After playing B.S.'s old joke games, I was inspired to implement a "Stop 'n' Swop"-like mechanism in my own games so various games could interact with one another for unlocking hidden content and such. What would be the best way to do that? Maybe create a master file in the WINDOWS directory that each game would add lines to as needed? What would be the best way to encrypt it to make it harder to cheat? Would anyone else be interesting in creating cross-game collaboration using this feature?

[quote="VinnyVideo"]After playing B.S.'s old joke games, I was inspired to implement a "Stop 'n' Swop"-like mechanism in my own games so various games could interact with one another for unlocking hidden content and such. What would be the best way to do that? Maybe create a master file in the WINDOWS directory that each game would add lines to as needed? What would be the best way to encrypt it to make it harder to cheat? Would anyone else be interesting in creating cross-game collaboration using this feature?[/quote] DJ Yoshiman may be able to shed some light on that one, He was able to transfer data between 2 MMF apps and a Construct App in real time in WITT E2.

I used INI files. Both programs have it natively built in. Although you could just use any given file format, as long as each program used can read strings stored inside the file. I remember wanting to do this with Mario Spy and Shadowman's game (Luigi's game). Since neither game was released, it... just never happened.

[quote="VinnyVideo"]What would be the best way to encrypt it to make it harder to cheat?[/quote] have fun with that. everybody participating is going to have to share the same key, and a key will only take as long to acquire as decompiling a gm exe does if you [i]dont[/i] encrypt the entire file, but instead encrypt the data blocks individually (obviously any developer wanting to use that block would need the key to it), that might work a little better, but still suffers from the above weakness on a per-data block basis or you could just store hashes of the values and validate them that way (again, this requires collaboration as to which algorithm is used, the seeding method, etc) maybe some form of public-key crypto could work... but then again, does it really matter? unless this is an mmo or some other online system, who really cares if people cheat a simple binary format would be sufficient to throw most people off... until someone figures out the format and writes an editor for it, which is unlikely unless you have a really popular game involved

Actually, I don't really care that much - I'd just rather avoid using anything that's really easy to abuse. Also, I protect the source of GM executables I make, although I suspect the encryption program isn't exactly bulletproof - not that I care if anyone wants to see my terrible coding [i]that[/i] much.

[quote="VinnyVideo"]Actually, I don't really care that much - I'd just rather avoid using anything that's really easy to abuse. Also, I protect the source of GM executables I make, although I suspect the encryption program isn't exactly bulletproof - not that I care if anyone wants to see my terrible coding [i]that[/i] much.[/quote] Whatever TD used for the save data in Psycho waluigi was pretty tough to crack with a hex editor, i managed it, yes, but it took me awhile.

Registry save data also might helps. Besides, I'm using this method for my future games.

[quote="Nite Shadow"][quote="VinnyVideo"]Actually, I don't really care that much - I'd just rather avoid using anything that's really easy to abuse. Also, I protect the source of GM executables I make, although I suspect the encryption program isn't exactly bulletproof - not that I care if anyone wants to see my terrible coding [i]that[/i] much.[/quote] Whatever TD used for the save data in Psycho waluigi was pretty tough to crack with a hex editor, i managed it, yes, but it took me awhile.[/quote] if it's the cnc array format then not really--that's a pretty easy format (and someone even posted the format on ct's forum a few years ago); the hardest part of that format would be figuring out what the data itself is supposed to represent

[quote="Xgoff"][quote="Nite Shadow"][quote="VinnyVideo"]Actually, I don't really care that much - I'd just rather avoid using anything that's really easy to abuse. Also, I protect the source of GM executables I make, although I suspect the encryption program isn't exactly bulletproof - not that I care if anyone wants to see my terrible coding [i]that[/i] much.[/quote] Whatever TD used for the save data in Psycho waluigi was pretty tough to crack with a hex editor, i managed it, yes, but it took me awhile.[/quote] if it's the cnc array format then not really--that's a pretty easy format (and someone even posted the format on ct's forum a few years ago); the hardest part of that format would be figuring out what the data itself is supposed to represent[/quote] it is, thing is though, it seemed that their were things written that did nothing. i could be wrong though

I use superdimentio's Stop n' Swap/Swop system.

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