I really like using Windows Live Writer for uploading to my blog so I hope this bug is fixed soon.

Because I use xp64 on my pc a lot of the good old dos games I used to play wont run, even under dosbox – which is a problem from windows 2k onwards im afraid. One of my favourite games of all time UFO Enemy unknown will install from cd but the actuall game wont run on my pc. Now if i were to admit to being a hard core computer user, I could boot up from dos on a floppy disk (yes ancient technology I know but it works!) mount the cd rom and play the game – but thats a lot of hard work just for one game. I decided to google it, see if anyone had fixed the problems I had come accross, since I used to play it loads under windows 98 and when we upgraded to XP none of my old dos games would run, let alone on my even newer xp64 box. This is where I stumbled into the world of abandonware. After a few hours of searching I had found UFO Enemy Unknown and decided to download it as the website said it supported windows xp. Im not sure of the legality of downloading it but as its abandonware and as I already bought the cd years ago – and still have that cd in my posesion – I dont see it being a problem.

The file downloaded was pretty much the game files so all I had to do was copy them accross to where I wanted to run the game from… D:\My Applications\Dos Games\UFO\ and it worked. It just worked, sound and everything (because im doing this from memory i cant remember if it just worked natively under x64's 32bit emulation, or if I had to use dos box. But thats not important, the important thing is it worked).

Well seeing as todays modern PC games – with a few exceptions: doom III, UT2k4 – are focused totally on graphics and less on game-play I decided to go on the hunt for some free ones online (not the abandon-ware ones mind you, the open-source free ones). My first port of call is sourceforge and I have found a huge list of games that look to promise some good game play. As I am not at home atm I am unable to provide a first person review of each game, so for now this shall have to provide as a preview and when I get home tonight I shall download the ones listed here and play them so as to write a comprehensive review on them.

Automanic

From the description this sounds like it could be a fun game to play. I used to spend countless hours playing twisted metal in turns with friends and my sisters – so it could be classed as a good favorite of mine. It is written in C++ and python and although as far as I can tell they have only ported it to Linux because of the languages used to write it, it shouldn't be too difficult to port to other frameworks – if they don't have an x86 windows port I might try to compile it with native x64 support. The graphics aren't all that good it seems, but then again it was always the game play in twisted metal that kept me playing for hours on end.

Irrlicht Engine

Not a game on its own but the Irrlicht Engine really does look like something good. If you go to the engines website you can find a varied list of games that have been built using the engines base. I have included this here in the list because I shall be checking out some of the games that have been made using it and writing an article on that. Also I am bored of the useless collection of windows screen savers that come with xp, so I may use this engine to create some pretty ones all depends on how quick it is

UFO2000

This one goes back to the beginning of this article my love of UFO Enemy Unknown and looks to be one of the first I shall download and try tonight. Im not too sure how well developed this is as it is still in beta. But from the screenshots it does look to be a pretty good representation of the UFO games, and the developers say that it is able to import the image maps from the actual game to provide an even better representation. Even though I am likely to play UFO Enemy Unknown over this, it does look to be an interesting game and so I shall give it a go and let you know what I think.

EDuke32

Next to UFO Enemy Unknown on my list of games I loved would be Duke Nukem 3D. I haven't been able to find this in recent years, although ages ago I managed to find a demo download which was basically the full first level. The last time I properly played this was on an N64 and since then I have only been able to find and play demo versions for the pc. Alas since getting an x64 pc I haven't been able to find a version of Duke Nukem that will run – however if this one doesn't run the source is available and so I may be able to port it to native x64 architecture – although I don't know too much about such things. In the past I have simply pressed compile and ran the executable it produced. The developers describe this as A cross-platform, OpenGL-rendered Duke Nukem 3D port which provides many new features for mod authors. So if it wont run under native 32-bit emulation I should be able to compile it for native x64. If this works I will be one happy bunny as I have tried numerous times this year to get a version of Duke Nukem working.

Scorched 3D

Summarized Scorched3D is a 3D remake of the popular 2D artillery game Scorched Earth. Scorched3D can be played against the computer, other players and remotely across the internet or LAN. I never played Scorched Earth, never even heard of the game to be honest, what attracted me to this one is the multiplayer function. Many a late night has been burnt up with me and Andrew playing Worms Armageddon and AOE II over the network, and if this provides some good game play then it may be added to our list of multi-player games. The problem with many PC games nowadays, is the fact that you need a fkn cd to play the game, so what if you want to play the game multiplayer on your computers on your network? You can't, unless you crack the cd! I don't know about you but this sounds like the game companies are fueling piracy… all the way though the UT series up-to UT2k3 you could install the game on any PC you owned and not need the cd when I found that UT2k3 wouldn't run without the cd the first thing I did was hunt for a crack! Fortunately the game makers discovered the dismay this caused the UT community and almost immediately released a no-cd patch for the game. Fortunately you don't get this problem with open-source :p

Secret Maryo Chronicles

Described as a Classic Mario game like Super Mario World or Super Mario Brothers with an advanced Leveleditor and new Graphics based on SDL, written in C++. Im really interested in the level editor as I always liked the concept of being able to make your own maps for a game. I really liked the Mario Games on the NES and Super NES so being able to play similar on the PC and to be able to edit my own maps for playing is a really cool idea. The graphics look rather good, albeit in a cartoon style. But I'm all about the game play and if they have managed to make that even half of what the original was like then this should turn out to be a new favorite. Says it runs under linux and windows so we shall see if it runs on my x64 box if it does this looks from the screenshots to be a game I may play often.

Cytadela (the Citadel)

From the description it sounds like this is a port of an old doom clone for Amiga. They say that it is OS portable, so I hope they have a x86 version for me to run under emulation. I don't know too much about this as the description was rather brief so all I can comment on is the screenshot that I have got hold of. From the screenshot this looks like a good old 3D FPS and if its based on doom then I'm interested to see what the game-play is like – seeing as I really liked the doom series right up to doom III (which I am having problems getting to run on x64). I shall be able to shed some light on this one and let you know wether its good or not, once I download and play it at home.

As you can see from the tiny selection I have posted above, the world of free open source games is pretty varied and of reasonable quality. Some of these projects have as many active developers as closed-source games and the quality of some can match if not surpass that of retail versions. I chose to ignore any games listed on sourceforge that didn't have screenshots in the main listing when I was browsing. However I am sure I must have missed a few good ones, mainly because Azerius didn't have a screenshot in the browse list either and although I really don't like that torrent program (Im a utorrent guy) it is of good quality.

I shall attempt to get some of the aforementioned games working tonight and get back here with an article explaining a) how i got them to work and b) reviewing how they play. 

I am also very tight on security on my computer, I have a quarantine machine that I test most software on before running it on my computer because my computer is very, very important to me and I don’t want the extra problem of having to reinstall windows every so often because of extra crap that programs install on my computer without my consent. I thought I was safe, I only have the following installed:

• photoshop (uni work and hobby)
• word & excel 2003 (I don’t need the others i don’t use them)
• Visual C++ (I like to port old BASIC games to C++ so they will run on a x64 platform)
• Firefox (I dont like IE’s lack of support and security plus pngs look like shit in ie)
• winrar (my choice of unzipping app)
• winamp (i may be uninstalling this soon )
• intervideo windvd 7 (general dvd playing and because videolan isn’t as feature packed)
• videolan (for playing all those codexes that nothing else will for free)
• dameon tools (i like to copy my game disks to hdd and mount them makes for faster load times in my opinion, also usefull for checking linux boot disk iso’s)
• mirc (I dont really use this anymore, did once upon a time when i was heavily saturated in deviantart, but #alt.uk became crap so I left)
• macromedia dreamweaver (I have one of the free versions macromedia gave out on magazine, although its being uninstalled because I don’t really use it. I’m an old school coder and like to use notepad :p)
• Cinema 4D (I like to play around with 3D modeling and this appears to be the best way to do so, if you want to get into 3D stuff I recommend you buy a copy of cinema 4D and get started, its pretty easy to use)
• NVidia Mixer Application (it works in x64 which is good and controls the soundcard better than windows does so that is why i keep this necessary piece of extra baggage)
• Avast! AtiVirus (I run their free home edition of their anti virus application, it acts as a live firewall blocking malicious requests and such like as well as live anti virus scanning new files and programs as I open them, I should really shut down its email scanner because I don’t use any email software on my computer)
• Skype & MSN Messenger 7 (Got to keep in touch)
• Finally Interactual (it came with intervideo windvd, I installed it at my request, although I havent any use for it so I guess I shall uninstall it pretty soon)

So as you can see, unlike many computers mine is pretty clean with only 15 applications that I have installed (the rest being bundled with xp) and some of those are being uninstalled soon.

My problem is that Starforce copy protection has been installed on my computer against my will, and is actively fucking with my cd rom, thus the following drive errors that have been stopping my cd burns (a guy has to backup his photos and stuff) costing me money with broken disks, and because I’m on a 64bit OS its messing with the 32Bit emulator build into windows64 called syswow64 due to windows not liking what it is doing.
Starforce copy protection is seen my myself and many many others as malware (a lot like the sony rootkit). It is a piece of unnecessary crap that should never be installed on mine or anyone else’s computer. It poses a problem on two main levels:

• under Windows XP, if packets are lost during the reading or writing of a disk, XP interprets this as an error and steps the IDE speed down. Eventually it will revert to 16bit compatibility mode rendering a CD/DVD writer virtually unusable. In some circumstances certain drives cannot cope with this mode and it results in physical hardware failure (Most commonly in multi format CD/DVD writer drives). A sure sign of this step down occurring is that the burn speeds will get slower and slower (no matter what speed you select to burn at). Starforce, on a regular basis, triggers this silent step down. Until it reaches the latter stages most people do not even realise it is happening.
• The Starforce drivers, installed on your system, grant ring 0 (system level) privileges to any code under the ring 3 (user level) privileges. Thus, any virus or trojan can get OS privileges and totally control your system. Since Windows 2000, the Windows line security and stability got enhanced by separating those privileges, but with the Starforce drivers, the old system holes and instabilities are back and any program (or virus) can reach the core of your system by using the Starforce drivers as a backdoor.
  

I have noticed both things happening (see image above) these errors began to pop up around the time (checked my logs) that I installed the game X2 which stealthily installs the Starforce “malware”. I have also noticed more cd’s as coasters while before installing the game I had 0 bad burns, or burns that just stopped for no reason. I have also noticed (and this is a nice feature of XP64) that security errors have been showing up relating to a 32Bit processor stating bad driver or incompatibility issues, I have traced this to these starforce drivers (which took a while because I had to learn how).

So before today I was sure my computer has safe and secure with everything running as best as I could get it to, and then I find out about this, now I want to get rid of it, because it is “damaging” my computer and costing me money with respect to toasted cds. Below you can see the processes in windows device manager, however normally they are hidden. To show them you have to open device manager go to the view drop down and select show hidden devices. If the malware has been installed you should see the following:

Not one but four starforce devices! They are un-needed junk, that is basically slowing down your computers cdrom drive amongst other things, they need to be removed! They should never have been installed in the first place, and thats what bugs me the most is that I wasn’t warned – and also they are incompatible with my system which is causing ever more problems than they do under a 32bit OS.

Well ok, before I attempt to brute force remove them, I have researched a lot into the matter, I quote slashdot “some users report difficulty in keeping their systems stable due to conflicts, and think they’ve tracked it down to the StarForce protection.” and Broadbandreports “Users report that the software gobbles up computing cycles, slows CD drive read-times, creates CD-R read errors even after removal, and is responsible for a number of device conflicts – particularly with external USB drives. Users who have tried to remove the product manually have often damaged their systems to the point of needing a fresh OS install.“

So its not just me who is finding problems traced back to this malware, reading those I can also ditto the usb driver issue, I plugged a friends pen drive into my computer windows installed the drivers automatically and then just rebooted, upon start up I got the error report, windows had a system critical error due to device drivers, and it wasn’t the pen drive, it was these bloody Starforce protection thing, just back then I didn’t know about them, but looking back on error logs and id codes I can trace the problem to starforce. I have run windows 32Bit solidly for days on end really hammering it and have only ever had to reboot once because of memory leaks, my x64 version of windows xp has never in the 5 months I’ve been running it ever crashed, explorer has had to reboot a few times but never resulting in data loss (explorer rebooting meaning that explorer.exe crashes, windows closes explorer and then starts it again all other apps running remain running with no problem so i usually browse the net while waiting for the startbar to come back).

Ok, so I have checked the stories, found out the problem of many errors shown on my computer, traced error reports and finally found out why thanks to boycott starforce as well as how to remove. So I shall now go about the process and shall report back asap.

Edit: Well that was quick, I just downloaded the Starforce Cleaner Utility from online security and it took less than a second before asking me to reboot :/ And guess what, yup it did jack shit. Bugger all, fucking nothing! So yes, after all of this the remove tool doesn’t work, the only thing I can think of doing now is reinstalling windows. Thankyou a lot starforce, now I have to spend hours backing up my files just to fix a problem YOU CREATED!

Disclaimer: All the games I own have been bought, fortunately the only games I play now are UT2k3, Sim City and Guildwars. All software is either from magazines or bought. I am not endorsing piracy simply standing up for my right to protect my investments.

:info: I wrote a follow up which can be seen here.