Theft Prevention
February 21st, 2008 - filed under ProgrammingOne of the biggest challenges Flash developers must face is just how easy it is for people to steal your source code. SWF files include basically your complete source code, sure there are no comments included, but good programming is self documenting. Unfortunately all your variable & function names are kept intact. This means that any schmo could come along and get the complete source code to Jetpack, and create their own version from my hard work. This isn’t simple software piracy, it’s closer to actual theft, where someone else is profiting from your work. Even if the hacked game is not sold, there is revenue from ads, or just increased site traffic. A copyright helps, but still there are many examples of flash games being reskinned, and published as original works.
This is why I haven’t released any flash demos yet, I’m trying to find a resolution to this problem before releasing a simple demo that contains my entire source code. There are tools out there to encrypt ActionScript, but none of them work with ActionScript 3 yet – and from what I understand, a separate tool is needed to obscure variable names, a feature that is very important to protecting code.
Maybe this issue is why there are very few large games created for Flash? Still, I intend to continue on this path, at least for this game.
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February 21st, 2008 at 3:13 pm
well thats nice…just thought i should show my support some more with a comment
February 21st, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Hi. I just tried to call you on the number in your whois information, and left a message with my contact information. I thought I’d leave it here too for easier reference
February 24th, 2008 at 2:20 am
I recommend creating a Quality Assurance or Beta Test team made up of trusted, knowledgeable gamers. I’ll leave the criteria for inclusion up to you, but I certainly volunteer to participate in testing.
February 24th, 2008 at 8:47 am
I’m going to hold off on posting any working examples until an SWF encryption program comes out that supports ActionScript 3. It should be in the next month.
February 24th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
so ur positive this program WILL come out? (in the next month)
March 17th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Hey Adam. Nice to see you’re up and going on Jetpack 2! This game is gonna be lots of fun, I just know it……can’t wait!!!
March 17th, 2008 at 7:56 am
Hey Doug, good to see you! Yes I can’t wait to start posting some of the technology demo’s I’ve been working on.
If you remember the credits screen, Doug made a lot of the tougher levels in the original Jetpack.
March 17th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
lol, i actually got tired of jetpack because i could hardly get anywhere. i only got through maybe 10 or 20 levels at most. so i made my own and went to random levels and downloaded from adeptsoftware
June 1st, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Whoever wants to steal source code should be damned to hell.
October 18th, 2008 at 10:54 am
If it makes you feel better, windows XP destroyed my source code for a game I was making last year. When I decompiled my own flash game to get the source back, it was completely unusable.
October 18th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Wow that sucks. I lost a month of work once because I didn’t back up and my hard drive failed catastrophically.
January 18th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Jetpack 2 is going to be rewritten in freakin’ FLASH!?
Good god! The world is going mad!
January 31st, 2009 at 12:52 pm
@Tom: whats so bad about flash? well its no more proprietary than windows xp / vista wich you are required to have for most of the games that are released nowadays.
flash has made a BIG jump with introducing actionscript 3, wich is now JIT compiled – hence very very fast as compared with older flash versions.
if flash had any kind of 3d graphics support i would go so far as to say it would be the perfect platform for browser / online games.
so – go on! do the jetpack HD in flash! fantastic !!
February 26th, 2009 at 1:17 am
Hi Adam,
I checked my old email account today (the with a name that I totally loved when I was smaller but cant bear to name it now because of how kiddish it sounds) and was really surprised to see an email from you and was thrilled to read about Jetpack’s version 2 finally coming out, and that too as a flash game… I am totally thrilled…
Just FYI, I was one of the guys who made the PRA series and your mail prompted me to re-download Jetpack and also the pack that I made then with my friends… It was soooo nostalgic!!!
Anyways, thanks for your email!!! Really looking forward to the flash version of jetpack!!! Count me in if you’re looking for Beta testers… Would really loooove to do it!!!
January 29th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Hi. I just tried to call you on the number in your whois information, and left a message with my contact information. I thought I'd leave it here too for easier reference