[SUNFLOWERS] "daemon.dll"

[stainless]

wow, some fire here!
the comments blooduk posted are indeed from other forums. i think i've seen most of them on bluesnews.com
his only fault is that he did not say this clear enough. :(

btw some kind of apology (instead of just saying "known issue, will be fixed") from SF for the .dll case would be nice and polite. yeah, it is not your fault but an apology wouldn't hurt anyone. :)

[Webmaster]

for reporting other options is the quote button or you can say it directly ... but ok.

games are tested on clean fresh installed systems with different OS, hardware and drivers. its simply not possible or achievable to test things in the QA with nasty 3rd party appz ... why? good questions, but easy answer, coz which are "common" configurations?

why should be an apology from SF? we aren't the devs of the copy protection system. the game itself doesn't do anything. the copy protection system is a 3rd party licensed module intraged into KoH.

the issue isn't a good one for any side: customer, publisher and copy protection systems.
but now calm down everyone. the patch will solve it.

~re-opend, as long as there is a normal discussion~

[stainless]

you are missing my point here :(
i'm not blaming SF nor inspiring SF to behave defensively. i think we have a great community here (despite some glitches, i've seen much much worse). and for one, you are always a very helpful person. the same counts for the other mods.
i understand that this part of the protection code has slipped in either by neglect after some experimenting, or just by underestimating the consequences. and that it is most likely protection developers' fault.
i just say that a simple "we are sorry for the incovinience" would be nice. it's not a matter of who is to blame, it's simply a matter of politeness and sympathy. and politeness always pays back.

[Webmaster]

good point, indeed !
i will check this out and see what i can to in this direction ... !

[sas]

one question.. how much money out of the retail price of this game goes to pay for that stupid copy protection? its all pointless seeing as if you want to and you are in the right places you will have no troubles finding a pirate copy of this game that actually works! and thats the way with all games.
not a single copy protection lasts longer than the release date of the game!

[srun]

Well, in fact after reading this thread I'm with fear to run this game on my machine... a game that by bug could delete/rename system files (not related to the game itself) is a bit danger in my point of view...

[Arcador]

daemon.dll is not actually system file. Your pc will run without it, althou the deamon tools won't.
Fear not from the game, fear from Pool of Radiance. When you try to uninstall the last one the whole drive may be "uninstalled" as well.

[Webmaster]

@sas
sadly, your are right ... but this a political decision of the publisher and not mine to make! especially if the system protecting the game causes trouble ;(

my personal opinion:
maybe one day games will be sold as personal fingerprinted .iso files via internet. so everyone everywhere on the world can buy the game and burn it on his own. the manual comes as .pdf. if you additionally want a cover and gimmicks, them you can order per snailmail.
but until this day the moon will show us many times his full face.

@srun
the copy protection system doesn't touch any system files ... the renaming is bug appearing under rare circumstances and will be fixed in the upcoming patch.

[sas]

I totally agree :P

and just for anyone wondering (srun?) daemon.dll belongs to a third party application named daemon tools which is used for CD emulation, which again is used mostly by people who want to run pirate copied games. that is the reason it is renamed by the "anti piracy" part of the software.

and no files are being deleted either :P

[Webmaster]

so it is, sadly but true

[somejoe]

Just my 2 cents...I don't like when applications, intended or not, poke around your system for info. Makes me feel naked and alone. I blame it all on MS. Not because they are the biggest and it's easy, but because they allow programs to sniff around outside the directory they are run from. Not that any other OS does, but I thought it would be a good idea once. (IE: a program is run, the system only permits it access to the folder and subfolders. Also, one system folder for shared DLLs.)

Maybe I'm thinking too complex and secure for my own good.

[Webmaster]

windows is capable of doing such things!
the problem is that many programs require access to the registry and that they need administration rights ;(

[Angryminer]

About the topic:
I always run the Daemon-Tools parallel to KoH when I play KoH. It neither interferes with the copy-protection nor with the game itself. No files are deleted and the system is not altered at all.
In order to have your system altered by the copy-protection you have to deliberatly "lock" the Daemon-Tools and thus declare the intention to use an image-file of a CD/DVD while playing KoH.
I still think that renaming the daemon.dll (it is never deleted) is the right thing to do. However I'd like the developers of the copy-protection to tell the user about this action, so he can change the filename back to "daemon.dll" after he finished playing KoH.

Angryminer

[Arcador]

My windows once deleted my temp folder....pretty scary. No disk cleanup or similar directory.

[addeect]

and just for anyone wondering (srun?) daemon.dll belongs to a third party application named daemon tools which is used for CD emulation, which again is used mostly by people who want to run pirate copied games. that is the reason it is renamed by the "anti piracy" part of the software.


so the point is-KOH renames another application's dll is not actually a bug ,but a feature-right?

[Angryminer]

The official statement:Due to a bug in the checker-routine the file "daemon.dll" is renamed...

Angryminer

[Snake]

Speaking personally.

I use daemon tools to play many of my favorite games without a CD, like Starcraft, Delta Force BHD, Deer Hunter 2005...etc. Don't mention that i have two PC's and the second one don't have CD. DT is the only way to play games on it.

I know the copy protection is the thing that the developers count on to stop the piracy, but i think this is gone too far this time. It's too "overprotective". Touching someone's files without informing the user and disabling 3rd party software is one thing. Many of you will say that it's just a simple misearble DLL file. Many people don't use DT, so they don't have problems. But what about the rest of us?

I am NOT blaming the creators of Koh for this. It's the creators of the protection. I love the game. But i just think this time it's gone too far! What about if DT was copirighted licensed software? Now it's freeware, but what if it wasn't? This is a direct declaration of war? Some freakin' software protection just renamed a file of a program i payed $50+ for, making it unuseable. This is dangerous, and it won't end up good...

Speaking freely. I can't stand things like this. So i took a close look in the frakin' "$$$.dll" file. If the protection is going to touch my files, i'm going to return the favor, so i "touched" it :angry: ... Now the game don't rename my "daemon.dll" file anymore, but still i should disable DT before starting the game.

Why the protection wasn't made this way in the first place? :confused: Like, when starting KoH, if DT is runnig - notify the user and ask him to close it, instead of silently disabling it by touching into your files... I know it could be done.

TC :cool:

[Angryminer]

You could also have "unlocked" the dll. I use the DTools silently beside KoH. I just disabled the option "lock the dll" and it works fine.

Angryminer

[Snake]

I tried this also, but it doesn't work for me. I should close DT before starting the game or it displays the well-known message ("dt is installed but locked! please...").

[Snake]

Oh, it worked, this was strange... The option "Lock DLL" was disabled when i checked, but the game still displayed the message, then i enabled "Lock DLL" and redisabled it again and then the game run fine. Maybe a bug in DT...