It's got a secondary check that bricks the game after 2 hours of play. On reload, textures are reduced to minimum, and it gives a piracy notice. Wasn't able to keep playing even with reduced textures.
Check your firewall if its allowed to have access to the game exe, i nobrained clicked on approve when starting the game that was a mistake cause i got the same problem as you!
After removing the access for the exe on the firewall settings its working with no problem
Apparently the game checks the steamapi64.dll size. There is a cracked game.dll and thirdparty.dll floating around that will fix it. Otherwise, it's a standard Goldberg setup.
Bro no one is going around saying these games all came from Dwarf Fortress. Games take inspiration from the ones that came before. It's been like this since the first kids that played video games grew old enough to make their own.
Not a fun game, and your fun is very directly tied to the RNG you get at start up. One game may be easy breezy because RNGeezus bent over for you, the next game RNGeezus is laughing and making you bend over and forgoing the lube.
Difficult is one thing, but putting an hour into the game only to find RNGeezus decided you didn't need any "disks" which MUST have to do anything just makes for a very unfun game.
In time it will probably get better. I'm just not investing my time in a game that requires time to get better.
It just has two checks if the contents of steam_api64.dll add up to the right number. Then when you go to the main menu with a play time over 2 hours and the steam_api64.dll check failed, it sets your texture quality to a specific setting that marks you as a pirate until you delete the cache file, and it pops up messages about having a pirated copy instead of letting you play the game.
It's a fairly interesting measure, but not too bad as long as you know where to look in your AppData to find and delete the cache file after fixing the crack. It's even a bit disguised in the code to not be found with the simplest approaches, so the dev apparently put slightly more than the bare minimum effort in. I just have a suspicion the anti-piracy check will change with future updates, so things could get more interesting.
I looked pretty closely at the code, but I don't have the kind of time needed to exhaustively check everything so I might have missed something. I looked at everything using similar methods as the two checks that cause the popups and everything that uses their results. If there's something else it must be much different, but for now I doubt there's anything more. However I do get a feeling that this dev is the type to change things up every major update until either he or crackers get tired and move on, so I wouldn't trust it to be the same in future versions.
good luck trying to keep this updated, it get update almost everyday. it is a good game , but i admit it is a bit salty on price , just have fun, and if you can in the future, buy the game. i am one of the translator for fan made translation.
Had the same issue with 0.6.109 - but fumbling through the menus by "feel" to enable "Software Cursor" made the cursor visible, so it's likely just a bug rather than anti-piracy. That being said, I also couldn't load saved games under 0.6.109 (game appeared to freeze, but with music playing), so I ended up rolling back to 0.6.108 (which has both a working cursor and working saved-game loading). The 0.6.109 cracked version appears to be another borked crack.
Are you able to load a saved game after applying the crackfix to 0.6.109? I tried it, and although the cursor did re-appear (as you said), I once again couldn't load a saved game. The file dates in the (re-downloaded) crackfix appear to still be the older dates (i.e. from a previous version).
It appears that Skidrow has had a little trouble circumventing all of the anti-piracy measures (and anti-anti-anti-piracy measures) in the latest version(s). That being said, they did just release a crack for 0.6.116 (google "stardeus skidrow" to find it) that hasn't been mirrored here yet - maybe that version will work?EDIT: That version should work. I've played it for a bit, and it seems good so far.
After updating to v0.6.108 (and re-applying the crackfix), I can neither start a new game nor load a previous save. I noticed the file dates in the crackfix don't match the file dates in the latest game .RAR - the crackfix may need to be updated.
EDIT: The v0.6.108 download appears to be properly cracked as-is - it appears to run just fine past two hours without applying the crackfix, and applying the (old) crackfix to this new version breaks the ability to load or start games. Unless there's some more insidious anti-piracy measure still lurking, a supplementary "crackfix" patch no longer appears to be needed (for this version).
Okay, I used the crack file, and the game no longer detects it as a pirated copy. However my graphics are still low res. I deleted the game and file in the Appdata and downloaded the whole game again but the resolution is still low. how do I fix this?
In the options, change your texture quality to what you want. Assuming of course that the crack fix patches out the parts where it sets it to a special value rather than the parts that check for that value...
Did these guys do any copyright patching at all?, or did they made game playable and posted it just to have barging rights that they got it first? or maybe they got tricked by game devs "Game Dev Tycoon" developers uploaded free version of there game to torrents but changed it so that players got fucked if they played far enough. Maybe its same thing?
After removing the access for the exe on the firewall settings its working with no problem
Apparently the game checks the steamapi64.dll size. There is a cracked game.dll and thirdparty.dll floating around that will fix it. Otherwise, it's a standard Goldberg setup.
Difficult is one thing, but putting an hour into the game only to find RNGeezus decided you didn't need any "disks" which MUST have to do anything just makes for a very unfun game.
In time it will probably get better. I'm just not investing my time in a game that requires time to get better.
Some games anti piracy measures leak your personal data online.
It's a fairly interesting measure, but not too bad as long as you know where to look in your AppData to find and delete the cache file after fixing the crack. It's even a bit disguised in the code to not be found with the simplest approaches, so the dev apparently put slightly more than the bare minimum effort in. I just have a suspicion the anti-piracy check will change with future updates, so things could get more interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWYSYaO9hmQ
it is a good game , but i admit it is a bit salty on price , just have fun, and if you can in the future, buy the game.
i am one of the translator for fan made translation.
[You don't have to download the 'Crack Fix']
folder next to the executable"
there literally is
Any one know why? anti-piracy measure?
That being said, I also couldn't load saved games under 0.6.109 (game appeared to freeze, but with music playing), so I ended up rolling back to 0.6.108 (which has both a working cursor and working saved-game loading). The 0.6.109 cracked version appears to be another borked crack.
They updated fix maybe?
It appears that Skidrow has had a little trouble circumventing all of the anti-piracy measures (and anti-anti-anti-piracy measures) in the latest version(s). That being said, they did just release a crack for 0.6.116 (google "stardeus skidrow" to find it) that hasn't been mirrored here yet -
maybe that version will work?EDIT: That version should work. I've played it for a bit, and it seems good so far.I can't seem to get the cursor to show even after turning on 'software cursor'...
I just check the request page they are uploading v0.6.116 soon.
Hope it's fixed.
the crackfix may need to be updated.EDIT: The v0.6.108 download appears to be properly cracked as-is - it appears to run just fine past two hours without applying the crackfix, and applying the (old) crackfix to this new version breaks the ability to load or start games. Unless there's some more insidious anti-piracy measure still lurking, a supplementary "crackfix" patch no longer appears to be needed (for this version).