How do you protect your media files from changing?

Hi all,

When we write 3d prg., we need external media files
(eg. wav, 3ds, bmp, etc.)
How do you protect media files from changing by end users?

Thanks in advance
Sammy
:)

Have a look at terabit's packer in the toolbox.

http://www.blitzbasic.com/toolbox/toolbox.php?tool=30

Free and easy to use.

I use MoleBox pro:

http://www.molebox.com/

You could use a custom pack format, but if you aren't able to load stuff from memory or a specific offset/size in a file then MoleBox is probably your best bet.

why would you want to?

if the end user wants to mess about, it doesn't affect you in any way does it?

...Because I don't want the end user to mess about it? :) Also often after messing up everything totally they start bugging the developer how to fix things like they were - or just demand "money back" because it's not working anymore. Much easier not to give them the chance in the first place.

terabit's packer

Hi all,

As mentioned in "TeraBit DataPak Guide",
"It's not primarily designed as a security measure, more of a side effect."
It may still have a chance that users change the files.

Besides molebox, are there any other alternatives
for doing the same job?

Thanks in advance
Sammy
:)

Personally I think Datapak is plenty secure enough. I mean, sure, a dedicated hacker could get at the media files without too much trouble, but then that's not the worry here. The point is so that people cannot casually overwrite the files or something.

I don't know what method these program uses, but any program that extracts media to your harddrive before loading it - and then deleting the temp files, is very easy to work around.

Undelete programs find everything.
(I tried it once just to see if it was possible :p)

Okay, sure, an undelete program finds the packed media. But following my point, who cares? If the person is going to go to that much effort to monkey with the data, then it's out of your hands. Is it your fault if the person corrupts the exe by messing with the binary data?

Incidentally, does that even matter? Won't the game just overwrite their changed file with the correct files from the pak? I'm not sure, but that sounds logical.

AL90 released a packer solution too. Although as far as I see you need to be able to modify your code, so you couldn't use it for an EXE you cannot recompile. Well I'm not sure about that. (see here: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=52045#580853 )

I am using Molebox Pro too. There was some kind of Molebox Lite for about 40$. It worked with Blitz, but didn't allow to add DLLs, like the Pro Version does.

The point is, there are indeed only a few true Exe Packers around. I was searching for a good one for a long time and tested a lot of stuff, molebox finally did the best job.

Terabits packer is surely useful too, but it isn't exactly the same kind of tool.

I am a little ticked with the MoleBox people, They don't reply to emails and I haven't been able to download the updated version in about a year.

Free stuff:

Terabits is the best for B+/B3D
MPacker is the best for BMax

PopCap doesn't protect their media in any way. They seem to be doing alright.

Those fools! They don't realize they're just setting themselves up for a catastrophe.

Kuron - they release updates frequently, at least of the Pro version. I had a problem, sent a mail. Tho the bug was too insignificant to be fixed quickly, they answered.

Maybe you should check your contact adress and/or send them evidence of your purchase.

Sure it affects you. In the old days, you would make a game, and your three main distribution points for shareware were CompuServe, AOL and indie BBSes. If you did NOT protect your media, people would often change it to their liking, including copyrighted artwork, like "NES, Super Heroes, characters" or change it to "adult themed" artwork. In turn, they would post these modified versions to indie BBSes, and even back to AOL or CompuServe.

People would download the modified shareware versions and get something completely different than what they expected, often with illegal content, or content not aimed at minors. Besides the potential to ruin the reputation of a company, getting angry letters from parents, there is also the potential of legal action from the copyright holders of the artwork for having it in your game. This is why even in the DOS days, people protected their media.

Today is no different. It is even worse with the outrageous number of Shareware sites, it is not uncommon to see games & developers still falling victim to these same issues.

Any developer will always take a reasonable approach to protect his work. Not so people can't steal it, but just so the "average joe" can't mess with it in some way.

I have, at least five times in the last month :c( THey used to be great and no troubles, for me.

Yup. And these days modding is far more popular than it was in the DOS days... not to mention internet/broadband vs. modems/bbs's. Most modders seem to have slightly lost the point what's legal and what's not... most mods use ripped material from other games and the modders don't even think (know?) that it's illegal because they are doing it "just for fun".

What about pre-calculating an MD5 or SHA hash of your media files and compare them to a hash generated when you load the media files into memory (or at startup, or whenever)? If the hashes don't match, you can pop up an error or something.

It still won't stop people from stealing your work. you may also use a combination of it. My engine for example is using packed media and level cfg files, but it may also run external, nonpacked maps if they are named on the command line.

True, but he didn't say anything about wanting to stop people from taking the media files - only to stop them from changing them in his game so that he doesn't get support calls or have his program distributed with illegal content.

BlitzMediaLinker

LOL @ jH

:)

--Mike