Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!ukma!psuvm.bitnet!cunyvm!CRONEJP!UREGINA1!MAINE.Bitnet!STEVEG From: CRONEJP@UREGINA1.BITNET Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Silent Service Message-ID: <8CRONEJP@UREGINA1> Date: Sun, 30-Aug-87 22:58:00 EDT Article-I.D.: UREGINA1.8CRONEJP Posted: Sun Aug 30 22:58:00 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 5-Sep-87 01:27:15 EDT Lines: 100 Its begining to look like I'm posting more flames to this newsgroup than anything else..... Incidendtly this is A LONG posting.... I'd like to think that I make some valid points in it, but if you have an allergy to long Flames that are targeting Companies with pain in the ass Copy Protection policies. Then avoid this message... now on to the Flames.. Anyways.... I just figured I'd post this to warn people about a product thats been out for a couple of months which I've had no end of trouble with..... The company is MicroProse and the product is Silent Service Not Being into piracy, I have nothing like Maruader etc... but products like Silent Service make me wish that I did have maruader, the program is HEAVILY copy protected, with what appear to be nondos tracks and the copy protection causes HEAD BANGING on my 3.5 inch drive (thought that I'd gotten rid of that noise when I ditched my C64 in favour of the Amiga 1000, (in fact I believe that Silent Service was responsible for the failure of my df0: (maybe I'm just being paranoid...)) Not being happy with just the copy protection, there is also a KEYWORD type setup in the program.... (You have to identify a destroyer silouete (SIC) and trust me, the differences between the destroyers are NOT readily apparent and of course the matching pictures in the manual are scattered ALL over the manual...) I could ALMOST put up with the CP except for one rather major annoying flaw in the program.... NATURALLY any intelligent Amiga user would write protect his purchased program disks.... except that.... Silent Service doesn't like being prevented from writing to the disk... After a War Patrol is finished, whether you wish to record your high score or not, the game attempts to write to the disk.... If it can't write to the disk, then it reopens the Workbench screen and pops up the standard Can't write volume Silent service... you cancel the operation, and the program goes back to its main menu, NOW if you attempt to start another patrol, the program crashes back to the deadend workbench screen.... and you have to reboot and listen to your df0: getting hammered to death..... if you let the thing write to the disk, then you stand a 80 percent chance of getting a trashed disk the next time that you fire up the game..... Think I'm pissed off???? OF COURSE I AM.... I paid bucks for this thing, and only the largess of my dealer in coping with the fact that 6 (THATS RIGHT SIX) of them have died on me... has made this situation at all tolerable.... (if I had to keep sending the thing back to Microprose I'd be able to play Silent Service about once every three months... I phoned MicroProse about the bugs in the thing and listed them off to them, and the twit at the other end had the temerity to tell me that "We have as of this date, received NO complaints about the program" and he told me to buy one instead of pirating it.... (I hung up in his ear, I wasn't paying long distance to Maryland from Saskatchewan to listen to someone insult me.....) As soon as I get another one from my dealer the first thing I'm gonna do, is find someone with Maurader and get this damn thing deprotected.... Because in the end run, I LOVE the damn game.... i just wish that it would quit dying on me.... I appologize for the length of this posting, however if there is a moral to this whole story, it would be to make sure if you buy any microprose game, that you can copy one or two backups of the thing for yourself... If there latest products that they are advertizing for the amiga are as badly copy protected as Silent Service then I'd recommend that you think five or six times before you buy it.... (that may be the number of times that you need to get it replaced...) Jonathan Crone or NO (thats right NO) pithy saying today..... Except for.... as a salute to monty python... ARGH MUCK OR GLAR!!!!