No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size box"?

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

A bunch of Dinosaurs wanted physical media trolololol.

Mike

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

Yeah, those dinosaurs will be able to install the game 20 years from now, unlike the people that don't have it in a physical form.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

I like Physical media

Will most current Digital distributors still be here in 10 years? Who knows? According to them you don't own the games you buy anyway, and they can take them away for whatever reason they deem worthy.

I'm still bitter about Impulse getting sold to gamestop. :|

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

Maybe, Maybe not....

Mike

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

All I can think of now is a T-Rex trying to plug in a USB with short arms, and the slapstick of him destroying his home office.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

"ME GRIMLOCK WANT TO PLAY PLANETARY ANNIHILATION!

XD Chronoblip you crack me up.

Mike

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

Maybe I will too.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

Is it possible to get an simple install.exe which we can save on our computers or burn it on dvd? Where is the problem with that? It's just that simple, or not?

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

That's what steam backups are for.

That depends on the game itself. We already know PA is not going to have DRM.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

Twenty years ago the standard form of storage for software was a stack of 3.5" floppy discs. I can't remember the last time I even saw a computer with a functional floppy drive, let alone had cause to use one.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

That still doesn't mean you can't hook up a floppy drive to use that stack of floppies.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

the "in twenty years" perspective isn't actually an argument for distribution of a fixed medium.
If you think long term, a compact downloaded installer is easier to maintain in whatever backup strategy you employ for your data than yet another disk. In the time frame of 20 years you will want to switch media anyhow, I would bet on it.

the only reasons I see for a distribution of some kind of medium are collectors (people collect almost anything, hard to argue against it ) and restricted download speeds (valid reason, just keep in mind updates and any intermediate versions (alpha, beta) will be downloads anyhow), but storage is in favour of downloaded files.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

Sounds like a huge .exe file. And given the way Windows works, it couldn't be done. You still need to unpack a lot of files and those will need to be outside of the .exe-file. That's how most setup systems works, because of Windows' limitations.

If the game/program is small enough, it can be stored within the .exe, but I doubt PA will be.

You also need to keep those old OS's lying around to play those games as well. And it won't be long before floppy support is removed from modern OS's.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

That's the only reason I got it.
I wasn't interested until they said it'd be something interesting like Commander shaped.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

My strategy for Steam games is to download them once and keep a steam backup of them on an external hard drive. If I want to reinstall the game for whatever reason, I load it from the external drive. If the external hard drive would crash or get lost, I redownload the thing from Steam.

My strategy for all files that I want to keep forever is to have multiple backups available. No storage medium is invulnerable to wear: CDs and DVDs can wear and lose data, external hard drives can crash, flash can lose its data over time or get destroyed by an electrostatic discharge. Additionally, anything physical can get lost, stolen or burnt with your house. Online backup services can go bankrupt, accounts can have payment issues, internet connections can fail when you need them, ... It wouldn't be the first time that I have my hard drive crashed only to discover that my backup is broken too.

Currently I keep one backup in Dropbox and one backup on my external hard drive. Which means I have the data at three places (my internal hard drive, my external hard drive and Dropbox). And I have FreeFileSync to sync my dropbox folder with my external drive.

I will get the USB stick, but it's mostly a collectors thing and I'd also like to play with it to have a PA-stick that enables me to play the game together with a friend when I'm visiting them even if he doesn't have the game.

And yeah, the OS notes are correct too, but finding a VM image for an old OS isn't necessarily hard.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

You know what?
Any kind of media-content will always be available in some shady corners of the internet, even after all our dvd's are broken. DVD's dont exactly last forever. In fact in 20 years many of the dvd's that are sold today will be broken. Blurays are a bit better and are supposed to last like 50 years, if I remember correctly.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

I see a big difference between physical storage and digital ones.

Physical:

Storage device getting outdated (like floppy discs)? Trasfer the data to a newer form of storage, like DVDs or flash drives. There is no need to use external floppy drives. I still have some old floppy games burned to cds, and they work great (though they now need an emulator to work on my windows 7).

Afraid of storage failing? Make backup copies. It doesn't matter if a disc or drive fails over time. You have an extra copy or even several. One fails, just make another copy (in case the copy fails).

Cloud Storage:

Steam goes down? Too bad, you can't backup Steam servers. All you can do now is get a hack for the game to be able to play it without steam (which might prevent you from getting into multiplayer matches), or download an iso (which is a copy of the physical version of the game).

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Of course, I might have some things off, but all in all, I see physical storage as being superior.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

if you compare it just to cloud storage or steam like services, sure then the physical storage wins.

there are a few ways to store data beyond cloud and without needing a disc in the first place, they are called local backup.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

I played a game on Steam while lacking Internet access today. In a field on my netbook. You would have a point if the situation you describe actually represented reality.