Is anyone else getting constantly spammed by the game's copy protection? In particular when your group leaves an encounter to go to the countryside? I know this was not a part of the original game, and I wonder if it is just something going on with my game?

Just happened to me too, and when i guessed one, it crashed the game. Very disappointed to see copy protection in this..

It's the original check-the-manual stuff. It'd have been nice to have seen it removed, like they did with MoO1, but it's manageable.

Here are the symbols used for the Darklands Copy Protection. Using it is much more convenient than looking them up in the .pdf manual.

Thanks so much Greybriar!

Hmm. I haven't been getting this. The first time I saw it on my copy was when I exited/got thrown out of a Raubritter's castle. Repeatedly entering and exiting towns and villages certainly didn't trigger it.

@Greybriar

Thank you! I was wading thru that manual and it was terrible.
Im very grateful.

I saw it for the first time today (when exiting a city through the sewers). Never had it come up before and I'd say I've played a good few hours.

The CD version of this game I got had a digital copy of the manual but didn't include any pictures, not even the copy protection. So I had to figure it out myself by trial and error, as this was before all those nice copy protection images for it were floating around. Thankfully with only 20 possibilities it wasn't too hard.

No it wasn't pirated. (Also still less of a headache than modern DRM.)

Cd version should have come with a brown paper with the codes on it as well as the cluebook here for download, however no manual ( had to use cluebook if new to game )
I just kept the clue list near my note book for keeping track of quests.

Sidenote, the utility to help remember what quests you are on has a little bug that sometimes removes the quest site....oof So I just dot it down heh.


the copyright spam is irregular. it may at times come everytime you do anything in the wilderness. Saving in a city and reloading the save may get it to lay off a bit when you leave the city again. Otherwise you will; get to claim that you know what all these symbols mean after a while!... erm I hope it has real world application.........

You're welcome, bcasner and zombiehunter.

Just a digital manual accessible from a menu on the CD, made to be viewed in DOS. There were multiple CD releases of it in the late 90s, often in a package with other game CDs.

Well... isn't GoG supposed to remove copy protection on his games ?

GoG removes DRM - generic copy protection systems that prevent you installing multiple copies, running the game without the cd, etc. These methods usually have their own code separate from the code of the game itself (because they're licensed by the developers from a separate company like starforce or securom).

Old-fashioned 'check the manual' protection methods were programmed by the developers themselves on a per-game basis, so they're harder to identify and remove since they're in with the rest of the code and can be completely different between different games.

They are a bit of a pain, but the internet and PDF manuals mean they're less of a bother than they were when they were originally released - you could say that they never actually prevented copying, just made it harder since you needed to copy the info from the manual too.

It will be interesting to see how GoG deals with a 'code wheel' protection system when they get a game that uses one - some of those can have hundreds of combinations so you can't just look them up in a list, although I have seen them done with Java or Flash.