Is possible to hack the readfile.dll?

Yeah, but when running some mods, it’s so damn near impossible to make any decent money even WITH these tools.

=Alex= wrote:
Yeah, but when running some mods, it’s so damn near impossible to make any decent money even WITH these tools.

I’m sorry but that sounds like whining. If it’s so damn near impossible, just don’t play the mods.

a good mod developer does build his mod based on experiences of himself or other players. if he wants the money to be gotten easily, he can do so, without making the best route short and dangerless. if he wants to make a challenging mod, he can do so, too but he has to keep in mind, that every task ingame is passable without cheats or datastorm tools. the datastorming should not be the usual case. a mod developer should get back the possibility to make an interesting mod without thinking about datastormers. if you play a mod, that is difficult with datastorming, than it is this way, because the modders have to make their mods more and more difficult for the datastorming not to be too profitable. traditional freelancer, where everyone had to explore his trade route by himself is dying out this way. i am definately for a new encryption matrix.

I personally can’t stand datastorm, FL Companion and all those other tools that let you see where everything is. It’s no different from cheating imo and are used by people too lazy to play a mod and find out things for themselves.

Those tools are oddly very useful for developing a mod but should be banned for use by players, or at least alter certain files in the final release so players can’t use them.

I’m all for encrypting files as already mentioned, so players can enjoy what the mod developer has put into a mod, and not use shortcuts to get best items as soon as possible. That’s just pure laziness

you got it, Gibbon
is it true, actually, that most of the players can not even handle with files encrypted by bini?

Sorry, but I dont think you are on the right track here. There will always be ways to decrypt the game files simply because the game needs them unencrypted eventually.
Also, exploration isnt everyones favourite gameplay. Sure, in Multiplayer this can really cause issues, when your mod is not balanced in the right way. But thats mainly a flaw in the mod design then.

Also Im kinda sceptical about any moves to encrypt mods. It kinda reminds me of the music/games industry with their failing copy-protection methods.

I think modding/coding resources are much better spent in developing new features or, to stay in the same corner, develop new anticheat features that dont involve encrypting files (preferably serverside, since this cannot be tricked).

Still w0d, sometimes you want to reward people for exploring. I mean, you get rewarded for fighting, you get rewarded for trading, but if people can cheat to find any hidden goodies, how do you get rewarded for exploring? It’s unfair and it shuts off large swathes of what makes FL fun.

How would you create anticheat for not finding wrecks, ship selling locations or such things? File encryption is an obvious way of doing it and while no it won’t block all, it’ll block the VAST majority.

I am on w0dkas side here, although i pretty well understand the modders and their main aim to prevent that their stuff is ripped off by scanners and helper tools.

But finally the game needs the files decrypted so all ways you would need to do to encrypt them you need ways to decrypt them too. If you realize it by an extra dll or whatever you need the file client side. And with that you offer possibilities for all those tool writers to use those libraries as well. Eventually to muche effort for something that would last a few month eventually a year. Imo.

I personally would trust more in the players whos intention is to play the game and not doing hours of work to scan the files. You will always have those kind of players but they are in the minority.

i’m on FF’s side. i had clients who cried to be terrible cheaters and who would bring me on the edges of my skills ingame and most of them did not even know how to install a flmod file to their mods direction. of course, for the game to be playable you will need some dll that decrypts it but only a few of the very cheaters know, that there are possibilities to use the dll to decrypt files. another few of that few would know how even to manage that. as you say, the majority anyways wants simply to play, there should not be too much problems or changes on the server-client personal relation or policy. question is, if those few cheaters you would like to stop datastorming are reason enough to create a changed or even redone encryption matrix.

Honestly, I can’t tell you how many players I’ve asked for a trade route, or some RP info (duh), and all I got was “you do have Companion/Datastorm, don’t you?”. Seriously, I’m sick of it. I remember when SWAT OP blocked those two (one of the best features of CF imo lol), I’d like to see the same blocking feature in other mods.

I’ve already got ways to block them and you can be sure I’ll use them as much as I can.

FriendlyFire wrote:
I’ve already got ways to block them and you can be sure I’ll use them as much as I can.

Thats the point. Why go any further down the road?

maybe those ways FriendlyFire talks about should be shared with other modders or at least a lead to the right direction

NeXoSE i mean that if you have a open source than the deeper sence of making your mod more secure is futile. If you have it open source than the tool writer could use it simply to adapt their tools. Any further encryption would not result in the way you want to have it. Even if you decide to make in not open source then you need ways to additionally decrypt those files that were encrypted before to prevent tools to rip off the stuff. And that would also mean a few clever tool writers could use it to decrypt the files and finally the result would be the same.

So do it privately among the modders in your admin and owner forum or use the ways they are already existing - but i would find the time wasted to find new ways that will maybe last a year until they are no longer secret.

NeXoSE wrote:

Huor wrote:
NeXoSE i mean that if you have a open source than the deeper sence of making your mod more secure is futile. If you have it open source than the tool writer could use it simply to adapt their tools. Any further encryption would not result in the way you want to have it. Even if you decide to make in not open source then you need ways to additionally decrypt those files that were encrypted before to prevent tools to rip off the stuff. And that would also mean a few clever tool writers could use it to decrypt the files and finally the result would be the same.

Firstly, Increase The Difficulty Of Read File Directly is good way to prevent player cheat, not very reliable but simplely and useful. I don’t believe Tool Writers will write tools for every mod’s file library.

I post this topic because my file (bini encoded with header bits hack) still can be decode automaticly by some tools. So i need a new way to solve this problem.

If player have those scan tools, make a decide to add more fun stuff is hard. Then you release a new mod, player will scan it, and they will know all things like where is the new wreckage? what in the new base? how to friendly with NPC etc worse?

So that is not just because lazy, if player can read all content of mod, Mod will get bored. And Bored Is Suffering for a small mod, why player go to your server and play with few guys? Goto large server like Discovery and Hamburg City (or maybe other RP server, but i don’t like RP) is much better, At the least there not lack of peoples who can PvP or chat with you.

What about if those players will no longer play your mod once they find out they can no longer scan your mod, thus have to explore everything but they dont want to do that simply because they are casual players and dont have that much time…?
Just saying, players who enjoy exploration do not use the mentioned tools. Working against your playerbase is always kinda risky.