another way is to..
generally use custom binary files and external assets (swf, jpg, png, mp3). That way it requires almost reverse engineering aka understanding the engine, code and fileformats in order to change it dramaticly. Such kind of development is another reason for AS3 anyway,- esspecially since you can write custom Binaray data from within the Flash Player 10 to your desktop.
Getting ripped off can happen even if you have a contract with the site. I sold the rights to a game to a site who totally bastardized it and basically ruined it. They added MORE mochiads (in between levels, which made it annoying to play because levels were short), somehow mistakenly deleted graphics making the game look very ugly, and added a useless leaderboard to a game that it didn't really fit into.
Even if you legitimately sell your game, there's a chance that some moron will butcher it up.
just post the name of that hoster,- so that others know who to watch out for
"Even if you legitimately sell your game, there's a chance that some moron will butcher it up."
You get that everywhere mate, I've had it with my first ever sold game to a portal back in '03, to having it with clients forcing last minute changes that just destroy a game.
As to the slightly o/t encryption thing, as3 is a million times more secure than previous versions.
For example, the 651 demo linked to in my sig was protected with our in-house encryptor which stops all the decompilers in their tracks. If you want anything of interest out of that you're going to be getting your hands a lot dirtier than just picking "save as fla".
Squize.
couldnt agree more. I if you really want a project protected, you should make a custom encryptor / obfuscator.Quote:
For example, the 651 demo linked to in my sig was protected with our in-house encryptor which stops all the decompilers in their tracks.
(its not too hard, as essentially it's just a find/replace on a bunch of files.)
just to share a technique i use...
in all my actionscript code, i put comments like...
and then the obfuscator app just replaces this string with one of many different little snippets of site locking code. some of the sitelocking code is several lines long in itself, and is put in at random.Code://[LOCK]//
this allows me to have readable code, and insert hundreds of different sitelocking points where i want in the source code. almost automatically.
also,
i had a whole system of loading encrypted files off my server, with the game logic in it, but then discovered that all the portals actually want you to give them a single, self contained swf file.
so i made another little app to convert an asset into a string (encrypted and sitelocked), and wrap the string with some as3 code to convert it into its object. this also has the bonus of being able to store bytearrays as assets.
it kind of sounds complicated//overkill, but basically by writing a couple of simple apps in vb that do some string handling, i now have a simple way to strongly protect my stuff without thinking further about it.
another point.
if i was decompiling someones as3 code to steal, i would do a search and replace for any occurrence of 'loaderInfo', as most sitelocking techniques use it. so try to use a variety of different methods.
EDIT.
That's an extremely good point about the extra MochiAds. They could add all sorts of extra junk and just recompile it, once youve given it to them, even if they dont understand what's going on in the rest of the code. is there any way to prevent this? what do other people do?
Could the flash file perhaps detect how big it is? and refuse to run if it is larger/less than a set number of bytes? Is there any way of hashing a swf that it can access?
Nice ( The comment way of doing it ).
Our system uses blowFish, basically the entire swf is encrypted using that ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowfish_(cipher) ) which gives a byte for byte copy of the original swf ( So no slow down at all and no filesize increase ).
Then after the preloader there's a class which embeds the whole encrypted swf into itself ( Which limits this to Flex / Flash Develop and now CS4 I believe ) and runs the decryption routine.
This routine is the weak point, but we use a source code scrambler ( http://blog.gamingyourway.com/PermaL...915983a25.aspx ) on it to mess it up.
The version in 651 is breakable, but it'll be so painful to do, and it's a starting point for the next version which will be much nastier.
The advantage we have is that decompilers have to be pretty generic with what they do, they can only really target commercial protection schemes, so they're not hard to mess with thanks to byteArrays and as3.
"They could add all sorts of extra junk and just recompile it, once youve given it to them, even if they dont understand what's going on in the rest of the code."
I guess you mean in situations where you've given them the fla ? Simple solution is don't. There's no need for a sponsor to have your code, and if they insist on it, then that should be reflected in your price.
"Is there any way of hashing a swf that it can access?"
md5 does this well and is available as open source actionscript. You'd only really need the last byte value, so in theory that value could be hidden in a png in your library so it's actually a getPixel which tests the hash, which again would be tricky to find.
Sorry about taking this thread away from the original point again, and turning it into yet another how to protect my swf thread.
Squize.
The name of the group I dealt with was xodo, and they work for YouGame.com. The contract was non-exclusive rights with the right to alter the game for APIs, removing my ads and putting in their own, etc. But, in altering the game they turned it into trash.Quote:
Originally Posted by renderhjs
xodo offered us a truly pitiful amount for the pinball game we did. They offered what you got basically, a none-exclusive but they wanted the source 'cause they wanted to add it to facebook and obviously couldn't trust us to do it ( They update their api's a lot being the reason, so it's just easier if they have the source. Yep right ).
Obviously I'd rather delete the game all together rather than let anyone have it for the amount that was offered ( $301< ), never mind handing over the source for it.
Wattz harsh way to learn a lesson when dealing with sponsors mate, but looking on the bright side at least it's a lesson learnt.
Squize.