yeah you can just make it more difficult. it''s impossible to protect that stuff. it follows the same logic of trying to copy-protect anything that gets displayed to the user. basically if something will eventually be drawn or played to the user then they will be able to get the raw data. at the base level they could take screenshots or record from their speakers and just take your data. even more likely, it''s usually a simple task for some people to reverse engineer the file formats or your pak files or of your resourse packing. once one person does it, they can just post the unencrypted data and everyone else can just bypass the whole getting around your security part and download the raw data. until things like palladium or other hardware level DRM things come around (hopefully never) protecting data on a computer that needs to be decrypted by that same computer to use it in a game or whatever is a lost cause. even then it probably won''t be that hard. like i said you can always resort to taking pictures of your screen or putting a mic up to your speakers.

-me

The only semi-complete way is to create your own formats for images, music, and every other resource, and even those will be reverse-engineered if the game is succesful enough (such as Blizzard''s MPQ format; it''s not officially documented, but well known).

Throw it in a zip file using zlib, or define your own PAK format. That will stop 99% of people from trying to get at the data. The other 1% will get it no matter what you do to stop them.

quote:Original post by ze_jackal
The only semi-complete way is to create your own formats for images, music, and every other resource, and even those will be reverse-engineered if the game is succesful enough (such as Blizzard''s MPQ format; it''s not officially documented, but well known).

Throw it in a zip file using zlib, or define your own PAK format. That will stop 99% of people from trying to get at the data. The other 1% will get it no matter what you do to stop them.

XOR the data, then save it with a different extension? Most people wouldn''t bother to get your images after that.

Two possibilities.

1'' Apply a filter to your data (all bytes + 1 with FF becoming 00, for instance) or something to that end that''s VERY simple (to reduce the conversion time when you load it; really, do you NEED a hyper-complex algorithm for this?) and convert it back before loading.

2'' Realize that users can still take screenshots or dump their sound buffer to disk, and that even if they do that you still won''t be affected by it at all. Avoid unecessary work and focus on making your game more entertaining and of better quality instead of trying to prevent n00bcoder_1337 from using your dancing german beerkeg in his tetris clone.

I don''t think anyone cares about getting their graphics/sound stolen, I think the idea here is that it looks a little unprofessional/ugly when you see the game directory filled with jpg''s and movie clips. I don''t think anyone really cares but I get a weird feeling that I''m using bitmaps and wav''s and it''s right there in the open.