ID:183286
 
I was thinking this through, and considering all games are submitted into Hubs eventually, this idea might actually help prevent rips in an actually intelligent way (I'm posting this here hoping the Byond Administration would see this and consider using it).

As we all know, Colleges and High Schools uses programs to detect plagiarism, basically which search out the whole net, and then compare it to a text file that a student turns in, seeing what the student plagiarized and reporting the exact website and the Sort.

I was thinking what if Byond Had something similar on it's Hub Submission Pages. Update the Hub to have a place to put your Source Files (whatever file it is that contains the actual code that you use to run the game, I think the RSC, although I don't know how right I am there). IN this new spot, you place the Coding Source, and the System Compares the code to other code stored in the Byond Database.

If a Certain percent of the code is similar to another Game (Say 50+%, due to that's Definately rip level work) which belongs to a person not of the same key, then the Byond Server Recognizes the Game as a "Rip" and prevents the Hub from showing any hosted games, thus making the game always appear 'dead', also removing the ability to view the game in the pager (thus resorting it purely to IP, which is an inconvinience to a lot).

Of course, some people want to make games on a new key, and want to use their old code or coding style. In that case there could be a spot where a person can type in another key and it's password, to link the keys together to prove you're the legitimate owner of the other key, so as to use the original code.

For Teams, it would 'register' the keys, so that each member can input their keys and passwords, so it could refer to each other key's info, and ignore their code so it's okay.

It's a bit 'out there' considering that it's a new idea, but it has it's perks. It keeps it so that only people who permit the use of certain code can use it. What this means is say Player A makes a game, and Player B wants permission to use player A's code (or even TRY to rip it).

Player B would need to make an account for Team Projects, give the key and pass to Player A, who would need to log into that hub using their normal Key and password IF they permit. If not the system, upon Player B's trying to input the Rip, would see that PLayer B is using 50+% of Player A's code (changing names and numbers is not enough to hide this) and would flag him as Ripping, thus sealing Player B's hub.

Why try and solve rips?

They do no real harm or BYOND staff would have already dealt with them.

Also that's a pretty silly and impossible idea. For one it could be a meer coincidence that the code is similar also an easy work-around would be simply alter the code a bit. It won't take much BYOND programming knowledge. So it is a bit of a silly idea.

*~Modulus
In response to Modulus
Modulus wrote:
Why try and solve rips?

They do no real harm or BYOND staff would have already dealt with them.

*~Modulus

Byond's Staff has a problem with Rips, they just got no way yet of clarifying which are rips or not, this system would help clear that out, thus minimalizing Rips. (I Spoke to Lummox Jr about this before, even he hates Rips too, so I know the Staff doesn't like them, but as Lummox Told me, they had no sure fire way of confirming what's a Rip. This will at least eliminate CONFIRMED Rips)
In response to Latoma
Umm BYOND staff clearly have no imagination then. It really takes no skill to tell if a game is a rip or not. Simply log in and compare it.

Ask the BYOND players. I am sure over the years some of them have gained the ability to sniff out a rip. There really is no way to stop rips, seriously. It's like trying to stop the world doing drugs. No matter how many people you stop and rules you put in place, there will always be someone braking the rules.

*~Modulus
In response to Modulus
Modulus wrote:
Umm BYOND staff clearly have no imagination then. It really takes no skill to tell if a game is a rip or not. Simply log in and compare it.

Ask the BYOND players. I am sure over the years some of them have gained the ability to sniff out a rip. There really is no way to stop rips, seriously. It's like trying to stop the world doing drugs. No matter how many people you stop and rules you put in place, there will always be someone braking the rules.

*~Modulus

Do you even know how many Rips there are? Even then (and this is true) it's hard to tell if the game ripped is even original, or ripped itself (Case in point: The Game Naruto Way of the Shinobi is the Original, CONFIRMED, it was ripped by Naruto Birth of the Legendary Shinobi (Which lies saying WOTS ripped it), which is ripped by about as many games as a Dragon Ball Zeta Rip.

Considering there's quite a few of these, this system idea would eliminate rips entirely by limiting code to the original creator, who could take the code to his grave should he wish.
In response to Latoma
You're to simple minded and you think your system is flawless, but it's far from.

You've got to understand. The way I see it what's the point wasting energy in getting rid of the harmless rips when they could spend their time making BYOND a lot better than it already is.

Rips can attract players to BYOND meaning more memberships, meaning more money for BYOND so that they can improve. Sure their annoying, but I just care not to care.

*~Modulus
In response to Modulus
Modulus wrote:
You're to simple minded and you think your system is flawless, but it's far from.

You've got to understand. The way I see it what's the point wasting energy in getting rid of the harmless rips when they could spend their time making BYOND a lot better than it already is.

Rips can attract played and more people to BYOND as far as I'm concerned. Sure their annoying, but I just care not to care.

*~Modulus

Rips also cause the original game makers to be scared of posting their content up. That in turn causes a cycle, this cycle is confirmed to happen too in reality.

Original Game Maker 1 Makes Game

Game gets STOLEN/Released by Jerk Team Member or Obtained through Hacking.

Because of this, Game Maker 1 and other game Makers Begin to worry about their source or icons getting stolen (This is the current case with a friend of mine's game, and his is very looked foward to by other players).

As a result, eventually less and less people will make games in fear of their source being stolen.

Due to less games being made, the same rips keep circulating.

Due to a lack of good coders, coding techniques begin to slow down being inherited upon new coders.

Due to this, game quality decreases, and new coders also begin to fear their game being ripped.

Due to this Byond's popularity goes down. As a Result eventually Byond will be left to nothing but rippers and a few Original Games which the owners rarely pay attention to. And thus eventually the players will get bored of playing the same boring games (and lesser quality original games) lying around, and quit Byond, resulting in the Byondcalypse.

Edit: Remember a Majority of Byond's Player Base is in the Anime section, so this is applying info from there. If Quality there doesn't pick up that is the cycle that's going to happen there.
In response to Latoma
A simple answer. Be careful who you choose for team mates and don't hand your source around. It's suicidal, suicidal, suicidal...

The way I make games on BYOND is to keep the source to myself and let the rest of the team send me what they have and build on that. Instead of handing around the source to complete strangers over the internet.

*~Modulus
In response to Modulus
This topic about solving rips has been posted so many times and BYOND staff reply as they always do "Rips can't be solved!". Before posting try searching for "Search is your Friend" (qouted by digitalmouse) *waits till topic is closed*.
In response to Miran94
Hooray! Someone has come to knock some sense into this silly sod.

Like I said it's like trying to stop drugs. You can stop many people and lay down many rules, but someone will just carry on the legacy.

*~Modulus
In response to Modulus
Modulus wrote:
Umm BYOND staff clearly have no imagination then. It really takes no skill to tell if a game is a rip or not. Simply log in and compare it.

What about people like me? I hate DBZ and Naruto. Thats about 98% of the rips.

Fat chance I'll be doing that if I make it onto the staff.
In response to RedlineM203
Yea I was planning on pointing out that it would be perhaps voluntary work. For the people who hate rips with a passion and are willing to do anything to stop them. Even if it means spending countless hours at their computers searching through games.

*~Modulus
In response to Modulus
Modulus wrote:
Yea I was planning on pointing out that it would be perhaps voluntary work. For the people who hate rips with a passion and are willing to do anything to stop them. Even if it means spending countless hours at their computers searching through games.

*~Modulus

_> I spoke to the Admins about "Volunteer" help, they said they wouldn't trust players with that level of power.
It's not out of the realm of possibility that a .dmb file could be searched for big chunks of the same code or maps, and that an .rsc file could be searched for a number of identical files. However, I don't think that could be used to solve any rip problems.

For starters, the host files for either game might not even be available. If it's something merely hosted on someone's machine, but not available for download, this technique can't even be applied. If they are both available, BYOND has to download them and extract them from the zip file, and compare; and it has to do so infrequently so it causes no stress on the server, and yet it also has to be able to handle a bait-and-switch on the ripper's part. If a ripper knows about this scheme they can easily upload a basic test world, then sub it out for their rip once they've passed the test.

Then we have a couple of technical problems. The first is, can we trust that 50% figure? A game's .dmb consists of its code and maps. Much of the code will probably be touched a little and so will many of the maps. To tell if a game is a rip, likely this algorithm would need to see matching blocks of a certain size. Those blocks would then make up a percentage between the two files--but what percentage? 50% might be the maximum you'd ever see on a rip, rather than the minimum.

The other problem is one you mentioned yourself in another post: There's no way to tell which game is the original. Hub entry date won't work for a lot of reasons, the aforementioned bait-and-switch being one of them. Telling which game is the "original" is not a trivial problem, if indeed it's solvable at all.

Lummox JR
In response to Lummox JR
Lummox JR wrote:
It's not out of the realm of possibility that a .dmb file could be searched for big chunks of the same code or maps, and that an .rsc file could be searched for a number of identical files. However, I don't think that could be used to solve any rip problems.

For starters, the host files for either game might not even be available. If it's something merely hosted on someone's machine, but not available for download, this technique can't even be applied. If they are both available, BYOND has to download them and extract them from the zip file, and compare; and it has to do so infrequently so it causes no stress on the server, and yet it also has to be able to handle a bait-and-switch on the ripper's part. If a ripper knows about this scheme they can easily upload a basic test world, then sub it out for their rip once they've passed the test.

Then we have a couple of technical problems. The first is, can we trust that 50% figure? A game's .dmb consists of its code and maps. Much of the code will probably be touched a little and so will many of the maps. To tell if a game is a rip, likely this algorithm would need to see matching blocks of a certain size. Those blocks would then make up a percentage between the two files--but what percentage? 50% might be the maximum you'd ever see on a rip, rather than the minimum.

The other problem is one you mentioned yourself in another post: There's no way to tell which game is the original. Hub entry date won't work for a lot of reasons, the aforementioned bait-and-switch being one of them. Telling which game is the "original" is not a trivial problem, if indeed it's solvable at all.

Lummox JR

Well Lummox, this idea was spawned up as a 'joke' at first, then became a serious idea when, on Byond Anime, a few people told me the idea was good (this is namely those who are not lazy fools who promote rips by telling people to ignore them, helluva lotta good that does). You can't expect this idea to be flawless yet, but I am sure I could find ways to improve it based on your message here.


If it's something merely hosted on someone's machine, but not available for download, this technique can't even be applied.

This is VERY True, if it is only on someone's machine it won't work, but then again it's a lot better than it being out public with people playing it and getting ranking boosts for it (which is quite annoying).



..., and yet it also has to be able to handle a bait-and-switch on the ripper's part. If a ripper knows about this scheme they can easily upload a basic test world, then sub it out for their rip once they've passed the test.

Actually, this is a smart suggestion on my part, though not perfectly flawless, why not make it so that, in order to access the 'host' command in Dream Maker, one needs to host it through their hub (you could make this part of a later Byond Update).

What I mean by this is remove Dream Daemon from being normally accessable by players, and make normal hosting (Through those icons you normally get unless you make the game down-loadable) only possible by putting the RSC file into your Hub, and clicking "Ok", which will react with your Dream Maker and activate the "Dream Daemon" thus allowing you to host.

Through this, it's a requirement to submit your RSC/RSB (Sorry but this is confusing XD) to Byond, in which it waits a minute or two to do a quick review, and then activates the game making it public. (Again, I'm working on theory here, and what I know is possible, which is ironically quite a bit seeing what you've done with Dream Seeker/Daemon).


Then we have a couple of technical problems. The first is, can we trust that 50% figure? A game's .dmb consists of its code and maps. Much of the code will probably be touched a little and so will many of the maps. To tell if a game is a rip, likely this algorithm would need to see matching blocks of a certain size. Those blocks would then make up a percentage between the two files--but what percentage? 50% might be the maximum you'd ever see on a rip, rather than the minimum.

I will admit that is a small hole, however trial and error (and smart judgment on how you all would wish to actually apply this, I'm just giving rough figures to try to promote this idea while remaining realistic here, due to I don't know the full capabilities you guys got) would help find a good % to eliminate confirm(able) rips.


The other problem is one you mentioned yourself in another post: There's no way to tell which game is the original. Hub entry date won't work for a lot of reasons, the aforementioned bait-and-switch being one of them. Telling which game is the "original" is not a trivial problem, if indeed it's solvable at all.


I discussed this on Byond Anime myself. Honestly Lummox, I just want to prevent an overdose of Rips. In order to do that, we just need to get a Source as close to the rips as possible. It's fine if a few rips slide through, sadly, as a lot of people who are pessimistic towards Rip removal point out, Rips tend to be the cause for a LOT of Byond's Membership Purchases (I will admit that's why I originally bought one, but NOw I want a membership to Change Byond as much as I humanly can).

If a Rip IS made an 'original' by said system, it WILL produce ONE good side effect: all other rips like it will be slain. In short we keep one rip, we get rid of tens to hundreds of others. Not a bad Trade off, not as bad as what we got now at least, and thus allowing us to 'relax' as to this whole problem.

I know it's impossible to completely eradicate rips, but I am not pessimistic as to think it's completely impossible to stop them either. As a Result, I personally want to eliminate as many rips as possible. This theory, as I planned it, will do just that, effectively eliminating a majority of rips by cutting them by the throat where it hurts most, the ability to actually host them.

I know this is an extremist thing, but honestly everyone's sick of Rips, some have given up and become indirectly supporting of rips (IE: Saying they don't hurt you, saying that and I quote "The best way to beat rips is to ignore them."). They don't like to admit they're supporting rips indirectly, but unless people actually begin beating down on rips, then they'll never stop anyhow.
In response to Lummox JR
Although i know you think im an idiot, I have to say wouldnt a really sneaky way for you guys to covertly assign originality values to games be possible (and more realistic) if you simply had games send something similar to world profile reports, that simply listed all the procs and verbs in the game? Then you could write up some code to pick out the ones with really distinct names, things with spelling errors and strange capitalization convention. Then when you find that 2 games contain the same odd proc it would work against an originality score. Originality indexes could be completly private for a few months while you get that sorted out and really get the information you need. Without the owners of these games being aware of this they wouldnt purposely code to defeat the system. Then suddenly, you simply release a column on the guilds next to the games description with a originality value, high percent being very original and a blatent NBOTLS rip with a few new icons added would get some dismally low score. Then you simply put rank restrictions for guilds, multiply the originality score by the number of ranks = new rank score.

100% original game with 50 rankers would be the same rank as a 50% original game with 100 rankers. And you just never disclose how you got the values. :)

And to everybody (especially modulus) who like the status quo and fail at improving anything, shut up and dont talk. Its a suggestion to make things better, you trying to keep things worse is the bad attitude that stagnates things in all levels of society. Rips are an issue, in the anime guild especially. Thats why you guys think anime games suck, because its flooded with rips. Stuff needs to be done to clean it up.
In response to Masterdan
Masterdan wrote:
And to everybody (especially modulus) who like the status quo and fail at improving anything, shut up and dont talk. Its a suggestion to make things better, you trying to keep things worse is the bad attitude that stagnates things in all levels of society. Rips are an issue, in the anime guild especially. Thats why you guys think anime games suck, because its flooded with rips. Stuff needs to be done to clean it up.

Actually, if you look in the actual gaming industry (commercial gaming) you notice that most of the anime games do poorly also. There are a few exceptions but those exceptions come very few and far in between.

I support a stricter anime guild but do not endorse the use of secret code.
In response to Masterdan
Masterdan wrote:
Although i know you think im an idiot, I have to say wouldnt a really sneaky way for you guys to covertly assign originality values to games be possible (and more realistic) if you simply had games send something similar to world profile reports, that simply listed all the procs and verbs in the game? Then you could write up some code to pick out the ones with really distinct names, things with spelling errors and strange capitalization convention. Then when you find that 2 games contain the same odd proc it would work against an originality score. Originality indexes could be completly private for a few months while you get that sorted out and really get the information you need. Without the owners of these games being aware of this they wouldnt purposely code to defeat the system. Then suddenly, you simply release a column on the guilds next to the games description with a originality value, high percent being very original and a blatent NBOTLS rip with a few new icons added would get some dismally low score. Then you simply put rank restrictions for guilds, multiply the originality score by the number of ranks = new rank score.

100% original game with 50 rankers would be the same rank as a 50% original game with 100 rankers. And you just never disclose how you got the values. :)

And to everybody (especially modulus) who like the status quo and fail at improving anything, shut up and dont talk. Its a suggestion to make things better, you trying to keep things worse is the bad attitude that stagnates things in all levels of society. Rips are an issue, in the anime guild especially. Thats why you guys think anime games suck, because its flooded with rips. Stuff needs to be done to clean it up.



...No offense Dan, this was your [ugliest monkey] idea ever.
In response to Latoma
Latoma wrote:
Masterdan wrote:
Although i know you think im an idiot, I have to say wouldnt a really sneaky way for you guys to covertly assign originality values to games be possible (and more realistic) if you simply had games send something similar to world profile reports, that simply listed all the procs and verbs in the game? Then you could write up some code to pick out the ones with really distinct names, things with spelling errors and strange capitalization convention. Then when you find that 2 games contain the same odd proc it would work against an originality score. Originality indexes could be completly private for a few months while you get that sorted out and really get the information you need. Without the owners of these games being aware of this they wouldnt purposely code to defeat the system. Then suddenly, you simply release a column on the guilds next to the games description with a originality value, high percent being very original and a blatent NBOTLS rip with a few new icons added would get some dismally low score. Then you simply put rank restrictions for guilds, multiply the originality score by the number of ranks = new rank score.

100% original game with 50 rankers would be the same rank as a 50% original game with 100 rankers. And you just never disclose how you got the values. :)

And to everybody (especially modulus) who like the status quo and fail at improving anything, shut up and dont talk. Its a suggestion to make things better, you trying to keep things worse is the bad attitude that stagnates things in all levels of society. Rips are an issue, in the anime guild especially. Thats why you guys think anime games suck, because its flooded with rips. Stuff needs to be done to clean it up.



...No offense Dan, this was your [ugliest monkey] idea ever.

One reason why it is: BOTLS is a rip itself.
In response to Latoma
Latoma wrote:

...No offense Dan, this was your [ugliest monkey] idea ever.


On the contrary, this is exactly what he used to prove that your game was a rip, so we know that it could work.

The problem is that when BYOND asks people to send in their CPUs reports they'll probably figure out whats going on.

Though, I'm not exactly sure how well the scoring thing would go.
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