mechlore

Basically Im thinking of converting to GM: Studio for its cross platform support + performance improvements


however, my game relies heavily on the ability to dynamically swap in and out sprites at different times using sprite_replace_sprite


I did some research, and it appears that this is removed from GM studio, and I dont actually see any alternative to this.


Does this mean that GM studio games will have hard limits to how big they can be? Or are the internal sprites now handled differently? If so... in what way? I cant seem to find details.



Thanks in advance to anyone who can answer these questions for me.

Im not sure if this is the right place to post this, but...

ive been searching the forum/googling for a good easy way to encrypt external text files/.gmspr files. (and possibly the entire executable and the external files it needs to access).

I need this primarily because the majority of text in MechLore is stored and read from external text files. I did this so that I could use the simple read_line gamemaker function to display a "page" of text, without needing a complicated message system. (Its also nice to be able to edit in game text while the game is running).

My problem is this.

I'm going to release a demo for MechLore very soon, but I dont like the idea of absolutely ANYONE being able to open up the text files and read/change the dialog to anything that they wish.

There are a few encryption/archive creating dlls and extensions on the GMC, but they all seem to revolve around the idea of extracting the files during runtime, at which point they're still on the players harddrive in easily editable form. Even if you have code to destroy the folders/files on game end, there is still a chance of the files remaining, as you can't always control when the user will end the game, if it crashes, etc.

It all seems rather messy to me.

The best and easiest solution that I have found, for texts at least, is a script that I found here http://gmc.yoyogames...howtopic=319847
which basically encrypts the text in the text files with a crypto algorithm. This would make it so anyone could change the files, but a read would have no idea what those text files said without first decrypting them.


Mostly this is acceptable, but difficult to implement, as I would have to manually encrpyt each text file and then add decryption code to each place that that textfile is read.


Are there any easier ways?


Is it possible to simply put all the external files in one "archive" of some type, and just read directly from it?


Even better, is there some kind of "shell" that you could encapsulate the entire executable and external files in that would basically preform like normal internally, but still prevent users from accessing or changing anything inside?


Im not looking for super hard encryption, just enough to stop the average user from being able to simply browse in, decompile the executable, edit texts, directly reuse sprites, etc.


Also... (this post is getting long)... on the subject of the decompiler and anti-decompiler...

how efficacious is this? Is it worth using? Should I try and find another way to protect my source code if im worried about people borrowing from it? (which I am... I realise people are often overly paranoid about this sort of thing, but ive been working on MechLore for what seems like forever. To be finally about to release a demo is exciting, but also seems to bear a certain degree of risk. )


Hopefully someone can help me with this... as its a problem farther beyond the scope of my ability than I think I can really figure out on my own.

Does anyone have any experience in doing so and/or success stories? I cant seem to find any info about it in google/forum search.

I'd be interested to hear what that process is if anyone is willing to share. Specifically things like implementing the steamworks API and etc. Do you need to know more than GML to do so - that kind of thing.


Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this.