Upcoming Unreal Alpha and Beta versions release

[nobody]

{snip}

Trust us Leo, I'm sure that this person with the betas has already investigated all the legal issues and would not have posted here at all if he knew he would not have permission.

Okay, this guy *thinks* he has permission. Fine. I'd love to believe him, but my experience is that if something looks too good to be true, it is. Hence I want word from DE that this is actually happening, and that we won't get our asses sued over it (a valid practical concern!).

EDIT: add back extraneous snippage

[GreatEmerald]

Well, let's just wait for a reply from DE, shall we? That way you will see if we get or not get permission. No use to talk about that until then. It's just empty talk that can get into a flame war very quickly.
And yes, he has now sent a mail to DE, so expected reply is within 1-4 days (weekend...).

[nobody]

Wow where did Zeurkous come from? Haven't seen him in years.

From the hell-hole I'm confined to (luckily proverbial... mostly). Climbing back into safe && familiar Limbo, but it'll take a while longer...

...sry I've been away :X

And Leo...don't you dare call me "boy".

I'm sure it was a figure of speech. Besides...

I'm probably twice your age.

As far as my estimate of your age goes, he's older than you. Not *twice* as old as you though :^)

As I said before, you know nothing about me, so you should have no reason to doubt me. I have been working with computers at the age of 3...

So have I, and I don't run windoze, don't use Trillian (puke) for IRC, and don't run servers by impulse. Simply said, mine is longer than yours :^) On top of that, I'm sensible enough to refer the case of the floppies(tm) to an old {micro,home }computer crusty instead of offering to handle it myself.

Remember, *I* was the one who referred that n00b to the short form of unreal://NUL >:P

and my father has been building them from scratch most of his life.

Computers, or floppy drives? Define 'from scratch' -- just buy a load of subsystems -- mobos, disks, and stuff -- and slap them together like I expect everyone older than 12 to do, or was he at the soldering iron mounting chips and banging bits through memory ports, with always the right type of screwdriver handy to align the cassette and/or disk heads?

In the latter case, I'd refer to your father, not to you -- except if you have the experience I just outlined. You can take credit for having access to such a... complicated father though. [and that's a *compliment*!]

This is why I even have a 5 1/2 " floppy disc drive in the first place.

So do I, but I'm afraid *I* dunno how to fix them so the heads are hell misaligned :X I clean it now and then but it does seem to be getting worse...

The normal 3 1/2 " Floppy's that the other alhpas are on,

Normal? So 5.25" floppies are Not Normal? As far as I'm concerned even 8-inch floppies are Normal, even though I've never touched one of them myself :P

I believe "the guy" has drives for those himself. But the 5 1/2 " ones are so incredibly rare

http://ebay.com

[nobody]

227 requires checks to make sure your install of unreal is even valid, otherwise you're getting essentially a free copy of the engine.

I've never had a chance to play the shareware version -- screw me, for that -- but doesn't it contain a copy of the engine, too?

Besides, an engine can be reliably cloned. It's the content that matters!

Also, a simple check to make sure you actually own Unreal vs UT or U2 is extremely easy.

If it's something like:

Code: Select all

if [ ! "$(

[nobody]

ffs. can someone remove all this fucking slander? god damn.

Slander? If you mean me, I'm only posting my opinion. I expect people to be mature enough to take it with a grain of salt. It is /not/ necessarily factual -- I thought that was clear.

Someone's out there busting their balls to give us some really cool stuff and you two are arguing?

I'm arguing 'cause I'm not convinced it's all (fully) true.

And it's extremely possible one of you just ruined it altogether?

Then I apologize. We can contemplate damages if and when that happens, okay?

Be quiet. PLEASE.

If you don't like flamewars, you'd be better off without a presence on the Network.

EDIT: remove extraneous sentence

[nobody]

Well, let's just wait for a reply from DE, shall we?
{snipness}

Agreed, if there's no further questions, I'll shut up.

[Gizzy]

I've just been messing around in the '95 Tech Demo Ued, given that you can't do anything in it

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

Not an md5 or a directory check, something much simpler thats only different between UT and u1, which is slightly more complex than checking 220 vs 224+.

Also, the unreal engine is extremely hard to replicate. Otherwise there would be a clear cut competitor that runs just as well.

And there isnt a shareware version of unreal that I know of, though it was clearly planned. the patches all ship with an editor, and just /system and a few texture files is all you need to start making a game

[nobody]

Not an md5 or a directory check, something much simpler thats only different between UT and u1, which is slightly more complex than checking 220 vs 224+.

Then what's the point of checking at all?

Also, the unreal engine is extremely hard to replicate. Otherwise there would be a clear cut competitor that runs just as well.

You're confusing two senses of 'hard'. It's not *that* difficult. It's just loads of (dumb) work, and it seems people can't be assed enough to do so. So I'm doing it :^) But since I'm on my own, and currently in less than... favourable circumstances, that's gonna take a while...

And there isnt a shareware version of unreal that I know of, though it was clearly planned.

Well I haven't seen it personally, but Leo_TCK told me there was. I remember something specific about Dark and Harobed being pasted together still, and it aborting in the transition hallway...

...might be confusing things here though :^) My mem is not functioning _entirely_ up to spec...

the patches all ship with an editor, and just /system and a few texture files is all you need to start making a game

I'm not talking about the patches, I'm talking about the 'to-be-released' content. If there's such simple checks in place, you might as well omit them...

...but I'm prolly sinning myself here too :X

EDIT: update prose

[Shivaxi]

And you twice as older than me? You are 17, I am like three years older.

LOL! Really now? I guess you don't act your age then

And yeah Casey convinced me over MSN that it'd probably be best to send him the drive and cables for it, so I'll probably be doing that once he moves to his new house sometime in July.

And yeah my dad actually does all the soldering work on chips and other hardware and manually puts them together, not just buying the parts and slapping them together. I'd refer to him first too...which I usually do anyway since I'm currently spending my summer at his house here

[nobody]

And you twice as older than me? You are 17, I am like three years older.

LOL! Really now? I guess you don't act your age then :P

And you're perfeclty acting your age *smirks*

And yeah Casey convinced me over MSN

Soap, mouth, a certain hygienic act...

that it'd probably be best to send him the drive and cables for it, so I'll probably be doing that once he moves to his new house sometime in July.

K then =)

And yeah my dad actually does all the soldering work on chips and other hardware and manually puts them together, not just buying the parts and slapping them together. I'd refer to him first too...which I usually do anyway since I'm currently spending my summer at his house here ::)

Kewl. I worship the smell of solder in the air .

[Leo T_C_K]

Again, Casey you are wrong. There is shareware version which was bundled with creative sound cards, sound blasters.

I have the CD with the drivers still, etc. It came with them together, I am surprised you don't know about it.
And actually, you can even patch the shareware version, it will confirm it as normal Unreal.

And the shareware version is downloadable as well on some sites.

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

when did I ever say there wasn't one? I said that I know of, and it was obviously planned. I've just never seen one, never heard of one, only speculated of one. Upload the thing so we can see it then, it'd be cool.

And yes I did tell shivaxi that doing that crap over MSN is a bad idea, as far as I know the only good methods for securely communicating is skype and a few proxies and SSL. Supposedly the government was trying to pay a hacker to decrypt skype file transfers and voice.

btw, that "simple check" is exactly what the regular unreal installer does, but I don't see anyone complaining about it. there STILL needs to be a check, for legalities sake. No matter how simple, there has to be one.

[nobody]

{snippitysnip, not for me}

And yes I did tell shivaxi that doing that crap over MSN is a bad idea, as far as I know the only good methods for securely communicating is skype and a few proxies and SSL.

Try IRC? Most clients and servers have been supporting SSL for quite a while now...

Supposedly the government was trying to pay a hacker to decrypt skype file transfers and voice.

If it uses lousy encryption, I'd not be surprised. However, when cracking reasonable encryption, with today's most powerful computers, it'd take longer than the remaining life of the Universe.

Of course, nothing'll guarantee it'll *stay* that way for a good long while. And I don't expect a commercial vendor like Skype to use it.

btw, that "simple check" is exactly what the regular unreal installer does, but I don't see anyone complaining about it. there STILL needs to be a check, for legalities sake. No matter how simple, there has to be one.

To appease the Shark God? Guess that's in avoidance of the sin of logic then :^)

[Gizzy]

So this check would be easy to implement into an installer for the beta, providing the required code is in the old engine versions?

[nobody]

So this check would be easy to implement into an installer for the beta, providing the required code is in the old engine versions?

Guess it being so simple, one could sensibly implement it from scratch.

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

the check is in the actual installer if I interpereted smirf correctly, but any compiled installer could perform the same check, possibly even a linux script but I don't know enough about linux scripts to tell you.

I also didn't know IRC supported SSL, but any publicly available server is likely prone to risk, so hosting one locally would likely be a good idea.

[nobody]

the check is in the actual installer if I interpereted smirf correctly, but any compiled installer could perform the same check, possibly even a linux script but I don't know enough about linux scripts to tell you.

Depends on how brain-damaged the particular variety of Lunix is.

As a UNIX person, I can provide you with reasonably elegant shell scripts to do the job. Then again, UNIX people generally hate such checks. Since it's appearantly supposed to be there, I can probably provide a UNIX-style distribution. People *will* need BSD make to use it, since GNU make -- the flavor that usually comes with Lunix distros by default -- is incredibly crap and I can't be bothered to work around it's idiosyncracies and 'undocumented features'.

I also didn't know IRC supported SSL, but any publicly available server is likely prone to risk, so hosting one locally would likely be a good idea.

I run one. It's not public ATM, and I guess I'd better apply for a SSL certificate for improved security (so you can be reasonably sure that you're talking with my server and not another one!), but I'll see what I can do in making it public again soon. Stay tuned.

EDIT: I see now that we have a bit of confusion of terms here. What do you mean with 'public' -- 'public' property, or 'publically available'? My server is *not* public property, but it's supposed to be publically available. IRC is designed to only send relevant traffic across links -- the biggest risk is when you run a mutiple-server network where you can't entirely trust all operators. Then again, if you stay on the same 'trusted' server, only metadata will be sent to keep the network in sync -- not the actual chatter. Guess it boils down to 'do you trust me enough to use my server?'

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

More like, can I google it and find a public server kind of thing. gamesurge or efnet etc.

one hosted by you is going to be far more secretive than either of those

[nobody]

More like, can I google it and find a public server kind of thing. gamesurge or efnet etc.

one hosted by you is going to be far more secretive than either of those

Well it's supposed to have a WWW page, and it's supposed to be a Grand Network -- there's a history to that -- but 1) I am (hopefully not /was/, since that'd mean the network would never grow again) used to maintaining the IRC software on all the servers myself; and 2) it's currently not that way :(

EDIT: spacing

Yay post #69 8)

[hund_schraube]

i was so excited to hear this news till i figured out zeurkous is right.we may never see this released because of legitimate legal reasons[its thier property].

GreatEmerald you dont post in forums about betas till you have them in hand and ready to be downloaded.

[nobody]

GreatEmerald you dont post in forums about betas till you have them in hand and ready to be downloaded.

Well I don't mind him posting about it -- I mind him generating undue enthusiasm.

EDIT: Yay also post 71 8) 8)

[hund_schraube]

i do zeurkous because a cease and desist after i've downloaded it doesnt affect me having it

[nobody]

i do zeurkous because a cease and desist after i've downloaded it doesnt affect me having it ;)

My point is more, like, he was -- and partly is -- acting like it's all done and over with. I somehow strongly doubt that to be the case, especially given DE's response.

[Leo T_C_K]

when did I ever say there wasn't one? I said that I know of, and it was obviously planned. I've just never seen one, never heard of one, only speculated of one. Upload the thing so we can see it then, it'd be cool.

And yes I did tell shivaxi that doing that crap over MSN is a bad idea, as far as I know the only good methods for securely communicating is skype and a few proxies and SSL. Supposedly the government was trying to pay a hacker to decrypt skype file transfers and voice.

btw, that "simple check" is exactly what the regular unreal installer does, but I don't see anyone complaining about it. there STILL needs to be a check, for legalities sake. No matter how simple, there has to be one.

It was uploaded years ago by me on celtic warriors site, in fact in early 2005. The shareware version.