Virtual disks?

[RoD]

I have a LAN coming up soon, and i want to make installing each game quick and easy. Now i have a dedicated gaming server, and i was wondering if it would be possible to image a CD onto the HDD and allow users to dbl click the image icon and install the game as if they had the cd in their drive?

I own all the games legally, im trying to avoid making 10 CDR's for each game. I'm expecting a minimum of 25 people, through this method everyone can install the games at will and all at once, instead of passing CDs.

[Kinasz]

tried something like that at a lan once, it is absolutely unbelievably slow!!! and we only had 20ppl. It is quicker to do cdr's!

If you use bittorrent bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/ (i think ) it will go a lot faster. Just get everyone on the lan to install bittorrent client and daemon tools and then transfer over the iso's like that. If everybody does it at the same time it will be quick and painless.

[RoD]

its a 100MBPS lan i dont think it would be so slow.

[ober]

*cough* illegal *cough*

Ya know... most of the newer games won't allow you to use the same game in a LAN situation. Just FYI.

[heat511]

its a 100MBPS lan i dont think it would be so slow.

you'll never get even close to that rate when you actually transfer... at least in my experience

[RoD]

Thats what i mean.

Ober: All these games play on a lan, and its well within my rights as each games owner to allow other people to play my copy in a localized, non profit lan, as per contacting the game companies.

[Kinasz]

er trust me its slow... 20 people downloading of your server together thats only 5mbps each. Even if you have gigabit lan for your server that is still only 50mbps each. Assuming your servers drives can dish it out that fast. Your clients will only be at half their capacity downloading. Bittorrent will make out your whole networks bandwidth.

I am speaking from experience, short of a server with 2xGigabit lan with scsi disks, bit torrent is the only fast solution.

[ober]

RoD, I still think you're wrong. If game companies were ok with you letting other people play your game in a LAN/non-profit situation... why would some of them restrict you to the point where you have to have different keys for each copy of the game running!?

Show me the licence, or other proof, or I say you're full of I am sillyI am sillyI am sillyI am silly and call the cops on your party.

[RoD]

i asked them via a support email contact (sierra), but since u didnt buy it i went and actually called them. Apparently its untrue. Theyw ere able to find the email in the logs they keep, and said they are going to deal with it (oops?).

Hmm....crap now we cant talk about it here.

[vasanth]

Well to answer the original question you can use a software by name Alcohol which is a CD rom emulator.. it can load ISO or any other images and make your PC believe its a CD rom drive.. you can share this drive then and use it.. else each person can install Alcohol and load the Image from the network... I usually do this and it works fine though not fast... You can download a demo version at http://download.com.com/3000-2646-10...ml?tag=lst-0-1

[linucksrox]

yea i couldn't even get alcohol to work with halo...do i need to use specific settings or what?

[-=SoKrA=-]

yea i couldn't even get alcohol to work with halo...do i need to use specific settings or what?

Usually when you create an image, the physical data of the protection (or something like that) will not be copied. Most games wont work with an image or CD-R (since to Windows they're exactly the same). You need to patch the program so that it doesn't check for the original CD.
It shouldn't be a problem if you have it leagally, if you don't have it legally, then you shouldn't do this.

[RoD]

thnx guys

[linucksrox]

oh... well i don't have alcohol legally. so you're telling me it's... ok to illegally copy games as long as i legally own the burning software??? or... i mean not to imply that i do it or anything. 'cuz i don't. i just tried it once. and it didn't work. but that's ok 'cuz it'd be illegal anyway.