how can develpers protect their assets outside Construct 2?

^

Not trying to be rude here, but here I am staring at my copy of all kinds of development software.

Unity - Sure, straight up decompiliable, assets are easily extracted.... usually though titles are sold by big small time endevours or people who are so talented that they can easily make something else and Unity has alot of buyers.. Wish I could understand the whole quaternian vectoring and also C# or Id give it a go.

Game Maker - horrible to use to be honest, keeping track of so many scripts and crap. I liked 8.1 but that gives the same problem when using outsource files loaded in. Studio? Sandboxed content and its compiled to the .exe. In a wrapper. I think its just as easily extracted.

Clickteam Studio Fusion - everything is compiled to its exe unless you choose to make it external, very light programs... so inbedding content to make it harder to crack is easy. costly too, and youre limited to only like winodws for export without paying for extra crap. Atleast it has a Layering extension which supports Z ordering, the one in construct 2 lags like hell.

Gdevelop - I believe it exports your assets in a viewable folder. just like construct 2. I think it runs off the same kinda code but not sure. Its pretty buggy at times.

Real programming languages with imported libs - same issues as above, but you can also put into the effort of obfuscating your own assets behind encrypted zip packages. Its always possible.

Construct 2 - ? You export to Nodewebkit and ALL your assets are exposed in a nice little package to be taken at whim in some .pk file? I mean what the crap? I'd rather export to an encrypted .exe and have it be bloated. Image youre some indie dev, youve got no talent at making games and slave away at one to sell. Suddenly anyone can come in taken your little assets and resell elsewhere extremely easily. Not because its any good, but because there was a potential for duplicate sales and yours was easy pickings. Theres nothing to stop this... and I dont even see many games being sold made with Construct 2...

On one hand I can count

Insanity Blade

The last penolope

DinoSystem

....

hmm

Anyway look, I am not complaining if this was a hardcore limitation that all users of nodwebkit have to contend with, but then I learned you CAN inbed your nodewebkit files into encrypted .exes.... so what gives, will Construct 2 see any of this asset protection for small time no talent indie devs slaving away?

its one thing to get a game I make or anyone makes torrented, fine, but to get assets stolen and resold? Thats just terrible.

i skim read this... but i get your jist... but the issue is deeper than just "compiling to encrypted exe".

Lets say you move it to Linux for gamers, well that file system is "open" and doesn't contain .exe programs (only in VM/Emulators like Wine) or big encrypted data streams which stop people from sitting on the I/O of the disk to get at the data.

The problem is a technology problem, where realistically nothing, in any software is safe... Sometimes it comes down to just a matter of time before it's cracked.

If the issue is piracy and not asset stealing, the industry resolved the issue by using DRM/Logins/Etc

Once you realise that pirates aren't your key demographic it becomes less relevant to most developers.

In other words thats income you wouldn't receive anyway.

Asset extraction is possible with any game, but I do understand the notion of not wanting to have your graphics and sounds just sit there for any "noob" to grab.

I did use Enigma Virtual Box in the past (Windows only I think), which is a free program for the purpose of creating portable applications for software that usually doesn't support this (would have to be installed).

It results in one single executable file and works flawlessly as far as I can tell. Your assets won't be visible to the user and they aren't temporarily being extracted to the hdd either.

Admittedly I didn't research this for safety and it might be a bad idea for other reasons. All I can say is that I didn't get any complaints related to this so far.

Once you realise that pirates aren't your key demographic it becomes less relevant to most developers.

In other words thats income you wouldn't receive anyway.

So true! I think the concern here lies more with the openly available assets in general though.

Once you realise that pirates aren't your key demographic it becomes less relevant to most developers.

In other words thats income you wouldn't receive anyway.

I said, I didnt care about "pirates"

I care about resell content thieves. A different beast altogether. And in fact, any measures relating to making their job a little less forward and more indirect, being a baseline feature offered already in the same export option. Meaning, base level encryption on any or all packaged assets we create inside of this game maker engine. I already know its possible, I'm just wondering why or what we can do exactly besides just listing some "copyright".

Asset extraction is possible with any game, but I do understand the notion of not wanting to have your graphics and sounds just sit there for any "noob" to grab.

I did use Enigma Virtual Box in the past (Windows only I think), which is a free program for the purpose of creating portable applications for software that usually doesn't support this (would have to be installed).

It results in one single executable file and works flawlessly as far as I can tell. Your assets won't be visible to the user and they aren't temporarily being extracted to the hdd either.

Admittedly I didn't research this for safety and it might be a bad idea for other reasons. All I can say is that I didn't get any complaints related to this so far.

> Once you realise that pirates aren't your key demographic it becomes less relevant to most developers.

> In other words thats income you wouldn't receive anyway.

>

So true! I think the concern here lies more with the openly available assets in general though.

Yes, the "noob" part. I mean, I'm a noob too since I'm using something like construct 2. But why would I want to make it easier for every noob using my game, hell, even the pirates, who can just plunker in, spend (or even get for free) the same key to use construct 2 I got, or something else entirely (unity?) make a game just like mine or better somewhere with recolored assets? Its totally possible and I'd atleast like someone who knew how to crack encryption doing it. Otherwise, all the person did was lawfully, extract a zip package. what am I going do to? Put a legal notice saying "DO NOT EXTRACT MY ASSETS AND RE-USE IN OTHER GAMES... OR ELSE!"

I'm not Bethesda.

On most stores, you can flag games or apps for copyright infringement and if you have proof (like yours was published first and they stole the assets), the copy version will get taken down.

It's not something that should be a cause for concern because almost every game out there has ex-tractable assets. Even complex 3d ones, I can get their models & textures, I've been modding games for fun ever since 1995.

In the industry, the copycats are what's called "Reskin Industry", they take your game, the code, and replace your asset with modified ones or other theme variants, then republish that. They get away with it, because you can't accuse them from ripping your assets, you also can't copyright a GAME idea or game playstyle. Anyone can make a Mario clone as long as they replace the art.

Yeah clones are really the only thing you have to worry about, but you have to take into account that that only really affects the mobile/ casual market.

Cloners stealing from cash grabbers. Rather poetic actually.

Asset theft and resale isn't really a thing, at least not not in the free world, or to anyone with even a modest notion of how the law works.

an old online RPG i owned back in web 1.0 days had all its assets stolen and essentially an entire new site created using the assets... I never really cared, it was a fun running joke between the developers and the players

I did use Enigma Virtual Box in the past (Windows only I think), which is a free program for the purpose of creating portable applications for software that usually doesn't support this (would have to be installed).

Enigma looks cool. Another interesting thing to consider is, even if the entire exe/assets were protected, if I wanted your graphics - i'd just open your game up and start taking screenshots, then just make my own spritesheets from them.... pretty easy to do with any 2D game.... as for 3d games, i'll make a GPU emulator and run your exe to hit my GPU to extract your models etc

Asset protection ey... never ever going to happen, because it can't happen.

Yeah clones are really the only thing you have to worry about, but you have to take into account that that only really affects the mobile/ casual market.

Cloners stealing from cash grabbers. Rather poetic actually.

Asset theft and resale isn't really a thing, at least not not in the free world, or to anyone with even a modest notion of how the law works.

Game of War is a Clash of Clan clone (like many others), and now its doing even better than Clash.

Basically there's no copyright on gameplay or game mechanics, if you make something novel and awesome, clones come, and its a new genre.

IF people bother to clone your work, that's when you've already made it to the big time, so its the least of your concerns.

Welp, I guess these are all my answers.

Thought some sort of compiling assets option should be available in c3 i hope.

I agree with — and some others.

There's nothing you can do to prevent your assets to be stolen.

I'm also not sure how one would create an EULA with online games (where to display).

And don't bother clones because they happen like a plague.

Play has literally thousands of the same re-skinned game over and over again it's overwhelming.

But from my experience as a player, not every clone can copy the same game play elements and flow.

jeebroniz I had the same concern about that package file that can be easily extracted by anyone.

I found a simple solution in another thread :

https://www.scirra.com/forum/how-do-i-avoid-have-a-package-nw-file-on-distribution_t118694

Frozenen proposes this:

"just merge the .exe and package. Open a CMD prompt:

copy /b yourgame.exe+package.nw newname.exe

be sure to put .exe first then package."

It's simple and it works. That's enough for me to avoid any 'noob' to unzip my assets.

Of course, if someone really wants to steal your assets, there's nothing you can do.