Subject: Re: [stella] Perfect BIN copy protection From: "Eckhard Stolberg" <Eckhard_Stolberg@xxxxxx> Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 20:44:26 +0100 |
> Well, the goal Thomas and I had, was meant to provide > BINs that run flawlessly on an emulator, but not on any > real hardware. > > We know how to disable the Cuttle Cart, the > Supercharger, Distella and the Debugger of PCAE. That still leaves out the people who burn the game on an EPROM and play it in a socketed homebrew cart without paying you for it. Unless you are going to create your own bankswitching scheme for your game, there is no way to stop that. And if you make your game use a new bankswitching scheme, you'll have to add support for that to the emulators. And if you add support for a bankswitching scheme to an open source emulator, anyone will be able to recreate it in hardware. Also since neither Thomas nor you own an actual Cuttle Cart or Supercharger I doubt that you are locking out the hardware. You probably only lock out the BIOS, which in the case of the Cuttle Cart comes on an socketed EPROM chip, which could be replaced with an updated version if nessesary. So there is no perfect protection here either. > It'd be a 2600 in _every_ sense, but noone halfway > insane would go through the troubles to hack it to run > on the Cuttle Cart :-) I'm starting to get a little offended by the fact that you constantly talk about the Cuttle Cart as if it were a device that was solely created to pirate games. Other people's Cuttle Carts and Superchargers have been used for playtesting games from both, you and Thomas. In both cases this has helped you to find and remove bugs that otherwise would have been much more difficult to track down. Also the Cuttle Cart allows you to keep all your legally owned games on a CD, which is very convenient for playing them without the need to shuffle around dozents of cartridges. This is a feature that your protected games would not allow their owners. And the Cuttle Cart is a homebrew project itself in a certain way. The people who bought one for $100 + s&h + taxes have already proven that they are willing to support the homebrew scene with their money. Treating them as if they were all mean software pirates who just want to steal you your game sure isn't going to help your buisines, as they probably are a large percentage of the potential customers for your game. I think that you want to allow the distribution of your ROM in an emulator-executable format, because you think that people would be more willing to buy it, if they had a chance to try it out. But emulators will never be perfect. We constantly get complaints about the colour palette for example. And for an action game where the controls are important, playing the game with a PC keyboard won't really give the a true impression of how the game is. And our recent discussion with Simon has showed us again that some VCSs react quite differently to certain TIA tricks. So you can't be sure that a game would play nicely on your particular system without the ability to try it out on that console. And if I can't really try out a game, I'm less inclined to order it in cartridge form. Therefore I think distributing the ROMs without the lockout code would actually help your sales more than it would hurt them. Also, just like you feel challenged to prove that a copy protection is possible on the VCS, there are people who feel challenged to prove the opposite. And if those people create versions of your protected games that work better than the original (i.e. the game is playable on the Cuttle Cart) that wouldn't make your games look too good either. ;-) Of course you are under no obligation to release anything. You have every right to protect your games as you think it is nessessary. But if you won't allow us to play your games without paying for them, then I don't see why we should use our freetime, knowledge and tools to help you for free. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archives (includes files) at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/ Unsub & more at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/
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