ReVive | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net KitGuru.net - Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards Fri, 27 Oct 2017 12:42:04 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-KITGURU-Light-Background-SQUARE2-32x32.png ReVive | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net 32 32 Battlefield ‘Project Revive’ shuts down after receiving a legal notice from EA https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/matthew-wilson/battlefield-project-revive-shuts-down-after-receiving-a-legal-notice-from-ea/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/matthew-wilson/battlefield-project-revive-shuts-down-after-receiving-a-legal-notice-from-ea/#comments Fri, 27 Oct 2017 12:42:04 +0000 https://www.kitguru.net/?p=352026 Back in 2014, online multiplayer service ‘GameSpy’ announced that it would be shutting down. This had a knock on effect for hundreds of games, which relied on the service for multiplayer. Most notably, a few of the older Battlefield titles would no longer be available to play online. This prompted a fan group to set …

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Back in 2014, online multiplayer service ‘GameSpy’ announced that it would be shutting down. This had a knock on effect for hundreds of games, which relied on the service for multiplayer. Most notably, a few of the older Battlefield titles would no longer be available to play online. This prompted a fan group to set up ‘Battlefield Revive’ to bring some older games back online. The project was popular but unfortunately, it will be shutting down following a legal notice from EA.

Project Revive started off in 2016, bringing Battlefield 2142 online. The project expanded to also include Battlefield 2 as well as Battlefield Heroes. Unfortunately, publishers need to protect their trademarks and as a result, EA’s legal team did need to send a cease and desist. On the upside though, the publisher went about it in the nicest way possible. Here is a quote from the notice sent to the Project Revive team:

“We’ve noticed that Revive Network has several projects and websites devoted to being a Medic by ‘reviving’ older Battlefield games, including Battlefield Heroes, Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142. It’s great to see your enthusiasm for these titles. Not to brag, but we too get the nostalgia chills when booting up these classic entries in the Battlefield franchise.”

The letter than goes on to say: “We need a favour though: we must ask that you stop throwing down Ammo Crates. In other, more legal-styled terms, please stop distributing copies of our game clients and using our trademarks, logos and artwork on your sites”.

There is a bit more to EA’s legal notice but as you can see, the publisher tried to be as polite about it as possible. Unfortunately, this notice does also mean that the Revive network will be shutting down. In a statement posted to the Revive website, the team wrote:

“We will get right to the point: Electronic Arts Inc.' legal team has contacted us and nicely asked us to stop distributing and using their intellectual property. As diehard fans of the franchise, we will respect these stipulations. Over the past 3 and a half years, Revive Network has filled a void in nearly 1 million players' hearts by bringing favourite titles back to life after online services were closed after the GameSpy shutdown. Only a few months ago, we took on the task of bringing multiplayer services online for a fan-favourite, Battlefield Heroes. The public reception for our efforts on this title were massive, and we never expected it to become as big as it was.”

Going forward, downloads on the Revive website will be disabled. The team ended its goodbye post by thanking all of the players, moderators, developers and artists that helped make the project successful in the first place.

KitGuru Says: Unfortunately, when it comes to trademark law, you stand to lose your trademark if you don’t actively protect it. It seems unlikely that EA or DICE wanted to do this, but it was a necessarily evil. Did any of you play some of the older Battlefield games online while Project Revive was up?

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Revive injector updated to 1.0, adds Oculus Touch support https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/drivers/jon-martindale/revive-injector-updated-to-1-0-adds-oculus-touch-support/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/drivers/jon-martindale/revive-injector-updated-to-1-0-adds-oculus-touch-support/#respond Tue, 06 Dec 2016 12:22:24 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=313878 With the release of Oculus Touch controllers today, there are over 50 new, supporting games hitting digital distribution platforms like Steam. To make sure that VR stays inclusive, developer CrossVR has updated their Revive compatibility layer, which makes it possible to play all of those Touch games on a HTC Vive with its wand controllers. …

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With the release of Oculus Touch controllers today, there are over 50 new, supporting games hitting digital distribution platforms like Steam. To make sure that VR stays inclusive, developer CrossVR has updated their Revive compatibility layer, which makes it possible to play all of those Touch games on a HTC Vive with its wand controllers.

The Revive project was one that was born from Oculus VR's drive for exclusive games on its platform. It funded developers to keep their games from platforms like the HTC Vive, which many people felt was against the inclusive roots of VR and something that could harm the industry in the long run. After some back and forth updates from both camps, Oculus relented and allowed the Revive injector to make it possible for anyone to play Rift games on a Vive.

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This latest version of Revive brings it up to version 1.0 and solidifies Touch support for the new games – it was actually added several months back – and also adds an automated updater so that people don't have to keep visiting the GitHub in the future.

The response from the community has been positive, with many people praising CrossVR for helping to keep VR an open and inclusive platform, rather than one walled off by companies and their desire to stand apart. There are a few games and experiences which may require the odd workaround, but with more than 50 titles launching today, some bugs are to be expected.

To use the Revive drivers yourself, download them from the release page and you can find the Revive menu within SteamVR's pop up menu system.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Myself and Matthew have one VR headset each, he a Rift and I a Vive. What about you guys? How many of you have VR hardware at this point?

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Revive injector drivers supports Oculus Touch already https://www.kitguru.net/components/vr/jon-martindale/revive-injector-drivers-supports-oculus-touch-already/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/vr/jon-martindale/revive-injector-drivers-supports-oculus-touch-already/#comments Mon, 07 Nov 2016 10:53:56 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=310913 Even though the Oculus Touch controllers don't release for a few more weeks, the Revive injector drivers which make it possible to play Oculus ‘exclusive' games on the HTC Vive, already supports them. That means that when Touch does debut, many of the games that come with it should work just fine on the HTC …

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Even though the Oculus Touch controllers don't release for a few more weeks, the Revive injector drivers which make it possible to play Oculus ‘exclusive' games on the HTC Vive, already supports them. That means that when Touch does debut, many of the games that come with it should work just fine on the HTC VR headset.

This is something that has been possible within Revive projects for close to six months now, though the developers do admit that the implementation isn't perfect. There are still some controller animations that need to be implemented and Vive controllers don't support the capacitive inputs of the Touch controllers, but those are the only real differences.

In a subreddit discussion, one of the developers of Revive suggests that we may need to wait for a third party SteamVR controller with full capacitive support to get 100 per cent playable Touch games on the HTC Vive, but that we're not far off from that being a reality with the currently available hardware.

We're also told that there is some discrepancy between what you see in Touch games and what the Vive controllers feel like, which might be a slight barrier to full immersion in those experiences. However we're told that the developers are working on this, making whatever tweaks they can to line things up as best as possible.

KitGuru Says: Fans of motion controller games should have a lot more to play with come the start of December. There are said to be around 30 full Touch compatible games coming with the launch of the controllers, so there should be plenty to play this Christmas period. 

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Fans restore Battlefield 2142 multiplayer https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/matthew-wilson/fans-restore-battlefield-2142-multiplayer/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/matthew-wilson/fans-restore-battlefield-2142-multiplayer/#respond Mon, 26 Sep 2016 15:01:04 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=307098 While publishers can't necessarily keep older multiplayer games alive forever with official servers, the fans can certainly put up their best efforts with unofficial servers. This week, the fan group behind the Battlefield 2 revive project turned their attention to Battlefield 2142, bringing back the 2006 shooter's multiplayer for all. Battlefield 2142 had its servers …

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While publishers can't necessarily keep older multiplayer games alive forever with official servers, the fans can certainly put up their best efforts with unofficial servers. This week, the fan group behind the Battlefield 2 revive project turned their attention to Battlefield 2142, bringing back the 2006 shooter's multiplayer for all.

Battlefield 2142 had its servers shut down back in 2014, so right now there is no way to play the game officially. However, Project Revive has put up some servers for the game, with fully functioning leaderboards and an in-game ranking system.

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The revival seems to be off to a good start too, as PCGamesN points out, the game has attracted over 1000 concurrent players over the last two weekends, so if you wanted to take part in a futuristic 64 player battle, you should be able to find a server populated enough.

Project Revive has been running for Battlefield 2 for a while now without EA stepping in and so far, the publisher hasn't said anything against the 2142 comeback, so for now, it doesn't look like copyright is going to be an issue.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: The Battlefield franchise has been around for a long time now, with 2142 being around ten years old now. Did any of you guys play Battlefield 2142 back in the day?

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Revive update brings AirMech, EVE: Valkyrie to HTC Vive https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/revive-update-brings-airmech-eve-valkyrie-to-htc-vive/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/revive-update-brings-airmech-eve-valkyrie-to-htc-vive/#comments Mon, 27 Jun 2016 07:49:20 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=297254 Following the surprising move late last week that saw Oculus VR remove headset checks from its DRM, the developer of the Revive driver which makes it possible to play Rift games on the HTC Vive, has been able to get back to improving compatibility. They've been working fast too, as already both AirMech: Command and …

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Following the surprising move late last week that saw Oculus VR remove headset checks from its DRM, the developer of the Revive driver which makes it possible to play Rift games on the HTC Vive, has been able to get back to improving compatibility. They've been working fast too, as already both AirMech: Command and EVE: Valkyrie are now supported.

This update comes as part of the 0.7 release of the Revive injector, which makes it possible to send the content to the HTC Vive, as well as enable tracking. It has previously enabled Vive users to play games like Luckey's Tale, Henry and other Oculus ‘exclusive' titles. It even has Touch/Vive wand controller support, though few titles support the former just yet.

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AirMech: Command

Not all game releases are perfect however. The support is unofficial, so occasionally there are problems in terms of your viewpoint and we're told that this latest release also has difficulties with sound in AirMech: Command, but developer CrossVR is working hard at it. Considering how regularly they've made releases in the past few weeks, we wouldn't be surprised if these latest issues were fixed up rather quickly.

Bug fixes in this latest version should improve Oculus Video support and there should no longer be the curious double-vision bug which plagued some users, due to what is said to be an error in the vertical field of view.

You can download the Revive installer and injector direct from its Github page. The full list of compatible games and experiences can be found here.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: What's most interesting with Revive, is playing games in a different way with the Vive, than you could ever do so with the Rift. Like walking around Henry the hedgehog's house. The environment is so detailed and you miss a lot of that by just sitting there in the Rift.

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Revive Oculus VR driver 0.6.1 released, Oculus games discounted https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/revive-oculus-vr-driver-0-6-1-released-oculus-games-discounted/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/revive-oculus-vr-driver-0-6-1-released-oculus-games-discounted/#comments Fri, 24 Jun 2016 08:30:57 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=296997 If you have a HTC Vive headset and want to continue playing those games Oculus has popped behind its storefront wall, you can do so with the latest version of the Revive driver. It's not a bad time to download it either, as Oculus is discounting a bunch of its games alongside the Steam Summer …

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If you have a HTC Vive headset and want to continue playing those games Oculus has popped behind its storefront wall, you can do so with the latest version of the Revive driver. It's not a bad time to download it either, as Oculus is discounting a bunch of its games alongside the Steam Summer Sale.

While Oculus continues to defend its stance on exclusive titles, gamers have taken the matter into their own hands with the development of the Revive injector. It makes it possible to play Oculus' exclusive VR games on an HTC Vive headset instead – it even has support for Touch controls, even if they aren't implemented yet.

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While Oculus has made some effort to block it, this has just made the driver more effective in the long run. Recent changes to the Oculus Home file system didn't have much of an effect either, as 0.6.1 updates Revive to continue working despite the changes.

In reality that's all the latest release is: a hotfix to teak the file locations. However it does come at a good time, as many Oculus exclusives are available at a discount right now. You can pick up Final Approach: Pilot Edition for a few pounds less than normal, Titan of Space for 90p off, Blaze Rush at half price and Chronos at ‘just' £30.

The discounts aren't as strong as many of the ones found in the Steam Summer sale, but they're there.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Chronos in particular is a great play and Blaze Rush is a good party game. Support Titans of Sapce 2.0 as well. The guy behind that has been a strong presence in the VR developer world for years at this point.

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Revive cracks Oculus DRM on Unreal Engine titles https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/revive-cracks-oculus-drm-on-unreal-engine-titles/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/revive-cracks-oculus-drm-on-unreal-engine-titles/#comments Mon, 23 May 2016 10:32:48 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=293574 Unsurprisingly, when the Revive project that unlocked Oculus VR's Rift exclusivity was launched, the Facebook owned company updated its DRM to block its use. Even more unsurprising though, is that within days the Revive project is back and it's already circumvented DRM protecting Unreal Engine titles. This all stems from an ongoing debate in the VR community. …

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Unsurprisingly, when the Revive project that unlocked Oculus VR's Rift exclusivity was launched, the Facebook owned company updated its DRM to block its use. Even more unsurprising though, is that within days the Revive project is back and it's already circumvented DRM protecting Unreal Engine titles.

This all stems from an ongoing debate in the VR community. While most users are against the idea of console-like platform exclusives, Oculus has championed it from the outset, stating that it wants to set a minimum quality level. While our own experience with its platform would debate that fact, it's not something others were willing to accept.

The Revive software previously let you circumvent Oculus' store lock-out for other headsets, letting HTC Vive users buy and play games on it. Now that Oculus has upped the ante though and made real efforts to block gamers with non-Rift headsets, the Revive project has had to do the same.

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“I really didn't want to go down this path, but I feel there is no other way. This release bypasses the Oculus Platform DRM in Unreal Engine games, so the entitlement check doesn't fail because the headset isn't connected,” reads the Revive blog.

This means that the Revive project can technically be used as a crack for pirated Rift games. That's not something the project supports, but it was the route it was forced down to continue offering Rift-game access to Vive users.

Oh the irony

The update only works on Unreal Engine games and experiences so far, but a Unity update isn't far away and that will open up just about all of the VR experiences currently on Oculus Home.

It's a sorry state of affairs that people wanting to play Oculus exclusives without the headset are forced down this route. Especially considering Palmer Luckey stated in the past that Oculus wouldn't block them from playing Oculus games without a Rift. Clearly his standing in the company isn't enough to make that a reality any more.

We would expect Oculus to respond in due time, but as we've seen with most games and platforms, rarely can the developer prevent their platform from being opened up eventually.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: This move is so short sighted by Oculus. It smacks of Facebook oversight and suggests its interest is in controlling the platform, not selling games and helping out developers. I hope it wises up soon, as its reputation in the VR industry is nose diving.

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Oculus DRM update breaks hack to play exclusives on Vive https://www.kitguru.net/components/vr/matthew-wilson/oculus-drm-update-breaks-hack-to-play-exclusives-on-vive/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/vr/matthew-wilson/oculus-drm-update-breaks-hack-to-play-exclusives-on-vive/#comments Fri, 20 May 2016 16:57:44 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=293454 Shortly after the official launch of the Oculus Rift, one modder managed to port the Rift's exclusive games and make them playable on the HTC Vive. The project was known as Revive and while it had been working fairly well, until today as the Revive creator has confirmed that a recent Oculus software update has …

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Shortly after the official launch of the Oculus Rift, one modder managed to port the Rift's exclusive games and make them playable on the HTC Vive. The project was known as Revive and while it had been working fairly well, until today as the Revive creator has confirmed that a recent Oculus software update has stopped the hack from working.

Speaking with Motherboard, the Revive creator, known online as ‘Libre VR' explained that Oculus's DRM system now checks that a Rift is actually connected to the PC when playing a game bought on the Oculus Store. “While this helps prevent piracy from people who didn't buy an Oculus Rift, it doesn't do anything to prevent piracy from those who did buy an Oculus Rift. And this clearly excludes anyone who bought the game, but didn't buy an Oculus Rift. Even if Revive wasn't targeted, they were probably more than aware of the collateral damage.”

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While Oculus has previously spoken out against Project Revive and made it clear that it did not support hacks to get Oculus-exclusive games running on other VR headsets, in a statement given to Motherboard Oculus does claim that this recent update didn't target the Revive project specifically:

“We take the security, functionality and integrity of our system software very seriously and people should expect that hacked games won’t work indefinitely as regular updates to content, apps and our platform may break the hacks”.

KitGuru Says: It remains to be seen if the ‘Revive' hack can be made to work again but for now, it looks like the hack may be broken. Do any of you own a Rift or a Vive yet? What do you think of Oculus's DRM approach? 

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