A question regarding pictures (and hi there~)

[Dark_Koji]

Hi fellow rpg designers and makers,
I am 'Dark Koji', a rpgmaker newbie, as you may notice. I am also an artist-in-training, so if I ever work on a rpg project, it may end up being more 'graphical' than 'fun'...

Anyway, pardon my ignorance if this was answered many times (I checked through the first few pages of my search, but no luck there). And I hope this is in the correct forum.

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Now for my question.. I was wondering if there is;
an existing way to actually hide pictures in your game folder (be it avatar, icon, animation etc) when you submit a completed-game?
Or at least hide it from the player outside-game?
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I asked this because I noticed published work have all resources chuck in their respective folders, and players; like me, can just easily access them and take a peek at what's inside. Curious, I know, but killer-spoilers too.

Therefore I want to know if there is a way around this. Like locking cgs, sprites and not letting players access them from outside the game. Or a complete compilation of the game that turn it into a one-piece .exe file?
I am also using Postality-Knight version, if that matters.

Thank you for reading this, and please do post, if you have any comments to this.

[ahref]

hmm i think it would be called a security system i would also like to see if one of these exists

[monster-doog]

I don't think you can hide pictures.

[zxm]

With XP, anything can be done. Someone will give you an answer.

[gyromon]

There is such a thing, and Sorry I don't have a link so just do a web search.
It's called an Encrypter and there are encrypters that will excrypt your entire game including all resources and of course yes it will still play.

[thatsmypie]

If you are using RPG Maker XP then when you compile your gamedisc you get the option the encrypt game data, this way only audio files are viewable.

I though someone would have been clever enough to have pointed this out already!  :whoa:

[gyromon]

I assumed he is not using xp because he seems smart and probbably would not have asked somthing so obvious.

[Dark_Koji]

Thank you everyone for your help! It does appear to be a very simple task in the end. Seems like I was being over-concerned about the situation...

I have not tried compiling a game yet, so I didn't know there was such an option. Thank you all once again. Problem solved~  :^^:

[gyromon]

Ok, maybe i overestimated :roll:

[ahref]

ahh i wouldnt know that because the pk edition hasnt translated the exe file thats created when you compile so it makes no sense

any other ways to do it

[Zeriab]

ahh i wouldnt know that because the pk edition hasnt translated the exe file thats created when you compile so it makes no sense

any other ways to do it

Using the encrypt option when creating a game-disk is the best, as you encrypt all your data into a singly file. It will be invisible from outsiders, while being accessible to the game.
There may be people that could decrypt your data and access it, but there's really no reason trying to hide your pictures from them unless you want to consider some kind of streaming solution from the game to a server on the net. Even then they could just leech it from the video output.

Besides the obvious way (when creating a game-disk) to select properties and check hide, but this is not a very good way as it is easily spotted.

Your could encrypt the pictures with a third-party encryption-mechanism. You would also have to implement it into your game. This would however not hide the files, just make them 'unreadable'.

If you really want to cling to stenography you could try using something called ADS (Alternate Data Streams), but I wouldn't recommend using that as some operating systems doesn't support ADS. They will just remove the data. (More exactly 'not copy the ADS with the rest')
Also ADS have some exploitation issues so I won't go into details about it.
Don't use them unless you're desperate.


While there are other ways to do it the easiest by far is just using the inbuilt encryption. (I have not covered all the ways as I don't know all of them)

[Dalton]

All I ever found the in-game encryption did was simply add 400 kbs and when you install it theres no game.rxdata :/