Following the first post of the series (no need to click it’s not that interesting) I did some initial testing with some SWF encapsulation and obfuscation software. Let me remind you that the exact same testing many months ago wrecked our game, by that time Tech Wars.
What I want to achieve
For any of the software tested to pass this initial test the game I chose had to run without breaking anything. As a reminder I checked the previous testing and the problems were:
1. Sound not playing
2. Actions not being called (like opening a menu or something)
3. Problems with text
Assuming no new issues would arise I would keep an eye on these three.
Software and prerequisites
I downloaded the following demos (in alphabetic order in case you are wondering):
1. Amayeta SWF Encrypt 6.0
2. DComSoft SWF Protector 2
3. Kindisoft SecureSWF 3.4
One thing I recall was trying to get help to make Tech Wars work and found myself tunning preferences and stuff like that. So I decided that I wanted nothing of that! All my effort had to be minimum. I would install the demo software on my harddrive and throw an SWF at it, check for problems, try some minor things. I wanted no complications and no tunning.
Maybe I’m being to picky, but my know-how doesn’t include encryption, not to this extent. As a game developer there is so much stuff I have to learn every week, that software like this, while extremely important is just a tool. I just want it to work with minimal fuss.
Last but not least, the chosen game was Atomik Kaos 2. I did some small testing with a build of Hajime, but I guess that’s a perfect game for later testing, right now I needed something that I knew in and out, so AK2 it was.
Amayeta SWF Encrypt 6.0
Amayeta’s SWF Encrypt Interface looks easy and fine. Choosing and protecting the file was an easy job, but my problems with dynamic textfields emerged almost instantly and the game had a slight hicup when a level was finished. Apart from that all was fine. The hicup wasn’t serious, but I had to take a look at the textfield issue.
On the left SWF Encrypt, on the right the original SWF
Took a deep breath, looked at the options before me (not many, minimalist, just the way I like it) and I had a vague idea about encrypting names being an issue. So I decided not to encrypt names… it worked perfectly. A little tiny thing, but nothing serious.
DComSoft SWF Protector 2
Next on the list DComSoft’s SWF Protector 2 and I must say I’m really impressed. The interface is just perfect and it was begging for a drag and drop of the SWF, which I did and it worked wonders. I had to do nothing, absolutely nothing, just drag the file and click a button.
It was perfect! Just like I imagined it.
Kindisoft Secure SWF 3.4
Secure SWF doesn’t need installation, that’s a big plus in my book. The interface feels old though but it does the job. I tried to drag and drop the SWF and that also did the trick, cool! Time to protect the file and run it. A couple of severe problems happened. For starters as soon as the swf opened the player threw an error. The game went fine after that until I checked the achievements screen where dynamic textfields were messed up.
Flash debugger error
Problem with textfields, again left is protected SWF, right is original SWF
I returned to secureSWF to try a different approach. One fine thing is the protection presets it offers. Being my middle name “minimal” I enjoy not having to go through all the options trying to find out what it is and what it is not. So I chose the preset “Safe – less protection but will always generate working files” but the results were exactly the same, both for the starter error and the textfield issue.
I started to look at all the options, aiming for a custom solution, but I was overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I had to try on to eventually make it work. I gave up at this point.
Conclusions
I’ll give decompilers a shot next and see what happens, what can I see, extract and so on, but for now Amayeta’s SWF Encrypt and DComSoft SWF Protector 2 did the job although I’m very impressed with SWF Protector 2 because it just did its job and I did not have to worry about anything. If I recall correctly that was what I was not able to do with Tech Wars testing. If I had to make an early pick, I’d go SWF Protector 2.
There will be a lot of news in the upcoming days, stay tunned.
FIGHT! no wait, it’s “GO!” is it? “Kick each other’s @ss!”, I don’t really know how its translated, but I know what it means. It’s an order to do your best and take out your opponent. And it’s the name we chose for our game, and we are happy with it.
So without further due, here is the logo for it and some combat screenshots.
Keep in mind though, the backgrounds need some work still! No time for everything!
So, here they are, in full glory, the first peak into the combats in Hajime.
Take care!
Marco
Hi everyone, just a quick note to let you know of some stuff going on regarding Bold Pixel Engine.
Collaboration with Arne G. Strout
It really felt great to hear about a developer wanting to build on BPE to make it go further. That’s what I felt when I read Arne G. Strout blog post about BPE. Under the spirit of open-source, Arne offered a great deal of thought and ideas regarding our little framework.
In the meantime, v2 was already under way so we exchanged some ideas and I’m pleased to announce that Arne will be collaborating in v2 development.
Box2D integration…
Wrapping Box2D in a minimalist Bold Pixel Engine kind of package is no easy treat, but it’s done. It doesn’t offer the full potential of Box2D yet and it’s not integrated with blit, but it will and it’s working great.
Toolkit changes
Manager has been removed from the toolkit package and it is now the manager of all the engine. Again this is related to a minimalist approach. Box2D wrapping needed information about framerate and we could get it from the main movieclip that is passed to the manager. This also offers other possibilities like controlling mouse focus, quality, yada yada yada.
I’m cooking a Button manager. I know most developers don’t really like SimpleButtons, but I actually do! What I was lacking was a central point to control those… it’s being taken care of. 
Scene and Music will now have transitions. This is possible mostly due to Greensock tweening library, which Vortix Games now officially supports by becoming a member of the Club Greensock.
And that’s it!
There won’t be many news in the next weeks, since we have a lot of work (remember that we kinda disappear when we are just starting up a contract project) and the rest of the bunch, like the Japan game, Bold Pixel Engine and so on.
Hi
Almost two years ago, I went through the trouble of using some trials of encryption/obfuscation software in order to protect our swf files. I don’t know how that worked out for you, but to me it didn’t work at all.
I tried and retried and tried again. I messed around with several settings and it never, NEVER worked perfectly… or actually it did if I turned out most if not all useful stuff.
Well… I really put it behind my back and never really thought about it again. But today I tried it again… and it worked… and it worked nicely!
So this is good news and since it went so nicely I’ll be making a small series of posts with our findings, from initial testing to a final game. Stay tuned.
I’m cleaning up my brain today. It has been cluttered with code and projects and today after almost six months I’ve managed to stop and think. At first my objective was to code but while I was pulling some design decisions I noticed I was also organizing my own brain.
Projects
We are now in the final ‘meters’ of a long race. This race was a nice and big contract project we are just just just about done with. As it is approaching the end we have more opportunities in front of us.
Less than a week ago all we had was this current project, the japanese themed game being coded by Pedro that Marco has spoke about lately and Mechs and Drones in a full stop. It was only natural that our option would be to pick up where Mechs and Drones was left, but suddenly another possible contract landed on our hands and the doubts start.
We’ve passed the startup phase with no investment capital but our own work, which is a huge victory. I wonder what we could have done with venture capital… We are currently in the consolidation stage, so these crossroads are always a doubt. Go for the stability of the project or the chance of a game like Mechs and Drones?
Bold Pixel Engine
A lot of stuff planned for v2. We’re implementing Box2D in it, plus camera and more and more behaviors. We will migrate all time based stuff to Greensock’s Tween Platform.
With this a lot of questions appear also…
Will the engine stay modular? By this I mean, right now I’m not dependent of the blit engine, but to implement Box2D I have to decide if only the blit engine will be served by the physics wrapper. I want to write a simple collision system. Should I implement it with sensors in Box2D? Or create a separate one?
I can even go backwards… should the current animation of the blit engine be able to be applied to MovieClips? And the list could go on and on…
I know what will decide all this: simplicity and minimalism. Whatever makes Bold Pixel Engine be more simple and minimalist will probably be chosen.
Sorting it out
Monday marks the beginning of March. I’m betting it will be a defining month for us this year. For starters the japan game will walk the extra mile in terms of content, quality and so on. Then, depending on what we will be doing, a lot of extra effort is needed… that’s what I think right now. We’ll see how it goes.
By the way… thanks for reading
