles with torpedo targeting, et al. But overall it is very good. I documented my issues with DRM above. Other people have had the issue as well. Support is iffy. They release a lot of pathces, but the update and bug reporting system is a little flawed and the patches seem to fix some things and break others.

If you are a big naval fan, go ahead and get it. But if you are only casually interested, skip it until they eventually can the stupid dial home DRM.

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Unfortunately I have to give fair warning about its DRM system.

[...]

There are all kinds of issues with this in places I travel. It basically means on my two and three weeks trips to some parts of the world, I won't be able to play this game.

And exactly this is the reason I won't buy this game. It's a pity because I've been hearing only good things about it apart from the DRM.

I don't think SES will get rid of the DRM soon. They are too paranoid about it from what I've read in their "official" forums.

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Thanks guys. I don't like DRM at all either, but I do sympathize with artists who try to protect their work.

These guys see a Russian hacker under every bed, ready to steal their market - and to be honest, having been in Ukraine at least, I know people there will not buy legitimate software since waerz stuff is readily available and there are no penalties for downloading and using it.

But the real market for these games are not in the FSU countries and I think that we are being made to pay the price for this fallacious notion that they are preserving an non-existent market with DRM. So they preserve a few sales, prevent a few hacks, and in so doing, scare away many more potential buyers.

It's too bad that they won't hire a neutral party to do a survey - they might be surprised at the result and I would expect DRM to go out the widow afterwards. But that's just my feeling and clearly not their belief.

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"Gamers who tried to play Gears of War on the PC Thursday ran into a slight snag: it seems that the digital certificate that allows the game to run expired on January 28, 2009. Basically that means if you keep your PC's clock up to date, you can no longer play the game. The official Epic forum is ablaze with complaints about this issue, as the still-kicking community becomes enraged."

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING??? :eek:

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Despite what people imply, this is almost certain a technical accident, not a deliberate attempt to limit the lifespan of the game.

When you put cryptographic subsystems into software you don't write the stuff yourself (well, SES did for Distant Guns, but let's leave that aside). You re-use existing systems. Existing digital certificate systems all have certificates that expire and somebody probably just forgot to change the default from the manufacturer's default.

Still, none of this changes the fact that if they hadn't tried this bogus stunt none of this would have happened, and that's why I'm not buying game with this kind of authentication.

P.S. of course you, as in you the gamer, pay the bill for all the cryptographic products incorporated into the game (they are cheap, yeah), the programmer to do the integration and the tech support to sort out problems.

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"Gamers who tried to play Gears of War on the PC Thursday ran into a slight snag: it seems that the digital certificate that allows the game to run expired on January 28, 2009. Basically that means if you keep your PC's clock up to date, you can no longer play the game. The official Epic forum is ablaze with complaints about this issue, as the still-kicking community becomes enraged."

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING??? :eek:

Bad DRM like this (and, I guess, stupid managers implementing it not knowing what they do) is what is giving DRM solutions as a whole a bad name.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just to make sure this isn't misunderstood more than it already has been:

The Gears of War issue was not, repeat not, DRM-related. It was a bit of bad programming that tied the digital certificate to the games anti-cheat feature. Also, the problem has now been fixed.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/02/mark-rein-gow-issue-caused-by-expired-certificate-not-drm.ars

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Just an update about the DRM and, leaving aside the philosophy of it (the "rent versus buy" argument), focusing instead on the practicality of the "no license after 7 days" thing.

I just got back from a fortnight's holiday on the south coast of Oz, no internet connection. Didn't bother to transfer the game's licence from my home PC to a laptop (to try to play while away), or hand the licence back using the in-game mechanism. I just got back today after 14 days of not logging on or playing, fired the game up, it connected to the server, downloaded an update and was ready to play.

No dramas, no having to re-register or anything like that, so in that sense the DRM gave me no problems at all.

smith

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and presumably this also

if anything see the pretty movie makes it even less attractive as a game to purchase.

Naval games really need a reason to be fighting the battle and given there are no flags to capture it can only be down to destroying ships. Given the nature of luck in battles and other than that the mechanistic weight of shells times rounds etc is paramount seems to me that battle satisfaction is not going to be high.

But what do I know ... naval fans will love it possibly.

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But what do I know ... naval fans will love it possibly.

I do not know what to do with it either, even though my great-uncle served on the GNEISENAU (never talked one word about it, of course.)

But it seems to be well made! I mean ... it even has shock waves, just like CM had in its best days!

Best regards,

Thomm

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If you study/studied Jutland it is a good game to have just for building what if scenarios. Company PR and the draconian DRM make me not recommend it for the casual naval wargamer. Thier support has a thin veneer of fast response, but they are very cranky and make you jump through some hoops to get a response.

There are also some odd design decisions regarding how you manage fleets.

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if anything see the pretty movie makes it even less attractive as a game to purchase.

Naval games really need a reason to be fighting the battle and given there are no flags to capture it can only be down to destroying ships. Given the nature of luck in battles and other than that the mechanistic weight of shells times rounds etc is paramount seems to me that battle satisfaction is not going to be high.

But what do I know ... naval fans will love it possibly.

You're right in that it has no capture flags and it's pretty different to CMSF for example, though the campaign (which I've tinkered with but haven't yet properly tried due to lack of time) has objectives related to interrupting supply and suchlike to France during 1916. Individual battles (like the Death of the Pommern scenario I made the Youtube video of) have points balances and at the end of the scenario your success or failure is determined based on points for and against, I believe from ships sunk and damaged, though not all scenarios have objectives based on sinking ships. Some require ships to escape others, or to protect convoyed ships etc.

I'm enjoying this game a lot and it's awakened an interest in that period for me, so partly I like playing with and learning about the ships and tactics of the period. Some of the scenarios (most, probably) recreate historical battles or encounters (like Death of the Pommern which simulates a chance meeting between a Brit destroyer flotilla and some German BBs which happened near dawn after the Jutland Battle) and include the ships of the time.

From my experience (and I have no knowledge of the programming under the bonnet) the game does a great job simulating the kind of poor accuracy, dodgy shells and human frailties and mistakes of the time. The history of the Jutland era, I've found, is littered with idiot moments where commanders were either rigidly stupid and unimaginative, fearful, incompetent, resourceful and hasty, resulting in disasters or inexplicable occurences.

It has, in common with CMSF, that wonderful uncertainty of the Tac AI in the sense that you can put them in the right spot and give the fire order, but once the shells start flying, the responses of your ships (and of your men in CMSF) can be unpredictable and undesirable and the challenge is overcoming the unintended behaviour to get a victory. Things like a ship blowing up, or falling out of line, or colliding with another are all great challenges with this game, as well as the historically-accurate approximately 3-5% accuracy of the gunfire at long ranges because of the basic gunnery control and rangefinding.

But when things come together, it's a very satisfying sim and the graphics make it better. I have always struggled a bit with getting into abstracted wargames - I like seeing the ships as real ships. I made the video that Thomm linked to because the early morning setting looked really great with the gunflashes and explosions.

I played one scenario with the British Third Battle Squadron's obsolete battleships against the tough German Battlecruisers that really illustrated for me how satisfying Jutland can be. I crossed the German T as they approached and my BBs hammered the German column, particularly the second in line, Derflinger. As the Germans got closer and turned to go broadside to broadside with my line, I turned into them at 90 degrees, meaning my whole line could then sail along and hammer half the German line broadside-on, while the German van (the front half) had turned and was now blocked from firing at me effectively. I felt very pleased that I'd out-manoeuvred the German BCs and my old BBs gave them a hell of a pounding, causing one of them to fall out of line out of control, drifting closer to my line and getting even more comprehensively hit before they got things back under control.

However, as the scenario continued it became clear that while my ships had hit the German BCs much more, the fragile British AP shells had failed to penetrate the better German armour and damage was relatively minor. The Germans' stronger construction and faster speed meant that I couldn't win - they eventually sank my BBs for the loss of no BCs. Even though I lost I had a great time.

thewood is right about company PR and support. I have had no troubles, but they are not a polished "the customer is always right" outfit and I think I can see where the strong views about the company around the net have originated. However, I disagree about the DRM. I don't think it's draconian - it doesn't install anything nasty on your PC, it just wants you to be connected to the net when you start it up. I personally don't have a problem with that, but if others do, then I respect their views.

I think the 7-day license expiry thing is poorly understood and explained, but in practice, for me, it was no problem. I was away from the game for 2 weeks and it started normally the next time I played it. If you want to play it while you're not connected to the net, or, like Speedy, regularly travel in the boondocks where you can't connect, then it's not the game for you.

In any case, I'd still encourage people to at least try the demo. The demo is basically the full game, but with most scenarios limited to 10 minutes. In a game like this 10 minutes isn't enough time for anything much to happen for most scenarios, but there are a couple of unlimited scenarios to try in the demo.

smith

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OK, the DRM thing gets a little more interesting every time. From the Jutland subsim.com forums:

Bullethead (SES employee)

"It was a strange thing. AFAIK only our email server and web site went down, not the server involved with the DRM. The games worked fine for me all day. And besides, you all don't need to contact the DRM server every day anyway--you've got the 7-day thing. So that wasn't the problem.

However, a few other folks also couldn't get the games running this morning. I submit they were having bad internet days. What happens is, when the game phones home at the get-go, it will allow your connection to time out up to 10 times before giving up. When it does, the game should start anyway but tell you it was unable to check for updates.

While this is going on, the game isn't technically running yet, however, so you have nothing about it in either your task bar or in Task Manager. And we, unforunately, don't provide any sign of life either, so you might have some number of minutes between the initial splash screen going away and the game starting, with nothing to indicate that the game is running. Hopefully we'll show you the game isn't completely dead during this time in the future."

Is this just wierd or what? I mean a big coincidence that thier servers go down, people can't play the game, and it couldn't be the DRM server causing the problem. As I said above, until they debug the DRM system, I can't recommend this to anyone.

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