The Snow Box Project 7

[malada]

- where I ask.... why so nosey? -

Heheheheh. The soapy hot water did the trick! It didn't work at first so I gently pried open the drive again, dropped in the game disk just to check if the disk drive still read the disk. Closed it manually and the game started up. Nope.

Restarted the console with disk still in it and the game loaded.

I pressed the eject button... and out it came!

So I opened and closed the DVD drive a couple of times and it now seems to work!

So I loaded up game again - still keeping it off the net - even though it always bugs me to reconnect - and created a character.

And it won't play the game.

It seems this is a game where even in off line mode you have to be connected to XBox Live to play it. Now why can that be? Is there some vital piece of the game missing or are they just being noisy pokers?

I swear, I'm tired of all the tracking and data mining. And if I'm going to use this thing in my living room I'm going to have to run another cable to the router. I don't mind running a little Cat 5 cable... it's just a pain to *need* to be online to play games.

-to be continued

-m

Comments

[siliconshaman]

I've heard of people using a pC to spoof the console so it thinks it's online and connected when it isn't... but that's kind of an arcane black art hack really. The console 'needs' to be online because it checks in with an authentication server to check the game's internally generated key against a check-sum file on the server. It's supposed to be an anti-piracy measure, so no two copies of a game using the code snippet are exactly alike.

Pretty cool hardware project you've got going btw... keep an eye open for playstations though, PS2 or older you can load a new OS on, and use them for doing cool stuff like building your own super-computer cluster. [half a dozen PS2s packs some serious computing power!]

[malada]

People have been making computer clusters with game consoles for many years. The console makers hate that because they don't make their money on hardware sales but on subscriptions and GAMES! Which is another reason why most consoles are seriously locked down - the first is cut down on piracy. However, with the game industry a multi billion dollar a year profit center, hearing them cry 'boo-hoo' over a few unlocked consoles doesn't make me trust or like them very much.

-m