Do/Would you protect your data?

[Nova]

Hi everyone,

i am just wondering how you guys deal with data security.
For example your 3d models... are you just putting them into a
directory, leaving them for everybody to re-use / modify etc, or
do you have a concept of encrypting (or whatever) your data.

I'd be really grateful for some input on this topic since i don't know
if i should even bother trying to protect my data.

hope to get some great ideas
cheers

[Saturn]

Hotly debated in the past already. Instead of starting the discussion all new again, you can learn from past discussions. Nothing fundamentally changed since then. Search function really is an awesome forum tool btw.

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... otect+data
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... otect+data

[MasterGod]

I don't. I state the license of the media files and trust people to follow the license and I do too with others.

[vvv]

are you just putting them into a
directory, leaving them for everybody to re-use / modify etc

If someone want to use your models/sounds/etc in a popular project - then you can just ask him to pay for that or sue him (if you don't like to share it).

If someone want to use your models in a non-popular project - then who cares?

If person who want to use your models is a fan of your project who want to provide some more content for your game - it's cool and free .

If person who want to use your models is a fan of another game who want to add your characters to another game - then its free advertisement .

[Halifax]

If you really want to protect your meshes, then I would do the following:

- Make your own mesh format (preferrably binary)
- XOR encrypt the data
- Then use a proprietary encryption engine
- XOR encrypt that data

And that should slow people down on figuring out your format, and how to load them.

[Saturn]

Why should people even bother.
What is the advantage of XOR then encrypt then XOR? Actually I know the answer here: There is none. Only thing that is helpful is to take out redundancy before encryption by compressing the data. Everything else is meaningless. And even this is totally meaningless because:
Everybody can grab the data when it is send to the underlying 3d api, be it opengl or directx. There is no slowing down involved at all, however clever your data format is, data has to be send to GPU unencrypted.