I've been thinking or rips alot lately and.... in Off Topic

ID:181084
 
Aug 24 2011, 9:51 am
I've been thinking or rips alot lately and I wanted to know if there is anyway for someone on BYOND to steal my source even if I don't distribute it to anyone on the web and only leave the copy I have on my laptop. I'm working on an original game and I've been worried about someone stealing my hard work. I want to get my stuff copyrighted and any other thing I can do in order to protect the fully original content on my game, but having a source leaked would give me much grief and I think it would be difficult to hunt down the people who try to make changes in the icons and maps in order to post a slightly different version from my original source.
#1 Aug 24 2011, 9:55 am
No. Unless you yourself hand your source code to another person (at which point they distribute it like mad) then no one can obtain it.

The best advice is that, if you work with a team, do not give them the source code. Say you have a mapper, well, just give him just enough things that he needs to make the map (icons, /turf, and /obj declarations) instead of your entire source code. Never give people you've hired to make graphics your source code, they don't need it to make icons.

Finally, do not give other programmers on your team source code. Hopefully they're capable of programming things in accordance to BYOND's object-oriented design that you can easily plug the system in.
#2 Aug 24 2011, 10:02 am
In response to LordAndrew (#1)
Okay thanks. That makes me feel much better about launching the finished product
#3 Aug 24 2011, 10:19 am
In response to LordAndrew (#1)
LordAndrew wrote:
The best advice is that, if you work with a team, do not give them the source code.

That's a bit paranoid. If I feel like I can't trust my other programmer, why did I hire them in the first place? Unless you just really piss him off and have him leave the team fuming, I don't think he would willy nilly distribute the source code unless he's either 1) A complete [Male Genitalia]. 2) Does it for money (Extremely Unlikely). Or 3) He's an even bigger [Male Genitalia].

Moral of the story, be nice to your programmers. You'll never know when you'll come to need them again, or just trust them not to sell out everything that you worked for (Like Naruto GOA).
#4 Aug 24 2011, 11:48 am
In response to Danbriggs (#3)
But what about the source extractor!!!1!!1 The narto kids all have one, they'll take your game codes out of their cache and then brag about it without actually proving that they have anything!!!!

All stupidity aside, you really shouldn't need to worry about this unless you hire the kind of people you shouldn't be hiring. Besides that, if your game is complex enough, it would be too difficult for your average ripper to rip it. PLUS, it won't have the narto frog in it, so why would they even WANT to.

If you're absolutely adamant about it, get your stuff licensed up and hide a text input based procedure somewhere that calls up an ID and link to copyrights, it would be easy enough to prove that your average moron ripper managed to grab your source and stick his name in the level 19 GM spot.
#5 Aug 24 2011, 12:21 pm
In response to Robertbanks2 (#4)
Robertbanks2 wrote:
it won't have the narto frog in it

Someone call for me?
#6 Aug 25 2011, 12:56 am
In response to Raruno (#2)
*steals*

No no joking.

But seriously, if your worried about people ripping, see if theirs a macro you can put in for the prnt screen key that closes the game, or banns them :D
#7 Aug 25 2011, 7:40 am
In response to Komuroto (#6)
Komuroto wrote:
*steals*

No no joking.

But seriously, if your worried about people ripping, see if theirs a macro you can put in for the prnt screen key that closes the game, or banns them :D

good idea
#8 Aug 25 2011, 11:39 am
In response to Raruno (#7)
I was just joking around, i'm not sure how to do that myself, but hey if you get that working let me have the snippet, since it was my idea xD
#9 Aug 25 2011, 12:13 pm
In response to Komuroto (#6)
Komuroto wrote:
*steals*

No no joking.

But seriously, if your worried about people ripping, see if theirs a macro you can put in for the prnt screen key that closes the game, or banns them :D

This would work, except that it could be easily avoided by just selecting another window and then using the print screen function with the game in view. The key wouldn't be sent to the dream seeker, and wouldn't be registered as a key press to activate the macro.
#10 Aug 25 2011, 12:15 pm
In response to Robertbanks2 (#9)
how many people are going to figure that out though?


And besides, you'd just have to get a bit more creative.
#11 Aug 25 2011, 1:31 pm (Edited on Aug 25 2011, 1:47 pm)
Graphics and sound are rather easy to rip off from games either by manually going in and copying it with external programs or just knowing where to look (IIRC it all gets stored in cache or bin or whatever). It's going to happen, maybe it won't, whatever.

As far as source code goes - you should be more worried about you being the security risk (handing it out freely to someone) rather than anyone forcibly taking it from you. You, and the royal You is being used here, are probably the biggest threat to your own project's security.

A lot of people seem to be worried about this issue when a) they don't have a game to steal or b) don't even have a game that's worth the effort of stealing.

If you look on the main page you'll see how many games are released and you don't have anyone of their creator's flipping out about possible theft. And those are the games that should be worried because they're actually published, publicized, and popular.

The rips that have gotten out seem to have been given out or were accidentally sent out as the source code instead of the compiled project form.

As far as copyrighting goes, why bother? Maybe if you planned to somehow be making money off it. How is any game on here intrinsically different than anything else on Byond or gaming in general? What is fully original content - have you invented a new genre?

From what I'm reading you seem to be worrying a lot about having your game ripped off. That's time/thought you could be using to actually make your game instead. And whenever these types of threads pop up I'm certain a lot of people feel like this . ^_^
#12 Aug 25 2011, 6:34 pm
In response to EGUY (#11)
Actually, the byond.rsc found in the cache had more encryption added to it, making the current resource extractor not work with it. Of course, normal .rsc files included with a game's host files do not have this encryption, so giving out the host files to untrusted sources could easily be picked apart by one.
#13 Aug 25 2011, 7:37 pm
In response to LordAndrew (#12)
What about dmb decompilers? Do those exist?
#14 Aug 25 2011, 8:43 pm
In response to Complex Robot (#13)
Complex Robot wrote:
What about dmb decompilers? Do those exist?
They do exist, those who create them do not share them, but these decompilers only spit out machine code, and it'd look nothing like DM.