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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Anyone make a commercial game by using DB?

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quickg
21
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Joined: 1st Oct 2002
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Posted: 1st Oct 2002 14:14
Did anyone make a commercial game by using DB? Is the game really acceptable in the market?
Zero
21
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Joined: 28th Aug 2002
Location: Finland
Posted: 1st Oct 2002 14:53
Did? In this time? No, but I will.

Getting professional product to stores is a bit hard way and I think I won't ever choose it unless I had a company making games all day long. The better solution for us and all other private db users is to make our games as a shareware and spread it by the internet fully working demo which has all features of fullversion, but some of them are locked up. The features can be unlocked by a serial number which the customer will receive when purchasing.

My primary project is targeting to be shareware, but I still have lot of work to do DBPro currently has so many bugs that I've been developing the project in Visual BASIC and DB#1. When DBPro is stable enough.. I'll translate the source for it.

The evil plan is now even closer!
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Specs:- P3 550 Nvidia TNT2M64, 192Mb RAM
CD On CD
21
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Joined: 23rd Sep 2002
Location: United States
Posted: 1st Oct 2002 18:13
hi there

speaking of commercial games & shareware versions, does anyone have a quick "code routine" to "lock" the shareware version UNTIL a serial number is entered? i'm no where near that level yet but would be nice to know, eh?

just wondering.

United We (Still) Stand
Richard Davey
Retired Moderator
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Posted: 1st Oct 2002 18:15
Try looking in the Resources section of this site under the "Protection" software (it's within Programming I think).

Lots of software protection and packer programs there.

Cheers,

Rich

"Gentlemen, we are about to short-circuit the Universe!"
DB Team / Atari ST / DarkForge / Retro Gaming
Rob K
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Location: Surrey, United Kingdom
Posted: 1st Oct 2002 19:15
DO NOT USE A SERIAL NUMBER SYSTEM ON ITS OWN!

The best solution is for the trial version to distribute a version that doesn't even have the levels inside it or code etc. that are only in the "Full Registered" version, so it cannot be unlocked. Then give a website address to your site.

When the user registers, send them a secret URL for a page to download the full version, which they then enter a serial number into to unlock.

I have found from past experience that if someone has to pay for software they will not bother to crack it then redistribute it. Most people will not go to the effort of cracking a program if they already have the full version (they wouldn't gain much by doing it)

Exe packers are useless as for every major one out there, there is an equivilent decryptor.

As part of my ongoing project of working on a CDR protector, research into shareware programs showed that the ones least often defeated were those that lacked some essential features in the demo and the full version was a seperate download.

what is a signature?
Zero
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Posted: 2nd Oct 2002 16:38
Storing the files that the full version needs onto webpage isn't so good idea! We all know that the URL will leak out sometime. Also.. making the registration as simple as possible (by using this lock system).. you get yourself more customers. What's wrong with the serials anyway. I know someone could spread one of them by the internet, BUT! If you are crooky enough, you could make a system where the serial will not work on everybodys computer..

Every harddisk has it's own serial, right (unless it's cloned)? What if you made a little program that grabs out the serial of C: and combines it with the name of the customer.. encrypts it and sends it back to you. You will find something corresponding serial and send it back. This works as a serial number created for the customer. The game will check if the serial was valid with the serial of C:

Uh.. it was hard to explain, wasn't it. Propably no one got the point But i'm sure thet WHEN you have a product, a professional one and want to sell it as a shareware, this is the LAST thing to do in the development process. And I'm sure everyone can and will make 'the best system' for the game.

The evil plan is now even closer!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Specs:- P3 550 Nvidia TNT2M64, 192Mb RAM
Richard Davey
Retired Moderator
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Posted: 2nd Oct 2002 23:36
I'm a firm believer of the fact that there isn't a single thing out there that can't be cracked. If it runs on a computer, at the end of the day, there is someone capable of cracking it just due to the very nature of the medium.

Cheers,

Rich

"Gentlemen, we are about to short-circuit the Universe!"
DB Team / Atari ST / DarkForge / Retro Gaming
Zero
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Location: Finland
Posted: 3rd Oct 2002 15:15
But you can make the hacking work difficult. We all know if the game appears to be popular, then it will be hacked, but we won't make the hackers work easy

The evil plan is now even closer!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Specs:- P3 550 Nvidia TNT2M64, 192Mb RAM
rapscaLLion
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Location: Canada
Posted: 3rd Oct 2002 16:03
To answer the original question, there have been some great commercial games:
-StarWraith I,II and III
-Kain's games (can't remember the titles right now)
-A warrior's mind
to name just a few.

Alex Wanuch
aka rapscaLLion
Get the DB Weekly Newsletter at www.dbwn.cjb.net
MrTAToad
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Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 3rd Oct 2002 18:53
You shouldn't use the serial number from a hard drive - At my place of work, we managed to get a hard disk that had the exactly the same serial number as the hard drive that we were going to replace.

My boss complained to the supplier because he thought that all serial numbers had to be unique (and as such it would have messed around with our protection).

Personally, I think how Microsoft have protected XP is the best way - especially tieing software down to the processor ID.

Yes, I really am THAT good...
dpf44
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Posted: 12th Nov 2002 03:53
Bit late in my reply, (just joined) but

First M$ have not protected XP properly - the fact that large corporations would not stand for their annoying activation thing have ensured this. (Corporate edition of XP allows for use of serials from bluelist keygen)

Secondly, regardless as to how well something is protected, if its popular enough, groups like TMG etc will crack it very quickly. IT doesn't matter if its easy, I can't imagine someone would go out of their way to crack something if they didn't enjoy doing so....

Shadow Robert
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Location: Hertfordshire, England
Posted: 12th Nov 2002 04:48
The protection within XP to be technical would have been outstanding ... the problem with it was - actually was that the XP Activation software was leaked, if you ever get a look at the code you'll understand that even WITH the complete description it still took some seriously dedicated programmer to develop something to create serial codes - i mean took them what 4months before the software was out to do it... i remember Win9x/98/Me all had thiers cracked within a week without the external help (not forgetting that they left in the debug serial code which i just thought was funny)

Technically no there is no such thing as completely secure, however you can give so much security that it makes it almost impossible to do

balance though is calculation speed and complexity of such means and end userability

...
on another note there are a good number of DB titles that have gone commercial/retail - but I know of none at the level of actually taken on by a reputable Publisher

Anata aru kowagaru no watashi!

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