Update on Progress

[Desdinova]

What tool are you using? It looks like there are many obfuscation tools for .net, both free and commercial. Maybe it's just a matter of finding the right tool.

An alternative would be to move the non-trivial code into a .dll written in a not easily-decompiled language like C++, but that would take a lot of time.

[Planetfall]

How many spines do these ships have?

I always imagined a spinal mount is like a HALO Mac cannon or the Gau-8 in the A-10.  You designed the craft around the weapon not vice versa.

I think if you want more than ONE spinal-mount weapon, your ship should be a catamaran or even trimaran design (which could be a simple tech line).

Spreading the weapons farther apart by mounting them on separate ship sections would increase the problems from recoil that a spinal mount is trying to solve.  It results in more torque turning the ship if they do not fire in synce and it concentrates the force into the handul of struts connecting each segment, making the ship more likely to snap in two.  It also makes the ship have far more surface area and thus need more armor. 

[Bughunter]

What tool are you using? It looks like there are many obfuscation tools for .net, both free and commercial. Maybe it's just a matter of finding the right tool.

I'm no obfuscation expert, but he should probably not answer that. When doing security through obscurity, add as many layers of obscurity as possible

[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.

Making some progress. The virus problem seems to be because I tried to obfuscate an already obfuscated file. I am new to this

The rest is due to problems with reflection. The obfuscation renames fields so if I happen to use reflection and it depends on a renamed field, there is a problem.

There is an option to exclude fields from renaming, but for some reason it is ignoring the exclusions. Frustrating.

[joansam]

The whole obfuscation effort seems wrongheaded to me - if the concern is modders making the game quite different, that wouldn’t bother me as a creator. Whereas if the concern is someone else taking the Aurora code and trying to make a profit from it, I think it’s A) extremely, vanishingly unlikely, and B) quite easily handled legally by just sticking up a fair use notice. I also think obfuscation will hurt bold modding projects a lot.

But you’ve made Aurora a fantastic game, Steve, and it’s yours to do what you want with it. Wishing you the best of luck with final release steps, including obfuscation.

Edited to avoid cluttering the thread: Yeah, I'm familiar with Steve's reasoning. I just frankly don't understand where it comes from. The concern about bug reports from modded games taking up his time seems very minor, and easily fixed with a "no modded games" notice on the bug report page. As for the broader concern with preventing people from altering the game in any major way...I don't get it. The closest thing it reminds me of is Lucasfilm shutting down this KOTOR fan remake: https://kotaku.com/star-wars-kotor-fan-remake-shutting-down-after-cease-a-1829720602
It's like...why would someone ever do this? In their case it was fear of losing money...I understand it but I think it makes everyone else worse off. Aren't we all better off when people can make more fun things and put them out into the world? Anyway, that's my two cents. Again, it's Steve's game and I don't endorse anyone trying to break the obfuscation against his wishes.

[Desdinova]

The whole obfuscation effort seems wrongheaded to me - if the concern is modders making the game quite different, that wouldn’t bother me as a creator. Whereas if the concern is someone else taking the Aurora code and trying to make a profit from it, I think it’s A) extremely, vanishingly unlikely, and B) quite easily handled legally by just sticking up a fair use notice. I also think obfuscation will hurt bold modding projects a lot.

But you’ve made Aurora a fantastic game, Steve, and it’s yours to do what you want with it. Wishing you the best of luck with final release steps, including obfuscation.

Steve's already made it clear he doesn't want to endorse 'bold modding projects'. I really wish people would give it a rest before Steve decides to take his ball and go home.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

The whole obfuscation effort seems wrongheaded to me - if the concern is modders making the game quite different, that wouldn’t bother me as a creator. Whereas if the concern is someone else taking the Aurora code and trying to make a profit from it, I think it’s A) extremely, vanishingly unlikely, and B) quite easily handled legally by just sticking up a fair use notice. I also think obfuscation will hurt bold modding projects a lot.

But you’ve made Aurora a fantastic game, Steve, and it’s yours to do what you want with it. Wishing you the best of luck with final release steps, including obfuscation.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10606.0

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I am making progress with obfuscation. I was aware Reflection was an issue but I didn't realise just how much I used it. Rather than trying to flag everything in the obfuscation program setup, I've been adding code to Aurora to tell the obfuscation which parts to ignore. This is mainly DisplayMember for data binding and using typeof with enums.

An obfuscated build is now launching and running turns from the installation directory. I'll test that in the next day or two to find anything obvious but I am probably going to miss something so there may be some obfuscation-related bugs (which will either cause object missing errors or put weird data into a dropdown). It should get sorted fairly quickly though.

BTW I checked it in NET Reflector and it looks pretty horrible. I wouldn't know where to start

[Demonides]

what is the probability that it will be release on Friday 

[Erik L]

It's like Schrödinger's Release. Until it is released, it is both ready and not ready to be released.

[Inglonias]

Yeah, at some point in every software project you start to gain a new appreciation for Zeno's Paradox.

[Aquilae]

To play or not to play on friday, that's the question!

[littleWolf]

To play or not to play on friday, that's the question!

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here...

[Deutschbag]

fraaaakk I can't handle the hype. This quarantine won't be so bad once I have my grubby little hands on C#.

[Aquilae]

To play or not to play on friday, that's the question!

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. . .

good that i am a hopeful person with persistence