How to hide .x files and .bmp?
Author
I almost finished my game for Win9X. I would like to hide my .x files .wav and .bmp files so that others can not reuse my files(I spent long time and effort to make these).
I heard there is a utility to integrate these non-programming files into .exe. Would someone suggest such utility? or are there any other methods to hide multimedia files?
Probabaly I do not have time to rewrite my code to use .x files .wav and .bmp as resources. I am using Visual C++ version 6.
I would appreciate any help.
James
Edited by - JamesH on 1/7/00 4:37:57 PM
Edited by - JamesH on 1/7/00 4:47:47 PM
Try:
this link
There was another post that mentioned this method:
make a filesystem out of one file (kind of like what the above link describes), then append it to the .exe file so you basically have one humongous .exe file.
Of course, for both methods you will have to modify your code. You can either extract the files to a temp directory into their original form (which would leave them subject to copying for some time) or write something that loads them directly from your special file. You can even compress and encrypt the files (we did something similar using the zlib utility) if you so desired.
Hope this helps,
Edited by - NightShade on 1/7/00 4:50:29 PM
Although I''m not an expert on this, I would imagine that putting images and models in the .exe would make it load extremely slow. I''m not sure whether windows loads the whole exe when it is started though, so I might be wrong and there might not be any problem with that. One thing I might suggest is just changing the extension of the files to trick the user. It''s not the best method, but it will deter most.
Personally, I would not be worried about others reusing my files. What are they going to use it for? Just food for thought
--TheGoop
Personally, I would not be worried about others reusing my files. What are they going to use it for? Just food for thought
--TheGoop
Windows does try to load the whole exe file at run time. It assumes that the data segment of a the file is small. That still doesn''t prevent you from creating a gigantic dat file that munges all your bmps, etc. together without tagging it on to the end of your exe.
Hi,
I prefer putting all the files into one big .pak-like-file with it''s own file system. You can also copy the data to the end of the exe using
copy /b exe1.exe + data.dat exe2.exe
and load the data at the end of the first the exe file, because you know the size of your exe. So no one would be able to use your files. The problem with this is, that you would have a huge exe, so I''d prefer your own packed file with your own file system. .pak should be well documented so it shouldn''t be a problem.
CU
Skullpture Entertainment
#40842461
I prefer putting all the files into one big .pak-like-file with it''s own file system. You can also copy the data to the end of the exe using
copy /b exe1.exe + data.dat exe2.exe
and load the data at the end of the first the exe file, because you know the size of your exe. So no one would be able to use your files. The problem with this is, that you would have a huge exe, so I''d prefer your own packed file with your own file system. .pak should be well documented so it shouldn''t be a problem.
CU
Skullpture Entertainment
#40842461
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