Armadillo question

[arcadetown]

We have a game which is a .exe and unrestricted full version. We want to wrap it using Armadillo so that Armadillo enforces use of the demo version up to 60 total minutes. We saw a "nuke program after X amount of time" feature in Armadillo but it only enforces that time limit per use and not across consecutive runs of the game. Also, when using the "nuke" feature we expected the armadillo "reminder message" screen to open after the program is nuked but it does not.

Is there some way to get Armadillo to do what we need w/o having to resort to implementing armadillo api calls directly in to the game?

[DragonsIOA]

I don't think it provides a way to limit the trial to a certain amount of overall time like you want. I remember some discussion on ways to do this on thier site, but they all required using the API some. Having a reminder window pop open after the app has run is only available in the Pro version.

[Sirrus]

I'd really recommend emailing support at Silicon Realms (www.siliconrealms.com)

They are extremely prompt in answering emails and could help you with this.

[mkovacic]

We have a game which is a .exe and unrestricted full version. We want to wrap it using Armadillo so that Armadillo enforces use of the demo version up to 60 total minutes. We saw a "nuke program after X amount of time" feature in Armadillo but it only enforces that time limit per use and not across consecutive runs of the game.
You can't do that just by wrapping the exe, you have to make a few API calls from the game itself. In a nutshell, you set up armadillo for a 60 day expiration, counted by the app, and then you decrease the counter every minute from the game. You also have to change the Armadillo locale strings from "App expires in %i days" (or something) to "App expires in %i minutes".

Relevant code:


typedef bool (__stdcall *IncrementCounterFn)(void);
void ARM_IncCounter()
{
/* Change "ArmAccess.DLL" to whatever you renamed it to */
HINSTANCE libInst=LoadLibrary("ArmAccess.DLL");
if (!libInst) return; /* Couldn't load library */

/* Substitute the typedefs above for functions other than CheckCode */
IncrementCounterFn IncrementCounter=(IncrementCounterFn)GetProcAddres s(libInst, "IncrementCounter");

if (IncrementCounter==0)
{
return; /* Couldn't find function */
FreeLibrary(libInst);
}

IncrementCounter();
FreeLibrary(libInst);
}

[arcadetown]

Yeah we heard back from Silicon Realms and similar answer. Unfortunately all we have is the full version .exe from the author which we expected to be able to get Armadillo to do this. The author provides the game like this since they don't want to get in the business of dealing with custom builds. SR said only possibility was to make a small stub program that included api calls which launched the full version who's only purpose was to enforce 60 minute limit.

This makes zero sense as I've seen lots of programs being wrapped doing this. BigFish appears to do it on quite a few games. Anyone have any idea of any products which support this?

[mkovacic]

This makes zero sense as I've seen lots of programs being wrapped doing this. BigFish appears to do it on quite a few games.
Bigfish simply asks the developers to implement the IncCounter() thingy. :)
If they don't they get the sucky 3 uses expiration.

Anyone have any idea of any products which support this?
Do you mean the stub thing or API calls from the game? We did the calls from the game for the BigFish build of Light&Shadow. I don't know of any games that do the stub thing.