'.MIX' '. CAB'? data packed?

[Nifflas]

Save games...? Well, that makes it more tricky.

If the game is an online game, it's of course important to keep savegame stuff safe. An easy solution though - store the information on the server, rather on each person's computer.

If the game is not an online game, I suggest leaving the savegame files as open as you can. Seriously, editing savegames is a good thing. At least it was in my games. When people had beaten it, and found all secrets, yet wanted more, they would post challenges, like "get from point A to point B without this powerup", etc. In this case, editing savegames will often open up for completely new challenges, and alternative ways to beat the game. If for example savegames specify the location of items, you can change the position of them...

Another good thing with it, is that as soon as somebody lost his savegame, I could just tell him what additions to make in the .ini file. And besides, if somebody desperately wants to cheat by editing the savegame, why shouldn't he be allowed to?

[LazyCoder]

I hate people taking stuff you made specifically for your own games

Have it happened to you before?

Really, what's the danger in it? In Within a Deep Forest, I stored the actual source files of all the music and sound in folders, that anyone could easily check. I had 500 downloads per day over a month or two. Yet, nobody has "stolen" any of the songs, except convering them to mp3's/wav's, and listening to on their home stereos. Nobody has yet used the music in any game or product.

Even if you successfully encrypt your files in a way that nobody can possibly decode, what stops them from simply recording the audio output of the application? The only way to prevent that, is to play the music with a volume of -inf dB.

I'm not talkin' about music. I'm talking about the cutscenes. People might actually want to steal those. Plus, it's not just for stealing, also if they see a cutscene, it may spoil the plot for them. Lol, yea, I'm 'protecting' them from themselves.

[Renatos]

Hey LazyCoder, I'm running into the same issue with cutscenes, if you ever figure out a way, let me know! and if I figure something out I'll do the same

[LazyCoder]

Well, what I'm doing right now is having the Quicktime files encrypted and saved as .vdo files (for instance, logo.vdo). Then I copy the file (the copy is called temp.vdo) and decrypt the copy. Then I load the file in the Quicktime object and it plays just fine. When the video finishes, when the player skips the movie, or 'at the end of the frame' I delete the temporary file.

That works ok but it still leaves the exposed 'temp.vdo' file laying about where anybody could just snatch it up, and you can't delete the file while it is being used by the QT object.

[Dynasoft]

I'm sure someone said to try destroying the quicktime object before trying to delete the file, or to try asking it to play another (blank / one black frame) video to try to get it to unlock the file you want to delete, but I can't find the post.

[LazyCoder]

Yea, but I still want to play it! lol

What I meant by that was I want it to load the video, then delete it, that way there is a very small amount of time in which somebody could copy the file.

EDIT: The 'load then delete' thing works fine with the picture and active picture objects.

[Nifflas]

Even removing the file won't help against people with good computer skills though. There's always ways to prevent files to be removed, and undelete is possible too.

EDIT: The 'load then delete' thing works fine with the picture and active picture objects.

Yet, all they have to do, is to press print screen when they see it.

[Dynasoft]

What I meant by that was I want it to load the video, then delete it, that way there is a very small amount of time in which somebody could copy the file.

You'd have to find a video player that loads the whole video into ram, which none do because they're designed to play everything up to 9GB dvds. Instead they play the video directly from the file, locking it so it can't be deleted while they're playing.

Sorry.

EDIT: Plus people could just turn off delete priveleges in the folder, and then nothing you'd be able to do would delete the file. Trust me, people can always find an EASY way to break any system like this, just don't bother.