SQF Encryptor

[Vigil Vindex 64]

Typical capitalist mentality, I made something on the shoulders of previous peoples work, now I want to earn something from it and prevent others from doing the same. Anyone with enough ego to think they can limit what other people do should just keep their work to themselves. It's like giving a thirsty man a glass of water and telling him not to drink it. Pointless. Community is about contributing, not limiting or obfuscating the knowledge that helps the community thrive and survive.

[Mattar_Tharkari 10]

Some people never get beyond this, it's modern parenting:

vYjI33pHGk4

[Horner 13]

It depends how much value you actually place on the product of your hobby. I've always been the same - I hand out lures, flies, bait and hooks when I'm fishing. I don't ask anything in return because I enjoy making them and it takes a lot of time. I don't expect anyone to sing my praises or tell anyone they only caught a fish because they were using my patterns. So why should I here? If it keeps the game going we should hand out everything we make. One day BIS could close - then what will you do with your precious scripts and models? It will not last forever, nothing ever does. Share the fun and keep the game alive?

I myself do this on my free time and take pride in it. Stealing and decrediting someone is a sign of disrespect.

And your analogy doesn't go as far in depth as it should. How would you feel if you handed out your fishing equipment and someone went and set up a shop selling your fishing equipment as their own? It's no different then making content for arma and allowing people to steal it, make their own servers, clans, or modifications without permission or credit. To sit there and say, that if you spent a long time on something, poured days or even months into, and someone came by, took it and ran with it, not even mentioning your name in the process, that you wouldn't care, then you must not take a lot of pride in what you create.

[Vigil Vindex 64]

I myself do this on my free time and take pride in it. Stealing and decrediting someone is a sign of disrespect.

And your analogy doesn't go as far in depth as it should. How would you feel if you handed out your fishing equipment and someone went and set up a shop selling your fishing equipment as their own? It's no different then making content for arma and allowing people to steal it, make their own servers, clans, or modifications without permission or credit. To sit there and say, that if you spent a long time on something, poured days or even months into, and someone came by, took it and ran with it, not even mentioning your name in the process, that you wouldn't care, then you must not take a lot of pride in what you create.

My mum always tells me "pride comes before a fall". Too much pride and ego going on here. Why are we here making script and missions and what not? To contribute to the community? To make ourselves famous? What is more important? I think the answer to that will reflect the quality of character of anyone who answers it truthfully.

If I release anything, my main concern is that it works, and that people can use it and enjoy it. No strings attached like "You must plaster my name all over your stuff cause you used my code". Which is what attribution basically boils down to.

[kilrbe3 37]

My mum always tells me "pride comes before a fall". Too much pride and ego going on here. Why are we here making script and missions and what not? To contribute to the community? To make ourselves famous? What is more important? I think the answer to that will reflect the quality of character of anyone who answers it truthfully.

If I release anything, my main concern is that it works, and that people can use it and enjoy it. No strings attached like "You must plaster my name all over your stuff cause you used my code". Which is what attribution basically boils down to.

I think you may just have a very open mind, and that's a good thing. But if you spent hard work on something, and someone comes and takes it, uses it, spreads it and calls it theirs, well that's just disrespectful. How hard is it to just include a single name in the credits from the person that you got it from/helped? No need to plaster the name everywhere, just a simple, one word name.

Games do it, Movies do it, TV do it, Music does it, Research papers do it. It's just the kind and respectful thing to do.

I get where you are coming from and I agree. But plaster it isn't something that is brought up here, just a simple "Thank you" to the person who helped/got it from.

As for your question, why I am here & make things. Is simple to me.. I do it because I want to see my imagination and dreams/ideas in my head come to life. In something playable, or something to see. ArmA makes that come true. I do it for the pride in me, to show hey, I learned that, and took ideas from my head and made it become real. I also will admit as a small addition to all that, I enjoy hearing people say "hey great missions". Knowing I am doing something right. If that slowly makes a name for myself & to others knowing I can making something of a good quality. Than that's just a added plus in my book.

[Mattar_Tharkari 10]

And your analogy doesn't go as far in depth as it should. How would you feel if you handed out your fishing equipment and someone went and set up a shop selling your fishing equipment as their own?

If I saw one of my fly patterns being produced commercially I would be very happy because I had contributed something of value to the sport. The pride I get is in seeing progress, advancement and and other's enjoyment of the things I make. I do care about what I make, I'm a perfectionist at heart, but I am not selfish with my toys and I know how to share things and I have no fear of someone improving on what I have done, that is an even better result. The way things are going on the editing side, this game will grind to a halt and BIS will focus on other things, couldn't really blame them.

[iceman77 18]

My mum always tells me "pride comes before a fall". Too much pride and ego going on here. Why are we here making script and missions and what not? To contribute to the community? To make ourselves famous? What is more important? I think the answer to that will reflect the quality of character of anyone who answers it truthfully.

Me personally, I do it (code/script), because I'm up in a cold, dark, shithole with nothing better to do. Same reason why I'm always on these forums :) Regardless, one should take pride in anything he does. For example, lets take two workers (job irrelevant), the one who takes pride in his work will usually produce the better finished product, than someone who doesn't take pride in his work. Sure pride can get in the way, but pride can also help one do better work. My 2c

[bigshotking 11]

Agree. Yes there's some times where protection is "legit" (only referring to scripting/configs) but in general where would YOU be without having the chance of studying other peoples code(bis code)?

I must admit (shamefully) that i've looked into bis pbo's to learn how things done :butbut:

I don't un-PBO BIS material, I'm talking about other peoples missions that I really enjoy or want to know how one certain thing is done. I don't just copy the code and use theirs I see how it works and make my own version of it and compare between the two. If it does the same or something close to what the original does then I have learned how to do that specific function or script and now I will know how to do it in other missions that I make if needed. There is no shame with looking at others missions as you are not taking anything from them besides a learning experience. If I can make a mission and help someone new to the community learn how to do something in it than that makes me happy knowing that I have positively affected the community and brought another member into it.

I can agree with you that certain protection should be done, but I think that should be limited to game files and not missions.

[Horner 13]

If I saw one of my fly patterns being produced commercially I would be very happy because I had contributed something of value to the sport. The pride I get is in seeing progress, advancement and and other's enjoyment of the things I make. I do care about what I make, I'm a perfectionist at heart, but I am not selfish with my toys and I know how to share things and I have no fear of someone improving on what I have done, that is an even better result. The way things are going on the editing side, this game will grind to a halt and BIS will focus on other things, couldn't really blame them.

I already pointed out that I would share my knowledge with those who are also willing to share, I think my couple released and WIP projects can attest to that (see my sig). If you really think someone wanting what they made to be their property, that they can use, distribute, and keep credit to is wrong, and that they should be glad that someone is stealing their work because it's "being used", then you must be one of the most generous people on earth.

Same mentality as, I don't care if someone cheats off my paper in class, because everyone is getting a good grade then. I don't care if someone steals my money, because I wasn't using the money, so I'm glad the money is being used. Anyone starting to see the similarities between this topic and real world dilemmas? I hope so.

My mum always tells me "pride comes before a fall". Too much pride and ego going on here. Why are we here making script and missions and what not? To contribute to the community? To make ourselves famous? What is more important? I think the answer to that will reflect the quality of character of anyone who answers it truthfully.

If I release anything, my main concern is that it works, and that people can use it and enjoy it. No strings attached like "You must plaster my name all over your stuff cause you used my code". Which is what attribution basically boils down to.

I don't give a damn if someone doesn't plaster my name all over the place. All I ask is for what I put there to remain intact, if you edit it, go ahead and put your name right up there too.

You can't seriously think that someone wanting rights to something they created is egotistical. The pride I'm speaking of is the pride in your work, that it works well and is the best you can make it to be. What I meant by "You must not have a lot of pride in your work" is referring to the fact that if you don't care if someone steals it, then you must not have put a lot of work into it.

Anyways, I'm done ranting on this conversation, I'll let the cards fall where they may. For those who don't care what happens to what they make, fair enough. But I think it's wrong how you think that people shouldn't want rights to their work. I have a few things that I've made that I didn't really care what happened to. But I do have projects that I've worked VERY VERY hard on and would be fairly pissed off if someone came by, stole it, and only took time to edit the credits and comments in each file. I'm not "selfish" in any way with my code, I come on this forum every day to help people.

This thread has been derailed enough, I apologize for engaging in the de-railment.

[[frl]myke 14]

Gentlemen, this topic is about a tool/method to encrypt, not about if it should or shouldn't be done. Discussion stops right now or infractions will be handed out.

[alleycat 28]

You just need to know the full path to the script (inside the addon). Also, make sure only to call it on the server (because the client won't have it, obviously).

For example:

if (isServer) then {
 [] execVM "\MySecretAddon\scripts\serverStuff.sqf";
};

I think I messed up the path when I tried it.

C:\Steam\steamapps\common\arma 2 operation arrowhead\@MyAddon\addons\MyAddon.pbo

If I want to access a script that is in the root folder of the .pbo (packed inside), what should the path to it be?

[Horner 13]

You can use a folder in the arma2 oa root directory (if you're running CO) instead of a pbo, that way you can freely edit the code inside of what would be your pbo without restarting your game. Path works as follows.

// Folder named "server_stuff" in your root dir

if (isServer) then
{
fnc_something = compile preProcessFile "\server_stuff\fnc_something.sqf";
// Public variable so code is accessed by clients
publicVariable "fnc_something";
};

As Nouber pointed out, you can still print this out in the form of just plain text, however, it's only accessible on the server you're running the mission on, so the file is not encrypted, the file is just not available to the client, even though the code is. So long as you have addon signature checking on the client would need to inject a script to print out the code.

[alleycat 28]

thx, also found an article explaining the possible paths:

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Script_Path

[alleycat 28]

null = execVM "\@AddonName\addons\test.sqf";

Only appears to work if the file is in that directory. How to target a script that is inside a pbo? I want to pack all client scripts into a pbo too so I can move the stuff to different missions.

About cheat protection:

If Client scripts are unpacked in the addon folder, does BE detect wether they match the one on the server? (Which the server does not even use so I am confused) Would it be safer to simply leave them in the mission pbo so at least that is cheat protected because the server sends the file?

Edited February 15, 2013 by alleycat

[galzohar 31]

If the scripts are in an addon you need to use signatures to prevent cheating. If the scripts are in the mission itself so there is no problem as mission file is read from the server anyway so user cannot modify it without complex hacks (which is what BE is for).

[BlenderRUS 6]

Lol guys.. dont blame on me but it is stupid idea.

You cant binarize arma scripts. The only thing you can is just make scripts less readable by changing variable names, functions to a random, and removing all spaces/caret returns.

Efficiency of this... is ZERO!

Any starting C++/C# programmer can write string parser :)

The only solution is to make serverside functions.

[infiSTAR 3]

This is awesome

[paulchanty 10]

hello

[Rene-k 10]

Hi, i found this thread over google

But first the Zip. download link is dead :( can some one re upping it.

Then i have question to this encyptor. It just Encrypt 1 sqf file?

Or gives it a way to Encrypt the complet .pbo?

I ask becaus some of my work i diden`t wand share. So it was be nice to Encrypt the .pbo file

Need this for Arma 3

[spitfire007 10]

I don't believe you have to.

From the file.

Version: 1.0

Description:

Encrypts or decrypts a string with a specified encryption key.

Parameters:

0 - Decrypt (0) or encrypt (1) [number]

1 - Encryption method name [string]

2 - Encrypted or plain data [string]

3 - Encryption key [string]

Returns:

Encrypted or decrypted data or nothing on failure [string:nil]