Running the game without disc

[Rosencrantz]

Hello!


I was never able to run SHIII without a disc, but now I found out (accidentaly) it seems to be possible with IV. Only thing I would like to know is, is it safe to do so? Or is there somekind of protection system in the game which could possibly identify me as an illegal user and ruin my career?

Greetings,
-RC-

[ichso]

Would be obscure after you already entered your DVD key on installation, wouldn't it ? ;)

Go ahead playing without the disc, I do it too.

If you wanted to be really sure (paranoid ? :D) you could just have a firewall block SH4's access to the internet if it is on while you're playing. If you don't play multiplayer, of course.

[Rosencrantz]

Thank you a fast reply, ichso! :rock:

Just wanted to be sure, as my time for playing is limited and to complete a two moth patrol in the game usually takes two months from me in real life. You know, with that kind of playing rate you don't want any nasty surprises just after you got yourself of the Japan coast...


Greetings,
-RC-

[Sailor Steve]

Playing without the disc is a function of one of the patches. They announced it at the time (which of course was a long time ago, but this was just an FYI).

[Stealhead]

I have always wondered with a PC game that can be run sans disk does this make your PC work harder or not? I mean by having the disk in anyway does the data get processed faster off the disk or off your hard drive? Or does it really make a diffrence. Never knew SH4 worked without the DVD but I have IL-2 1946 and that can be run with or without the disk but it seems that the game runs ever so slightly better with the DVD in. Anyone else notice that?(i have a quad core and 3gb ram and Nvidia 8800 GT so well above IL-2 reqs and no issue with SH4's either) Never any issues with SH4 though IL-2 sans dvd can act buggy at times.

[ichso]

Concernd with the work load on the pc it doesn't matter. The work that is done is done by the CPU. On start of a game and then on loading a mission the data is loaded into RAM from either hard disk or DVD or whatever.

Of course in such a big game world not everything is loaded all at once at any given point of time. But in SH4 things get installed and loaded from HDD, so the DVD is only needed for installation and usually checking it before the game is started - until that patch Sailor Steve mentioned.

[ReallyDedPoet]

Playing without the disc is a function of one of the patches. They announced it at the time (which of course was a long time ago, but this was just an FYI).

Yeah, it was with 1.4 :yep:

[Stealhead]

That is what I figured I have 1.5 myself but I will keep using the DVD. though I can hear the DVD getting read at certain points so if the DVD is in there even with 1.5 according to you it is reading the data from HD not the DVD. I will see what happens without the DVD if it dose anything diffrent. It is mainly habit i guess I have a few games that wont run without the DVD inside of course i have some Steam games that have no DVD or CDROM at all but that is another can of worms