Hello, I have an event that stores all of the cd keys for my game. I was wondering if there was any way that someone could look at the cd keys in the event from the compiled version.
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Thanks,
GrahamVH
graham@warcraftcentral.com
Coldstone Developer (url="http://"http://www.warcraftcentral.net/legends/main.html")http://www.warcraftc...gends/main.html(/url)
I dont think you can look at an event within a compiled game, I have tried many times but failed :frown:... But thats just good for you 
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I don't know about hackers (I am not one) but normally you can not even know what the various events are in a compiled game. Everything except movies, music, and sounds goes into one large data file. From there I'm sure it would be difficult to extract such information.
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My Doctor said I was having too much wine, women, and song - so I gave up singing because 2 out of 3 is not so bad.
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Quote
Originally posted by Rubber Ducky:
**I don't know about hackers (I am not one) but normally you can not even know what the various events are in a compiled game. Everything except movies, music, and sounds goes into one large data file. From there I'm sure it would be difficult to extract such information.
**
It's very easy to know what the various events in the game are. Simply open the plugin folder an open the plugin data.txt. It shows a list of almost everything in your game.
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Thanks,
GrahamVH
graham@warcraftcentral.com
Coldstone Developer (url="http://"http://www.warcraftcentral.net/legends/main.html")http://www.warcraftc...gends/main.html(/url)
On that note, I think that one would be able to prevent hacking while still being able to make an use plugins. Just take out the file from the plugins folder when you compile, and if somebody wants to make a plugin, then you can send it to them, or even sell it. That way, you could keep better track of who has access to your game data. Still, anybody who gets a hold of it could distribute it on the net, but it still raises how secure ones game is. Also you could check out a post I made on how to make a shareware coldstone game at this address: (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum48/HTML/001921.html")http://www.ambrosias...TML/001921.html(/url)
That method can be modified so that instead of one, you could make two or three number entries needed to secure it even more.
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Whose cruel idea was it to put an 'S' in lisp?
(This message has been edited by BlackLite (edited 09-27-2003).)
Quote
Originally posted by GrahamVH:
**It's very easy to know what the various events in the game are. Simply open the plugin folder an open the plugin data.txt. It shows a list of almost everything in your game.
**
I would like to know how you do that. If I try to open a data file from a compiled plugin which I did not write, it opens Coldstone to the last of my own plugins which I worked on. It does not give any information about the plugin written by sombody else. I also tried opening a data file in simple text with no success.
If you have a way to read those data files, why couldn't we all get into PoG, for instance, to see how things were done?
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My Doctor said I was having too much wine, women, and song - so I gave up singing because 2 out of 3 is not so bad.
The (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/")Kingdom of Garendall(/url) sectional map is easily printed from gif format pages.
(url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/damsels.sit?path=pog/addons&file;=damselsV1.1.sit")Damsels in Distress(/url) - A plugin for PoG.
Quote
Originally posted by Rubber Ducky:
**I would like to know how you do that. If I try to open a data file from a compiled plugin which I did not write, it opens Coldstone to the last of my own plugins which I worked on. It does not give any information about the plugin written by sombody else. I also tried opening a data file in simple text with no success.
If you have a way to read those data files, why couldn't we all get into PoG, for instance, to see how things were done?
**
I can only see the names of everything in the game, no further than that. It only works for the game itself; I can't look at plugins. I open the plugin data.txt using TextEdit in OS 10.2.8.
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Thanks,
GrahamVH
graham@warcraftcentral.com
Coldstone Developer (url="http://"http://www.warcraftcentral.net/legends/main.html")http://www.warcraftc...gends/main.html(/url)
Hmm. It's possible (possible, mind you) that if you used a Hex editor you'd be able to extract the data and view the info in a Coldstone data file.... let me just download an editor and compile something. I shouldn't be too long. 
(Update) Well, it doesn't look too good for you if you're trying to make it impossible to see the numbers. I compiled something in Coldstone and opened it in a hex editor I downloaded from VersionTracker. I put in a dialog event with the words 'Romeo test for hex edit' so I'd have something to search for. I did an ASCII search in the file Data001.dat and got the following:
On the plus side, though, as long as you weren't obvious about it, it shouldn't be too hard to stop this method. Call the event 'Find old cheese' or something else completely innocuous, and it's very good odds that noone will find it.
Incidentally, if you open the data files in Hex Editor, you get all kinds of interesting stuff, with load and engine calls all over the place... if you knew what you were doing, it might be possible to figure out a few things from the data. Something to think about, anyway.
-Andiyar
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"Any good that I may do here, let me do now, for I may not pass this way again"
(This message has been edited by TarnΔlion Andiyarus (edited 09-28-2003).)
Just something else I thought of (and couldn't be bothered editing for )
With a hex editor, you can change data strings, as well as view them. As such, it's perfectly feasible to hack into a game and change or read the dialogue that is played during the game. If you felt like doing a hacked version of PoG, for instance, with the spelling mistakes corrected, you could. If you wanted to read what was going to happen (and you had a lot of patience) you could. You can read and edit the names of events and what they contain quite easily........ interesting, wot?
-Andiyar
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"Any good that I may do here, let me do now, for I may not pass this way again"
It doesn't matter how clever a developer is at protecting their software a hacker will always find a way around it. If you were to develop shareware or even a commercial game Grahams idea is the best one for registering or making a CD key. i guess that's the way that most big companies do it with their software
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Pilky
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Quote
Originally posted by BlackLite:
On that note, I think that one would be able to prevent hacking while still being able to make an use plugins. Just take out the file from the plugins folder when you compile, and if somebody wants to make a plugin, then you can send it to them, or even sell it. That way, you could keep better track of who has access to your game data. Still, anybody who gets a hold of it could distribute it on the net, but it still raises how secure ones game is. Also you could check out a post I made on how to make a shareware coldstone game at this address: http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum48...TML/001921.html
That method can be modified so that instead of one, you could make two or three number entries needed to secure it even more.
Sorry to be critical, but there is flaw in your design for a shareware version. If I where to make a plugin that set gb_registered = 1 then the player would have bypassed the cd key system. I decidied to have a global store the cd key that was entered and have it cheak it that way.
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Thanks,
GrahamVH
graham@warcraftcentral.com
Coldstone Developer (url="http://"http://www.warcraftcentral.net/legends/main.html")http://www.warcraftc...gends/main.html(/url)
I've mentioned it several times before,
Any CGE gaame data file can be dropped onto BBEdit/TextEdit , and as you've seen the dialog text is not scrambled.
it wouldn't exactly be a hacker, it'd more or less anyone with a proper textEditor.
aside from keycodes, theee's also your story at stake.
Basically your plot is not safe and someone could have spoilers on the web in the time it takes to copy+paste into their wanton 'Blog.
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Ah. That would be a loop hole. Unless of course you were to remove the plugin data file and be the sole maker for plugins, or if somebody wanted to make a plugin, then they would have to direct construction through you to prevent piracy.
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Whose cruel idea was it to put an 'S' in lisp?
Quote
Originally posted by ellrx:
**I've mentioned it several times before,
Any CGE gaame data file can be dropped onto BBEdit/TextEdit , and as you've seen the dialog text is not scrambled.
**
Really? I tried it with PoG's data file. In TextEdit's plain text mode, it's a whole bunch of gibberish (and takes an absurd amount of time to bring up the document).
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Quote
Originally posted by Thunderforge:
Really? I tried it with PoG's data file. In TextEdit's plain text mode, it's a whole bunch of gibberish (and takes an absurd amount of time to bring up the document).
TextEdit doesn't seem to be a good choice since, as you noted, it wants to load the entire file at once, but the text is definitely there. I was able to do a very ugly (though quick) search through the file by running it through "grep" and "more" in the Terminal, but I'm sure there's a much more user-friendly way to do this.
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notice the gibberish as you call it is very well organized gibberish...sort of like code...but...scrambled. hmm, what if someone knew how to unscramble it.
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