Dungeon Master Forum

Good guy Youtube pointed me to a new video highlighting the copy protection in Dungeon Master:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VheNpiS ... u.be&t=412

He forgets to mention, which might not even be obvious when you play the game, that the magic runes are actually part of the copy protection as well. Without the manual, you really have no way to know what the scrolls tell you, so you'd wander around in complete darkness when your supply of torches ran out. Anyway, I've never seen the copy protection in action before (items hovering in mid air!) so that was pretty neat I thought.

I figured out most of the spells just by trying every combination of runes in the "Kid's Dungeon" (Apple IIGS version) long before I beat the Worm level. I thought I was missing a second manual or something (I was missing the "Quick Reference Card" or whatever it was that explained the "Kid's Dungeon", I thought it was an Easter Egg because a friend who had the game told me about it. Heck, said friend was the reason I went and bought the game, although in honesty, in those days, if It hadn't been copy protected I probably would have pirated it.

That said, back in the 1980's, especially the early to mid '80s, most people I knew (including adults) thought nothing about copying audio cassettes via dubbing or dubbing records to blank cassettes and swapping them with friends. The music industry hadn't made such a big deal like they would with CDs and MP3s a decade later (leading to the DMCA) and most people did not understand that this was illegal, even prior to the DMCA.
As such I did not see any difference between copying disks and copying tapes when I first got my computer and honestly did not see piracy as wrong or a crime.
Copy protection just pissed me off (that hasn't changed even on CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs. I've crunched too many of those when I drop them and they roll under my castor that I only realize when I push back to find the fallen disc) because it meant I couldn't make a backup copy.
I think people got slightly more aware after the Sony vs Betamax case made national headlines, although I honestly do not remember that as I was only in kindergarten, but I do recall the kindergarten teacher offering to make copies of some of the [audio cassette] tapes used in lessons to anyone that brought in a blank tape.

Hah, same! We didn't even realize the first symbol was power, so we'd write these long list of different combinations that we'd tried. It's not much of a copy protection against kids with way too much free time, that's for sure.

Hope I'm not off topic here, but FTL didn't put any protection on DM2 whatsoever. Guess they figured that it didn't need it?

You all have a good evening now.

Well, when DM2 was released, CD burners were rare and expensive. 6xCD-R burners did not become generally available or affordable until the end of the 1990's, and CD-Rs (as opposed to CD-ROMs) would not be standard with stock computers until the 21st century.
So you are probably right, CD-ROM games did not need copy protection in the early or even mid 1990's. It wasn't until burners became mainstream that it was needed.

Copy protection on the DM disk was pretty involved.
( Details on the DM Encyclopedia ).
So, pirate copies were not so good.
I had the version, where all your champions die from sudden death in the middle of the first level ( screamers & mummies ).
So, I bought the legit game.
In those days there were so many not so good games, that I was testing with pirate copies to know wether games were worth buying.

Stungeon's Law still applies today. The main difference is that you can now often find "Let's Play" previews on Youtube where you can watch the entire game being played, but that only tells you so much.

StuRgeon.

Theodore Sturgeon a SciFi writer.

terkio wrote: ↑Fri Jun 07, 2019 12:55 pm Copy protection on the DM disk was pretty involved.
( Details on the DM Encyclopedia ).
So, pirate copies were not so good.
I had the version, where all your champions die from sudden death in the middle of the first level ( screamers & mummies ).
So, I bought the legit game.
In those days there were so many not so good games, that I was testing with pirate copies to know wether games were worth buying.

I wish I would have thought of that, back when I was purchasing quite a few boring games. I was friends with a guy who seemed to buy games and lose interest before he actually got to the interesting parts (DM was the best of them). He'd drop by and leave a game, asking me to try it out and see if it was worth playing. Yeah, I guess he was 'playing' me. Oh well, he introduced me to Dungeon Master, so he'll be a friend for life.