Knights and Merchants.net Forum

Stop avoiding Kroms (and my) question. Please just answer.

I didn't knew that was your question too o_0
I thought you is one of developers of TKE would know it .. or not?

I already answered that didn't I?
It's impossible to completely stop the source of a .NET program from leaking, ngen-ing for example should only be done on the machine on which it is installed, not as a "second compile".
The shared source is always older than the actual program though, and jbnorro may not share his source at all
As for me, I won't leak details about the encryption and networking directly, but if people want to use the .NET reflector I can not stop them.
The rest doesn't really matter (it's not going to be negative in any way if people look at the source and learn from it how to draw the terrain for example)

Well, you didn't answered that clearly :roll:
Looks like you want to keep monopoly on TKE in your hands. Nothing wrong with it as long as you making it yourself and have no profit in mind.

From my understanding you didn't decided about sources yet, but networking and encryption (encryption of what, whole TKE?) will be closed from very beginning.

Encryption of the maps/missions, TKE is not encrypted (it can't be) and everyone could decompile it - so basically there is no reason to spread the source at all.
JBSnorro could go ahead and spread his sources of course, that is up to him (but like I said, maybe he won't), but it would be just as pointless as releasing any other C# code.
So there really is no monopoly here, the source is basically open by default.

I most definetly won't release my source-code and will try everything before I release it, to prevent anyone from viewing/altering/decompiling my code.
It should be possible, even while it is written in a .NET-language.

It's not possible, live with it
There are obfuscators, but they are only that (they make the decompiled code harder to read)
But even in theory it's impossible to completely lock an executable, it wouldn't be possible to still run it - there would have to be either code in the executable itself that decodes it prior to running (but that leaves this code in the executable, meaning people have access to it) (and that would be very hard in .NET anyway) or the OS has to decrypt it - but Windows doesn't do this.
Writing part of your code in C++ would work better, it's much harder to decompile (though possible, see Boomerang) and so, of course, would encrypting the DLL and explicitly load it at runtime after in-memory decryption (though this obviously won't be safe either, the decryption code has to be somewhere, and the decrypted dll will reside in memory during runtime, it may take longer to be cracked though)

What you say is you will share code in a form of compiled EXE and if anyone needs he can access asm codes on his own. GREAT LOL

Krom, no offense, but are you familiar with .NET at all?
It can be DECOMPILED with certain programs such as Lutz Roeder's Reflector
Of course it can also be disassembled, which the Reflector also can (just change the language to MSIL)

Harold, I'm not familiar with .NET, but I can see what you say.

TKE will be open-source until you want to close it, no date announced. That answers my question. I don't need all these talk about decompiling. One can decompile anything with certain tools, that doesn't matter.

Well .NET is decompiled a whole lot easier, just a couple of clicks (not the "endless tweaking until it looks right" that you have to go through with Boomerang..)

So the source can not be closed as such, "not available to total noobs" is more like it - and if I may say so, there is no reason to give them the source, they couldn't do much with it anyway

The source of anything made last week and later will be "made unavailable to noobs", people who are interested in it can take the Reflector and look through all the source and recompile it after editing - the compiled program will be useless for multiplayer anyway. (seeing as that's the only mode there will be for a while, they would just have broken the game)

Progress update:
TKE now has sound, not all sound - for now just the music. This adds about 180MB to the data :roll:

Hm, I wonder why TPR SFX folder takes only ~60mb (speech included)
Why don't you use TPR music "as is" ?

EDIT: I always thought mp3 playback is performed via external DLLs, does XNA supports them?

I asked the same question via MSN, and he said XNA(used for creating TKE) does not support MP3-files, only WAV, unless you're willing to pay.... And we're not, so we'll have to use WAV-files instead, which takes up to 161 MB... It's sad, I know, but it will have to do...

Can't you use OGG? I heard it's free to use. I mean 160 MB is just way too much for some music tracks! :shock: Or is this MP3 support for XNA something different than the license cost you normally need to pay if you want your program to play MP3 files?