Download off-line Update

ImpulseAnywhere - Your friends are what we call transient users.  They will need ot uninstall after the LAN games.

You would have to go to http://anywhere.impulsedriven.com and download the fully-patched game archive compatible with offline installations. Anywhere doesn't currently support offline patching, so you'd have to get the entire game archive.

To install it you'll need the Impulse client on the machine, but it won't need to be connected to the internet.

Edit: *pokes Zubaz in the EYE*

Only way I can think of to do that, would be to get your copy fully updated, then archive it through impulse, then re-install that archived copy on your friends computers at the LAN.

So, if I install Impulse on my wireless laptop, that means we can do a 3 person Lan game here too?  Will I have to unintall Impulse on it after we are done???

This will not work on offline PCs. Archives made within Impulse will require Impulse to be connected to the internet to install from.

Only Anywhere archives support offline installation.

Impulse is only needed to install from an archive, not to play. So you can uninstall it after the game is installed, if you wanted to.

Oh, I'd leave it on my Laptop, NP, but I just can't shake this feeling I'm not suppose to do it.  3 Different computers (with 2 different emails) and I can still play on my Lan?  That is SO nice, SO great, but does that not give pirates a free pass to do the same things with 10 different friends?

It does, but it requires them to download the game in its entirety with each update and either make their own patcher for all the files or redistribute the whole 2.7gb.  On top of this, they will still lack multiplayer support.  Unfortunately there is no system that can stop people from pirating.  Stardock focuses on making it easy for customers to play and enjoy their purchases without hinderance while slowing pirates as much as is reasonable.  Best you can hope for.

I guess I just did'nt want to be an "accidental pirate".  Don't want to log onto online MP and see my account banned or something cause it's on 3 of my different computers.  Strict DRM from other games has me totally paranoid now. . .

Nah, I believe in the manual there's actually a section that basically tells you to go nuts with LAN, with the caveat that if you're installing on machines that are not yours (friends pcs, LAN centers, etc) you're supposed to uninstall it after the LAN party.

SD's activation system doesn't actually red flag based on machine IDs but frequency and location, so if they see it's been installed 5 times in a day in 5 different places in the country, it's probably going to redflag it. If it sees that you installed it a couple of times on your own machines it isn't going to care.

That's why it doesn't have strict activation limits tied to machine IDs or anything funky like that, it's a smarter and gentler system

It's still futile, imo...The easier the DRM is, the easier to crack is. It's a matter of hours, not days, to crack and release such a game. But it's still a pain in the *** for legit users, as this net-impulse-only updates are. The only thing that stoped pirates to release cracked updates for Demigod is because the game isn't so popular yet...

There are no cracked updates because there are no "updates". Impulse just does a file comparison and changes what needs to be changed. They'd have to re-package the whole game with each patch version. That's what they were doing for Sins

yea and you will only play on gameranger or such program pirated games will not be able top play on impulse and there are far less pirates then people think.

And you think pirates can't do the same thing? File comparison programs are available for anyone. Remember the CS Source updates, that were only available on Steam. And many more. It's not a problem, if they really want to, they do it.

This has nothing to do with the update process. Pirated copies, updated or not, they still need a key for playing online on stardock servers.