RED_NOVA'S PROFILE

There are good games. There are bad games. There are games that had wonderful potential but squandered it. And there are games that you enjoy for some reason even though, by all rights, you should hate them because of how terrible they were developed. This is a topic about the latter.

For me, a game I strangely enjoy is Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City. Yes, the A.I is terrible. Yes, the story is stupid. Yes, the characters were all HUNK wannabees. Yes, the Spec Ops fights were garbage. Yes, the set pieces were terrible. By all rights, I should have played it for about ten minutes then traded it in.

But I noticed when I was fighting zombies that I was, I can't believe I'm saying this, actually having fun! With hundreds of zombies, limited ammo, and a risk of becoming a zombie yourself with every hit you take, I really felt like I was in a survival situation where I had to pick my shots and use all my abilities to the fullest to escape with my life. When I went online and played with a friend, he had the exact same response.

And then we played online multiplayer, and we were still having fun. I guess bad enemy A.I really bogged down the offline campaign, because when we were playing against actual humans, it was loads of fun!

Honestly, if Operation Raccoon City was JUST about shooting zombies, I would have given the game an 8/10, with the terrible A.I bogging it down two pegs. The Spec Ops fights, unfortunately, brought the game down to a 4/10 for me.

I see what Slant Six was TRYING to do. The concept was absolutely brilliant, and the mechanics were very well implemented, like shooting a soldier in the stomach to make him bleed so the hordes of zombies would go after the enemy and not you. But too many little details ruined the overall game for me. Yet, for some reason, I keep coming back for more. I keep playing the missions where you only fight zombies, and I'm still having fun, despite constant taunts from my other gamer friends.

So what about you? What's a game you enjoy even though you shouldn't?

How to Protect your game from Thieves

Hello, everyone. I have a question that has been bothering me ever since I started working on my game. I have my own solutions to the problem, but I wanted to check with you guys, who have may more experience with this sort of thing than I do, and see if my solutions would work or if you guys would have better ones. I don't know if this should be an article or whatever, but depending on the information gained here, I might just repost this as something more significant than a random forum thread. I'm posting this because I couldn't find this same topic after searching the forums, so I hope I'm contributing something worthwhile. Anyway, on to the topic:

You see, making a game is all well and good. Posting images of works in progress is all well and good. It's great to get some feedback on your work in progress. But there is a major problem with doing this: This is the internet. And there are assholes on the internet. Assholes that will, without a second thought, take a copy of your game and post it on some other website, claiming it as their own.

This is the biggest reason why I've never even MENTIONED my development to other people, let alone post information about it online. Because there's no official copyright on your game, what's to stop some random guy in the forums to pull a Bill Gates and take a copy of your game, complete it with some shoddy patchwork, and post it as their own? Then, all the hard work you've done will be someone else's success. And, to take it a step further, the thief would then try to push legal action against you and claim that your work was actually their own.

I do understand that there is nothing actually physically STOPPING someone from reposting your work. What I'm trying to do is figure out ways that you can PROVE that you are the original owner if an aforementioned asshole pulls this stunt.

What to do about it:

I have come up with the following solutions to this problem. I ask that you read over these carefully, and critique these solutions, elaborate on them some, and/or even come up with your own original solutions. I'll edit this post with information as I see it coming.

1: Post encrypted files

Pro: As this is a no-brainer, I put this one first. With encrypted files, a potential thief would not have access to the assets, and therefore would not be able to edit the project itself.

Con: Honestly, I can't think of a con for this one. I think I just answered my own question, but let's keep going. Maybe one of you can think of a con for this method.

EDIT: I've gotten a couple of different suggestions for a con. Here's a quote that summarizes it the quickest:

author=eplipswich
Oh, there certainly is a con. Ever heard of decrypting? There are definitely people who are capable of decrypting files encrypted by different people.

2: Keep a repository of your game and assets in progress

Pro: A thief would not be able to have copies of the works in progress, so that alone could prove that you are the original owner. All the thief would have access to would be the completed project(Or completed work in progress), not have access to early stages of assets. For example, in the game I'm making, I have drawn all the character faces myself. But the last step I take before importing it to RPG Maker is applying an Anti-Alias filter. So I have two copies of each faceset. One with the filter, and one without. These copies would prove that I was the one who developed everything.

Con: A thief could claim that he/she doesn't have copies, and that I would put some sort of filter on the images to remove the Anit-Alias. The thief would then go on to claim that I'm just trying to make myself look like the victim.

3: Use the post date of the first time you put your project out there

Pro: No matter how soon the thief steals your project and posts it up on their own website, it will always be at a later date than when you did. So all you would have to do is take a screenshot of the first post you made or even provide a link to the first post, and then that could prove you were the original uploader.

Con: Remember when I made the Bill Gates analogy earlier? Well, going by that logic, a thief could make the claim that I completed it first, but that I stole from the thief.

4: Get a copyright protection

Pro: This is perhaps the most surefire way to protect your game. If you do this, you probably don't even need the above methods.

Con: It's costly(Hey! $35 is a lot for a guy on a budget!), plus it feels a bit... excessive. Especially if you're making a free game. Plus, the rules would get quite complicated if you're using other people's works in your own, like other people's facesets, scripts, or music. Using this method would surely degrade the quality of your game if you aren't good at drawing or scripting.


EDIT: And here are some methods provided by Archeia_Nessiah:

author=Archeia_Nessiah
1.) Self Dissolving Scripts. Basically make all your script files dissolve or check an important thing and then if it can't find that, it will corrupt data files. So if people tried to use it in their own games, yeah. It's not 100% fool proof, but for someone who knows very little RGSS and tries to steal your stuff, this would work.

2.) Clear all Switches and Variables Names. Basically Change the max to 1, then change it back to 500 for quick clear. At least it'd make things harder to find.

3.) Remember XYZ in rm2k3? If you can somehow do the same thing with RMXP-RMVXAce to read a specialized image format, that will already help you a lot.

4.) Clear all comments and make sure all the aliases in your script are made with your username or some such.

Audio Encryption is still impossible, unfortunately. :(

Well, those are my solutions. If you have any more, or want to discuss one of my own methods, please reply. Thanks!