I wanted to start a thread about playing the Sierra games completely from the harddrive. Not only is there the convenience of not having to dig out the CD every time, but as any Sierra gamer knows, some of our discs have become quite valuable, with some going for over a $100 on places like eBay. I know I would like to keep my CDs out of harms way. Are there a legal issue with this? Perhaps, but i argue that where there was no clear attempt to prevent this, it was not Sierra's intent. Let's take a little look at the history of Sierra's copyright schema. Then I'll address some of the easier fixes.
Some of Sierra's early games have some well known copyright schemes. The original Space Quest used a fake bad sector on the floppy to fool DOS into thinking that it could not copy the disk. Then there was the manual check, like in King's Quest 4. King's Quest 5 had the little symbols that you had to look up from time to time throughout the game. This was removed from the Multimedia PC CD version. King's Quest 6 had my favorite scheme. The Logic Cliffs were woven into the fabric of the storyline and tried to make it fun.
Sierra abandoned copyright protection with the advent of CDs. Initially most did not have the means to copy CDs and harddrives were too small for most to waste space for a whole CD. In some cases, Sierra even offered complete install on the harddrive of some of the smaller games. Copyright protection didn't really return to Sierra until near the end of the SCI era.
The solutions for hard drive play of Sierra games don't include game data, they just copy all needed data to the harddrive and adjust the configuration to look to the installed folder for the resources. These solutions are posted on Vivendi's boards. They do not assist with distribution of copyrighted material. Almost none of these games even have a simple CD check function, let alone any copyright protection like SecureROM or Starforce. Even the latest collection releases sets the games up to be played totally from the HDD. Even ScummVM, which has had to endure very close scrutiny from LucasArt, recommends copying the needed game data file to the harddrive, with Red Book Audio tracks ripped to OGG or MP3s.
Most of the single CD games can be made to run from the harddrive by simply copying all of the game to the harddrive and editing the config file to get the game to look to its own folder for the needed files. Most have a section at the end the RESOURCE.CFG like:
Code: Select all
audio=C:\SIERRA\GKCD;D:;D:\sfx;D:\patches;D:\aud
sync=D:\aud
movieDir=D:\seq
patchDir=C:\SIERRA\GKCD;D:;D:\patchesCode: Select all
audio=.\;.\sfx;.\patches;.\aud
sync=.\aud
movieDir=.\seq
patchDir=.\;.\patches This does not work for some of the early CD games (after they bought BrightStar Technologies for their lipsyncing technology), as the audio track was a second Red Book Audio CD track. The second Mixed-up Mother Goose and Jones in the Fast Lane are examples of this. Then there are the multi CD games that look for specific CDs for the needed resources. Sometimes these files are identical and sometimes they are named the same, but are different.
In either of these cases, since there is no real copyright protection, disc images can be made and mounted (in DOSBox with imgmount or in Windows with Daemon Tools. For multiple CDs in DOSBox the discs can be swapped by pressing CTRL-F4 when needed. For games with Red Book Audio tracks, you will need to use a CUE/BIN pair to include the audio track.
For later games, there certainly are legal issues with harddrive play. Even these can be made to run from the harddrive with "NoCD" cracks, but I'm not going to go into this or give any links for obvious reasons.
