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DanPhillips
Registered: Jan 2003
Posts: 42 |
Cartridge protection
Armalyte Ultra cartridge:
Now, normally there's one "smart" guy making an attempt at adding anti piracy measures to a product, and "loads" of people then trying to break it.
I know we will go down the "custom" cart that probably won't be supported by vice...until we release a version that does.
Adding something like DMA or hardware decompression, would have to actually enhance the game in some way :)
But what else could be done?
Thought it might be an interesting challenge for who could come up with the best scheme, maybe we could do custom versions with different schemes and see who's gets cracked first ? :)
Discussion or DM...up to you
Cheers
Dan |
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Spinball
Registered: Sep 2002
Posts: 89 |
You could add a display to the card, that shows random generated codes. These codes have to be entered at some places in the game. The codes are generated by the cardridge hardware and used to encrypt the game-data on the fly. The game-data (or parts of it) can only be decrypted on the c64-side with the correct code in memory. |
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cadaver
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1163 |
In seriousness, anything that makes the user hate you for inconvenience is probably not a good idea.
Also, if the cart was to include some serious HW enhancement like a blitter, it always creates the nagging question of whether the game could have been made the same on a bare C64 :) |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11510 |
Quote:I know we will go down the "custom" cart that probably won't be supported by vice...until we release a version that does.
Unless we are quicker of course :)
I wouldn't waste a lot of time on thinking this through. Pointless exercise :) |
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Mason
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 467 |
Quote: Armalyte Ultra cartridge:
Now, normally there's one "smart" guy making an attempt at adding anti piracy measures to a product, and "loads" of people then trying to break it.
I know we will go down the "custom" cart that probably won't be supported by vice...until we release a version that does.
Adding something like DMA or hardware decompression, would have to actually enhance the game in some way :)
But what else could be done?
Thought it might be an interesting challenge for who could come up with the best scheme, maybe we could do custom versions with different schemes and see who's gets cracked first ? :)
Discussion or DM...up to you
Cheers
Dan
To be honest.. waste of time today. You make a protection and it will be cracked anyhow
Many people today support the developers and buy the games if they like it |
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DanPhillips
Registered: Jan 2003
Posts: 42 |
To be clear...this is to make it a challenge and fun, not to actually stop the scene doing what it likes to do.
Sounds like...let it be cracked to run under Easyflash/GModN, detect it in a way that isn't obvious and apply a bunch of gameplay tweaks?
Don't want to make it too broken, cos if someone wants to buy it after trying it that would be great.
Who will find all tweaks 1st? Or disable the detection code? How many different versions of the detection code can there be?
Cheers
Dan |
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Fungus
Registered: Sep 2002
Posts: 746 |
Well the best protection against disk cracking is to make the game use the cartridge banking in a way that uses enough memory to make not possible without removing something from the game.
The easiest way to protect the code is to checksum the contents and use breadcrumbs spread through the game to use it and to use indirect addressing to check things so it's not easily hunted.
The biggest deterrent, is wasting the crackers time. VMs are they way to go there with run time polymorphism.
All of that can be done without hassling legit customers. It's time consuming to implement and test however. |
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soci
Registered: Sep 2003
Posts: 486 |
Quoting Krill.oO( Run the entire game from Blackbox-FPGA-C-64 in the Cartridge, with C-64 in Ultimax mode. )
That's what I thought first. Just make sure the machine is only used for display and periphery and that the whole game executes on a SOC or microcontroller natively (no 6502 code). Even if there's no protection it's unlikely that it'll end up as a C64 release. |
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Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 3083 |
Quoting DanPhillipsthis is to make it a challenge and fun, not to actually stop the scene doing what it likes to do. You should go for novel approaches either way to make it as hard as possible (that's where the fun is), not redo old tricks.
(Plus gameplay tweaks depending on some detection are dangerous, as yes, they can paint a wrong picture of the actually intended gameplay, and false detection of a "pirate copy" can never be ruled out.)
Otherwise it just looks like a thinly veiled marketing stunt. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11510 |
Quote:Otherwise it just looks like a thinly veiled marketing stunt.
I'd like to see a cartridge release that would actually make use of the cartridge in ways that benefit the game, rather than trying to make it hard to copy (that would be a side effect) for that matter.
If "no copies" is really what you are after, do what the "Mssiah" people did. It was cracked/dumped many many moons ago, and noone bothered to make a release, or add it in VICE, yet. |
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tlr
Registered: Sep 2003
Posts: 1807 |
Quoting FungusThe easiest way to protect the code is to checksum the contents and use breadcrumbs spread through the game to use it and to use indirect addressing to check things so it's not easily hunted. Yes, and the checks should be completely independent implementations spread through out various stages of the game. Maybe there are uncommon crumb hideouts to explore?
If you are worried about breaking the game, just make a pretty obvious kill screen appear late in the game if badly cracked.
Quoting FungusThe biggest deterrent, is wasting the crackers time. VMs are they way to go there with run time polymorphism.
Yes, this can be an interesting exercise to reverse engineer. Takes quite some time to implement though. |
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