The other day I was checking the hard drive on one of my old computers and found my installation of WOOMB. I remember having alot fun playing Hydlide 3, Golvellius 2, and Xak translated in english. Even their english manuals were superb. Sadly I can't run any of the games because of some "runtime error". I guess the WOOMB launcher needs to connect to server to activate. I bought 9 games from WOOMB.net before they closed their doors, and I still would like to play them. I hate to ask this but is there any way to get these game running again?
I think several of us, myself included, are awaiting the re-release of these Woomb.net games in patch form. I hope they will become available again. Before WOOMB closed, I was a premium subscriber and had purchased Xak and Golvellius I & II and still have all of those files with the original launcher as well. I'm not sure if there is a way to get these files working again, but I'd sure like to see all of their releases to become available or sold again.
Or perhaps the woomb people could tell us what kind of DRM was used; perhaps someone can write a small patch for the launcher, or side-application which will fake the call-home response (if such DRM was used).
I can't say anything about the DRM because I don't have a clue about how that works/worked. I can say, however, that indeed I have planned for a long time already to mold the WOOMB releases into IPS patches and distribute those on a dedicated website. However, since I'm not really a magician when it comes to making IPS patches, those patches still haven't been made. Apart from that, the website should still be set up, but that is something I could do.
I had planned (together with Max) to make such a dedicated website after we released Project Melancholia, but unfortunately finishing that project takes much more time than we anticipated. That doesn't mean that I couldn't start the development of the new website, but I would need someone to make the IPS patches for me...
By looking at this video, it seems that Woom's translation of Xak is indeed impressive and a very high quality work! If all that's missing for such high quality translations to be released are the patches creation, I'll certainly be willing to help on that! :D
If you don't have a website to publish it, probably they can be hosted here on MRC, don't they? If not, I can create a special area on my site for your translations.
You can patch the game (recommended tool is again IPSEXE) and play the patched version on the emulator of your choice (blueMSX, openMSX, etc ...); however, openMSX allows also to run the original game while applying the IPS patch to the game in its memory.
