Top Secret or Open Source? The Password Debate

[Rodak]

The Great Password Debate now has a home.

I often wonder why people like Passwords so much.

I only used one on my first demo because it had so much unfinished crap it was embarrassing. But everything since has been "open source" demos.

At least I never have to worry about forgetting it!

I have learned much by studying scripts from games and demos that were uploaded without a Password (and even games / demos to which I wound up with the Password elsehow).

It was that experience that led me to my No Passwords For Me policy. Perhaps I can help others.

But what do you all think?

What are your motivations either way?

This started in Doyleman's forum, so I'll post a quote from that to show some of my ideas and see if anyone has any thoughts (the italics are Doyleman's responses):

I understand the motivation, but from my twisted point of view:


1) people could possibly take the game, edit it here and there, and say its their own.

I've heard that one the most. I say I'd take it as the compliment that it is should that ever happen to me.

2) an open, non Passworded game is asking for people to cheat.

Let 'em. Gameshark and Codebreakers stuff sells very well. It's all so people can cheat. They like to cheat. It's a part of gaming for many people.

3) I like my secret stuff to remain 'secret' in game (yes, there are many more secrets than those I listed)

I dare say "Pointless". That's why Prima and the like sell big books detailing all the secrets in "real" games. When I played through Final Fantasy 9 recently (found it and the book at a yard sale for $5!) I would play a bit, go back and read the book to see what "Secrets" I missed, and replay.

Replay value is greatly increased by secrets, but only if you can eventually know where they are.

[/size]

I'm breaking form and voting first in my own poll!

And campaigning for the results I want to see!

Vote for No Passwords!

[Valkysas]

Re: Top Secret or Open Source? The Password Debate

Passwords were a neccesity back in the RPGM1 days, as many sites would take games from one site, remove all mentions in-game about where the game is supposed to be posted, and even change the creator info. eventually the community got large enough that everyone knew who made what, and it wasnt a problem anymore. of course, people still put passwords to protect their work. same with 2. and as we all know, with 3 it isnt even possible anymore.

Where do I stand on the issue? Passwords are good.
We have a lot of talented people in the community, our own "superstars" if you will. these people are extremely talented, and can do a lot of things most people wouldnt normally think possible with the software (tetris, working zelda battle system). if the passwords to these games were made available to the public, a lot of people would take the code, put it in their own game, and never have to work for it like the original author did. I dont want to see tons of games using the same battle system that was genius in one game, but gets watered down upon further use. I like the diversity of things right now.

[hitogoroshi]

Re: Top Secret or Open Source? The Password Debate

I agree with Valk. Don't like project stealing (although I never work with RPGM anymore).

[Hedrum]

Re: Top Secret or Open Source? The Password Debate

I voted for having passwords because if someone is to look into my RPG Maker projects, they'd be able to cheat and have the game spoiled to them (like it said in one of those quotes). Like in my game, Monkey Brothers, I have these special keys and each of these special keys are scattered into 5 pieces and are scattered throughout the world of the game. Looking for these key pieces is totally optional, but collecting all of them can determine if you completed the game 100%. By someone searching through the game data, it often at times ruin the gameplay experience. Monkey Brothers is suppose to be an adventure game and if someone knew where to find every item and how to solve every puzzle, it would really take away the mystery of some things. Now, I can understand how a person can get stuck in games. Well, other than having people just look through my scenario data and solve the problem, I'd rather have the player Private Message me or post in a topic about the game. It really would give me a good feeling knowing that a specific member actually played my game instead of an anonymous person who's just merely a contribution to the amount of views the game received.

[Crimson Knight]

Re: Top Secret or Open Source? The Password Debate

Where do I stand on the issue? Passwords are good.
We have a lot of talented people in the community, our own "superstars" if you will. these people are extremely talented, and can do a lot of things most people wouldnt normally think possible with the software (tetris, working zelda battle system). if the passwords to these games were made available to the public, a lot of people would take the code, put it in their own game, and never have to work for it like the original author did. I dont want to see tons of games using the same battle system that was genius in one game, but gets watered down upon further use. I like the diversity of things right now.

Exactly. Passwords are good for the select few who actually put painstaking work into their games. To me, it just doesn't seem right if someone who was less willing to do so, make such a game from another's work. It's cool if the author allowed people to use their engines and stuff but I don't think it would work out because it'd require too much work on the receiver's part.

[Rodak]

Re: Top Secret or Open Source? The Password Debate

It's cool if the author allowed people to use their engines and stuff but I don't think it would work out because it'd require too much work on the receiver's part.

Well, I committed Tetriscide shortly after winning the password and Jugem likes what I did.

I have his permission to release it.

I'll post it this weekend after some final fine tuning.

He has offered the password to any interested parties.

So long as it is handled with respect (I contacted him prior to even telling anyone what I did) I see no problem.

I guess my point of view comes from hanging around scientists more than any other creative group. The very notion of withholding how something was done just does not work in that field. Fine artists are always willing to share their techniques too.

But these boards do serve the same purpose that the scientific journals do for sharing knowledge. I've never seen anyone here (or even elsewhere) refuse to answer someone's question on proprietary grounds.

So long as the openness of this community continues I'll never complain about the use of passwords, and given the fact that I was able to learn new things from poking around some open source games I do advocate the open script concept.

But my brain is dodecahedral.

In the world of Fine Art, if plagiarism happens it is usually caught by others of that community pretty fast and the perpetrators quickly ostracized.

I suspect the same thing would happen here, but why make it easy?

My answer to that would be that I think of RPGMakers as the only truly educational video games out there. They are not a programming language by any stretch of the imagination, but they do teach the basics of computer programming logic and we need people with logic skills in this world (and especially in this Country {America... no offense to our more geographically spread out friends, you guys need smart people too!} where our economy is in trouble and high tech stuff is being outsourced world wide because Big Business says there are not enough skilled workers here).

So I promote anything that can get people to learn Logic skills no matter what it's disguise.

Ooh... Philosophy on a game board.

Whooda thunk?

Peace.

[Jugem]

Re: Top Secret or Open Source? The Password Debate

Exactly. Passwords are good for the select few who actually put painstaking work into their games. To me, it just doesn't seem right if someone who was less willing to do so, make such a game from another's work.

There are situations though where the scripting is just so complicated that you'd have to be very dedicated and intelligent to figure out how to use/steal anything from the game. Tetris is one of them. That's why I decided to release the password. My hat's off to anyone who can make sense of what I've done, lol.

Well, I committed Tetriscide shortly after winning the password and Jugem likes what I did.

I never said I liked what you did. I never even saw Tetriscide yet! But you told me how you changed it, and I am interested to see these changes. I reserve judgement until I actually see it.

[Rodak]

Re: Top Secret or Open Source? The Password Debate

Oops. I meant to say you liked the idea.

For those who care I still had the message I sent and it is a great example of how to handle these things.

I don't think posting this is a problem:

I have committed Tetriscide!!!

This may be a nice tie - in with the Password Debate thread.

I don't know what you may have thought I'd do with your game once given the password, but I think you may want to know regardless.

The only way I could see what was happening was to make modifications and see what happens (kind of like learning RPGM2 in general).

I started with the sounds.

I tracked every script that made noises and inserted a menu at the start that lets you choose Default Sounds or Silly Sounds. Silly Sounds opens a menu with which lets you choose from a list of sound sets (Weird, Wet, Wild, Wacky, Whacky, Wonderful, Wandom, and Wegular (your sounds)). It started with just one choice, but it offers 8 in a multiple choice branch, so...

Weird is self explanatory. So are Wet, Wacky, and Wegular. Whacky is weapon and fight sounds, Wild is Animal Sounds, and Wonderful is things like "Cursor" set at pitch -12 (pretty, echoey, plingy things). Wandom randomly selects a sound from any of the sets for each noise so they all mix together. This only selects from the appropriate sets so you won't get the "game over" sound for a TETRIS, just one of the seven different sounds set for that moment. It's very interesting.

While testing them I decided I'd add another menu to the pause button that lets the player change sound sets in mid-game. It was for testing purposes, but why get rid of it?

If you want to see what I have done, I'll send you the file. If you want to pretend you never saw this, I'll understand too.

Don't worry, I won't share this with anyone unless you say it's OK (I may want to share it with Bigfoot since he has the password too and when I asked him (in a PM) what he did with it, he expressed his confusion colorfully) (and it may prove worthy of a more public distribution) (But that's your decision) (I Like Parenthesis) [Brackets too] {And these things are just Wonderful!}.

I respect your work and would not do anything with it of which you do not approve. At least not publicly.

Privately however... the Graphics are next!

Thanks again for taking my suggestion about using the Password as a prize. I really am learning a few things by doing this, it's just that I can't simply look at the scripts and learn anything. I have to use them actively to get an understanding of what's going on.

Call it a Learning Disability.

I hope this does not make you want to shoot me (again).

Besides... You Started It! You and your Sheep Sounds at the end! I'm innocent I tells ya! Innocent!!

Peace.


Now you know what I'll be posting.

Note that I will not be giving myself credit anywhere in the game.

It's still not my work!

[ErikaFuzzbottom]

Re: Top Secret or Open Source? The Password Debate

Well here's my own thoughts on passwords, or rather what I do with them.

Any demos I release will be password-protected, on account that the player could look into the game and see some stuff they aren't supposed to until the game's final release. Not to mention if they're evil enough they can take some of my code and use it in their game before mine is released; and then who's idea gets credited first?

Full games, it entirely depends. Jester's Hunt is so open sorce I flat-out say in its manual that anybody can go ahead and use stuff from my game for use in their own. One could easily figure out where all the stuff is hidden by looking at the source code, but I could care less.

If it's an RPG, it's password-protected so the player can't spoil themselves. Jester's Hunt 3D (still early in development, but work has been done), I have a few tricks up my sleeve that, should I be able to use them, I don't want ANYBODY knowing it until they find out the old-fashioned way, so that will be password protected as well. My games will thow out the password in-game somewhere, so that those who get far enough can look at the code if they want to.

Also, I don't use the password options while I'm working on the game. If I lost the password or something, I'd be very much skrewed.

[MC Ardle84]

Re: Top Secret or Open Source? The Password Debate

Passwords are essential, you ask if you want to look at how someone created a game.

It's disrespectful to the author to hack a game's password, look at his scripts, and 'learn' from his programming unless you get permission first.

Imagine if you created a really awesome CBS and someone stole it and put it up as a "Script" and it became a _standard_ for every game from then on in. I would be rather ****ed off at all the n00bs for stealing my systems.

For RPG Maker 1 it isn't a problem, since there isn't any customability, but for any other Maker, like XP (I don't know how 3 works, or if you can even change anything about 3's system), I would say that's a big no-no.

[Valkysas]

Re: Top Secret or Open Source? The Password Debate

3's system cannot be changed in any way. there's no way to password protect your game either.

[ErikaFuzzbottom]

Re: Top Secret or Open Source? The Password Debate

For RPG Maker 1 it isn't a problem, since there isn't any customability

I beg to differ.

[MC Ardle84]

Re: Top Secret or Open Source? The Password Debate

Whatever respect you have for RM1, I acknowledge it--but finding crazy ways to get around a very limited system (That was 53 Megabites, by the way.) isn't total "customability."

You can't get around it's shell, like you can with RM2 and RMXP, so I would say neh.

Once again, I respect it, but I think my definition for customability is different ever since I've worked with the computer games. (Seeing as if you looked at what you can do with the PC versions, it's not just double or triple--but an exponential amount of customability you can do.)

[ErikaFuzzbottom]

Re: Top Secret or Open Source? The Password Debate

I will admit that RPGM1 doesn't have a lot of customability, but it by no means has none.

[The Toecutter]

Re: Top Secret or Open Source? The Password Debate

I'm for password protection on games where a lot of work was spent, but only so long as the creator is willing to explain what they did and how. Having it there to copy and paste simply invites people to steal it, but if you explain to them what you did and why, they simply have to try it and learn for themselves. That has a better chance of allowing another creator to build upon what you did, as if they have to work to understand it, the run of the mill cheaters would likely give up early on.

And after a game has been in circulation for a while, I'm all for opening it up to the public entirely.

For example, the password of my RPGM demo for Police State is up, down, left, right, up, down, left, right.

When the real game is released, I'd have no qualms with releasing it with no passwords or encryptions. I want people to experiment and learn. But that will be far from benig your run of the mill RPGM game...