X2 and Starforce

[Sever]

I've been wanting a decent space shooty game for a while now and seeing X2 in my usual games store for 5 bucks, i decided to pick it up. However i seem to recall the X series of games was included on the list of Starforce recipients at one time or another. I've taken reasonable measures to protect my game rig from shite in all its guises and am wondering if anyone can tell me whether or not X2 is a Starforce product and (if it is) how i can bypass it. Thanks in advance. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Luvian]

X3: Reunion has starforce I think so X2 should too.

Let me know if you find a way to bypass it, I hate starforce. My brother actually installed the game because he's looking for a space game too, but I'm sure he'd be happy to get rid of that protection.

[Bozos of Bones]

X2 didn't have SF, and X3's SF is bypassed. Both are really great games.

[Harkoliar]

I played X2 series. I was very impressed the way they did it. Good luck on it!

[shamrock_uk]

Originally posted by Bozos of Bones: X2 didn't have SF, and X3's SF is bypassed. Both are really great games.

Are you sure of that Bozos? I'm fairly sure it installed some rubbish on my computer..

[Harkoliar]

just in case, search for starforce.. heaps of tools to remove it just in case

[Sever]

It turns out that there is an official patch by Egosoft to remove Starforce from the system after installing X2. It sounds like even the games companies are getting annoyed by it. [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

*Edit: Link. Apparently it has to be a registered copy of X2...

One more question: Did anybody have any problems with missing voices? Sound and music appears to be ok, just the dialogue...

[ 09-08-2006, 12:35 AM: Message edited by: Sever ]

[Sever]

To paraphrase Jayne from Serenity, "This bitch is disturbing my calm!" After exhausting all reasonable measures, apparently i have to roll-back to Windows Media Player 9 or install an unsupported third party codec pack to get the voices to work in X2. At least, i hope that's all i have to do. The next option after that is reinstalling windows!

From Egosoft's support page: The very, very last resort. Sometimes Windows simply does not seem to be willing to use the codecs in the priority order you have specified. One sure-fire way to force this to happen is to start again and reinstall Windows from scratch. Obviously we do not recommend this unless you were planning to do so anyway for some other reason. It is rarely worth the very significant effort it requires to do this just to make the voices work in a game!

[img]graemlins/saywhat.gif[/img]

You don't say.

[Sever]

From Windows Media Download Site: Windows XP users: Windows Media Player 9 Series is no longer available for Windows XP. Download Windows Media Player 10.

I am seriously running out of patience and would be very appreciative of a little advice here. I've had painful experiences with third party codec packs in the past and do not want to go through that again on a new (and 100% clean) computer. I also did not want to install a lesser version of Media Player but that no longer appears to be an option anyway. Short of the drastic solution quoted in my last post, the only other possible solution is this:

From Egosoft's support page: Another unofficial solution if you cannot get any of the above to work is to change the voice file to WAV format.

Can someone please explain to me what that means exactly? Is it a simple (and hopefully reversable) toggle in Media Player? Or do i have to load X2's voice files (if i can find 'em) into some program and click "save as .wav"? Or do i just give up in disgust? WTF are they talking about?

Thanks in advance. [img]smile.gif[/img]

*Edit: *Slaps forehead* Note to self: When copy/pasting intstructions from a web page into notepad for offline use, be sure to note the hyperlinks.

The link explaining how to convert to .wav was buried in the sentence. I get the impression that this is a frequently encountered problem with X2. What i don't get is how it takes someone from outside the company to provide the best (and/or only) solution. [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img]

[ 09-08-2006, 12:11 PM: Message edited by: Sever ]

[shamrock_uk]

Hope the solution is working?

Seriously though, don't be afraid of 3rd party decoder packs. They're far more useful and work better than whatever versions Microsoft deigns to ship with WMP - there are some formats you'll never play without 3rd parties.

Just stick with a reputable one - FFDShow works for me or the Defiler Pack also has an excellent reputation (just uninstall divx etc first).