Don’t you love Windows Vista?
8 02 2008If you could ask software journalist about the biggest disappointment of the year 2007 most of them would say: Windows Vista. I am pretty sure that there’s a lot of reasons behind that… and I just found one yesterday on my own. I’ve setup new computer for my mother. It did come with Windows Vista Home (or Basic) edition. I installed Runes of Avalon and … it doesn’t work.
It’s not the game’s fault. It’s Software Passport aka Armadillo that is not compatible with Vista. There is of course a new version that is compatible with Vista, but guess what… there’s no upgrade, you need to buy full new license. What the heck? Not only Armadillo doesn’t protect you against piracy (Runes of Avalon had been cracked one day after release) but they force you to buy new license (300$) to get your software compatible with new Windows.
Lucky me, Vista users correspond to only 12% of ANAWIKI website visitors so I can focus on finishing Runes of Avalon 2 before switching to home made DRM solution. I will either go with separate demo/full version or online activation. We have to do something for Mac and Linux anyway, so no point for paying for new Software Passport that is not cross-platform.
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Hmm, I’d better test this for myself. It never occurred to me that my Armadillo wrapped games would fail in Vista (doh!). What sort of crash are you getting?
I don’t remember exactly, but it is some kind of access violation trying to read from address 0x00000. Armadillo support told me to search their FAQ, nothing helpful, but at least in some version of Vista they report that using MAC adrress to protect your software may cause incompatibility.
OK thanks. I’ll test on my Vista machine and see what happens.