Licensed content in a Spring game

Licensed content in a Spring game

Discuss game development here, from a distinct game project to an accessible third-party mutator, down to the interaction and design of individual units if you like.

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
Master-Athmos
Posts: 916
Joined: 27 Jun 2009, 01:32

Licensed content in a Spring game

Post by Master-Athmos »

What is the current state of affairs when licensed content is to be included in a game? When e.g. using sounds from a sound library I'm not sure if just putting it into the game file, which is just a zipped folder structure, would suffice the data security policies as you'd basically give away the raw files without any kind of protection. A download with Springlobby, where the game file is split into countless files in the pool directory, would be fine I guess but one wouldn't be able to upload the game to Springfiles or another file hoster...

I had a look at the VFS functionality and while it would be possible to read a seperate zipped file which contains all the licensed files, there seems to be no way to incorporate a password locked file. Is there any established approach for this problem?
User avatar
Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
Posts: 14673
Joined: 17 Nov 2005, 02:43

Re: Licensed content in a Spring game

Post by Forboding Angel »

and while we're at it, allow for optional dependencies.
gajop
Moderator
Posts: 3051
Joined: 05 Aug 2009, 20:42

Re: Licensed content in a Spring game

Post by gajop »

DRM is difficult with open source. Effectively impossible with just Spring. You'd have to rely on another tool and even then I'm not sure how you'd use such content...
Play sound with a separate, non-linked program?
Imo abandon such ideas or use a different engine
Master-Athmos
Posts: 916
Joined: 27 Jun 2009, 01:32

Re: Licensed content in a Spring game

Post by Master-Athmos »

Well I don't think this is about a big DRM issue or playing sound with another program. What would be sufficient from my point of view is being able to pass a password as an argument to zlib when opening an archive. So just as an archive like springcontent.sdz is read one could put the licensed files into an archive which is zipped with a password meaning there isn't even a new technicality behind it apart from passing the password string to the zlib opening command. Or is there no password functionality in zlib? I did a quick search but couldn't find anything indicating this...

I mean it's just about not giving immediate access to files - if someone wants to it is perfectly possible to enforce access anyway. That's the same for any engine with the big ones like Unreal or Unity being no exception. In the end pretty much any game title nowadays gets data mined in no time.

Would such an approach be possible?
gajop
Moderator
Posts: 3051
Joined: 05 Aug 2009, 20:42

Re: Licensed content in a Spring game

Post by gajop »

And where will you store such a password?
Master-Athmos
Posts: 916
Joined: 27 Jun 2009, 01:32

Re: Licensed content in a Spring game

Post by Master-Athmos »

You create it via Lua. From the top of my head I'd use the Pack/Unpack functions of the VFS to read a binary file and use that as the password. So it's nowhere in plaintext. And yes - that's no high-end cybersecurity but that's not the point. If someone would want to crack your archive (which already is a rather uncommon scenario) he would have to open your game archive, find the Lua script that does just that, alter it to print the string and then use that to open the secured archive...

I doubt anyone will go through that hassle plus my guess is there exist tools to open any Unreal / Unity archive making that an easier task than the Spring approach. It qualifies as sufficient file protection in the given case from my point of view...
Post Reply

Return to “Game Development”