I know you can disable auto downloading of skins, but it would be nice if you could protect your skins by making them "private", where you could put in a setting that would not let the other players person use the skin, but only view it on your car.

But in order for people to see your skin, they have to have it available locally on their machine.

I don't see any way that this would be possible without some hugely complex form of public/private key encryption or something like that.

pro or con, either way this is a very debatable topic, i myself is pro, i really hate seeing people copying and renaming and changing a few things from skins which people worked very hard for, only to find out that somewhat changes one little thing on it and calls it their own.. its called plaigerism, and it happens alot in this world, in school or out, very little is done about it, and thousands of people get away with it yearly.. here its not all that massive of a deal, it isnt illegal, but it is very shallow of someone to do that anyway
but still, complex or not, there must be a way to keep this from happening.. same for people that use other team's private skins.. but thats a whole different topic

Just have the following:

Skins folder contains jpeg
Skins_x folder (what is downloaded off of LFSW) contains *some difficult to edit files*. Most 'skin hackers' are too lazy (or stupid) to bother finding out how (if possible at all) to edit these files.

This would mean skins you are allowed to use, either cos you made them, someone specifically gave them to you, or they are publically available are jpegs, but those not publically usable are, to all intents, encrypted. It might even be possible for the devs to make the image files smaller somehow, saving them bandwidth. Obviously the conversion from jpeg to 'encrypted' would happen as you uploaded your skin.

How's that sound?

is there a way to compress all files into a 'encryptated' data file or something. And before each u connect to a server, it senses what files needs to be downloaded etc and whats already on file and gets them. I know it sounds weird, but i was thinking about guildwars, the game app is like 40mb, but as you go into new areas, you download it and they all go into a .dat file, instead of seperate bits.

Is it really all that necessary to have private skins anyways? Give or take a few people that use team skins and are not on 'that' team... it really isn't much of a problem in my opinion.

Im pro for this. I hate seeing peoples skins get ripped.

But people's skins getting ripped are NOT because of the 512 skin download. If you rip a 512 skin... ughh not very nice.

What is really at fault is the 1024 skins available on the team's sites, or skin makers site. Nothing you can do to stop it really. You are just better off knowing that some untalented painter decided to completely work off someone else's design and not use their own creativity, or lack thereof.

Making skins 'private' is not going to stop any ripping or wrong usage. I don't see how it could be done really. We have the simplest source of making skins, a JPG file, and it is a file that can be easily opened and distributed by anyone. I'd hate do see skins be involved with some encrypted feature or something... it just seems silly.

I find myself talking a lot about Nascar Heat in this forum, hehe. But anyway... In NHeat, when you make a paint, you have to save it as an uncompressed 24bit .TGA and then use a tool to convert it to a .TEX file witch NHeat understands and can show. There is almost not way of reverse this process (makinga .TGA out of the .TEX) and it has proven to be most effective when it comes to stop people from ripping off other peoples work.

So... A one step process of encrypting the .JPG skins into LFS's version of a .TEX file witch is still downloadable and still viewable in every aspect, but not possible to reverse and load into a paint program. I bet it would take a lot of the fun away since no one (well at least no one I know) would like to drive in a paint with someone elses name on it.

Possible?

Hmm, well I highly doubt the .TEX file is secure... someone would just make a .TEX viewer or an easy convertor. I mean... you created it from a .TGA file, what makes it impossible to revert back? . And a .TEX file can be opened by most paint programs as far as I know, unless this is some special file for the game. But like I said, people make tools to view these kinds of things.

I'm all for people not ripping skins, I've been in a few cases myself from teams stealing my work... it is a pain. But it doesn't happen so much that the whole simple skinning system we have now needs to be changed to a silly format. Sure the extra step of making a certain file for the skin instead could distract a ripper from even trying, but it just makes an extra step for skinners and especially LFSW support. The way it is now is what makes skinning so easy compared to other sims, even for the newbie wanting to make something simple.

And besides, if you made an 'encrypted' skin, how would it be done? If you couldn't make anything open it, how would say... the original author be able to view it incase he lost his original files? How would it know who it belongs too, and who could open it. A passworded image file? (Could be done like with Flash and PDFs). But making all of the 'security' precautions all to prevent ripping or usage online? The time involved for Scawen to code something to protect skin files would be tremendous I take it... let alone the need to update this feature incase their is some hole, because afterall, not everything is secure, maybe even the game itself!!! I must repeat... it is just such a small issue that this feature doesn't need to be considered in my opinion. Nothing better than finding out who took/used your skin and talking to them in a proper fashion to resolve the issue.

This feature is a whole lot more than it sounds like.

Might as well just mark your skin with a Creative Commons copyright thing or something -- http://creativecommons.org/ -- You have room for that

Yes, the .TEX files NHeat use is not the usual .TEX files you see that you can open with photoshop or PSP etc.
No, they are not impossible to hack, but... NHeat came out some time 2000 and is very soon six years old. The only .TEX viewer made during that time is a real hog to get to work, and the output is a very poor version of the original paint.

Skinning for NHeat is very similar to skinning for LFS. You start with a template, paint away and save your work when it looks ok in the 3D program. Then you go trough the extra process of converting the skin to a .TEX file and make it very hard to unpack.

Now... If I make a skin, I almost always put my country flag and my name on it somewhere. Something I like to do cause there usually are names and flags on real racecar paintjobs. I don't think anyone would like to use that skin unedited

Security... in most cases is not that secure. If the likes of MS with their army of developers can't even secure Windows against beeing copied then there is no real way to secure a jpeg. Authentication has been cracked and a little while ago tried to add security to Windows update to stop pirates from getting extra features etc. Result was it was cracked on day 1 and bypassed.

In the end of the day the skin issue is not that bad, prob not worth the effort. Everyone that produces skins knows the issues before they upload their skin.

If they want it, they'll get it. You can add all the security devices you want, but if they are determined to get it, they will..

If a skin is good enough that someone wants to nick it and claim it to be their own, then the real creator will be already known to most people they are trying to con i think.

Quote from Woz :

Security... in most cases is not that secure. If the likes of MS with their army of developers can't even secure Windows against beeing copied then there is no real way to secure a jpeg. Authentication has been cracked and a little while ago tried to add security to Windows update to stop pirates from getting extra features etc. Result was it was cracked on day 1 and bypassed.

In the end of the day the skin issue is not that bad, prob not worth the effort. Everyone that produces skins knows the issues before they upload their skin.

Then again, I suppose there are less proffessional skin-hackers than people trying to make Windows "public to the broad masses who cannot afford it"

Guess that something simple would be sufficient to prevent 95% (made up figure) of "skin stealing", like adding the accountname of the uploader to the file header, which would cause a mismatch for people trying to use that skin.

Then again, ayone who wanted to use the skin would have to upload it to use it themselves... which could be a dwonside for teamskins and so on...

anyone who sees your skin on a server has it in it's memory. it's no problem to get that skin, no matter if it's a tex file, jpg whatever.

imho there is no such thing like a skin-ripping-problem.

What about not loading the skin to LFSW when you don't want to share it?

Vain

Quote from Vain :

What about not loading the skin to LFSW when you don't want to share it?

Vain

There is a difference in "I don't wnat you to use it" and "I don't want you to see it"

Allthough I might agree that this should not be one of the dev's top priorities...

Quote from Vain :

What about not loading the skin to LFSW when you don't want to share it?

that's a good plan!

I might say that most of the "skin stealers" use other people's skins just because they don't know it's "illegal". Adding a signature to your skins is recommended too. As the skins are very easy to "steal" it is impossible to make sure nobody isn't using your or your team's skin. At least all teams should make it clear that only team members are allowed to use that skin and write it to the skin too.

Hmm, better sign my "skins" too

Shouldn't you take it as a compliment if people want to use your skin?

I'm a bit confused about why this is such a big issue for some people. I guess you must spend a great deal of time on skin design. Good for you. Personally, I need all the spare time I've got just to get a bit better on the track, and I don't really notice a lot about the designs painted on the other cars. Now that I think about it, typically after a few corners the other cars end up far enough ahead or far enough behind that I'm not in a position to appreciate the artwork even if I was looking for it. Do you guys spend a lot of time reviewing replays perhaps?

Anyway, no offence meant, and your mileage obviously varies, etc. But for me, at the end of the day LFS is a driving sim/game and not an art gallery.

But teams have spent many hours making nice looking skins that work at 512 and 1024 resolutions, that create an image of the team, and are used by many to identify that team. If someone start using the skin, or hacking it to make it 'their own' then a) thats not fair on the person who put the effort in in the first place and b) can be used to harm the image or reputation of a team.

Extreme cases I know.

Consider it this way - you make a really nice bit of software. Someone downloads it, changes an icon or two, and releases it as their own. Would you like that? No, I thought not, and the principle is the same here.

I get a lot of pleasure from playing with Photoshop and designing skins. I spend a long time doing them and I enjoy coming across servers where people are using them.

However, I can't understand why someone would want to use the skin from someone else's team when they themselves are not part of that team.

For me, skins should be shared and enjoyed to brighten up the track and the races, no matter how monentary the sight is, as they lap you when you have spun off into the kitty litter.
If I spent as much toime racing as I spend painting skins, i'd be a tenth of a second faster at BL by now. Oh well....

Quote from tristancliffe :

Consider it this way - you make a really nice bit of software. Someone downloads it, changes an icon or two, and releases it as their own. Would you like that? No, I thought not, and the principle is the same here.

that's not right, it's rather people downloading your software and USING it on their own PC without permission (warez); they don't go around selling & promoting it "as their own"

Well if they are just using the skin you made without asking, then yes it's like downloading software.

If they are tweaking a skin to make it look a teeny bit different, it's like taking WindowsXP, changing the skin, and selling it on as your own product.

So my example still stands, but for one case not both

at what point do they "sell" the skin?