From: Bill Kelly <billk@...>
Date: 2003-04-12T04:48:20+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Two questions


From: <wtanksleyjr@cox.net>
> >It is simply "an error" to think that many 
> >people pay for games when they can download 
> >an unprotected copy for free.  (Sad, but
> >very, very, very, very, . . . .true in my exp.)
> 
> This is hard for me to follow. It has nothing to 
> do with making source available, and it ignores the
> fact that ALL games are available as a free 
> download (warez).

It's indeed possible to break any protection scheme
based on security-through-obscurity.  I'm no crypto
expert - far from it - but I understand that anyone
with the right skills can crack my protection schemes
given enough effort and persistence.

However, in practice, it has seemed possible to produce
obscure enough schemes that during the [early] lifetime of
the product, no known successful crack has surfaced.

So my stance toward delaying the release of the game
source for a few years is predicated on the assumption
that there hopefully won't be a warez version available
"real soon" after the release of the product.


. . . To try to contribute something *slightly* on-topic
in this thread, however... <grin> ... I'm strongly 
considering embedding Ruby into my next game, and writing
as much of the game code as I can in Ruby...  Time-critical
components would still be in C++, of course, along with the
copy protection scheme...


Regards,

Bill