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Live to fly, fly to live.

<span class="bold">Knights of the Sky</span>, a high tale about acing the art of aerial combat, is available now for Windows, Mac, and Linux, DRM-free on GOG.com, with a 50% launch discount.

Some ride across the countryside in armored horses, some lay the heads of slain dragons on the feet of impressionable princesses, and others try to survive hails of bullets with only half an engine, a jammed gun, and a legendary dogfighter on their tail.
These are the Knights of the Sky, doing battle high over the trenches and aerodromes of World War 1 for the freedom of their country and the title of the ultimate Ace of Aces. Gather intelligence on your opponents, hop on one of the 20 renowned fighter planes, and get ready to face your destiny as you try to keep Baron Manfred von Richtofen in your crosshairs and yourself out of his.

Look your opponent in the goggles and reduce him to a trail of descending smoke as you fight to become a legend among the <span class="bold">Knights of the Sky</span>, DRM-free on GOG.com.
The 50% launch discount will last until July 26, 12:59 PM UTC.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/hX0JFUyfWAo
Post edited July 21, 2016 by maladr0Id
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gamesfreak64: a legal copy check (form of DRM) is still inside the game? if so thats quite funny to read.
I guess it's just a manual protection? Meaning you need the game manual to look up some answers, not that the protection works by hand :-P

Of the games I own here it's the same with the Leisure Suit Larry series, but GOG provides all the manuals and handouts. I actually like it, because it takes me back to the time when my collection of games consisted of my boxes of floppy disks and my folder with photocopies of manuals and copy protections and whatnot. (Yes, sorry, I was a pirate at that time... :-( I'm trying to make up for that now.)

Regarding min specs, besides what omega64 says (GOG using their test machines as min specs), take into account that all these games are emulated now. So the specs for emulation are way higher than the original specs, and also I'm quite sure that none of the original developers/publishers will be around to give specs for emulation.
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timppu: I think this game appeared around the same time as Red Baron, and always played a second fiddle to it?
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PMIK: As usual for this era, the Amiga version looks so so so so so much better.
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timppu: Nope. This game was released in 1990 (1991 for Amiga), and as was already common by then, it used 256-color VGA graphics with a better color palette compared to Amiga's 32-color (OCS) graphics.

PC version: http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/knights-of-the-sky/screenshots/gameShotId,139/

Amiga version: http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/knights-of-the-sky/screenshots/gameShotId,449105/

Notice how the PC version has better looking sky and the colors overall are smoother, with gradient colors? Plus, the PC version probably ran more smoothly, being a 3D polygonal game and all.
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IAmSinistar: I remember this one on the Amiga. Obviously superior there, but the DOS version is welcome too. Thanks!
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timppu: No no no, and still no! :)

Oh yeah, and the PC version supported analog flightsticks. I am pretty sure on Amiga you had to do with a digital on/off joystick in this game.

Flight and space combat simulations were one genre which were usually superior on PC (in the early 90s and so), for the reasons stated above (VGA graphics, faster polygonal graphics, and analog joystick support).

EDIT: I just tried both the GOG version I just bought, and the Amiga version on WinUAE emulator. Yep, overall the PC version is superior. The only thing where I'd say Amiga wins in that the engine sound is more convincing (I tried the PC version both with Adlib and Roland MT-32 sound support), but other than that, the PC version is the definite version with better and smoother graphics and better controls.
Llalalalala I'm not listening!
The Amiga is the home computer of the Gods, bow before it!
Attachments:
images.jpg (6 Kb)
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gamesfreak64: triple wow :D i cant remember we had 2 Ghz cpu in the nineties :D
i noticed many old games to get extremely high min. req. .... why?

anyway, i noticed lots of new games so i rushed to login and.... noticed there isnt anything i can play and like to play
Because it uses DosBox to emulate an old dos machine. And to emulate old systems it needs some horsepower, it's not like virtual machines which can directly take advantage of actual hardware by bypassing the host OS. And as already said, it's more safe for developers and publishers to raise the requirements instead of getting in trouble if something is not working because of other stuff running in the background, as example thanks to virus scanners.

Of course DosBox does not really demand such high requirements, I could run most games in dosbox with my old subnotebook with 1,2 Ghz low-power processor and my old desktop with an AMD Athlon XP 2500 single core processor. But I also remember that my AMD processor showed some performance problems with some more demanding games from the last days of dos the era (around 96 and 97). So yeah, better be safe than sorry ;-)

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gamesfreak64: Anyway, I'm digressing. Yes, let's go buy a couple of T-16000M, then more games :)
Congrats for doing that step ;-) There were some threads in the main forum about joystick recommendations over the years and the Thrustmaster was always highly recommended. Personally I will wait until september/october, the last two months I already spent too much on tech and gaming stuff and I hope that maybe the price will get a little bit down or there is a good deal somewhere.
Post edited July 22, 2016 by DukeNukemForever
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timppu: Confirmed here too, the other main menu items mentioned in the manual ("World War I", "Dogfight Encounters" and "Head to Head Play") are missing.

I wonder if Night Dive Studios / Retroism have indeed forgotten to crack the game properly? :) In the Amiga version I just tried too, it first asked to check an insignia from the manual, and if you picked a wrong one, I think it did exactly this: gave you only the training option.
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murkki: Steam version had that insignia check active at some point.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/347270/discussions/0/594820656472271988/
Just followed the trouble shooting guide that support sent me and the game now works fine. The "identify the squadron insignia " copy protection shows up but is disabled. .....Just have to hit return. So yes there is no copy protection. The only step I did not preform recommended by support was to disable full screen in the dos box configuration. If you are having the problem I did just use the GOG support section since they will ask for a dxdiag from you. Since everyone's PC's are different they can tailor the trouble shooting to your specific PC.

J
Post edited July 22, 2016 by JKELL
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gamesfreak64: a legal copy check (form of DRM) is still inside the game? if so thats quite funny to read.
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nepundo: I guess it's just a manual protection? Meaning you need the game manual to look up some answers, not that the protection works by hand :-P

Of the games I own here it's the same with the Leisure Suit Larry series, but GOG provides all the manuals and handouts. I actually like it, because it takes me back to the time when my collection of games consisted of my boxes of floppy disks and my folder with photocopies of manuals and copy protections and whatnot. (Yes, sorry, I was a pirate at that time... :-( I'm trying to make up for that now.)

Regarding min specs, besides what omega64 says (GOG using their test machines as min specs), take into account that all these games are emulated now. So the specs for emulation are way higher than the original specs, and also I'm quite sure that none of the original developers/publishers will be around to give specs for emulation.
thanks for the reply.
the games are emulated ? that would explain the high requirements, ifrom the minute i ran some games i had thought about games being emulated in away cause some of them use lots op cpu aswell.

Anyway, the 1 of 2gh is no that bad but > 2.67 quadcore as a minimum is a no buy for me, cause i want to be able to play as much games on recommended, been playing too many games for far to many years at minimum :D
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gamesfreak64: thanks for the reply.
the games are emulated ? that would explain the high requirements, ifrom the minute i ran some games i had thought about games being emulated in away cause some of them use lots op cpu aswell.
Yes, they are emulated unless you have a 90's DOS machine. I actually have a Pentium Windows 95 machine here in a box in my room, and I am tempted to try some GOG games in it, but you know what the biggest problem is for that? I have no easy way to copy stuff into the damn thing :-D

It has no USB and no network card, so my choices are floppy, tape (yes, 250 MB backup tapes!), or CD-ROM. I would have to rescue a laptop I have in another box to burn games to CD, then see if the GOG versions will run in that machine.
Post edited July 22, 2016 by nepundo
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murkki: Steam version had that insignia check active at some point.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/347270/discussions/0/594820656472271988/
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JKELL: Just followed the trouble shooting guide that support sent me and the game now works fine. The "identify the squadron insignia " copy protection shows up but is disabled. .....Just have to hit return. So yes there is no copy protection. The only step I did not preform recommended by support was to disable full screen in the dos box configuration. If you are having the problem I did just use the GOG support section since they will ask for a dxdiag from you. Since everyone's PC's are different they can tailor the trouble shooting to your specific PC.

J
Game works for me now as well.
Today's patch seemed to fix copy protection trouble.

I'm off to hunt Richthofen bros.
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gamesfreak64: thanks for the reply.
the games are emulated ? that would explain the high requirements, ifrom the minute i ran some games i had thought about games being emulated in away cause some of them use lots op cpu aswell.
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nepundo: Yes, they are emulated unless you have a 90's DOS machine. I actually have a Pentium Windows 95 machine here in a box in my room, and I am tempted to try some GOG games in it, but you know what the biggest problem is for that? I have no easy way to copy stuff into the damn thing :-D

It has no USB and no network card, so my choices are floppy, tape (yes, 250 MB backup tapes!), or CD-ROM. I would have to rescue a laptop I have in another box to burn games to CD, then see if the GOG versions will run in that machine.
sometimes i wish i ahd plent room to keep a old win2 amchine and winxp this way i can run lots of direct x 7 games, gorky 17 looks a lot better with and older gpu, cause now it looks like shit using the software rendering, res. eveil 2 and 3 wont run because of the gpu .... back then i had a voodoo 3 (or 300) and it worked a charm, ah those good old gaming days are gone for good.... the sad thing is older games seem to have 'licence' problems, so we mostly get new games, while imho the old stuf looks better then 99% of the new games.

The weird thing is that gamersgate has some nice old games drm free and most even work, if GG can have them drm free, why cant GoG have these aswell ? Seems the game devs/publishers are favoring some distributors i guess, we all know steam will always get the first batch of good games, later with luck the gamepublishers might consider to offer them here aswell, says something about the attitude of these gamepublishers/gamedevs :D
game looks good.
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Doc0075: Llalalalala I'm not listening!
The Amiga is the home computer of the Gods, bow before it!
But it certainly was!!! ...at around 1986-1989 or so, after which PCs (and arguably also Sega Genesis/Megadrive, Super Nintendo etc., if you were into consoles) mostly surpassed it, even if here and there Amiga still shined like some parallax scrolling 2D graphics things. :)

I mean, come on! When Wing Commander (1990) appeared on PC, you knew it was "Game over Amiga, game over!", even if Amiga got an inferior version of it two years later.
Post edited July 23, 2016 by timppu
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gamesfreak64: a legal copy check (form of DRM) is still inside the game? if so thats quite funny to read.
Personally I don't mind it because that form of "DRM" (a manual keyword check) is nowadays quite useless when a digital copy of the manual is included with the game.

The whole idea of the keyword checks was that for common people it was hard or impossible to photocopy the whole manual (and the copy would become worse and worse with each new copy), and if you wanted to provide pirated copy online (on a pirate BBS or whatever), the best you could do was to provide some kind of text file with the game. Good luck trying to describe all those insignias in a text file.

Nowadays that keyword check is not really any kind of DRM anymore, as it doesn't curb you from making million copies of the game and each of them being fully playable, just like the purchased copy.

At worst, it can be considered a slight nuisance, an extra step, having to check the digital manual to bypass the check. I personally consider the need to recalibrate your flightstick and having to select your graphics and sound card in the beginning of each KotS play session maybe even a bigger nuisance, but oh well, man's gotta do what women and children can't.

Anyway if I understood it right, the GOG version now bypasses even that small nuisance now.
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gamesfreak64: a legal copy check (form of DRM) is still inside the game? if so thats quite funny to read.
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timppu: Personally I don't mind it because that form of "DRM" (a manual keyword check) is nowadays quite useless when a digital copy of the manual is included with the game.
That it is actually a form of DRM is debatable since it does not manage the "rights", but barely requires the user ( irrespective of him/her being the licence holder or not) to have the manual or a bonus material provided with the game ( some may remember checking Aerodork timetables before playing with Larry, or decoding pirate codes with a dial-a-pirate before playing Monkey Island ).

And if it is one it's the mildest one, since it was not affecting the game code or the media anyhow. Thus such in game checks do not limit the rights of the legitimate licence holder ( no risk of the drm code being incompatible with a newer OS or with another software, no dependance on a distant server, no ties to the media, no limittation to the number of backups, no limitation to activations ). I don't even think GOG should remove them, as they ere part of the experience and it's possible to provide as a bonus a "list" of codes to be used.

Some of the other early copy protection mechanisms were worse (PC booter : you were bound to use the original media ; disk "stamp" : you needed the original disk 1 ) as they did not allow for backups to be used and tied the user's rights to the limited lifetime of the original media. And I can guarantee you that being barred from playing with one's favourite game (after years of use) because of a defective disk is infuriating.
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Phc7006: That it is actually a form of DRM is debatable since it does not manage the "rights"
In my opinion it does (try to), by deliberately making it harder or impossible to play the game without the said manual. Semantics schemantics.

But in modern times it is made inefficient since you get a scanned copy of the manual with the game, so now it is just a mere nuisance, not really a way to prevent illegitimate copies from working. That's good enough for me, the scanned manual is a fully working workaround for the "DRM".
Post edited July 23, 2016 by timppu
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timppu: In my opinion it does (try to), by deliberately making it harder or impossible to play the game without the said manual. Semantics schemantics.
This is indeed a form of copy protection, but I don't get your argument. Everyone who had a legitimate copy of the game had a copy of the manual because it would be in the box, so this can't possibly make it harder to play the game. In modern times we have pdfs instead, that's the only difference. Imo the only valid reason to be against it is its annoyance (for example, in the original Pool of Radiance you have to type a word from a given page and line every few times you save the game). At the same time there are several valid reasons to keep this copy protection intact. Personally I'd prefer to keep it the way it was in the original.
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timppu: In my opinion it does (try to), by deliberately making it harder or impossible to play the game without the said manual. Semantics schemantics.
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igrok: This is indeed a form of copy protection, but I don't get your argument. Everyone who had a legitimate copy of the game had a copy of the manual because it would be in the box, so this can't possibly make it harder to play the game.
Not sure if you read quite right what I wrote. See the important part: without the manual. Since the illegitimate copies didn't have that manual, it was harder or impossible to play them. I didn't say that the legitimate copies were harder to play with the manual, unless one refers to the nuisance of having to look for the keywords or codes from the manual when running the game.

I'd rather not call manual checks "copy protection" because that is not what they are doing, preventing you from making copies of your gaming media. Quite the opposite in fact, the point of those manual keyword checks was that no copy protection would be needed and you can make backups (copies) of your original game disks, in case the originals got broken or something. So it would be odd to call that form of DRM as "copy protection".

Copy protection is exactly what it says: some way to prevent you from making working copies of your original gaming media.

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igrok: In modern times we have pdfs instead, that's the only difference. Imo the only valid reason to be against it is its annoyance (for example, in the original Pool of Radiance you have to type a word from a given page and line every few times you save the game). At the same time there are several valid reasons to keep this copy protection intact. Personally I'd prefer to keep it the way it was in the original.
I was saying pretty much the same. I don't mind manual keyword checks that much in GOG games, it is merely a nuisance anymore, not something that will prevent me playing the game in case I lose my only paper manual (because I can easily make million copies of that pdf manual).