Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Copy protection and demo periods.

Hey,

So, today, I fixed a bug in TBK. As I mentioned before elsewhere, if the demo runs out, it just stops passing audio. It doesn't tell you anywhere, unless you click on setup.

This is relevant, 'cause people forget to register their plugins (they just install em, and forget about the registration files), and then the demo period expires. I'm gonna do new installers that fix this, but right now, something needs to improve, so that's what i'm on.

When it's expired, the plug is basically useless until you register it. So.
Now, when it's expired, it comes up in setup mode automatically [and stops you switching out] - basically the plug ui becomes a big warning saying "it's over! register me!"
Potentially, we can also pop up a messagebox to warn you. Is that too annoying? Or is that really useful... Either there's no box, and you wonder why it's not passing audio [it mutes the channel], and have to open the ui to find out... or it tells you straight up, once per session...

Thoughts please people :)

3 comments:

smart said...

Makes sense to have it show the gui slightly greyed out saying "Sorry! Your demo has expired!" or something similar. That way theres no confusion and the user is alerted immediately. There's no wondering "why does this sound different? hmm?" or anything like that.

Just my thoughts :)

Dave Sonalksis said...

heyas

so, here's what we're doing right now:
1) Grey out the plugin UI, and display text to tell you that it's expired.
2) Popup box when you instantiate the first plugin to tell you that it's expired, so there's no surprise when your session sounds different.
3) Improved code around the copy protection - autoinstall licenses when it spots them, etc

oh, btw, i've already removed the registration info annoyance. that went a couple weeks ago. next version we release will have that fix.

Dave Sonalksis said...

honest answer no... is that apple's soundtrack pro?

electrock, can you send me an email, I have a small gift to say thanks for the AUSynth suggestion.

Also, drop in some details and I'll get to testing this soundtrack pro thing.