Can someone clarify if there is (or will be) any way to use Onlink with versions of Uplink downloaded directly from Introversion's website? These versions have the activation code verification taken out, and thus they don't provide the user with the code card, and while Uplink does not ask for the code, Onlink does.

Cheers and nice mod

I got my code card when I contacted them through this site. They sent that card in couple days.

Ok will do, cheers

Hmm, seems there is a bug in Onlink code, it shouldn't ask for the code card on versions of Uplink downloaded from the store.

It would be far better of course if Onlink could adjust accordingly and not ask for the code on legally downloaded versions, rather than (probably loads of) people going to Introversion asking for code cards so they can use Onlink.

I went ahead and requested it anyway from Introversion, because while an Onlink based solution is obviously the optimal solution, I'm not sure about the legal/technical implications (if any) of having Onlink decide whether the uplink binary is a legally downloaded or retail as opposed to illegally distributed.

gary@bedrock:~/uplink$ strings lib/uplink.bin.x86 | grep DOWNLOAD
1.54DOWNLOAD
RELEASE-DOWNLOAD
gary@bedrock:~/uplink$ md5sum lib/uplink.bin.x86
7629780052ed32776d26f415d40e2186 lib/uplink.bin.x86

Downloaded yesterday.

The check is not done on the bin file. The code needed for doing the check is already provided in the Dev CD.

in Linux, onlink acts like a septate game I recommend installing it into another directory as for the codecard, its binary data at in the game, theres only one version of it and theres atleast a thousand places to find it on the web

I did test obtaining a code card by other (faster/illegal) means, on the internet. And it worked until some point in the game when it booted me out saying I was using an illegal copy of Uplink, so perhaps 1.54 (download or no download) had the code card updated or something? *shrug*

It is true what you're saying, I don't run ./uplink in Linux at all, I run ./uplink.full (which was provided by Onlink), so again the question is back to the legal/technical implications of having that standalone binary either ask for a code or not. My uninformed guess has been that since Onlink has no direct way to verify whether a person has bought the software from Introversion, it cannot try to decide whether to ask for a code or not. If Onlink was not a standalone binary but patched into the original uplink binary, perhaps this decision could be avoided(?).

As it stands, I'll wait for some kind of reply from Introversion (and hopefully a code card), though I'm not in the UK so if they send by snail mail I have no idea how long that will take, and just hope when I use it I don't get booted out of the game again after an hour or so of playing.

I had same problem too, it was pretty annoying. You have to have world.dat in the same folder as uplink.full.

Interesting, after your latest comments Lohi, I decided to put uplink.full and data.dat into ~/uplink/lib/, and then modified the ~/uplink/uplink file (shell script)
like this:

--- uplink.orig 2007-10-13 21:43:21.000000000 +0200
+++ uplink 2007-10-13 21:43:42.000000000 +0200
@@ -41,4 +41,4 @@
exit 1
fi
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$here/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
-$here/lib/uplink.bin.x86 "$@"
+$here/lib/uplink.full "$@"

Now it doesn't ask me for a code at all, so in the end I didn't have it setup properly at all by just extracting uplink.full and data.dat into ~/uplink/ and running
uplink.full from there. So all seems to be good, I'll let you know if I get booted out again but I don't expect that to happen now since I didn't have to enter a
code.

Maybe a small README file could be included in the Onlink Linux tarball saying this is what to do or something?

Cheers for the help.

Mmh, sorry for the newbie question, but what does this all mean ? what is the relation between onlink and uplink, uplink is commercial as far as I know, and onlink is free isn't it ? at least I dloaded onlink and there is nothing about a "code card".

did i miss something ?

Clipper

Onlink has evolved to where they are practically just releasing an entirely new game (sort of ). Miah and Tycho took out the codecard and built an Onlink installer, and now the installer includes all the data files, so you can just download Onlink and play. I don't really think that Introversion cares so much anymore about Uplink as it's other games, like Multiwinia and Subversion.

Wait your telling me we don't have to install uplink to play onlink?

Well, I didn't, on my new computer I just downloaded the onlink release and was surprised when all the data files where there.

Pretty much.

I still do so anyways, though.

-- Griffinhart