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[Django]

Hi there,

I am (obviously) new to this forum, just started wintermuting. I've been using AGAST for a while, but there were some reasons for me to change the engine, so I gave Wintermute a try and started porting parts of my game to it. So far I am quite content with this capable engine, there is just one thing that gives me a headache: Everytime I run the game from ProjectMan, it tries to connect to crl.microsoft.com. If I let my Firewall block the connection, the game's execution is delayed for a while, which can get quite annoying at times. I could live with that, but then I realised that even the final compiled project behaves this way. So my questions are:

• What is the purpose of this (something about certificates, but what exactly)?
• Is it really necessary, or is there a possibility that at least the final build doesn't behave like this? IMO it looks quite unappealing if my game (or any program as well) tries to contact Big Brother at startup.

Thanks in advance,
Django

p.s. I'm using Win2K, just tried it on XP a few minutes ago, where the connection request doesn't occur. 

[Jerrot]

Welcome Django,

well yes, this behaviour is known, though its not the engine itself that connects to "Big Bro'", but some WHQL certified videocard drivers do that.

As far as I know (but that information is about 6 months old), Mnemonic found no real workaround for that yet, but if you allow that connection once, it shouldn't connect afterwards anymore.

There also is some checkbox in the DirectX settings (dxdiag) about it. Actually it *should* stop this behaviour when this checkbox is unchecked (and therefore it'd be up to your users and should not only be WME specific) but it seems that this doesn't always work for some reason. 

I hope my information is not too outdated, maybe someone want to correct me.

Jerrot.

[Mnemonic]

Also, this issue seems to be DirectX 7 related. The newer DirectX versions provide means of disabling digital signature check programatically (that's what WME does for DX8).
So, in theory, if your game is set to require 3D acceleration (hence it doesn't query DirectX 7 devices at startup), it shouldn't connect to microsoft. This is yet to be confirmed, though.

[Django]

Ok, I see.
I've set the option "Require 3D accel." to "Yes" - problem solved for the time being. Though it might sound strange if the game's label reads "old school 2D graphic adventure game - 3D accelerated video card required". But who cares, nowadays...

Thanks for the information, Jerrot and Mnemonic!

Django

[Mnemonic]

Well, it's just a workaround.. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any feasible way of disabling this Microsoft's "feature" in DirectX 7.