Nova CE?

MLXC0012

Is the free version of EV Nova community edition legitimate? I want to make sure I stay away from the grey areas of abandonware but it sounds like Andrew Welch may have released the registration codes for free use (not 100% on that). I was a huge fan of all three games back in the day, but never could afford the registration. I played the shareware version to death back in the day lol.

Geek

It's a bit tricky. The primary purpose of the Community Edition is to provide continued support for EV Nova from within its own community in the absence of Ambrosia Software or ATMOS. So the bulk of the focus has been compatibility and performance on Windows natively, and on Mac/Linux through WINE. It is true that the CE doesn't require registration and uses a hack to accomplish that. But even before Andrew Welch released the Decoder Ring, the algorithm used to generate EV Nova license codes was already in wide use (edit: primarily for renewing existing codes). As far as I'm aware regarding Ambrosia or ATMOS, their response to the CE has been lack of concern, or approval. Is it possible that an update to the CE could restore the ability to register, and also generate the codes for you? Sure, but that's just extra steps to the same result at this point.

pipeline

As a member of ATMOS, the defunct company that made the scenario for Nova, I’m personally unfazed by community efforts to keep the game alive. On the contrary, I’m rather pleased.

Since I'm in no position of authority to officially support the project (as both ATMOS and Ambrosia are no more), I can only be enthusiastic about it in a non-official stance!