Encripting \Locking missions

[TheElite 0]

Quote[/b] ]@TheElite:

Last I checked, the US govt says 30% or over alteration of code is legally yours. Of course there's a lot of fudge room in there, and arguing the percentage is going to largely come down to who has the better lawyer.

well ,ty its nearest i ever got to an answer here,

the problem as well is when a well known company once got caught using i.p from here , Bis sorted there stuff out and the company simply shut it doors to anyone except military organisations, so how will we ever know who uses it for military or commercial purposes ?

I guess my own view is that just like when we play the game ,some are playing honestly some are not.

[UNN 0]

Just a thought, but doesn’t any mission and perhaps any script, belong to BIS? So you don't have the right to encrypt them?

As for personnel views, I go with a definite No! to encryption.

Can anyone who is pro encryption honestly say they learnt everything on their own? When I first started scripting I learnt so much from the forums it would be impossible to credit everyone. If I then go on to encrypt my own scripts and missions, then in theory I am using other peoples scripts, ideas and labour e.t.c and passing it off as my own.

In fact, in some cases, encryption will make it easier to steal other peoples ideas. As there will be no way to prove they have copied another persons scripts. So if nobody wants to post thier scripts in the public domain, the wealth of missions, addons and snipets could very well soon dry up. With no new blood coming into the game, it would stagnate around the sort of people who proclaim "they know everything there is to know about scripting" and go no further than their own self enforced limits.

I think there is only one real bone of contention (DARWARS aside, BIS made an attempt to deal with them), some people are being paid to develop addons for VBS and it pisses people off. It pissed me off to, not because I fear they are stealing scripts like thieves in the night. It's because I feel I could do as good a job, if not better  

[Op4 BuhBye 0]

You would be wrong. I have several missions from OFP that took me months. Look the world is full of scumbags and cheaters cause they dont have the guts to do it honest.

I understand what you are saying but if someong hacks your missions It doesn't remove anything at all from you does it?

You can keep your head up high and say I made that or I wrote that. Sure some will lie and say they made it, but ya know what... those are the morons that will come here and ask how to add a magazine in their next map.

What Im saying is they are not worth cheating the rest of the community out of De-Pboing a map to learn how to do something.

99% of the knowledge I have in editing came from De-Pboing maps. Some times I changed what I found and sometimes I desided they took the long road and I did it different.

The Wiki is a guideline, a referance. It is totaly worthless for learning. The ability to see a script, read it and figure out what its saying, and how its said is invaluable to the learning process. To cheat someone who could be a great map maker because of 3-4-5 loosers is sad I think.

[TheElite 0]

Quote[/b] ]I think there is only one real bone of contention (DARWARS aside, BIS made an attempt to deal with them), some people are being paid to develop addons for VBS and it pisses people off. It pissed me off to, not because I fear they are stealing scripts like thieves in the night. It's because I feel I could do as good a job, if not better

A very valid point, and as it seems alot of people return to arma from vbs and very active in arma , how will we ever know they work for bis and if they use your code in there name ?

Its all a real mine field isnt it.

But after all there can surely be no dispute that arma if not a game ,is a recruting ground and beta testing ground for VBS/2. Myself i think its fantastic win win for Bis/Bia that arma and vbs2 use same engine core ,just like ofp and vbs did.If its not true then it should be, if i had a business like this thats how i would play it.

i would release engine in form of arma , beta done by public add a bug tracker system , remove as many flaws as possible , when you feel its good enough to sell as a commercial product , add the gems on there like 3d editor etc and 200k islands instead of 100k

square . its fantastic sense really. Biggest r&d dept in the world . then later on release tools and you have virtually a free source of recruiting grounds for talent , modelers ,scripters , scenario/mission makers. its just too good to be true ?

or am i missing something ?

[[aps]gnat 28]

changed Default to MINE and simply applied a © tag and some // to the top of the script and or config.

The same with odol explore , i have seen blatant copy and paste of sections of original Bis models renamed and again a © added to the read me.

When does code become i.P ?

all scripts are derived (99%) from an original source and simply modified to fit a given/new problem.

or 80% or 70% or whatever. Agree.

Very little is "original" and all is either a derivitive of BIS code or you combined learnings.

Its all part of having a "trade" or a skill, if you can do it and you not getting paid for it, most of us still do it for the love of the game and the support and sometimes praise of the community.

.... and community praise can be as simply as a group of ppl playing your mission.

My mission making "learnings" come from 100 other ppls missions and things about coding I've accumulated over the years. Now is every little word I type mine, no, just like every normal thing I do in my RL job, its not ground breaking and therefore not 100% mine to ©

The way I see it;

- If you have code that is 100% yours and you want to protect it, and want ppl to play it, don't bother sticking it in an OFP or ArmA missions or addons. Take it somewhere else.

- You want to be part of the community, and want ppl to play your stuff, CREDIT any bits you use and contribute to this great community.

The support and longivity of OFP speaks for itself, why oh why would you change the formula.

Oh, on the VBS and other, agree ..... you would hope BIS and BIA are protecting whatever is our rights are and what is morally correct there

[Somerville 0]

Before I rant, this has gone slightly off topic imho. The first post asked if there was any way to protect his mission, and everyone's now arguing the case for/against/neither about encrypting your missions.

Anyway...

It's both a good and bad thing, your 'moral right' to your missions and custom-created content.

It's good, because if you've spent weeks creating a mission only to find 3 days after release somebody decided they'd rather drive a tank than a hummer to Corazol, and, having done so, his/her mission becomes more popular, then you're going to be pretty miffed. So yes, it's good, because it'd let you protect what's yours. To the best of my knowledge, there is a slightly basic version of this already. If you dePBO a mission and try to just insert the folder you get into your ArmA user mission folder in My Documents, the ArmA editor reports "The file is read only!" and doesn't load anything. At least, that's happened to me before. But of course, the easiest work-around is just to create a folder called "mymission.Sara" or whatever, and put all the files from the downloaded mission in there. Go BIS...

On the other side, I saw a comment about it being bad for the community. I sympathise with the remark to some extent - not every ArmA player is a mission-making legend, and some probably do unPBO missions to get a look at the scripts. Some people have a look at a script and go "That looks suspiciously like [script name here]". Is this morally wrong, or should we allow the ArmA community to learn from the fountain of wisdom that is community releases?

On the other hand, people would argue that people should go and read the wiki, go and read tutorials, and do it themselves. But then again, people want to start getting missions out there and fast, because there's just no variety of, for example, MP Missions out there. Well, that's not strictly true, but I have an example. Last week, I checked my MP server list. 6/10 were playing Evolution. Ages ago, it was Berzerk. All it is, is people wanting to make 'the next best thing'. I know it's a nasty phrase, and a few of you are probably keeling over as you read this (sorry), but it's true. The same is of OFP, too - at one point, there were so many CrimeCity servers, and that's because, at the time, it was different - refreshing, unique, a different adaptation on the conventions of a military simulator.

To be honest guys, I'm quite happy for somebody - amateur or advanced in scripting - to pick apart a mission I've made, as long as he quotes me in the credits. It's a chance, admitted, because you can't guarantee it, but trust earns more respect than just a good mission alone - it takes a more committed mission maker to say "I'm good, but I'm not the best".

[AsRock+SD 0]

To clear the air about a few things, I am not wanting to use this to "lockdown" my mission and keep others from viewing the scripting source for selfish reasons. I, as well as many of you all who are reading this, do unPBO mission files to learn the inner workings of some very cool scripting workarounds.

For those who have played GR with my group, they might be cluing in at this point as to what +SD is brewing. However, I'm not going to announce anything official to keep the furor down so we can concentrate on our primary objectives. I guarantee, however, that if we can successfully keep people from viewing the "secrets" of the missions (I guess the MORE important part here is keeping people from viewing where enemy tangos are and their movement and conditions of presence), that the community will be better off for our efforts. Thanks for the responses so far...

EDIT

Last thing i'd hate is if everyone did encript there mission in some way to stop others.

And to change some ones mission to please them selfs is just wrong. learn of it take notes but to edit it to there needs HELL NO.

[Nutty_101 0]

Somewhat on the topic. You can de-pbo missions from the multiplayer servers as well. Unless they do some tricky stuff and hide the files.

[kuwahara<ANZAC> 0]

i seriously cant see why the hell you need your E-name posted in someone elses readme..

is it not enough that the hard work you have done is appreciated??.

Im sure the people who copy/paste/edit other people scripts are very appreciative to the script writers and hopfully they study these scripts and learn something from them so one day they to may be able to write usefull scripts and help others, if you start encripting missions you will just hurt the quality of all missions being released.

im sure even the best scripter out there have got ideas off un-pboing missions for good ideas..

/rant off

[Nutty_101 0]

i seriously cant see why the hell you need your E-name posted in someone elses readme..

is it not enough that the hard work you have done is appreciated??.

Im sure the people who copy/paste/edit other people scripts are very appreciative to the script writers and hopfully they study these scripts and learn something from them so one day they to may be able to write usefull scripts and help others, if you start encripting missions you will just hurt the quality of all missions being released.

im sure even the best scripter out there have got ideas off un-pboing missions for good ideas..

/rant off

What about files that you don't want downloaded from your server? It can be a method to cheat sometimes.

[UNN 0]

@AsRock+SD

Quote[/b] ]I guarantee, however, that if we can successfully keep people from viewing the "secrets" of the missions (I guess the MORE important part here is keeping people from viewing where enemy tangos are and their movement and conditions of presence), that the community will be better off for our efforts.

If I understand you correctly? I think that’s more to do with mission design. I can understand why you might not want to commit yourself in detail just yet, but it's hardly surprising the thread developed the way it did, given the original topic title and content.

Sure, being able to encrypt data within the mission, so you can keep certain events hidden would be advantageous within a Clan based competitive system. But there is a lot you can do already.

1) Make heavy use of randomisation and on the fly unit creation.

This would be time consuming from a mission editing point of view, for every single event you would have to create multiple alternatives. Enough to make any attempt to try and decipher these events so time consuming; it would not be worth their effort.

2) Store all your event conditions outside the mission as pbo's.

The pbo's could contain all the relevant scripts, data and events for your mission. The pbo's could be relatively small and easily updated. So if you wanted to play out a particular scenario, the pbo would be made available just prior to the mission starting. All the participants would have a limited time to download and install them before the game starts. Making any attempt to unpack and examine them, pointless.

3) (Not sure about this) Have regular script files that are based only on the server and external to the mission.

These scripts would not be downloaded as part of the mission and in theory could be updated on the fly by a games master. Although they would probably be restricted to server side AI units, unless you invest some time and effort into communicating the changes to specific players using some sort of protocol.

Well I'm still not sure if this is the kind of thing you want to do? But I still found it an interesting concept either way

[KilJoy -SFG- 0]

I rapped my mission mainly to keep the end pbo under 1 meg. I dont have a problem with people learning from my work. But as evoloution is a work in progress (currently version 1.5a) it makes me sad that people have released a version 1.51 and a version v2.0 .As its a WIP its obvious i will reach these numbers myself at some time sio then there will be two version 2. At that point when somone reports a bug i will have to figure out if there talking about the hackers version or my version. Understand that most people probably get there missions by looking at the server list , if they see a higher version of a mission they will connect to that server when they connect they disconnect and move it from the mpcash to mp folder. The end result obviusly is people are tricked into downloding a fake higher version. This carry on is making me feel like finding another game to make missions for .