Post release Lan question

I don't guarantee this will work but you could try this:

1) Install Elemental on one of your computers.

2) In the Impulse games list, right click Elemental and select Archive Application. This will create a backup of that game.

3) Over LAN or via external drive, put this backup on the other computers.

4) Unpack the backup.

In the past this would have worked fine. Whether or not it will with Elemental is an unknown at the moment. I suppose once its released you could test this with just two computers/laptops first by only logging into your account on one of them.

After convincing your friends though, do the right thing and uninstall it from their computers 

You are able to do the above method to very easily LAN the game with your friends. It is a violation of the liscense agreement, however: 

Well, the odd problem is, even if my friends all get Elemental too (which they most likely will), we still can't play on the Lan at one house until we figure this out.  But I appreciate the help so far.  I mean, they are not going to want to install their copies on my computers.  When it comes out, I guess we will try the above (crosses fingers).

Elemental will have two multiplayer options: connect to an SD server or connect to a "custom" server. 

The host would have to create (and setup) the server, including any mods/maps. Any players who join will download the mod/maps from the server and play. Saves will be hosted automatically on the server (including SD's) but you can also choose to save them locally. This is mostly to make it easier to re-host games part-way through (instead of having to mail the save over to everyone). 

Custom servers won't have any authentication (on SD's side). 

So, if you were to wanting to ... "demo" this game to a friend to convince them to purchase the game (something I don't think Stardock would have an issue with, even if it is a violation of the agreement - especially if your friend do own their own copies of the game and just using your computer for convenience): 

- If all the computers are on the same OS, you can use the method above (achive/unpack with Impulse) 

- Or, you can actually copy Elemental onto a thumbdrive and copy it straight into Program Files. Then use Impulse, select "detect application" and then let it Verify the install (doing it this way you'll miss some key XML files, etc). 

After both computers on the game on the computer, you'll run the server host (this may also be built into a nice little button in the game itself, we'll see. It sounded like Frogboy wanted to make the custom server hosting a little more sophisticated than most other games, and sophistication often times leads to complication which sometimes don't get nice, clean UIs), then you'll connect to your custom servers. 

You can't save them locally, at least not according to frogboy, unless something has changed.

32 player multiplayer. This is a big one and will take a lot of work but it we are requiring that the game handle up to 32 players playing together. To make this work, it also means that games need to be automatically saved (to our servers regardless of whether it’s on a custom modded server or ours) so that stopping and starting games later is easy.

https://forums.stardock.com/373887

I played MP in Beta 2. They supported local saves. 

You played it on two or more computers that were not connected to the internet?

I played it on my computer, opened up My Games\Elemental and lo-and-behold it was there. I could load it up in Single Player too. 

(which makes it easy to cheat :/ Have a rsync between the save and load it onto a secondary computer to see what the other player's were doing and how far they were). 

So that would be... a no. Thanks.

They haven't released the custom software executables, I assumed that was obvious. However, if I had a local save while contacting SD servers there is no reason why it wouldn't save on custom servers. 

I'm only going with what Frogboy posted himself. You have not verified you're not connecting to their servers, so that doesn't really mean they've changed anything.  Stardock has mentioned this a few times since that post, so while i believe you have a file on your local drive, I don't see any reason to believe they've decided to remove this requirement.

as far as the impulse downloading, installing and verifying a game, on several computers that you own, I have installed sins of a solar empire & expansions on 7 cpu's, three of which have up to FOUR different windows installs on them ALL with the SAME impulse login, 6 of the computers do NOT have email set up on them, but all seven ARE on the same lan going through the SAME modem, and as most of the installs are for testing reasons, and as I am the ONLY person that uses the computers there should be no issues for me doing this.

harpo

Well, after reading that post Frogboy started (you can't miss it, it's 15 pages long already), looks like Lan play is "not quite" possible right now.  Each person has to purchase their own copy, and, you have to be connected to the internet to play.  But my friends are going "but that's not Lan play!?!?".  Anyway, I'm pretty sure it's about the same as SC2 multiplayer (at the moument), you'll all be playing each other via the internet, but you can still be in the same room with each other   Since we all like to get together and play up at one friends cabin, which we go up to multiple times a year (it has no internet), looks like no Lan games for us

The most common type of local area network is an Ethernet LAN. The smallest home LAN can have exactly two computers; a large LAN can accommodate many thousands of computers. Many LANs are divided into logical groups called subnets. An Internet Protocol (IP) "Class A" LAN can in theory accommodate more than 16 million devices organized into subnets.

Read the highlighted portion again. the LAN is connectiong to the Internet because the Internet is NOT part of LAN. It is separate. But you go ahead, go get a job setting up networks and when they ask you about LAN problems, start talking about the Internet.

no point arguing with him. He just gets all bunched up and calls us angry nerds on the internet, forgetting he is the one posting on a video game forum too. Just let him run around copy-pasting it and making a fool of himself. 

I think he was getting at the fact it's irrelevant to the game whether the computers are in the same room or on different continents, the networking is the same, it's just a matter of distance.

From the sound of it all four systems will have access to the internet, and presumably all four will have access to Impulse (in fact they'd need it to play). Installing is therefore not an issue; you could presumably simply log into your Impulse account on each box and download and install from there as normal. Though of course if you've got a tight bandwidth or download limit using the anywhere.impulse / application archive method would save on that.

When it comes to playing your friends will need an impulse account with a copy of the game registered to it, and they'll need to log in to that account to play.

Thank you for the offer Dragoaskani, we would be glad to have up to our cabin to make the game play on our Lan

Seriously, we do not mind having to buy a copy for each person, no problem there.  On release day, I and one other friend are getting together to play here at my place (I'm not EVEN going to say "to play via Lan" from now on), but my other 3 friends see no reason to get the game if they can't actually play it at their cabin with friends; solo play would not be the reason they'd get the game.

It is said that a Lan patch may be released in the future.  Ya, well, then they may sell 3 more copies when it does.  But I talked my friends into getting Demigod, and they still have a chip on their shoulders toward me about that multiplayer.  So I can't blame their sceptisim about this game.

But I myself still can't wait for it to come out.  I have the 24rth and 25th all free for two days of "Online play with friends in the same room"

What pisses me off about this whole thing isn't so much the fact that there's no LAN support, but the fact that we were mislead to believe there were. It was discussed at length months ago, when they first said that all multiplayer games were going to be on their servers, demanding constant stable connection to their servers (through the internet, obviously).

Only reason those discussions stopped was because Frogboy caved and we were lead to believe that there'd be full LAN support and the game wouldn't ship without being complete, and that now that they had settled on multiplayer, they were going to "do it right".

The most narrow technical definition of LAN is largely irrelevant, because ultimately, this is not a court of law. It's a matter of dependency and trust between fans, customers and marketers.

And in that I can only conclude that Frogboy is a dishonest lying hack.

As inconvenient as it can be, I really don't have a problem with a company shipping a game without LAN support. It irritates me, but I won't fault them for it since it happens all the time. Direct IP is dying to. I do have a very big problem with them not being honest and upfront about it.

Well we could wait another 6 months to iron out the issues with LAN, or we could play and get updated.

To each their own.

I'll take playing over waiting, and I trust Frog to get it in when it works fairly well.

Lee

I'm waiting till a couple days of play after release before I say more.  If my friend and I have a fun co-op experience, that's almost all we wanted. . .