Asset packaging for music
by Martin Andresen · in Torque Game Builder · 03/26/2009 (9:29 am) · 2 replies
Hi all,
Due to restrictions on the music we are using for an upcoming game, we need to encrypt/package the music files so they are not easily available to the end user.
We tried putting the files in a password protected zip-file (which TGB supports natively), however this gave us some severe performance issues. We were initially streaming the music, but when streaming from the encrypted zip file, the game would have small halts all the time. We also tried loading the full file without streaming, but loading a single file of music took around 5-10 seconds.
Are there any one out there that have also protected their music files? Did you fix the above problem or used other encryption schemes/programs that did not have the same performance issues? Did you end up streaming the music or loading it into memory?
Kind regards,
Martin Andresen
Twintale Entertainment
Due to restrictions on the music we are using for an upcoming game, we need to encrypt/package the music files so they are not easily available to the end user.
We tried putting the files in a password protected zip-file (which TGB supports natively), however this gave us some severe performance issues. We were initially streaming the music, but when streaming from the encrypted zip file, the game would have small halts all the time. We also tried loading the full file without streaming, but loading a single file of music took around 5-10 seconds.
Are there any one out there that have also protected their music files? Did you fix the above problem or used other encryption schemes/programs that did not have the same performance issues? Did you end up streaming the music or loading it into memory?
Kind regards,
Martin Andresen
Twintale Entertainment
#2
Thanks for your reply Jason, but we're not looking for anything 100% secure, just something that will not allow a basic user to just copy the files and use them. At the moment we have nothing, as TGB's performance of streaming music from a password protected zip-file is very poor.
So I'm mostly looking for other peoples' experience regarding what kind of protection that does work for streaming music, if any.
03/26/2009 (10:30 am)
Quote:Martin, I wish I had some advice for you on this. While I'm a strong proponent of IP law enforcement, there's only so much you can do to secure easily extracted content such as music.
Thanks for your reply Jason, but we're not looking for anything 100% secure, just something that will not allow a basic user to just copy the files and use them. At the moment we have nothing, as TGB's performance of streaming music from a password protected zip-file is very poor.
So I'm mostly looking for other peoples' experience regarding what kind of protection that does work for streaming music, if any.
Torque 3D Owner Jason Ravencroft
Every piece of 2D art in any game is easily taken from a game, nearly every sound can be isolated, etc. It's an unfortunate fact of life. As far as I know, there is no meaningful security in OpenAL, but I'm possibly wrong. If you were to compile your own OpenAL, you could possibly fudge some MP3 files in a very specific way to keep people from casually just copying the files.