IMHO it never hurt to try and find a solution, leaving it as is is kinda giving up on mankind

As stated before, the protection doensn't have to 100% watertight, be creating a few hurdles can never hurt (most people are to lazy/dumb to crack it) plus I think some users might not know it is a teammembers only skin.. it works the other way around 2, what if you create nice skins you would like everybody to use at their free will, wouldn't you like a feature that promotes those skins? Thus indeed create a difference between Private and Public skins? I think most users will go by this simple rule only.. "aah I see it is a private skins, ok, I wont use it, and look for a nice public skin"...

You could then even have a little warning send to server admins, playerX is using a private skin that he aint aloud to use.. then admins could chose them self to give a warning/kick/ban or what just tolorate....

So to summarize, dont go for an all out protection like the demo/S2 unlock protection, but just a simple feature telling users what skins they can use for themself, and what skins skinners would like to keep for them selfs...

Just my 2 cents...

Quote from traxxion :

I was gonna make a silly joke about your skins but I can't really, cos I liked the teamnic skins very much.

Anyway, still in favor of a simple encryption. If people want to crack it, they always can, but I think they won't do it as soon, as much and as easy as they can now and that's what we're trying to achieve, right?

Well, a joke wont hurt in here.

Haha, yeah we had been dealing with this since b4 S1. There is no way, all you can do is keep your personal skins offline. Maybe you could make a public skin close to the same as your team one and if you see someone using your skin ask them nicely to use the public version and not you personal one. Some people wont but you may get a few that will do it for you. You could use the public one yourself when racing online that way thats all the general racing public would have to use anyway if they wanted, and just keep the personal ones to team races.

This is why I gave up doing team skins, now I can just be happy when I see one of my skins online(not that Ive made any new skins for a while now)

Quote from Frankmd :

Well, a joke wont hurt in here.

Hehe, I was gonna say it might have been to do with your skin's design, that people are not using it
But as I said, it wouldn't really be a valid joke, cos the teamnic skins were very nice.

Get real guys. They have already a hard time protecting the game itself from crackers (which they are doing great with the forum and multi player) now you want Skin protection? lol.
If he wrecks with your skin well who cares. He will get banned or noticed by his LFSW username. Noone will come and say hey this TeamSkin driver wrecked me but they will call the wrecker by the name and possible username. So you may aswell go protect the names now.

Everything can be cracked, EVERYTHING apart of the multi-player CDkey and username solutions. But everything for offline play.
IF someone really wants to abuse it he will do so. He will just take a look at your car and paint his own version of it. Now what you gonna do? Now he has actually the full right to his skin.

Quote from Sawyer :

Everything can be cracked, EVERYTHING apart of the multi-player CDkey and username solutions. But everything for offline play

I think you'll find they are crackable as well

Nothing is uncrackable or unhacakable, it's just a bigger challenge for the crackers!

Quote from Sawyer :

Get real guys. They have already a hard time protecting the game itself from crackers (which they are doing great with the forum and multi player) now you want Skin protection? lol.
If he wrecks with your skin well who cares. He will get banned or noticed by his LFSW username. Noone will come and say hey this TeamSkin driver wrecked me but they will call the wrecker by the name and possible username. So you may aswell go protect the names now.

Everything can be cracked, EVERYTHING apart of the multi-player CDkey and username solutions. But everything for offline play.
IF someone really wants to abuse it he will do so. He will just take a look at your car and paint his own version of it. Now what you gonna do? Now he has actually the full right to his skin.

Right, there's nothing we can do about crackers that are that dedicated... But it would greatly cut down on those who simply do it because it is easy.
You know every door can be broken open, yet you still lock it. Same here, just that the consequences are not really grave... But I agree taht there are more impoprtant things than the occasional skin-jacker

Quote from Thorvertonian :

I think you'll find they are crackable as well

Nothing is uncrackable or unhacakable, it's just a bigger challenge for the crackers!

Well yeah they are crackable in a way to make cracked dedicated servers. But I have yet to hear about someone making a valid CDkey gen for any game.

I dont know computers that well but i was thinkin as reading this, on LFSW why not have a feature where you say whether public or private (As suggested before) but instead of encrypting images, why not have all public skins downloaded to skinx_x, while ones marked as private are downloaded to the user but to a temperory folder that gets auo deleted when user leaves server.
Ive seen one person using a team skin, wasnt mg skin but was another team skin. Told them that they shouldnt use skins out at all really, but if they are gonna dont use team skins. they were like ok pitted changed skin to another teams skin, said it again and same thing happened they pitted and used another teams skin. After 3 times they were using a skin that didnt have team names or anything on so i left it. It does seem people do use skins out of skins_x folder.

Hmm I think my point is being missed a bit... Now people can't know that the skin they are using was not intended for them. Thus I think before you even start looking for crackable solution.....
Just create an option for LFSW uploaded skins to be marked for public use or not, thus players atleast know that the skin they like so much is actually a private skin of someone or of a teamskin etc etc

continue discussion about how every lock a man can make a man can brake...

edit:

Quote :

It does seem people do use skins out of skins_x folder.

Alot of people aren't photoshoppers, and I think alot of the skinner do intend their skins for public use. So this is not a problem, but if you are new to the game how should they know Ocrana is a team

So LFS needs a bad-ass DRM system, right? Maybe Sony BMG can consult Scawen? I mean they do have experience with good protection schemes for intellectual rights, eh....

Absolutely, and a popup licence agreement box upon downloading new skins.

There isn't actually no need to get hands on those skins that are in your skins_x folder so some kind of "repackaging" could be introduced.

And maybe the best way to try to protect the skins is to contact the user and ask as politely as possible that the skin he is using isn't made for him. Don't know if this works, as some people are just a**holes.

Maybe Scawen could put a little *.txt file inside the skins_x folder where it reads that these skins are not for your use...?

(I have made a little contract with myself. As long as I don't see anyone using my personals skins online, I make free public skins with very free permissions to edit/use. If I even once see that someone is using my personal skins online, I'll remove all my public skins from whereever I have uploaded them and never make new public ones anymore. Simple as that )

Quote :

If he wrecks with your skin well who cares. He will get banned or noticed by his LFSW username. Noone will come and say hey this TeamSkin driver wrecked me

Whilst I do agree with your point in a basic sense it isn't entirely true. Only a few days ago I was accused of driving back onto the track after a spin and taking cars out because "It was the pink car". In that race there where 3 pink cars, unusually, the least pink of which was mine !

Quote :

But I have yet to hear about someone making a valid CDkey gen for any game.

I wont give a current example, but here's the Windows 95 key format

AAAAA-oem-AAAAA-AAAAA-AAAAA (if I recall correctly)

Win95 checks the validity of each block of AAAAA by adding up all the numbers, if the total equals the mathematical operator &7 (ie: is divisible by seven without any fractions left over) then it's a valid key.

So I could write a keygen that generates the first 4 digits randomly, lets say 1519. And then works out what the fifth digit needs to be to make it valid, in this case 15195, totalling 21, which is divisble by 7.

Every single game and utility i've ever seen with a CD key code has also had a pirate CD keygen utility written for it.

The only game I know of "never" to be pirated in online play is the MMO's, the original of which was Everquest. Which if you connected to one of the servers running the 3rd party server software (there was more than one, but one example is eqemu) it worked without a valid Everquest license.

So even the unhackable got hacked, in a manner of speaking.

As a programmer who has had to get to grips with proprietry file formats before I find the hardest "protection" to break is not encrypted at all, it's compression. Compression makes reverse engineering far harder than encryption/hashing/bit swapping etc.

With images it's easy to discern a pattern in a "bitmap" format, and it's the pattern (such as large areas of background colour) which give away the format. With compression there are no constant patterns, making it a pig to crack.

All of my own proprietry formats now include some form of compression.

However the problem is the extra cpu juice used when loading them, for most games this isn't an issue - but LFS loads and applies the skins in a live situation ... This is a big problem because it basically rules out doing anything cpu intensive whilst loading the images.

Quote from traxxion :

Hehe, I was gonna say it might have been to do with your skin's design, that people are not using it
But as I said, it wouldn't really be a valid joke, cos the teamnic skins were very nice.

"Explaining" a joke is not "telling" a joke

Personally, I don't think it's that big of an issue. But since I have an opinion, as well as a constructive offering for a solution, I naturally feel obliged to burden you with it

The simplest solution for LFS, in my mind at least, is social tolerance. This does need a little assistance from LFS, but the infrastructure is there already.

What exists:
Team skins are associated with teams. You drive for a team, and you wear the team livery. Teams are registered with LFS at LFSWorld. The team prefix is registered at LFSWorld. Team members are registered at LFSWorld. It's all there.

At the moment, many or perhaps even most, people who are members of teams have race names to include either a team prefix or a team suffix. Mine, for example, is CTR.SamZ because I'm a member of Computeam.. hence CTR

What's needed:
We just need a prefix/suffix system in LFS where, when we are in "race" mode, our team skin shows and our race name automatically includes our team prefix or suffix. To distinguish a genuine prefix/suffix, perhaps the system would default to a mid-grey background to the prefix/suffix.. or something, anyway, that can't be faked by simply editing a race name.

THEN all that is needed is for social unacceptability to take hold. Once the above is in place, if someone who CLEARLY ISNT a member of a team IS WEARING a team skin.. they'll be boo'd off track by the "community".

More people quit smoking because of social unacceptability than because of the imminent risk of heart disease and/or death. In Britain, the government acknowledged that for all the money they spent on their drink-driving campaigns, the thing that ACTUALLY had an effect was the social unacceptability of drink-driving.. something they now are trying to engineer, to stop us driving our gas-guzzlers (but they can get lost!!).

There are minor additional things to resolve.. there are some people who race for multiple teams.. sprints and endurances, etc. Some like the more common prefix, but there are teams that have suffixes instead. Also the prefix/suffix needs to be optionally displayed. You need to be able to race for fun and not just for your team and glory.. but I think the idea is sound. What ya thinking?.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Whilst I do agree with your point in a basic sense it isn't entirely true. Only a few days ago I was accused of driving back onto the track after a spin and taking cars out because "It was the pink car". In that race there where 3 pink cars, unusually, the least pink of which was mine !


I wont give a current example, but here's the Windows 95 key format

AAAAA-oem-AAAAA-AAAAA-AAAAA (if I recall correctly)

Win95 checks the validity of each block of AAAAA by adding up all the numbers, if the total equals the mathematical operator &7 (ie: is divisible by seven without any fractions left over) then it's a valid key.

So I could write a keygen that generates the first 4 digits randomly, lets say 1519. And then works out what the fifth digit needs to be to make it valid, in this case 15195, totalling 21, which is divisble by 7.

Every single game and utility i've ever seen with a CD key code has also had a pirate CD keygen utility written for it.

The only game I know of "never" to be pirated in online play is the MMO's, the original of which was Everquest. Which if you connected to one of the servers running the 3rd party server software (there was more than one, but one example is eqemu) it worked without a valid Everquest license.

So even the unhackable got hacked, in a manner of speaking.

As a programmer who has had to get to grips with proprietry file formats before I find the hardest "protection" to break is not encrypted at all, it's compression. Compression makes reverse engineering far harder than encryption/hashing/bit swapping etc.

With images it's easy to discern a pattern in a "bitmap" format, and it's the pattern (such as large areas of background colour) which give away the format. With compression there are no constant patterns, making it a pig to crack.

All of my own proprietry formats now include some form of compression.

However the problem is the extra cpu juice used when loading them, for most games this isn't an issue - but LFS loads and applies the skins in a live situation ... This is a big problem because it basically rules out doing anything cpu intensive whilst loading the images.

No what I meant. You never get a working CDky for online play. Offline allright they work thats just as good as cracks anyway. But I have never heard of a game which wasnt bugged like STEAM for some time to get it working. Just like LFS. You can crack it for offline but you wont get online with that and without an account. So I say the protection works 99.9% on this one. Just like you cant play CSS on offical servers without an key nowdays.

Encryption seems like the way to go.

Every player could be assigned a secret n-bit key. Skins uploaded to LFS World that are marked as private could be encrypted using this key.

Upon trying to display the encrypted skin LFS connects to the Master / LFSWorld server to get the username and player's key. Decryption is then possible... but only if the skin is used by the right player.

A default skin displaying "I tried stealing skins from other users" could be displayed if decryption fails

Of course this system can be beaten, too. Not with a simple offline-tool, though. Something that grabs the transferred keys or reads the texture from memory can.

But it's not at all importand to make it perfectly secure...

Although... I'd rather see physics updates instead of that feature.

Quote from Sawyer :

No what I meant. You never get a working CDky for online play. Offline allright they work thats just as good as cracks anyway. But I have never heard of a game which wasnt bugged like STEAM for some time to get it working. Just like LFS. You can crack it for offline but you wont get online with that and without an account. So I say the protection works 99.9% on this one. Just like you cant play CSS on offical servers without an key nowdays.

All the games that have a keygen, and do NOT require a paid subscription to play online, have them. Not all of them work (some may be already used, some may have been excluded), but if you try enough keys, you'll find one that passes the tests. Especially if the key isn't actually used online for verification, then any simple working key works online.

The original topic is regarding preventing "thieves" from stealing your skin. The "how to" of cracking online games should be dropped immediately.

It's not a huge leap from the current infrastructure to have team skins assigned to team members at LFSWorld, but it would take some pretty fundamental programming changes to prevent very rare rogue players from using team skins they're not "entitled" to use.

In short, I don't think it's going to happen.

maybe give the team there own skin upload area and protect that, just my shout on things

Quote from traxxion :

Hey guys,

I've just heard from a teammate he daily sees 3 to 4 people online using our teamskins...
Now if it were Biggie's or other aliens it wouldnt be a real problem but most of the time they are either wreckers or newbie's, often they seem to be the ones causing mayhem in t1 for example...

Question is what can we do about this, apart from asking them friendly not to use our skins?

I'm just thinking it would be nice to have a certain unlock code / password attached to skin filenames that can be set by the one that uploads it.

If you agree on this I can post it in the Improvement suggestion forum, but maybe someone has a better idea?

why the big deal about skins.
i'm betting you do not observe others copyright religiously..

if you really care about someone stealing your skin... dont make it available to others.illepall

Quote from Gabkicks :

if you really care about someone stealing your skin... dont make it available to others.illepall

Yeah.. I just visited the 1ST website for the first time, and I MUST say it does seem a bit dumb to complain about people downloading and using the skins when they're available in high-res 1024 and super-res 2048 right from the front page of your team website.

What the hell is the point in offering them anyway, when you're asking them NOT to use them, and only to download them to the skins_x folder.. that's going to happen when they come across the team members on a server anyway!

Some HOME security sense would be a big start before asking the devs to make changes to THEIR system.

Read this thread: http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=2383

My explanation about how this really couldn't work is all in there. No need to discuss it twice