Gaming Without CDs

The games these days look for the CD in the physical sense, in your drive, instead of just taking the computer's word for it with the mounted .dmg's. Outside of kracks, you're out of luck, unless someone out there has figured out a way to NOT edit the game's code to look for the physical CD and somehow fake a physical CD...

You make a disk image of the game using disk utility in the utilities folder and then you mount the dmg file using toast. Sometimes you can get away with just double clicking the dmg, but most of the time you need to mount it with toast. Do a search of the forums about making an image file of warcraft 3, it's been discussed many times, even if it's not the game your using, theres a very complete walkthrough on how to make a working dmg file.

Did you try using search?

JzzTrump22 said:

You make a disk image of the game using disk utility in the utilities folder and then you mount the dmg file using toast. Sometimes you can get away with just double clicking the dmg, but most of the time you need to mount it with toast. Do a search of the forums about making an image file of warcraft 3, it's been discussed many times, even if it's not the game your using, theres a very complete walkthrough on how to make a working dmg file.

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Mounting it with toast will do the trick?? I wonder why?

Rocksaurus said:

Mounting it with toast will do the trick?? I wonder why?

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Toast can mount with read only status, while an Apple disk image mounts as an Apple Disk Image. Some games just check for the Read Only status.

Interesting, very interesting.

Make sure you lock the toast disc images if you're still having problems (click on the file and do a get info, then lock it). Sometimes it mounts the disc as an RW if not, and that won't pass the disc check. A lot of times you can delete most of the files off of a disc image and make it under a meg and it still fools the game.

Newer games, such as Doom 3, physically require a disc in the drive, but people have patched them to work with a disc image instead.

I play my copy of SimCity 4 Rush Hour without the CD all the time. I used DiskUtility to make a disc image of it. There is an option to make it read only. I would be more specific, but I cant remember exactly how to do it and I am on my work computer, a PC. Anyway, when I double click on the Rush Hour.cdr, disk utility mounts it (no need to use toast). When the disk mounts, it comes up just the same as when I insert the actual cd into my computer. This should be possible with any other game, you just have to get DU to format the image the right way. BTW there have been several threads discussing this and one of them is where I learned how to do what I tried to explain. Do a search...

Patmian212 said:

Where can I get these patches, like the ones used on doom 3?

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I don't think we can talk about that here...

But I use Toast Titanium 5, and just make disk images of the games I want. Then I lock the disk image, and it works! Really nice for trips, etc.

For Doom 3, could you make a disk image (like mentioned above) and then just stick in any CD to the drive to fool it?

Mechcozmo said:

For Doom 3, could you make a disk image (like mentioned above) and then just stick in any CD to the drive to fool it?

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You don't need to stick in a cd, thats the whole point. You don't need any cd's whatsoever. Once you make the dmg/toast file whichever you make, all you do is go into program Toast and select image file, then you drag the dmg/toast file you made into the area and the file gets mounted on the desktop the same way putting a cd into the cd drive would. So your computer thinks there is a cd in the cd drive, but there really isn't. Hope that clarify's a few things.

JzzTrump22 said:

You don't need to stick in a cd, thats the whole point. You don't need any cd's whatsoever. Once you make the dmg/toast file whichever you make, all you do is go into program Toast and select image file, then you drag the dmg/toast file you made into the area and the file gets mounted on the desktop the same way putting a cd into the cd drive would. So your computer thinks there is a cd in the cd drive, but there really isn't. Hope that clarify's a few things.

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Right, I know that, but someone said that Doom 3 checks for a physical disk in the drive.

Oh, well.

Patmian,


I've been trying to make a working disk image of Jedi Academy without much sucess....can you tell me how you did it? Please include all necessary details.

Thanks in advance,


richmlow

Patmian212 said:

Got it working with toast, thanks for the help everybody.

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Patmian,


How do you make the image read-only? I did not see any option(s) in the menus, etc.... I tried to make CD/DVD copy and save as an image, without changing any settings (just as you suggested), but the game still asks for the original CD, when activated.

I think my problem is the "read-only" issue, since I followed your directions. Can you tell me about the read only option....where do you set this option in Toast 6.0?

Thanks.


richmlow

Patmian212 said:

All I did is I made a normal .toast image with toast 6. I didnt touch any setting or anything I just made a simple image(make sure the image is read only). After the image is made I opened toast, and on the menu bar clcik utilities and the mount, then mount your image and it should work.

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richmlow said:

I think my problem is the "read-only" issue, since I followed your directions. Can you tell me about the read only option....where do you set this option in Toast 6.0?

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After the image is made, go to it in the Finder and click on it. Press Command+I (Get Info). Now check the "Locked" checkbox (in the top part of the info window... above the little expanding arrow thingies)

Patmian,


Any help/advice is greatly appreciated! I think that I am very close to duplicating what you did....it still does not work. I am using Toast 6.0 Titanium.

richmlow

richmlow said:

Patmian,


How do you make the image read-only? I did not see any option(s) in the menus, etc.... I tried to make CD/DVD copy and save as an image, without changing any settings (just as you suggested), but the game still asks for the original CD, when activated.

I think my problem is the "read-only" issue, since I followed your directions. Can you tell me about the read only option....where do you set this option in Toast 6.0?

Thanks.


richmlow

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Mechcozmo,


It still doesn't work.


richmlow

Mechcozmo said:

After the image is made, go to it in the Finder and click on it. Press Command+I (Get Info). Now check the "Locked" checkbox (in the top part of the info window... above the little expanding arrow thingies)

Click to expand...

Patmian,


I'm just trying to do this with Jedi Academy....I must be doing something wrong, since you are able to do this but I am not able to.


richmlow

Patmian212 said:

Richmlow, the toast thing doesnt work with every game. But from what you explained, it seems you've done everything right.

Click to expand...

Patmian,


I think that I have solved the mystery....I am able to make a working disk image of Jedi Academy 1.0.1. When I mount the image and install from it, I can play without the CD.

However, once I patch to 1.0.1c (latest official patch), I can no longer use the disk image. The game asks for the game CD to be inserted.

Since 1.0.1c has substantial fixes (fixing of stuttering graphics, etc...), I guess that I am forced to play with the game CD.

If anybody else has any suggestions/work-arounds, please let me know!

Thanks to everyone for their help so far.


richmlow

richmlow said:

Patmian,


I'm just trying to do this with Jedi Academy....I must be doing something wrong, since you are able to do this but I am not able to.


richmlow

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