Demigod, LAN play, and frustrations.

from Stardock Forums

One of the main reasons I enthusiastically picked up Demigod is because of Stardock's awesome stance towards LAN play. After purchasing, I look in the manual for the LAN section, and sure enough, you guys confirm your awesomeness. Any number of LAN copies with one CD Key. Perfect.

So I install the game on one machine at the office, then install the game on the next machine. I load up multiplayer, no LAN option. Confused, I look online and see that there is a day one patch that enables it. I think to myself, "Well, I thought the whole way of Stardock to incentivize purchases was to only allow patching and content updates to registered copies." So, confused, I look online and see that Stardock has already resolved this with it's neat Archiving feature. Great!

So I go home, update my copy on my local home machine, archive it, bundle the archive with impulse, and start burning a couple disks to make things smooth sailing the next day. I get in, pass out the discs so we can enjoy a lunch time of LAN play, and people start opening up the archive. Only, fairly quickly there is an error trying to unpack the archive. After some online research I find out the archives are encrypted with MY username. So even passing around the archive is not an option.

I'm pretty frustrated because I feel like I was sold one thing, and delivered another. As it stands, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but there really is no way to play on a LAN with only one copy. Or at the very least without having to manually log in on each machine with my username and password, and authenticate on each machine. This is exactly the kind of pain it seems stardock is trying to avoid by having an open LAN policy, yet implementation still seems to require the same headaches, even if technically they allow it.

Am I missing something? How are people playing this on a LAN with only one copy?

15,817 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

i installed impulse on two of my comps lan works fine

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Right, but did you install by logging into Impulse on each machine and downloading the game? Or did you do it by sharing a single install without re-authenticating?

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

I have encountered similar frustrations.  I host a games club at my high school (I teach physics) and the kids were excited when I bought DG.  To Hell if I'm going to give them (12 teenagers) my Impulse login, but that seems to be the only way to install and update the game.

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Bires, reply 3
I have encountered similar frustrations.  I host a games club at my high school (I teach physics) and the kids were excited when I bought DG.  To Hell if I'm going to give them (12 teenagers) my Impulse login, but that seems to be the only way to install and update the game.
End of Bires's quote

Exactly. I don't want to give a bunch of coworkers my impulse login info. Out of frustration last night I tried doing it with a few coworkers with my impulse login and the archive I made. I logged into impulse on their machine, unarchived the file, and logged myself out. However, now every time they run the game it asks them to re-activate. I'm assuming this is because they have their own impulse login info. At anyrate, any time we now try to reactivate on their machine with my cd key and username it says the cd key is already tied to another account. The ONLY method that does seem to work is if I install a fresh copy of the game from the discs, log in on my impulse, and download the patches, this has to be done on every machine.

To say this game has no DRM is such a lie. Not allowing a game to be played without activation is DRM. Only unlocking a major game component after a user has validated and patched is DRM. This is exactly why I hate buying games from other publishers, and frankly, I'm really dissapointed in Stardock.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

Can't you just update one copy and than copy that directory around to all the other machines... That kind of thing has worked for me in the past in LAN gaming situations.

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting giacdegiac, reply 6
I just made a copy of the game dir, gave it to my friend, and played.
End of giacdegiac's quote
This is exactly what I did for my wife and I the first several days we were playing. Then later on I installed Impulse on her machine and redownloaded the whole thing there so I could get updates on both copies. Now we Lan together all the time.

 

 

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top

Pretty soon that will likely stop working once it's been "fixed". I tried that with my Sins of a Solar Empire install and it didn't work anymore - now it requires activation.

Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting SERAPHRowen, reply 4

Quoting Bires, reply 3I have encountered similar frustrations.  I host a games club at my high school (I teach physics) and the kids were excited when I bought DG.  To Hell if I'm going to give them (12 teenagers) my Impulse login, but that seems to be the only way to install and update the game.

Exactly. I don't want to give a bunch of coworkers my impulse login info. Out of frustration last night I tried doing it with a few coworkers with my impulse login and the archive I made. I logged into impulse on their machine, unarchived the file, and logged myself out. However, now every time they run the game it asks them to re-activate. I'm assuming this is because they have their own impulse login info. At anyrate, any time we now try to reactivate on their machine with my cd key and username it says the cd key is already tied to another account. The ONLY method that does seem to work is if I install a fresh copy of the game from the discs, log in on my impulse, and download the patches, this has to be done on every machine.

To say this game has no DRM is such a lie. Not allowing a game to be played without activation is DRM. Only unlocking a major game component after a user has validated and patched is DRM. This is exactly why I hate buying games from other publishers, and frankly, I'm really dissapointed in Stardock.
End of SERAPHRowen's quote

They don't intend for you to be able to safely use gameranger/hamachi or some other private lan system all you want. They want to enable 2 brothers living in the same house to be able to play each other, or some other 'small'/simple instances of lan play.

I have got 3 pc's at home, and am playing LAN with my 2 sons regularly. The lan policy is fine, and not a big deal.

I think your expectations that you can buy 1 copy of the game, use it on gameranger/hamachi with the world, or buy 1 copy of the game, and yet always have 12 copies of the game running 24x7 in some computer kiosk/lab/coffee shop are a little messed up. Other companies dont' allow you to do this sort of thing period, yet the fact you can only do this a little/with a few restrictions is being complained about?

I wish the community would stop being so demanding. The developers give a little, and it seems that it's gobbled up by everyone here, with screams from the community back to the developers of "YOU FORGOT THE F#$@G PONY, A#@HOLES!".