Ashley's Forum Posts

  • I'm afraid I also have to disagree with FredFredrickson: I think you missed the point of my original post. I basically agree with redpicman, it appears there's been no copyright infringement, the law is not on YoYo Games' side (as much as they or their fans may want it to be), and so their legal threats are empty.

    However, the authors have now decided to drop the project, although they still insist it's legal:

    http://gamemakerblog.com/2011/01/06/ios ... t-dropped/

    which does make me wonder, couldn't they have predicted irritation from YoYo Games? It should be obvious they'd get riled up over it so I'd have expected them to have decided beforehand to continue to the end regardless else not bother at all. Maybe the legal threats would simply mean hassle that they can't be bothered with (empty legal threats succeeding in their goal again, which would be a shame).

    Still, this doesn't appear to be totally resolved to me - these guys have given up but it's still wide open for another anonymous group to start developing and publishing a new one, legally. YoYo really should take steps to prevent this from their software ASAP.

    Well, there's my "what everyone should do" rant

  • There's no documentation I'm afraid - and it's a big binary file - but you can make deductions about what is written through the source code functions where data is saved. Apart from that, there's no overall guide, it's done programmatically. Construct 2 will use an XML format, so it will be much easier and more self-describing so tooling should be more straightforward.

  • Hey everyone,

    I like to follow news in other game-creator communities, and I noticed an interesting story going on in the Game Maker world. Some third party developers have created (as I understand it) a tool which translates a .gmk file (their save file, equivalent to a Construct .cap) in to a .ios file, which their iOS runtime can run on Apple devices. This irritates them because they wanted to sell their iOS exporter, and the tool effectively does it for free.

    You can read about it, and the official response here:

    http://gamemakerblog.com/2011/01/04/gam ... ment-92428

    The official response by Sandy Duncan basically says copyright prevents you copying any Game Maker software and that decompilation of YoYo Games software is also illegal. Legal threats are made.

    Given my experience and repeatedly confirmed knowledge that businesses tend to issue fabricated legal threats against projects that inconvenience their plans in order to shut them down, I'm naturally coming from a skeptical angle. I'm not a lawyer so what follows is simply my (probably flawed) understanding of the situation given my limited understanding of copyright law. But as far as I can see, the decompiler guys aren't doing anything wrong.

    For starters, they aren't redistributing any YoYo Games software: their tool translates a .gmk file in to a .ios file. They are not distributing the iOS runner or any part of Game Maker, just an independently written tool (as I understand it), therefore there is no copyright infringement, assuming the source code to the tool is original code. It appears the end-user can download the iOS runner for free, so the decompiler guys don't actually need to redistribute it, so at no point have they given anyone any YoYo Games software. So: no copyright infringement.

    Further, they're not actually decompiling anything, so calling them the "decompiler guys" is a bit of a misnomer. They're translating a user's .gmk file in to a .ios file. This does mean reverse-engineering the .gmk file format, but that does not count as decompiling. The decompilation legal clauses Sandy Duncan posted refer to decompiling a software binary - executable code, like the main Game Maker .exe file or the actual runner itself. The "decompiler" doesn't do this, it merely appears to be re-formatting a .gmk file in to a format consumable by the iOS runner. The .gmk file is not copyright to YoYo Games either. If I write a story in Microsoft Word and save it to .docx, that file is copyrighted to me because it's my work, not Microsoft's. Otherwise, Microsoft would own any works produced in Office! The user owns their .gmk file - it's effectively a document - therefore they are free to do what they like with it, e.g. pass it through the "iOS translator" tool. The format of a .gmk file may be a trade secret, but that does not prevent reverse-engineering. If I recall correctly, several years ago OpenOffice were reverse-engineering the then-closed closed Word .doc format, and they were allowed to do so, because unless you have patents, there's nothing stopping you - not copyright, because the file is copyright to the author, i.e. you. I don't believe YoYo Games have any patents for the .gmk file format, and it would be questionable if they did anyway, because that's getting in to anticompetitive territory (Microsoft were forced in to opening the .docx format after attempting this with the .doc format).

    In short, YoYo Games have messed up. Their exporter system is badly designed, because it makes this possible. They should have anticipated this in the design stage and mitigated it - it's a tricky problem and probably can't be completely overcome, but they could have done better. To compensate for their mistake they are making up claims about copyright infringement, because generally that works in scaring the small guys in to shutting themselves down.

    They should be re-engineering a better exporter, but it's probably cheaper to make legal threats.

    A useful analogue might be a free .doc to .pdf converter tool. Microsoft can sell a "Save as .pdf" add-on feature, but the free tool is considered a legal competitor to such a feature. Microsoft can't shut them down, only compete by making their exporter better (e.g. integrating with 'save-as' for better experience, or converting the file more accurately or with more features enabled).

    Disclaimer: as I said I'm not a lawyer and I may have an inaccurate view of the situation, so I may be completely and utterly wrong, but I felt the need to wade in because I don't like to see what I perceive to be legal mumbo jumbo used to try and shut down someone working on a legal software project! It happens too often in the world. YoYo Games, if you don't like it, respond by making better software instead!

  • Yeah, not sure why the setup doesn't work, maybe re-download and try again?

    C++ is a large, complex and sometimes needlessly difficult due to backwards compatibility issues (it's a few decades old now, obviously technology has completely changed in that time). If you pick it as your first language to learn you're going to get a baptism of fire, but then other languages will be nice and straightforward in comparison!

    You can't learn C++, or any programming language, or anything, in 21 days. You need practice and experience to be a good programmer. I don't think I could have described myself as a "good" programmer before this year (2010), and I was coding as a hobby for several years before that! Give it time, but it's cool and fun, so good luck

    Construct 0.x has to use Visual C++ because the plugin-to-IDE interface is designed with compiler specific features (i.e. badly designed). So I'm afraid you probably won't succeed in getting other compilers to work with the SDK. This is something that's going to be improved upon in C2.

  • Merry Christmas everyone, or happy holidays if you're non-Christmasly inclined

  • No, it is not a completed feature, I'm afraid.

  • Construct does not fully support translations, so I would not recommend you attempt a translation at this time. Thanks for your interest, though.

  • I would believe the "lives in danger" argument, but I can't see any evidence that this is actually the case. Who's life has been put in danger? Has anyone directly been killed or injured by leaks?

    The goal is open, honest and accountable government - a worthy cause. Some of the content may look risky, but it is worth the risk for that goal, and without any evidence, "lives in danger" just sounds like the line delivered by the governments who are scared stiff.

    As for Assange - is it important if he's a douche? I haven't judged him that way myself, but even if he's trying to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, he's still trying to do the right thing.

  • Paypal appears to be down now too... crazy

  • Wikileaks is all over the news recently. Here are some recent developments:

    • They've released a huge number of secret internal communications which are embarrassing for the US
    • Their DNS company, Amazon, Paypal, their bank, Visa and Mastercard have all bailed out on them making excuses like terms of service violations. Twitter is still hosting their feed.
    • They're mirroring their site all over the world now, and torrents of their data are spreading widely.
    • Assange has been arrested in the UK over Swedish *** crime allegations
    • 'Anonymous' have succeeded in at least temporarily shutting down the Mastercard and Visa websites (and some others AFAIK) via DDoS in 'Operation Payback'
    • They claim to have an 'insurance leak' - the most sensitive documents they have: 2GB of torrent data heavily encrypted and already spread all over the world, and if anything happens to any Wikileaks members the key is apparently to be released.

    Some possible views on this include (all of which are pretty hard to judge)

    • The leak puts lives at risk
    • The leak exposes the extent Western governments routinely hide the truth from their electorates
    • Death threats against Assange by top level politicians are tantamount to incitement to murder
    • Wikileaks cannot be shut down
    • Wikileaks is a terrorist organisation
    • Governments and corporations must change to be either totally open and transparent, or become even more secretive (and therefore less efficient)
    • The Obama administration advocated openness and transparency but still want to shut down Wikileaks
    • The US government made pro-openness and pro-internet remarks around the China Google hacking earlier this year

    I find all this really interesting just to watch as it develops, especially with the emerging cyberwarfare twist and the potential implications for future politics. What are your thoughts?

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  • Looks like an awesome project, hope it goes well

  • Hehe, you got it the wrong way round Construct came after Multimedia Fusion. In fact, myself and a couple of the other developers used to write extensions for MMF. We ended up leaving and writing our own program though.

    The copying thing has been done to death in the past, but a good example is: is OpenOffice "copying" Microsoft Word, or are they just two originally written programs that attempt to solve the same problem? Isn't it better for customers when there are two competing options which are always trying to do better? Clickteam have come up with more features (HWA, Flash export, Java export etc.) than probably in the rest of their history, since Construct appeared. Then there are other open source projects that openly aim to simply be an open source clone of another program. Construct isn't even that - the way its event sheet is displayed is quite different, for example, and there are additional features like subevents.

    Then there's other projects like Game Develop which seem strongly inspired by Construct's way of doing things. That's fine too. This whole idea of "OMFG THEY COPIED THEM!!!1111" isn't a very good way of looking at it.

    I hope this doesn't descend in to a flame war - it's been argued over before and I'll lock the post if it gets out of hand. However, Construct and MMF2 have been coexisting just fine for a couple of years now, and MMF2 remains the more popular option, so we advocates of Construct should maintain some modesty.

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  • If it only contained your backups (i.e. things you have saved somewhere else) you can just throw it away and get another one, and copy everything you had on the old one back to the new one.

    If you had things which were only on that memory stick - as in, not backed up, then...

    Congratulations!

    You have just learnt the importance of backing things up in multiple places. Always good to learn the hard way

    (If you're really stuck and desperately need that information, your best bet is to take it to a data recovery specialist. It will cost you. If you solder it yourself and don't do it properly you could just make it worse.)

  • There's a captcha on the registration form and I've tried changing it, but I guess the bots are getting pretty good. Also, I suspect actual humans are recruited in some cases to pass the captchas (i.e. semi-automatic bots) so it might not make much difference. I think we're also targeted because we run phpBB, which is a popular forum software and therefore more highly targeted.

    Do you know how to limit posting URLs until you have a certain number of posts? I hate modifying phpBB because every time I do it it's a nightmare, it doesn't seem very well designed for it. Besides, it's probably one of those things that will irritate legitimate users (e.g. signing up to post a link to a .cap with a bug or something).