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From: Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: Code Wheels
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2025 14:36:13 -0400
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rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Ross Ridge) looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>Spalls Hurgenson  <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>>Anyone else have fond memories of this stupid thing, or is this a hill
>>on which I'm going to die alone? ;-)
>
>I didn't mind code wheels that much.  You only had to use them once at
>start up and loading times were so long back then that it didn't add
>that much a delay before you could playing them.  But I don't have fond
>memories of them.  If play through Pool of Radiance again, I'm not going
>to get out my old code wheel, I'm going to play a cracked version.
>
>Also like all early methods of copy protection, I'm not sure how much they
>actually prevented piracy.  It wasn't that hard or expensive to photocopy
>a code wheel at the library, and cracks weren't too hard to find.

Or general programs like Neverlock that patched the .exe so you could
enter anything and it would accept it.

Which caused no end of problems with Eye of the Beholder 2, Neverlock
patched it, but there was a secondary check later, that compared what
you entered with it's master list of answers and if it did not match;
when you got hit by a spell, the game crashed to desktop.

Found that out because I'd entered Wizard (I think) in my game, and my
sister had typed random garbage.   Her game crashed, mine did not since
wizard was on the list.

That check came much later in the game than the enter code prompt.

You could dodge the Skeleton Knight spells down in the basement area,
but upstairs are the lightning pads, where you cannot avoid getting hit
at least once.   That's, maybe 80% of the way through the game I think,
so it was a big F.U. to players using a crack.

Xocyll
-- 
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of 
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably, 
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So 
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr