Actually, the F.A.D.E. in Arma 2 has led to some pretty hilarious stuff. I guess if you play a pirated version of it, you cannot hit anything with a weapon, and after a certain period of time become...a seagull.

Not a rhetorical question, what are you referring to?

I really like the Anno games, or I should say I like 1701 since that is when I got introduced to the series. However, since this one has TAGES, I'll have to give it a miss. I'll meet publishers half way on DRM: Goo is perfectly fine, Steamworks is ok, and I can live with Safedisc so long as it works with my drive. However limited activation phone home types? Nope, not happening on my system. If I can't play the game 10 years from now, I'm not going to pay you for it. When I buy something it is mine to keep forever.

If they can the TAGES later, I'll probably pick it up because 1701 was good fun.

Yeah, I heard about that one. I can't bother to check, but I bet the... inconveniences... are gone now.

If a game has hidden triggers, add a couple of days to those 48 hours for the game to get cracked. All DRM software is basically the same, regardless the method - it tries to figure out whether a copy running on the machine is legit or not. F.A.D.E. takes longer to crack simply because it takes time to play through the game and see if you really fooled it. Since it usually kicks in shortly after you start playing, that doesn't take long. And once you shut it up, it stays that way for the rest of the game. So that's a failure.

No, I'm telling you... offer quality support and downloadable content/patches via authorized servers and treat piracy as free advertisement. You'll save money and won't get an ulcer.

Treat your customers with respect, reprioritize your budget and scale it down, turn down prices and profit! We need more creative, low-med budget games with a soul. I'm sick and tired of all those AAA titles with multimillion dollar budgets selling for 50+$ and offering usually only pretty visuals, gorgeous sound and absolutely crap gameplay I've seen a thousand times already. Its all sooo.... next-gen.

Suggestions?  Bought Dawn of Discovery on Impulse, but it crashes after the Ubisoft and Blue Byte flash screens.  Ubisoft support keeps telling me to update my drivers, but they are all up to date.   The demo worked fine.

Could it be a Tages problem?  I have a router with NAT.  Could that be blocking Tages?  Do I need to open a port or something?

thanks in advance

Dawn of Discovery is an excellent game...  for the first 3 hours of a new game.  This is about the time that you cap your technology and upgradability.  All it is at this point of the game is escessive resource micromanagement.  The game is absolutely beautiful and has tons of potential, but gets incredibly dull after that 3 hour window closes.

turns out it's a problem with my sound blaster x-fi fatal1ty pro xtreme gamer card.  when I disable it in device manager, the game works fine (but without sound).  Tried latest driver and roll back driver, same problem.  Obviously I'd like to play with sound.  Anyone heard of a fix for this? 

thanks

Best thing would probably be to use Google to find others with the same problem and their solutions.

Creative hardware is awesome, but their drivers aren't the best. When you find one that works, stick with it.

i use onboard 7.1 sound, works fine