Update on Progress

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

As the aliens in my campaign are stubbornly refusing to attack each other , mainly because Alpha Centauri has so many useful colony sites, I am going to temporarily comment out the piece of code that stops them claiming systems adjacent to a shared capital.

Just wanted to mention this here in case you wondered why the NPRs suddenly stopped obeying the rules

[Desdinova]

Maybe in the future, that should be a checkbox at game creation. Lots of people want to try multiple faction starts, they might want to be able to choose to have a "peaceful" campaign or not.

[Luckymoose]

A license is just a piece of paper.  Anyone that's going to try to steal it already doesn't care about what Steve says or they wouldn't be trying to steal it.

True, but it does prevent them from rehosting the source code on, for example, any git service for public participation.  This seems to be a major concern.  But for individual people tampering, there isn't really anything anyone could do about that.  The main thing is keeping the official release the only supported release, which licensing can assist in doing.  I don't think most people are bad actors on this, and those that are weren't going to listen to any dev regardless.

See my FAQ post on the subject.

hxxp: aurora2. pentarch. org/index. php?topic=10606. 0

Licencing might prevent 'commercial' theft, but that isn't really my concern.  Aurora isn't ideal territory for commercial theft anyway because it is such a niche game. 

I understand the concern and why it upsets you, but licensing is easy for you to implement and doesn't detract from your stated goals on protecting your code.  A license might only be a piece of paper, but it doesn't hurt to include it and explicitly define your intentions on keeping it closed source.   

[Bremen]

The main thing is keeping the official release the only supported release, which licensing can assist in doing.  I don't think most people are bad actors on this, and those that are weren't going to listen to any dev regardless.

No offense, but you're telling the developer he's incorrect about what the main thing about protecting his release is. The point of obfuscation is to keep them from reverse engineering it in the first place, since as already noted a license isn't going to stop them.

[Luckymoose]

No offense, but you're telling the developer he's incorrect about what the main thing about protecting his release is.  The point of obfuscation is to keep them from reverse engineering it in the first place, since as already noted a license isn't going to stop them.

Obfuscation is still required, and I didn't say don't do that.  I'm saying there are additional measures that could be taken to mitigate any bad actors.  One option does not exclude another.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

My understanding is that closed-source software such as Aurora, even when distributed for free, is governed by copyright rather than by licence. The copyright exists, whether I specify or not. For VB6, I do mention that copyright in one of the menu items and I will probably add something for C# Aurora on those lines. Licences are generally used to specify what people can do with software and are used to override the default situation of copyright.

Here is a good overview:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_license

I may look into this in more detail at some point, but I think copyright is sufficient protection from a legal standpoint. 

[QuakeIV]

Neither of those will really stop people from actively pirating it if they want to.  I do think your original intention of obfuscation is probably going to be a more effective means of preventing that.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

As the aliens in my campaign are stubbornly refusing to attack each other , mainly because Alpha Centauri has so many useful colony sites, I am going to temporarily comment out the piece of code that stops them claiming systems adjacent to a shared capital.

Just wanted to mention this here in case you wondered why the NPRs suddenly stopped obeying the rules

And that did the trick

Note the three messages from the NPRs have different text, which represent different levels of demand. Also, sensors detected that a Jovian population was transferred to the Khanate. This will only be noted for populations that are current sensor contacts when the transfer happens.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Neither of those will really stop people from actively pirating it if they want to.  I do think your original intention of obfuscation is probably going to be a more effective means of preventing that.

Yes, I agree. That is why I am going down that route. Theoretically I can sue someone on the basis of copyright, but that is not likely to happen in practical terms.

I seem to spend a lot of time with lawyers in my day job. For example, I had a conference call on Friday with lawyers from USA, Canada, UK and Malta to compare different implementations of similar legislation in different countries. Anything legal is usually complex, time-consuming and expensive. I want to restrict that to my job, not my hobby

[Hazard]

Another small step forward.

Given that NPRs accept/reject claims based on the populations they've detected this can have interesting consequences for diplomacy on the lower tech levels where sensors are more lacking. Violent confrontations over territorial disputes may be more common than at high tech levels.

I plan to add more detail to trade post-launch. For the meantime though, shipping line vessels will be ignored for the purposes of diplomacy once a trade treaty is in force. They won't count as an intrusion into alien territory and their tonnage will be ignored for relationship penalties.

Without a trade treaty, shipping line vessels are treated as any other unarmed, commercial vessel.

Will shipping line vessels avoid claimed systems from other empires automatically or do you have to forbid it manually?

[MarcAFK]

Maybe in the future, that should be a checkbox at game creation. Lots of people want to try multiple faction starts, they might want to be able to choose to have a "peaceful" campaign or not.

Seams reasonable as a stopgap before more advanced behaviour is added, but prehaps at a certian point in a conflict NPRS would claim a system adjacent to another nations home system, and if they start in adjacent systems they start off with a truce on claims, which can then deteriorate over time.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Another small step forward.

Given that NPRs accept/reject claims based on the populations they've detected this can have interesting consequences for diplomacy on the lower tech levels where sensors are more lacking. Violent confrontations over territorial disputes may be more common than at high tech levels.

I plan to add more detail to trade post-launch. For the meantime though, shipping line vessels will be ignored for the purposes of diplomacy once a trade treaty is in force. They won't count as an intrusion into alien territory and their tonnage will be ignored for relationship penalties.

Without a trade treaty, shipping line vessels are treated as any other unarmed, commercial vessel.

Will shipping line vessels avoid claimed systems from other empires automatically or do you have to forbid it manually?

Claims are based on actual populations, not detected. There was a discussion about it, probably earlier in this thread.

NPR Shipping lines will avoid space they have flagged as alien-controlled. Alien-controlled is a system-level flag for NPRs, not per alien race in the system. This is to avoid situations where the NPR has a trade treaty with one race but is causing problems with a second race in the same system. Players can be more flexible in dealing with these situations. There is no 'alien-controlled' flag for players, but they can flag a system as controlled by a specific alien race or flag it as military-restricted.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

So today I finally started looking at obfuscation. It has not gone smoothly.

Running the obfuscation itself generates warnings, such as "Could not evaluate arguments used for call.  Manual property exclusions may be required."

So I manually removed the affected methods from the obfuscation only to find a new set with this same problem. Then my anti-virus quarantined the obfuscated file before the process completed

So, this may take a while. I'll keep everyone updated.

[Inglonias]

I'm sorry, but I have to ask. Does looking at obfuscation mean that diplomacy testing is now complete, or are you simply taking a break from diplomacy testing?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I'm sorry, but I have to ask. Does looking at obfuscation mean that diplomacy testing is now complete, or are you simply taking a break from diplomacy testing?

Taking a break - but Diplomacy is close to complete.