Modder Protection

[tomascokis]

I was thinking, what is the communities thoughts on mod protection - ie, the ability to package or compress mods into a binary form that only overgrowth understands, allowing creators to hide there source material from others.

Do you think such a feature should be implemented?

And maybe more importantly should it be implemented into the campaign?

This would allow for easter eggs, hidden content ect which we can't find by looking into the games source files - something which I find appealing. Of course for other purposes an egg free version could be separately released by wolfire for modders to look through for example scripts ect.

Communities thoughts?

Wolfire's thoughts?

[TheBigCheese]

Interesting. Might be a lot of work for little gain.

I'm not sure the worry would really be of looking for easter eggs. More for stealing a modder's meshes and textures and using them for your own good. Of course that might be encouraged, depending on how the whole modding system turns out in the end.

[tomascokis]

I'm thinking of secret areas and stuff, portions that would just be spoiled by loading up the editor or looking in the xml's.

[Johannes]

I've asked about this previously and so far Wolfire's attitude towards a compressed format is that they may add it later if need be, but so far it's not a high priority.

I'd like to have some compressed format personally to make installing and downloading mods easier, instead of dragging and dropping all the textures files to the texture folder, model files to the model folder, etc. (as you currently have to do with lugaru) you could just drop the compressed version into the 'custom' folder (which I originally requested for that very reason) and not have to worry about using a 3rd party mod installer, etc. This format would contain all the necessary data, such as dependencies, or files to overwrite, to make mod management easy and pain-free.

I love the idea of being able to disable a mod that's giving me trouble just by dragging one file out of the 'custom' folder.

I also would like to see the final content of the game saved in a file like this, simply for size. The alpha is already over 500MB without really much content at all compared to what there will be in the final game. Most game-makers nowadays do this with the bulk of their games' contents, from blizzard (*.mpq) to Valve (*.gcf/*.ncf) to Bethesta (*.esm/*.esp)

That being said, I personally think that mods should be fully accessible by all, as someone like me learns by dissecting code that others have done and learning from that. I'd be perfectly fine with the compressed mod just being a slightly modified 7zip file to allow players to open them if they really want to.

I don't think Wolfire would attempt to make an encoded format that would hide the content. That would just be against their whole push for transparency that they pride themselves on.

If you don't want parts of the game to be spoiled, don't open the game in the editor, simple as that.

[merlin1991]

it would be awesome if they implented a system like the quake pk3 or steam vpk system, but also have a requirement for the paks to include some files (screenshot + description) and have a modui that lets you move that mod files from the gamemoddir to some backup dir (I mean doing this ingame on the fly and have the fs reload)

something that might be worth a look: http://icculus.org/physfs/

[The Happy Friar]

this was discussed at length on doom3world.org years ago because, simply, doom 3 is THE most open game out there (everything is a text file except the textures & map object models, which are industry standard TGA/LWO/ASE).

The consensus was "if you don't want people to look at your stuff, don't mod."

Seriously, Wolfire is putting lots of stuff in text-format files, for modders to say "we need protection so nobody steals our ideas!" is ludicrous. If that's the way most modders feel then Wolfire should switch to Starforce DRM or something similar to protect their ideas against the thieving modders.

But in terms of a .zip file (or simular) to store all files, that's an awesome idea. Nothing's as organized as a Quake 2, 3, 4, Doom 3, Prey or ETQW mod that just needs it's own folder, a .pak, pk3 or pk4 file & a description file to run a mod. completely multi-playform compatible too.

[tomascokis]

I certainly don't really want it for modders, the only reason I would want it is for what I said before, some kind of coded protection that only wolfire can use which allows them to keep the campaigns potential easter eggs/secret stuff secret.

Wouldn't it be so cool to have a whole lot of trigger events happen for extra achievements, unlockables or maybe just secret whaleman awesomeness, and wouldn't that be totally negated by knowing that there is zero chance at all there is anything new or unknown.

I'm not normally a fan of keep company secrets, but this is the one situation where I encourage them.

[tokage]

So you want it for the hope that there is something although there isn't?

I can't really see, where the difference of a single file compared to a whole directory would be in terms of handling them easier, it is basically the same thing. The only thing would be size when it is a compressed format.

[TheBigCheese]

The point still stands that it's your own fault for ruining the game if you open up a level in the editor. If you don't want to ruin the secrets, don't open it up! The easter eggs will eventually leak onto the forums anyways, so it's not really going to be much of a help to block out editor access.

However, I do agree that there should be a single file/directory for mods. If anyone has the Cortex Command alphas, they use a similar technique. All of the mods are a single directory that you drag into a custom folder. It's very easy to manage and still lets you modify the mods themselves if you want.

For the default game content, I see no real reason why the game data should be compressed unless it's above 2 Gb or so. If you buy it via Steam, then you have the benefit of the massive servers they have. (I downloaded the 1.2Gb Just Cause 2 demo in 3 minutes).

[Johannes]

Not to mention, given how dedicated and skilful some of the people on these forums are, I have no doubt that whatever encryption Wolfire might come up with to prevent their content from being dissected, it would probably be cracked in a matter of weeks if not days.

[tomascokis]

But it might give us game players a bit of time to solve some puzzles. After a month or something, wolfire can realise the decryption key.

EDIT

I'm sure wolfire could do better then days.

[Johannes]

Again, if you don't want the game to be spoiled for you, just don't look in the files.
I don't see how this is such a difficult concept...

Implementing a complex encryption mechanism for no reason but fans who don't have enough self control is really not something the devs' precious time is worth spending on.

[DtD]

I agree, it just isn't worth doing. Someone would probably write a decompiler anyway.

[tomascokis]

I suppose it just makes it more of a mystery, even if you don't explore them yourself you know that theres nothing new, otherwise it would have been in the forums.

[Eagle0600]

And again: JUST DON'T LOOK IF YOU DON'T WANT TO.