Why Complicate Things

[derricksummers]

Thanks Gator
I to was a member of the other site years ago, but I did not agree with what was going on
The Pay to View courses were being advertized on this site but you had to get them from
the other one. At one time I had all the Pay courses but when my old hard drive went up in
smoke I never bothered to buy them again, and I scrapped my membership.
We all have our own way of thinking and my pet hate is ( Locked Courses ) I have asked
many times why courses are locked and only ever got one reply from Glen. The bottom line
is that a course is locked because the desighner does not want to share anything on it.
I try to practice what I preach and I have no locked courses on my hard drive, I download
every course that comes on the list and when I find thats its locked I bin it. In the past I
have had a simple fault crop up on a course and if it had not been locked it was a simple
fix with the APCD. But that is just how I feel and I will never change on this one subject.
If I could create something good, and it might have cost a few pounds I would still share it
for free to any designer that wanted to use it, I guess the APCD is now part of my life !!
Also thanks to pmgolf for the information you gave me, my doctor says since we dont know
the cause of the problem he cant give me any treatment. He as told me not to start any
long novels so maybe the old body wont have to put up with it for any leangth of time.
Good luck to those foolish enough to try APCD

Derrick

[Still Linksing]

Pay courses and locked courses were a major negative for this game. The courses were only locked to some. Others used a course un-locker and did what they wanted with them.

If MS didn't change the EULA for Links 2003, heck, we might've also possibly had another version of this game before MS shut the door on all their game development. You'd also likely have a lot more people still around playing the game today as well. It is what it is now.

[gator]

I agree with what both of you are saying.

What I said about Rick Weathers was my clumsy way of saying I don't see why a designer couldn't use his panos on their course(s). He offered them freely on APCD-courses, doesn't respond to emails, his website hasn't been updated, he's no longer active, APCD-courses is gone (for all the reasons we know), and his former P2P/P4P courses are now available for free here. I expect that last one did not come without some considerable discussion/thought of the Admins here as there was a lot of reaching out to all of those P2P/P4P designers before their courses were released on this site.

I do think if anyone uses his or anyone else's pano in a course and you can identify who made it, it would be nice to give them credit when the course is released.

[Still Linksing]

I don't want to re-hash all the past but it's a different time now and this is quite funny so I think time to post it.

I was banned many, many times from this site for arguing against pay courses. MS never intended the EULA for people to sell courses. The Links 2003 EULA was intended and asked for by designers to prevent illegal sale of free courses on eBay. People just grabbed the opportunity to make money out of the new EULA by charging for their courses. This decision by those certain designers would always kill the game. I never held back arguing against this.

What made things worse was all the things that happened behind the scenes that many of those who sat there and supported pay courses never saw.
Sharing of pay courses was one issue. There was one member here who was always harping on about pay courses and in full support of it. He slammed anyone who even remotely hinted anything to do with illegal sharing. I read posts where he brought this up over and over, slammed member after member for a comment they might've made which might've related to the subject of illegal sharing or lack of support for the entire pay course situation.

After a ban at LC, I came back to this site under an "Amber" alias at one point. I pretended to be a young girl and used an avatar of a pretty young girl.
Well, this guy who I spoke of above, PM'd me within days of Amber's appearance here at LC. He could not offer me every pay course he had fast enough!

Everything about the pay era was just soooo wrong.

[derricksummers]

Gator I forgot to mention that I recall downloading ricks Panos and
when I found that I had to get permision to use them I binned them
I would not hesitate to give credit to a designer if I used some of
the work they had made available with no restrictions on using it
In the past I have e-mailed and sent private messages asking for
permision to use something and not once did I get a reply, so I gave
up trying. I hope the APCD and this site is with us for a long time to
come, and that designers will stop locking courses and share things
This can only be good for any New Designers who are struggling with
the workings of the program, it is very daunting when you first open it.
Some time ago Danny gave me the name of a program that reads all
I could never open so I took the opertunity to copy the top views so
that I could select one without searching for it, below is just a sample

View.png (682.84 KiB) Viewed 6428 times

I have nearly all of them so I can just select what I need to add easy
Derrick

[Danny D]

Gator I forgot to mention that I recall downloading ricks Panos and
when I found that I had to get permision to use them I binned them
I would not hesitate to give credit to a designer if I used some of
the work they had made available with no restrictions on using it
In the past I have e-mailed and sent private messages asking for
permision to use something and not once did I get a reply, so I gave
up trying. I hope the APCD and this site is with us for a long time to
come, and that designers will stop locking courses and share things
This can only be good for any New Designers who are struggling with
the workings of the program, it is very daunting when you first open it.
Some time ago Danny gave me the name of a program that reads all
I could never open so I took the opertunity to copy the top views so
that I could select one without searching for it, below is just a sample
View.png
I have nearly all of them so I can just select what I need to add easy
Derrick

Hi Derrick...

If anyone else is interested in that picture viewer, it's called "IRFANVIEW". It's the handiest *FREE* picture viewer I've ever found. It has many many neat functions for viewing pictures. If you double-click on a single picture in a folder, and press the "T" key, it will open large thumbnails of all of the pictures within that folder. It's perfect for viewing all of those .TGA pictures of treetops in the APCD. You can also view a pictures specs, and even it's alpha channel.

Here's a link for a free download for those who would like a really great picture viewer.

https://www.irfanview.com/main_download_engl.htm

Dan

[Danny D]

Pay courses and locked courses were a major negative for this game. The courses were only locked to some. Others used a course un-locker and did what they wanted with them.

I'm not aware of a course "un-locker". I have tested what happens when I lock a course, and at no point in the process does it mention anything about any unlocking procedures, nor does it offer any kind of a "code" or "key" for unlocking it.

Here are the results of my testing of the course locking utility.

Trying to open a locked course with the APCD results in a popup message like picture 1...

When I used the course locker to lock a beta copy of Wakonda, I get whats in picture 2... No mention of any lock codes...

When I pressed the LOCK COURSE button, I get whats in picture 3... No mention of any lock codes...

All parts of a course can be retrieved using the "Links Extender". However, when you try to open a locked course with it, you get a popup like picture 4... Note it mentions a code or key is needed. I believe this to be a farce to make people think it can actually be unlocked. Nowhere in the locking process does it mention any codes... I tried entering a dummy code in the box, and it returned the message that you see in picture 5...

Note that when I performed the lock on Wakonda beta, that it made me browse to the course and select it with the locking utility. The function it performed was to make a COPY of the course and add the word "LOCKED" to the .crz title. It left the original course there. Picture 5 tells you, in short, if you want to edit this locked course, go find the designer and get an UNLOCKED copy...

Now, with all that said I think to myself, OK, someone wrote the program for the course locker exe file. I wonder if they also wrote another program that would simply reverse the process, or remove whatever's locking it. That's a possibility, but I've never heard of such a program. The simple solution was to save unlocked copies...

[Still Linksing]

Danny,

The things that went on in the past were ridiculous. There 150% for certain was a course unlocker out there. Rehit, Mike Jones, Andrew Jones, these guys would've had access to it and likely one of them created it. It certainly wasn't anything available to the masses publicly. This was all hush hush. How it came about I can't tell you but there are only two possibilities.

1. One of them hacked it
2. Someone from MS or ex-MS passed it on to them or helped them hack it

Both are totally possible. It looks like a very simple little program. I don't think it would take much at all to hack it and reverse what it does.

[Danny D]

Danny,

The things that went on in the past were ridiculous. There 150% for certain was a course unlocker out there. Rehit, Mike Jones, Andrew Jones, these guys would've had access to it and likely one of them created it. It certainly wasn't anything available to the masses publicly. This was all hush hush. How it came about I can't tell you but there are only two possibilities.

1. One of them hacked it
2. Someone from MS or ex-MS passed it on to them

Both are totally possible. It looks like a very simple little program. I don't think it would take much to hack it and reverse what it does.

I viewed the text within the courselock.exe file, and it appears to have been created my Microsoft. I assume it's the same program they used to lock us out of the default courses that come with the Links2003. Do you know if anyone has actually been able to edit any of those courses?? I've certainly never heard of it.

[Still Linksing]

I've certainly never heard of it.

Cause it was hush hush! lol

It was like the Rebel Alliance vs the Galactic Empire here in the past. Seriously!
The course locker was created by MS. I can't remember the original reason the course un-locker came into existence or if it's intent was to get into the MS courses.

What MS used to lock the default courses I have no idea. It may or may not have been the same or a similar program.