How do I make Civ III run without the CD?

[Gamebird]

I have a MacBook 10.2.2, running Sid Meier's Civilization III by Firaxis/MacSoft. How do I get the game to run without the CD in the drive? I have the CD, but I'd rather be able to run it whenever and wherever I had the laptop, instead of having to make sure I had the disk with me at the time.

On Civ II, I could play it without the disk and just didn't have the civilization movies and music. That was fine with me. Is there a way to do the same thing with Civ III?

(Especially as I can't seem to get Civ II to install on my MacBook - it's unsupported or something.)

 

[MAS]

I understand your pain. This disk-in-drive feature is a very low-tech, but annoying form of DRM. Of course, the cracked version doesn't come with it in the first place, so only goody two-shoe's, who buy the legal version, like you and me, have to put up with it.
The good guys are punished, and the bad guys don't even notice it. A small fact that the advocates of this type of DRM seem to have missed, we've been telling them for years, but they never listen...


There are ways to do it, but it is against the rules of this forum to discuss how to do it.

I'll tell you this though: In your case, you already have all the utilities you need! You just have to come up with something.

 

[AlanH]

I recommend you upgrade to the latest beta patch for your software (version 1.29b2). See my sig for a link.

 

[Gamebird]

In the meantime, I've found an archived thread that discusses how to make a disk image. That might be what you meant. In case talking about that is against the rules, I'll say no more. But it's working now, Yay!

 

[bnj.s]

Hello Gamebird,

Well, I would very much like to know about your solution.
Meanwhile, I have found another trick that might help a little: I have noticed that, once the game has started, you may remove the CD or DVD without a problem. That way, you don't have it making a lot of noise in your CD drive.
I suppose that is not considered as piracy, since you need to own the CD or DVD to start the game.

Best regards.

 

[AlanH]

Well, I would very much like to know about your solution.

Moderator Action: Please take the discussion off line.
This forum does not support no-cd solutions unless they are provided by the game publisher. Removing the CD after starting the game is no problem.

 

[Gamebird]

The disk image solution only worked for five or six startings of the game, so now I have the disk in the drive again. Getting it out of the drive after the game starts would be difficult, because I don't have a windowed view/can't hide Civ once the game starts. I've found an odd fix for that - if I save the game, then it takes me to my desktop to ask where to put the saved file. While I'm there I can do other stuff. As soon as I tell it where to save the file, it takes me back into the Civ game. Odd, eh?

I think I'll just use it with the disk in the drive for a while and see how that works out. It was crashing every three hours or so anyway on the disk image and the sound quality would get very choppy after an hour. Which wasn't a fault with my sound card, because if I had iTunes running for music, then iTunes would play fine. But when a sound effect from the game kicked in, it would be choppy and very bad.

So I'll play using the disk and see if I have the same issues. If it continues to be a pain in the butt, I'll upgrade to Civ IV. Seems like there's a lot more support for that available.

 

[Sloaf]

This jam is real!

 

[AlanH]

Cmd-H hides the game in either version and gets you back to the desktop.

Which version are we talking about? I already gave you an alternative answer if you're talking about the MacSoft version.