I remember reading something on some forum a while ago about someone having come along attempting to hack... I think DOXII, but they couldn't get into it. Is it possible to prevent a hacker from hacking your hacked hack?

Eh. It's for an FF hack, so that wouldn't work anyhow. But yeah, thank you for the info.

I guess you can always hide your name somewhere in the rom in future hacks. So if someone does hack your hack and try to pass it off as their own you can say, "theres my name" as proof it was yours originally.

If you really are concerned about your hack being 'claimed' by some lazy twit ...
I suggest making up an anti 'thief' hack tool kit then.  IE Set up a set of various 'schemes' of 'gotcha's that someone who only does stupid stuff like resource hacking to make an emulator wouldn't get.   The basic thing is to automate it.  Yes you will have to put 1.5 times the amount of work for the first time. The second it would take almost no time at all because you have a tool that allows you too somewhat protect it.
With firmware in micros such as the ARM and various other processors they have protection bits as well as encyrption bits.  There are always ways of doing such things.  The thing that makes any such scheme useable is tooling.  I would go nuts having to hand encypt a binary image.  Instead I generate a suitably random key and send the key via the shell to the encryption tool that then dumps the key and encyrpted data into the processor.  This makes the work take the same amount of time it did before to program the processor to begin with.

Automate your protection! (auto ROM condom? )

Cyb

It is possible to protect them, of course, but everything is hackable anyway. For example: my Akumajō Dracula X hack has several levels of protection (ie: compression and encryption on the anti-ebay logo, several checks on file integrity, checksum, etc...), not to mention that I took advantage of a weakness present in ALL emulators, which I used for inserting data where you aren't allowed to and made the game virtually impossible to load without my intro code (ie: if you try running the main game directly, it won't work correctly in a certain place).

I guess all these methods should be more than enough for preventing noobs and ebay lamers from hacking your translations/hacks (and sell them illegally).

FFHackster also refuses to open an FF1 ROM that has been "locked". You can undo the protection very easily in a hex editor, but I guess it's good to stop newbies fooling around, editing one or two strings, and passing your stuff as theirs.

Same here, that's why I'm inserting some many protection routines in my hacks (not to mention people using my work without asking for permission >_<").

I find it rather ironic and completely hypocritical that hackers complain/worry about people hacking their work.  Not to mention that is the completely opposite of what the hacking community should be standing for.  IE:  the sharing and free distribution of games/information.  I can't help but wonder what is going through people's minds when they take information found by others, tools built by others, and use them to modify a game made by others -- then turn around and pass it out with fears of it being subjected to the same treatment.

ROM hacking has come as far as it has only because people have been willing to share and contribute their work towards others' goals.  If you can't share that concept --- if you can only take and not give --- you're not going to get any of my sympathy  =P



That was actually my concern when I implimented the ghetto "protection" feature in Hackster (hence the message you get when you try to open a "protected" ROM).  As has been mentioned it's easily bypassable.

Though my concern for that now isn't near what it was in the past.  If people have more fun cheating -- let 'em cheat!  If I could go back in time I'd probably remove that protection thing.


I actually hear about this concern a lot.  In fact I remember getting into a debate with someone on acmlm's who considered this a serious problem.  But really....  how often does this happen?  Has it ever happened?  I can't recall a single time, myself.  And even if it were to happen, ROM hacking circles would flood with gossip and the "thief" would probably be alienated as a result.

I just don't see this as a reasonable concern.  Odds are better that you'll get hit by a bus than someone will steal your hack.


</somewhat of a tangent post>