Question Modding question

[Drybaby]

Is there a particular reason why the .mf files have been encrypted? For a game that's supposed to be surviving the Disney lawhammer through the fact that it's open source and free, that seems like a fish move.

 

[The Crew]

Is there a particular reason why the .mf files have been encrypted? For a game that's supposed to be surviving the Disney lawhammer through the fact that it's open source and free, that seems like a fish move.

The Legend of Pirates Online is not open source. We are a closed source project with all development occurring privately within our organization.

We have always and will continue to take significant steps to protect Disney's intellectual property. By encrypting the resources, we are ensuring that the downloaded game files are used only within a manner that The Legend of Pirates Online permits.

Further, The Legend of Pirates Online has spent years developing technologies that make reverse engineering our game virtually impossible. This is why we have the MF files encrypted. Additionally, the Pypperoni update in particular was a major legal improvement to the game; we removed any existence of Disney's Python code from the application, everything is now compiled into raw assembly level instructions.

We have began open sourcing some technologies that we have created for the betterment of the open source community at large. For example, the Pypperoni Python Compiler has hundreds of relevant use cases in other technological industries other than our own.

Per Pypperoni's public documentation:

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== Background ==
==============

Pypperoni was developed initially as an in-house compiler for the free online game, The Legend of Pirates Online ("TLOPO"). TLOPO, which is almost entirely written in Python, had to come up with many creative solutions for security problems intrinsic to the Python programming language, such as Python injection.

They recognized the numerous security and performance issues associated with running a production application written in Python, and thus sought out to reinvent the way we traditionally think about Python compilers. Pypperoni is the result of this vision.

Previously, TLOPO maintained their own custom and open source compiler named Nirai. Unlike Pypperoni, Nirai was designed to be specifically used alongside the Panda3D game engine. Pypperoni is the successor to Nirai and is designed to be compatible with any application written in Python 2.7.

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== Why use Pypperoni? ==
====================

Pypperoni was designed with security as a central focus. Our compiler provides you with the necessary tools to run a secure and high quality Python application.

With the removal of the interpreter, it is practically impossible to inject Python code into your program and/or recover the original source code.

Additionally, by preprocessing the bytecode there may be a performance boost in your application.

 

[The Crew]

If you are interested in viewing the original phase files as they were from Disney's 2013 client when it was in a recoverable manner, there are projects available online which contain this information.

 

[Drybaby]

While I do appreciate the response, all you're really giving me is something that makes literally no sense in legal terms. I understand that the code has turned into Argo, and thus has a fair argument to it's encryption, that's all fine and dandy.

The fact that the resources table, which is almost entirely unchanged has been modified from original open modification to encrypted, is not advised or even remotely legal.

You're not protecting Disney's intellectual property, as the IP while Disney was running it was in a modifiable state as well. All you're really managing to do at this point is lock down visual modification for whatever reason.

And if one was to simply brush that aside, you've got a game in your hands that's entirely a labor of love, and any self respecting game dev can tell you that a labor of love needs to be labored on by both dev team and community, i.e modding.

 

[Bart Gunshot]

While I do appreciate the response, all you're really giving me is something that makes literally no sense in legal terms. I understand that the code has turned into Argo, and thus has a fair argument to it's encryption, that's all fine and dandy.

The fact that the resources table, which is almost entirely unchanged has been modified from original open modification to encrypted, is not advised or even remotely legal.

You're not protecting Disney's intellectual property, as the IP while Disney was running it was in a modifiable state as well. All you're really managing to do at this point is lock down visual modification for whatever reason.

And if one was to simply brush that aside, you've got a game in your hands that's entirely a labor of love, and any self respecting game dev can tell you that a labor of love needs to be labored on by both dev team and community, i.e modding.

Even if you were able to decompile the current multifiles, modify, and recompile, you couldn't get the game to load them. Game checks their hash to 1. Make sure they're up to date, 2. Prevent collision/model modifications (collision data is in the models). POTCO did the same thing, albeit it wasn't as secure as TLOPO (there was a flaw in which you could actually quickly swap the files after the check had been done and before the game had loaded).

TLOPO has expressed interest in supporting texture packs in the past. I believe that is still on the table, they just want to do it in a way where they aren't distributing Disney's resources in an unencrypted format. I believe it's more of a precaution, that if they were ever taken to court, they have defense that they have never distributed Disney's IP in a human readable format and it was better protected than even Disney themselves did.

I'd love texture packs as well, and I'll be honest I feel like it'd be better for the assets to be accessible as they were in POTCO. I get the reasons behind it, but I also don't completely agree with it. I think the benefits are greater than the risk. But at the end of the day, we still wouldn't be able to load them unless we were given texture pack support. Much like TTR does.