TechHelp: NeverWinter Nights Mac Backup Copy?

[seawasp]

As most people are aware, I am not opposed to companies protecting their intellectual property. After all, I make money through IP means.

However, I *AM* opposed to companies protecting their IP in such a way as to make it impossible for me to perform perfectly legitimate actions. In this case, I want to make a backup disc for NeverWinter Nights (Mac version) so that I can have the original stored safely and my son, for whom I bought the game, can still play it. Or vice versa, I don't care.

The problem is that which I can *apparently* copy the disc onto a CD (or my desktop, for that matter), something is obviously not quite right with the copy, because NWN won't start with any copy; it demands the real NWN play disc.

Anyone know a workaround? I hate having software which may become useless simply because of one stupid accident -- and with no less than 4 kids under 10 in the house, stupid accidents are all too likely.

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

NWN for Mac isn't copy protected.

You don't need the CD to run it, either.

Just use Disk Utility to make a disk image (.dmg suffix) from the disk. When your son wants to play he can double-click the disk image, mounting it, and NWN will then run happily from the hard disk. (This workaround assumes you've got a spare 600Mb for the disk image, but on a modern Mac that's no problem. And it's what I use to avoid shuffling CDs when playing NWN on my Mac.)

[nordhus.livejournal.com]

I'm not familiar with the Mac world but this (http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/daemonhelp.php?helppage=17#helpstart) info on how to make exact copies of a CD might be useful.

[ckd]

And, if that works, burning a copy of the image should work.

seawasp, how did you make the CD copy? Dragging to a folder and burning is likely to fail, but making a "new image from device" with Disc Utility and either mounting it or burning it should work; it works for me with other games (Civ3, SMAC/SMACx).

[autopope.livejournal.com]

You don't need that stuff on a Mac running OS/X. Instructions for OS/X 10.4.x:

Go into Applications/Utilities and start Disk Utility.

Stick the NWN disk in the Mac.

In the left hand column of the main window, which shows the mounted disks and filesystems on the machine, single-click on the CD. That's the parent of the partition named "Neverwinter Nights", or whatever.

Go to File->New->Disk Image From diskn (where n is some number corresponding to the disk you'd single-clicked on).

A file dialog will appear, asking for the name of the disk image file you want to create. Call it something like nwn.dmg and create it on the Desktop. The "image format" popup should be set to "compressed" and the "encryption" popup should be set to "none". Then hit the "save" button and watch Disk Utility make a disk image from the NWN CD.

Later, when your kid wants to play NWN, tell him to double-click on the disk image and wait (while it mounts -- there's a progress bar window) before he starts the game up.

[sub-musashi.livejournal.com]

gamecopyworld.com can be helpful for this sort of thing - finally I can play Civ4 without the cd!

[lmekko.livejournal.com]

Of course, should all else fail... I'm sure I can get something to work for you, just not the most legal way ;)