playing games with safe disc v2.

English Games
1

Hi,
I am trying to find out if there is a way to LEGALLY run a game
that has safe disc v2 in linux, preferably under wine,
but alternatively Code weavers cross over games,as a last resort I
may look at cedega however I hear they no longer return any code.
The game I am trying to run is 2001 vintage and the demo runs well

It would be nice to hear from anyone who has had a game with this
copy protection running under wine or one of its variants,or any
other advice.

Note: wine can legally run software with copy protection!

Any help on this would be great.

2

Not true! They have NEVER returned any code, or even put any of the money subscribers pay into anything but paying for trips to game fairs, hotel rooms, bigger and better computers/cars/offices, and developing a version of Cedega for the Mac platform!

I subscribed many years ago and soon became disgusted at their lack of doing anything useful, and completely ignoring most help requests.

Sorry, it doesn’t help you, but I feel very strongly about those “people”!

Have a look on the wine website for the winetricks script, and use it to download and install as much of the Windows guff that you think might be relevent, ie Visual C and Basic runtime stuff, fonts etc’.

You might even be able to install an update to that protection system, I had to do that lately with Panzers - Phase2 (sorry, I can’t remember the name right now).

Once you’ve done all that, use winecfg and set all the libraries to use native, then built in. I got Empire Earth working by doing that, you might also have to disable the pixel shader and sometimes setting use a virtual desktop can help.

Good luck :).

3

cedega was only ever a last resort. As far the wine site goes,well I have spent some time checking,there appeases to be no support for safe disc v2

I have not seen support for this game under wine or any variants

Without realising the implications of copy protection I was silly enough to promise myself I would only finish this game on linux

4

Hmm, still a few suggestions left -

  1. Give the crossover games a try, it comes as a 30 day trial so no risk there, and they do directly support the WINE project if you do decide to buy.

  2. Search for a crack for the game on the net. I use a crack for Empire Earth and it now (sometimes) works under WINE. I have a legal copy of the game, and I have no ethical problem using a crack to run a game that I paid for.

  3. Try it in a full virtual Windows machine. It’s still technically running it under Linux ;).

5

Thanks for your replies so far,
Part of what I have done to this point include some time working with winetricks and playonlinux.

I gave crossover games a try (now a 7 day trial) my result, ‘please insert the correct CD-ROM select OK and restart .’
This is the same error I got in windows when trying to use a backup copy of this disc.

Again this seems to be a copy protection thing

On your second option, I know of 2 cracks reported to work well with this game, I knew of them before posting this question, however I am not sure I am comfortable using either as they remove the copy protection and all I actually want is just to run the game under wine.

I bought this game and also see no ethical issue with running it in linux, But why should I have to break the law to do so.

Is there a need to prevent safedisc apps running in wine?
I do not think so.

I do feel that there are reasons for macromedia to offer support to WINE that make financial sense,so I will send them an email,once I have it ready.

The chance of them taking any notice is close to 0
but if I don’t the chance is 0