Unofficial, alpha 47 weekly build

[turbochop]

To whoever leaked that alpha: We will find you. We will hunt you down and make you regret it. We'll make you wish you never heard of SPF! (blinks) Oh, look at all the nice people.

[sixcorners]

Make them wish they didn't have an SPF?! Imagine the sunburns. (SPF = Sun Protection Factor)

[Jeff]

Hehe, well it might have been an accident, who knows? It's not really a big deal, but it is a good wake up call. The upcoming autoupdater system will make all of this obsolete and will actually be an awesome incentive against piracy.

[Endoperez]

Hehe, well it might have been an accident, who knows? It's not really a big deal, but it is a good wake up call. The upcoming autoupdater system will make all of this obsolete and will actually be an awesome incentive against piracy.

Hopefully so. I'd just like to mention that pirates are bastards and you should have something planned for when someone hacks your updater. It will happen.

The other beta forum I've been in, got several reports about the game being cracked down the line. They didn't have an auto-updater system, so they didn't rack any extra costs and the developer there could just add few more cogs and loops to the key-checking algorithm, to be released with the next patch (which often added whole new nations). I don't know the details, but the algorithm for generating the keycodes probably was distinct from the game executable and the check only checked few of the variables in the beginning, so even reverse-engineering got the hackers so far.

The developer there also had a clever system that made you think you had cracked it (the game works correctly for several turns), but starts doing wacky things later on, like removing the GUI and the ability to shut down normally. A nasty "bug" that only affects pirates and those who enter the key wrong, but a reinstall "fixes it" for the honest guys. It looks like the game was still cracked eventually, but the fact that new patches kept invalidating the old keyhacks and added enough new content for the hackers to want to patch seems to have been an annoyance.

[Jeff]

It's a losing battle on the PC platform. If your game is popular, even the best DRM in the world is going to get cracked instantly (or in many cases, even before the game is released). It just makes the experience worse for honest consumers and gives you a bad reputation.

The best defense against PC piracy is not DRM, but rather "premium" online services like the auto-updater, server browser, mod browser, etc. which will authenticate based on your SPF key. These are inherently uncrackable because it is on our server -- the same way you can't pirate your way into the secret preorder forum.

[Nigmos]

That is what I've always believed. Securom among other things has always been working like... well... crap. By computer just don't like those services, and I'm more often than not an honest customer.

[Endoperez]

The best defense against PC piracy is not DRM, but rather "premium" online services like the auto-updater, server browser, mod browser, etc. which will authenticate based on your SPF key. These are inherently uncrackable because it is on our server -- the same way you can't pirate your way into the secret preorder forum.

I thought server-based authentification was still vulnerable, but I'll take your word for it. I don't know the technical details and, to be honest, I doubt I'll ever need to.

This is a bit off-topic, but I hope online extras don't turn into 24/7-internet-connection-required-to-play. Paper manuals and code wheels turned into cd-checks, hopefully Steam won't pave way for SecuNets and StarForceOnlines in 2019...

[Silverfish]

It would be cool if we could get updated controls for the rigging editor and stuff. It would also be awesome if you could tell us a little about how to use the localization system, if it's even useable yet.

Thanks

Pretty please?