Thoughts about encryption..

[Ankhranum]

Hey guys!

 

I'm quite new on this forum, but I'm learning HTML5 since December. I'm not new in game-development as I learned .net and the fundementals of 3D, 3D Maths, 2D and 2D maths. I used unity and a basic language for DirectX, but I still prefer HTML5. I'm planning to focus on Directx and XNA in the future so I can finish my software idea for a game maker for HTML5. But first things first.

 

I've kept myself busy from the first of June till now with creating an engine for HTML5. Don't get me wrong with this, I'm not a designer at all but a loyal programmer. Having acces to everything and keeping things accesible is what is important thing to me. And no limits, which is even the most important for me. So far, no engine gave me that feeling and I felt it was time I had to create my own one.

 

The results are great and everything goes well, but one mind keeps bugging me. My engine will be mostlikely not very famous, so no-one knows it. I don't really know what do with it once it's completely finished. I could put it online so other developpers can use it if they like it, is quite the best option, but I'm a bit worried about the safety of putting it online. I'm a bit afraid someone will steal it or sell it if they get the chance to, encryption is not possible, or maybe it is, but it won't have effect becuase you can decrypt it no problem. What do you think about publishing? Am I worrying to much? Any ideas about Copyright or such a thing?

 

I really like to hear your minds about this!

 

Greets

Ankh

[rich]

I don't want to sound dismissive, but unless your engine is freaking incredible it doesn't really have any commercial worth on its own, as there are simply so many excellent free ones out there. So I personally wouldn't worry about encrypting it or anything. More valuable would be any games you create with it imho.

[Ankhranum]

Oh, it never will be the best engine I guess, but it completes my idea about what an engine should be. But you should know that I used to have an option in the past that encrypts all my media, and try to crack open an executable, it simply isn't possible. So I never faced anything like this before.

 

But I guess you're right, it depends on whether it's incredbly awesome or not. But who knows? Maybe people think it's incredibly good x'D I'll make sure to upload a beta in the future to let you guys take a look at it, I'm curious about your opinions.

[rich]

Personally I think encrypting a game engine would be the kiss of death for it re: any potential uptake from the wider development community, who are used to open source. The only exception I can think of is Game Maker or Construct 2, but that's only because they've a massive IDE to use instead (which is where the value in the product is).

 

There are a few ways to make your JS hard for people to play with, probably the best for something like this would be JScrambler.

[TheHermit]

On this subject, what do you think about obfuscating the games themselves? I know most HTML5 games make profit via being sold to portal sites or via ad sharing. Is there a tendency for them to appear for free on shady portal sites, for example, and in practice how bad is the actual impact of that (I'd guess this is part of why there's focus on in-game advertising revenue these days).

 

Or for a larger project, if you're actually trying to sell the game individually to customers how does that change the situation?

 

If you obfuscate parts of the code, you could put in things that e.g. make the game only run when hosted on a permitted server, or that have the game check with a server to verify that it has permission to run where its being hosted. But if the code is completely open then that kind of thing can be easily removed. I've been trying to decide if I should even bother with something like that, or if stuff does get out if I should just consider it free promotion and move on.

[rich]

Personally I think it's more hassle than it's worth. I will always minimise my games, but that's to save bandwidth for the end user, not to make it harder to "steal" (as really it makes next to no difference - if someone wants it, they can take it, it's the downside of most things browser based).

[Serbanghita]

I was a bit shocked to see that JScrambler runs by default in 'the cloud', so you have to upload the source to their servers and then perform the code scrambling.

If you want to run a desktop version you need to contact them (https://jscrambler.com/en/box).

 

Anyway @Ankhranum you worry too much, you have two choices. Keep the engine private and try to sell it later or publish it on GitHub.com with an open license like MIT License and engage users to contribute. I think the actual value is in the games that come out of it.

[remvst]

If you're on Linux (or maybe Mac OS), you can easily create your own Makefiles to obfuscate your code. That won't completely protect it, but I think that's enough.

[Evan Burchard]

There are a couple of other models for game engines.  Impact.js is not free or open source, but still seems to have a good crowd around it.  It also helped to get traction that the (first?) O'Reilly book on HTML5 games used impact.  The Quintus Engine is free, open source, and was also made while developing a book.  So those both had some serious marketing efforts but feel pretty indie compared to some of the bigger engines. 

 

Another approach is something like True Valhalla (of these here boards) does with the mobility engine, where the engine solves a targeted problem.  He licenses his engine and has transparent numbers if you want to know more about that approach.