I don’t know if you’ve heard of this yet, but it would be intresting to hear your thoughts on this.
http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10692
I think it explains why Outlook is bad, mkay.
Realistically, does it matter? The source is a month old, and the game won’t be released for another month at least, there could be lots of changes between the leaked and final. There might be a few more cheats and cracks earlier on for multiplayer, but equally they might be fixed quicker.
Although I heard that the entire Havok SDK was included, which would be a far bigger catch for someone looking to pirate software/code.
I don’t really have a problem with the code being out there from that perspective. People reverse engineer code anyway to exploit any potential weaknesses… just look at all the aimbots for CS.
You can’t prevent cheating by obfuscation. It only takes one person to crack it once.
The bad thing is that all of Valve’s competitors (including several people here, most likely) are going to get to look at all of their code several months before the game is released. That means it won’t be as unique when it’s released.
Then again, on the other hand, if this means more games with HL2-type graphics and physics… WOOHOO!!
Won’t change a thing.
Fine, the source got nicked. The authorities will get involved, and it’ll probably be traced back to somewhere totally outside of their jurisdiction (Korea, Russia, somewhere like that). Nothing will happen, people will start shouting, and it may even become front-page news. In time there’ll be no consequences of the theft, and it’ll be forgotten. How do I know this?
Anyone stupid enough to attempt to release a game based on the code will discover pretty quickly that however carefully they’ve disguised it, it’ll still be recognisable and they’ll quickly be stamped down. No development house would dare touch it, and no game developer, commercial or otherwise, should download it if they see it available.
It’s like the hoo-hah about Windows XP source that was thought to be leaked some time back - anyone who reads the code will not be able to prove any of their future work isn’t either based on it or influenced by it. Their ability to continue working in the industry is forever destroyed.
Don’t worry, Valve will survive it. They may even get some damages depending on other people’s actions. The worst thing about it is that Valve will probably use it as an excuse to push the release date further back. But hey, with an opportunity like that who could blame them?
I hope there will be a difference. Heard of Falcon 4.0 ? The sourcecode for that was leaked, too. After a few month someone started to hack around with it, now they have a very active comunity around that hack :).
Would be great to see something like that happening with HL2.
The other difference would be:
Valve should stop using Microcrap software ;).
sure valve will survive that…and no one would be so stupid to use the whole engine.
but what about stealing some fractions of the code? a nice effect or something? to prove that is not so easy …
i hope the post of the source would do something positive like the example i talked about (http://f4ut.frugalsworld.com/)
troggan
[quote]but what about stealing some fractions of the code? a nice effect or something? to prove that is not so easy …
[/quote]
Well, considering the size of the game and the engine behind it, I’d think that using a fraction of the code will not be so easy. Amazingly clever code snippets exist all over the place - there’s nothing really new in the writing of a 3D engine, it’s putting it all together that’s the clever bit. There’ll be too many dependencies around any single snippet of code to make any of it portable.
What was the Falcon 4.0 hack? Did it allow anything that isn’t already possible with FPS games today? Remember that HL2 will be extremely moddable. I suppose the “cheater” hacks will be the only ones that would be a problem, and that is a concern. It all depends on how cleverly they’ve written HL2 - how resistant is it to cheating? I guess time will tell!
Falcon is a Fighter Simulation. If you look at the Link i mentioned above you will see a very active comunity.
The following descrpition was found on slashdot
(http://games.slashdot.org/games/03/10/02/1547218.shtml?tid=126&tid=127&tid=156&tid=186)
Couldn’t said it better.
The game is going to slip by 4 months because of this.
http://money.cnn.com/2003/10/07/technology/vivendi_code.reut/index.htm
Er, who on earth are Vivendi, and why is their president claiming a third of the code was stolen, when Gabe Newell has already said their entire souce tree was taken?
As much as I don’t like their source wandering off on its own, it still smacks of using any old excuse to push back the date (remember that “no matter what, we’ll ship HL2 in september, and beat Doom3 to being released” stuff when announced at e3 :
)
Wouldn’t get suprised if they “helped” a bit to some imaginary hacker to get fine excuse for postponing release date. They have no backpup? ;D
[quote]Er, who on earth are Vivendi,
[/quote]
Huge French water utility company, now also a huge water utility company in the UK…and also a very big games publisher.
Basically, some years ago they had lots of cash and felt that the potential for expanding into other countries as a water utility company was pretty limited (have to wait for them to be privatized? I dunno…)…and they had all this money and clout, and the dotcom boom was starting, so Hey! Why not become a major media company? Then the chief exec could feel as important as those guys at AOL and Time Warner! Cool!
As it turns out, IIRC, the games publishing arm of the group - “Vivendi Universal Interactive” - was one of the few really successful ones that didn’t get downsized heavily when the chief exec got deposed for his “unusual” strategies.
(that’s a gross simplification - my previous post was more serious but got killed in my monthly Linux crash :(. But you can’t help wondering if the chief exec perhaps got turned down for / realised he’d never get a senior job at a media company, and realised he could get the fame and fortune he wanted by taking this boring old (but rich) company and converting it into the company he wanted - rather than doing it because it was in the shareholders’ best interests).
[quote](remember that “no matter what, we’ll ship HL2 in september, and beat Doom3 to being released” stuff when announced at e3 : )
[/quote]
I wouldn’t worry about it - Doom3 hasn’t even got a release date to miss yet… ;D
[quote]They have no backpup? ;D
[/quote]
Nothing to do with backup I’m afraid - they still have the code, but it’s been utterly compromised. It’ll be some weeks before they can even determine what they can do about it, let alone plan that work.
Good for java gaming (theoretically) because you could use it to develop your games on a more secure OS that wasn’t open to Outlook vulnerabilities and release them directly on windows…
yea, e-mailing source code is a bad idea to begin with no matter what platform your on.
We really don’t know what system the developers use, just that the HMOC was using windows. I guess your only as strong as your weakest link.
We can assume, based on the fact they are developing for windows, were started by two ex-ms employees and use DirectX very heavily they are probably developing on Windows.
Even if the hole sourcecode was leaked it would not mean too much. Except people could get tricks from the engine maybe.
Dont you think that the source would reveal the utility/map editor that the company use to create the real gameplay so that probably no one could recreate the actual half-life 2 gameplay from just the source. ( ? )
Their source and the way they integrated the Havok engine into their game is what made it so special. So, while a competitor may not be able to make HL2, they now have the understanding needed to make something comparable, using the same techniques.
-ChrisM
[quote]they now have the understanding needed to make something comparable, using the same techniques.
-ChrisM
[/quote]
Having the source doesn’t mean they understand it. For a sufficiently large project it could take more time to understand the source you were handed on a silver platter than to figure it out for yourself. I always find debugging someone else’s source more difficult than debugging my own for instance.
While there is likely some significant loss of IP that results in small boost to the competition, I don’t think it is as bad as some might think.