Password Protect a Mission

[apolloace]

Hi,

 

Is there any way one can Password Protect a Mission,

so that others will be able to only play & not be able to edit the mission,

except for the mission designer.

 

Edited February 21, 2016 by apolloace
spell check

[apolloace]

Anyone??

[159th_Falcon]

Nope, not possible. Though there is a way to effectively prevent others from editing your mission.

Not sure how it went exactly but it had to do whit the fact that the mission editor and the actual client use separate co-ordinates for unit placement.

 

So after making the mission, you could change all ME co-ordiantes of all units to be the same, making it damn near impossible to effectively edit the mision.

 

Mind you though, this was over 3 or 4 years ago, no idea if this has changed.

 

***EDIT***

Just had a look in a recent mission file, doesn't seem to be possible anymore.

 

***EDIT2***

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=727486#post727486

As i said, used to be possible, links are broken though and I'm pretty sure that the way of protecting the mission doesn't work anymore.

(mission editor co-ordiantes were X and Y, ingame co-ordiantes were Lat, Long, just change the X-Y ones to 0

to let all units show up in the same place of the map in the editor but not ingame. though, current missions only have the X, Y co-ordinate system)

Edited February 21, 2016 by 159th_Falcon

[FSFIan]

With enough determination, you might find a way to mess up the mission in a way that trips up the mission editor but not the actual game. But any method you can possibly come up with can be countered by an equally determined attacker. In the end, all of the data you need to play the mission needs to be there, and that means that you can use it to recreate all of the data you need to edit the mission.

 

Say the trick mentioned in the post above still worked -- yes, it would prevent people from casually editing your mission file, but it's easy enough to inject a small script into the running mission and use the DCS scripting engine to reconstruct that information.

 

Even if you do not publish the mission but instead only host it on your own MP server, anyone who joins that mission can save a track file and easily recover the mission data from that.

 

The best you could do is to implement a significant portion of your mission (e.g. spawning of key units) as a Lua script and obfuscate the hell out of that code.

 

My recommendation would be not to bother with it and allow other mission designers look at how you did things and learn from it.

[Pikey]

With the advent of some server side stuff now in the API, there are elements of the "mission" you can have not accessible, but not the actual miz file. Obfuscating the LUA scripts will only last so long, but you can make it so the unique parts of your mission are so specific that the effort cannot be used in other missions. I'm not sure how the payware campaigns work, but I assume theres some to do with the protection system and thats going to be expensive/under license.

 

Ultimately if it's a public server you've made it public.

[Grimes]

Nope, not possible. Though there is a way to effectively prevent others from editing your mission.

Not sure how it went exactly but it had to do whit the fact that the mission editor and the actual client use separate co-ordinates for unit placement.

 

So after making the mission, you could change all ME co-ordiantes of all units to be the same, making it damn near impossible to effectively edit the mision.

 

Mind you though, this was over 3 or 4 years ago, no idea if this has changed.

 

That was only valid with Black Shark 1/FC2 missions. I believe it was removed at the release of A-10C due to its numerous mission editor and miz file changes. It really didn't make a whole lot of sense to have two sets of coordinates, one for the game and the other for the mission editor representing the same data.

 

I'm not sure how the payware campaigns work, but I assume theres some to do with the protection system and thats going to be expensive/under license.

 

It puts all of the triggers into a dll, sort of like how starforce protected modules work. The rest of the mission is accessible and you can probably add/remove objects around to your hearts content. But obviously you can't see or access the triggers so it is likely something will break by making changes. Without the triggers a mission loses much of its content.

 

Ian;2686762']My recommendation would be not to bother with it and allow other mission designers look at how you did things and learn from it.

 

Thats been my view on it for a while now. A miz is just an archive file with text files within. IMO the only argument for protecting missions is to protect "authorship" and to give credit where credit is due for whoever made a given mission. Though I honestly can't recall a time when anyone has ever tried to pass someone else's work off as their own for a DCS mission.

[St3v3f]

At one point I had a mission which relied mainly on scripting logic. To protect it, I edited one of the game .lua's and added a variable that was accessible by the scripting engine. So I had my script check for the presence of said variable and if it wasn't found, it stopped working which made the mission pointless.

Then I removed all the line breaks in the script code to obfuscate it and make it less readable.

 

But as with all copy protections, it's only meant to be broken :)

[apolloace]

Thanks to everyone for their comments & opinions!

 

Originally Posted by [FSF]Ian

My recommendation would be not to bother with it and allow other mission designers look at how you did things and learn from it.

 

Thats been my view on it for a while now.

 

I think this is the way to go. :)

 

[BaD CrC]

That's a good question. Now you have campaigns DLCs, there is no way to protect the work of paid missions creators?

[Grimes]

That's a good question. Now you have campaigns DLCs, there is no way to protect the work of paid missions creators?

 

The same system works with individual missions I think. You just have to go through ED to use it. I know Sabre-TLA uses something with his Maple Flag content, but I don't know if its a protection of the file to unlock it and have full access or if its like EDs where you have full access to everything except for one critical part that is just missing/hidden.

[Wrecking Crew]

AFAIK, the protected missions/campaigns are all single player; a multiplayer mission cannot be protected. I believe the protected ones are compiled like a DCS module, and have to be installed like a module.

 

WC

[pepin1234]

I think is not fair for talented mission designer be overwrited by other less talented mission designer. The worst in this case the people that copy and edit the mission make some modification to change the author sign to his own name.

 

Every Multiplayer mission we play at the same time we get the whole mission via track, that's true. Also we can open the track and see how is made and design the whole mission, this is ok because we can see how is made the whole mission. So that mean we don't need edit the mission to know how have been made. Edition should not be allowed for a different mission editor than the original designer that choose the edit-right case previously.

 

This encrypted option for mission editor edit-right should be a must have for choice if wanted the mission designer.

 

If ED make an edit-right for mission editor will be welcome for lot of mission creator. We always have the option to see how was designed the mission just opening and see into the mission but not modifying the original design.

 

I see there two main problems:

 

1- We can run a track and see all the actions only if we got to edit the track previously. To solve this, Something should be modified by ED to allow a different play for "edit-right" restrictions.

 

The best way to treat this limitation is making some modification for track player and only allow the track player make some modification by itself for external views and Map option for every mission, BUT never let a second copy automatically for the edit-right tracks (to protect the original design of the mission).

 

With this you get watch all the track to learn every tactic and also you protect the mission designer rights.

 

2- the second problem is make a conversion from .trk to .miz

 

Save from .trk to .miz should not be taken like a modification/edition by the software itself. The only thing we get with this conversion is take the whole mission to play again by our team or whatever. This is nice and don't affect the edition rights. Replay a MP mission doesn't mean we modify the mission.

 

So to solve this limitation the mission editor should have the option to save and converting a .trk to .miz everytime we like, but never allow a conversion with previous modification by own mission editor.

Edited July 19, 2016 by pepin1234

[Ramsay]

I think is not fair for talented mission designer be overwrited by other less talented mission designer. The worst in this case the people that copy and edit the mission make some modification to change the author sign to his own name.

I have to disagree.

 

Maintenance

There are many examples of past missions/scripts no longer supported by the original author and reworked for 1.5.4, etc.

 

Sometimes these 'updates' improve on the original, sometimes they don't, as long as they give credit to the original work/have permission for public distribution there shouldn't be an issue.

 

Bad accreditation is bad but derived works do need to identify themselves differently to avoid confusion with the original.

 

DLC

Paid DLC is an exception of course but even there, copy protection for it's own sake should be avoided e.g. I'm considering the F-86/MiG-15 campaign but I'll only get a lot of use out of it if I can take the original missions and substitute L-39's in a MP environment.

 

The FC3 Su-25A Cold War Warrior missions are a great example, I've never flown the campaign as intended but used them as a base to fly the Su-25T with a friend before they spent money on DCS.

 

Content

There has been a tendency to release high quality modules (L-39, F-5E,etc.) with little SP content. The ability to quickly substitute a new aircraft in a old mission makes this less of an issue.

 

For example on buying the Gazelle, I put it in a user made Huey mission and practiced lots CTLD cargo loading to quickly compare it to the Huey and decide if it would make a comparable trainer, and so buy a second copy.

 

Free Movement of Knowledge

The little I know of mission design and .lua scripting, comes from studying other peoples missions and is probably the best way to learn the basics.

 

Obfuscating knowledge is never a good idea and keeps everyone dumb rather than improving on best practice, etc.

[pepin1234]

I have to disagree.

 

Maintenance

There are many examples of past missions/scripts no longer supported by the original author and reworked for 1.5.4, etc.

 

Sometimes these 'updates' improve on the original, sometimes they don't, as long as they give credit to the original work/have permission for public distribution there shouldn't be an issue.

 

Bad accreditation is bad but derived works do need to identify themselves differently to avoid confusion with the original.

 

That's correct. But this is easy to fix. ED can make a kind of expiration date option for the edit-right. Could be 3 option, 3,6,12 months. After this time the edit-right is free. Also can be the option to never share the edit-rights. Update the internal code of a .miz does not mean modify the mission. When you just open the .miz could be an auto update for new code.

 

 

DLC

Paid DLC is an exception of course but even there, copy protection for it's own sake should be avoided e.g. I'm considering the F-86/MiG-15 campaign but I'll only get a lot of use out of it if I can take the original missions and substitute L-39's in a MP environment.

 

The FC3 Su-25A Cold War Warrior missions are a great example, I've never flown the campaign as intended but used them as a base to fly the Su-25T with a friend before they spent money on DCS.

 

Free Movement of Knowledge

The little I know of mission design and .lua scripting, comes from studying other peoples missions and is probably the best way to learn the basics.

 

Obfuscating knowledge is never a good idea and keeps everyone dumb rather than improving on best practice, etc.

 

Read again. You don't need edit or modify a mission to know how work a trigger or a script.

 

Every Multiplayer mission we play at the same time we get the whole mission via track, that's true. Also we can open the track and see how is made and design the whole mission, this is ok because we can see how is made the whole mission. So that mean we don't need edit the mission to know how have been made. Edition should not be allowed for a different mission editor than the original designer that choose the edit-right case previously.

 

This encrypted option for mission editor edit-right should be a must have for choice if wanted the mission designer.

 

If ED make an edit-right for mission editor will be welcome for lot of mission creator. We always have the option to see how was designed the mission just opening and see into the mission but not modifying the original design.

 

I see there two main problems:

 

1- We can run a track and see all the actions only if we got to edit the track previously. To solve this, Something should be modified by ED to allow a different play for "edit-right" restrictions.

 

The best way to treat this limitation is making some modification for track player and only allow the track player make some modification by itself for external views and Map option for every mission, BUT never let a second copy automatically for the edit-right tracks (to protect the original design of the mission).

 

With this you get watch all the track to learn every tactic and also you protect the mission designer rights.

 

2- the second problem is make a conversion from .trk to .miz

 

Save from .trk to .miz should not be taken like a modification/edition by the software itself. The only thing we get with this conversion is take the whole mission to play again by our team or whatever. This is nice and don't affect the edition rights. Replay a MP mission doesn't mean we modify the mission.

 

So to solve this limitation the mission editor should have the option to save and converting a .trk to .miz everytime we like, but never allow a conversion with previous modification by own mission editor.

Edited July 19, 2016 by pepin1234

[Ramsay]

Imagine mission lock on EVERY mission/script you didn't author yourself.

 

You buy the F-5E, day one release, if Belsimtek hasn't included a mission type you want, you'll need to spend the first days off ownership building missions from scratch and the newbie learning curve for the ME has just increased exponentially.

 

If this password protection is to "protect" cherished server missions/scripts then play privately with a password and people you trust.

 

Don't ask ED to add StarForce protection to content I've paid for and might want or need to modify later for my own use.

[pepin1234]

Don't ask ED to add StarForce protection to content I've paid for and might want or need to modify later for my own use.

 

No, you wrong. You pay for a module and the whole software, including the Mission Editor. This mission editor is made for you build your own missions. At this moment you have the ability to modify mission from 3Th persons without previous ask if they want you use their work already made, their hours and ideas to you believe you are paying for the work of every mission designer in this community. That's why this thread...

 

I told you already. You don't need modify a .miz to know how work the triggers and scripts. Just opening is enough to look into the mission complexity. But seem you don't want only look into to do by yourself the job, what you like is take the whole mission on your control. The problem here, not all mission designer agree with your actions.

 

And nobody here is asking for starforce protection, so please...

[Grimes]

You are asking for a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. Suffice to say its rare for people to modify a mission in a major way, especially if the author puts in a simple request for them not to. Its even rarer for them to go out of their way and strip any mention of authorship out of said mission and replacing it with their own. Taking it further I don't believe anyone has ever taken a mission made by someone else and uploaded it as their own work.

 

Just because something can happen doesn't mean it will happen.

[feefifofum]

Even if someone had claimed credit for another's work, it's a crappy thing to do but doesn't really hurt anyone outside of the context of paid DLC, which is already protected...

 

I have made significant edits to many of the user created MP missions my VFS uses, either to incorporate additional airframes or add functionality (CTLD/CSAR/etc.) that the original designer didn’t include. Being unable to edit keeps people from breaking your mission, sure, but it also severely limits the content and ultimately adds to the mission creator's workload when the feature requests start rolling in frpm the community who can no longer make simple changes themselves.

 

I think one of the things that makes this community thrive is that we can all learn from and build on each other's work. Adding restrictions like you speak of would do more harm than good in my opinion.

[Foka1]

I bring you guys new side of this..

 

I want to create campaign for my squadron a PvE one.

 

So my squadron is rather free of any mandatory events so dynamic campaign with my edits is a way to go.

 

For instance I do recon mission, place enemy AI base "somewhere"... Then I'm telling my guys look before attack we need recon find enemy base make screenshots from altitude so we can plan attack. Then I say which zone they need to scan.

 

That way everyone can participate in any time by loading .miz file and try to do recon flight in marked area to find enemy base.

 

BUT I CAN'T PROTECT mission FILE!! So fun will be spoiled if one of the guys just open mission in editor and see all locations null sweat!

 

Or for instance if you have student and you give him a task with same distributed .miz file for him to work with...

 

Stop this stupid argument. THERE SHOULD BE A WAY TO PROTECT CONTENTS OF .MIZ FILE THAT YOU'VE CREATED PERIOD.

 

Password protected .miz files already was implemented in lock on!

Edited December 29, 2016 by P61

[Pikey]

I don't see the issue LazzySeal, you want random people to provide recon shots and you are concerned they will find the target and know where it is?

 

The idea of recon as a flavour item for a breifing is that people share the pictures and work together for the briefing for the next phase. If you give the task to someone that is going to edit the mission to put his plane right over the target then take pictures, why would anyone else care that he wrecked his flying experience, all you want are the pictures, for which you make the briefing from?

 

If you have to do this recon activity offline, AND you can't trust at least one person, AND you really really really need them to go through the entire mission properly, unsupervised, then give them all seperate missions with different locations and pick one at random for the live mission together.

 

If there is no live mission together, there's no point in sharing the recon and the fun that real pictures bring, so cheating has no impact.

 

 

I bring you guys new side of this..

 

I want to create campaign for my squadron a PvE one.

 

So my squadron is rather free of any mandatory events so dynamic campaign with my edits is a way to go.

 

For instance I do recon mission, place enemy AI base "somewhere"... Then I'm telling my guys look before attack we need recon find enemy base make screenshots from altitude so we can plan attack. Then I say which zone they need to scan.

 

That way everyone can participate in any time by loading .miz file and try to do recon flight in marked area to find enemy base.

 

BUT I CAN'T PROTECT mission FILE!! So fun will be spoiled if one of the guys just open mission in editor and see all locations null sweat!

 

Or for instance if you have student and you give him a task with same distributed .miz file for him to work with...

 

Stop this stupid argument. THERE SHOULD BE A WAY TO PROTECT CONTENTS OF .MIZ FILE THAT YOU'VE CREATED PERIOD.

 

Password protected .miz files already was implemented in lock on!

[Foka1]

I don't see the issue LazzySeal, you want random people to provide recon shots and you are concerned they will find the target and know where it is?

 

The idea of recon as a flavour item for a breifing is that people share the pictures and work together for the briefing for the next phase. If you give the task to someone that is going to edit the mission to put his plane right over the target then take pictures, why would anyone else care that he wrecked his flying experience, all you want are the pictures, for which you make the briefing from?

 

If you have to do this recon activity offline, AND you can't trust at least one person, AND you really really really need them to go through the entire mission properly, unsupervised, then give them all seperate missions with different locations and pick one at random for the live mission together.

 

If there is no live mission together, there's no point in sharing the recon and the fun that real pictures bring, so cheating has no impact.

 

Its simple.. There is given area... Mission is recon on that area (it could be 100 Km radius for instance in mountains) and find enemy outpost.. purpose of mission is flytime and VFR and of course to stall guys while I'm making next one..

 

Squad is fluid, people come, people quit.. Not all of them I can trust to not check mission file, so then specifically fly to that place and provide me tacview with result later (and screenshots ofcourse).

 

I just made one example, there is others I'm sure. Mostly when training involved you need to lock things and current DCS tools can't provide that...

[shagrat]

As according to the EULA every mission created with the mission editor without a separate agreement (aka contract) is a derivate work produced with EDs work/tools (aka mission editor, scripting engine) "your" mission is basically not yours in terms of copyright, selling and likely protection.

If you require a protection, like with a DLC campaign, you should think about applying for a contract.

But honestly, do we really need a way to spoil each and every mission with a protection?

As others said, most people learn tons, from understanding the triggers used in other peoples missions.

I have dozens of freely distributed missions, where I changed some details like planes, enemy composition etc. to meet my preferences and get the most out of DCS.

 

Sometimes I just fixed things that were broken, or enhanced parts of the mission to fit for our weekly multiplayer fun.

 

I can see the "fear" of some A-hole deleting the credits and impose as the creator of a mission, yet I have never seen such a thing. On the contrary, most people explicitly credit everyone who helped in mission building, scripts used and what not.

It is generally a very nice community around DCS.

 

If someone wants to spoil his PvE mission by "peaking" into the mission he is mostly ruining his own fun. So why bother and complicate things?

[DarkFire]

I vaguely remember a time when password protecting missions was possible. Su-27 SCE? Flanker 2.0 possibly? Somewhere around that sort of time. It was a feature that nobody used, even amongst the thriving MP / mission writing community of 20 years ago. I guess because nobody used the feature it was removed.

 

Can't say I've ever since thought it would be a necessary feature to bring back.

[Pikey]

It's not as simple as you think, LazzySeal, sorry to be so disagreeable but you have to consider a larger picture than your own circumstances mate :).

DCS has a primary functionality that Lockon never had in terms of its ability to export data mid mission and via tracks. This data export additionally allows most full modules on client aircraft to export things, so that you can review flight performance. However it is the HOST SERVER that decides the level of export and sets the difficulty and many other things. You CANNOT set what a server decides in a mission file and have it honoured by export, you have to assume that the person running the mission has COMPLETE control over the mission design. If you cannot set server/client options as the mission host, you cannot actually function running a mission. How would I deny you, with a mission only, to run your own DCS options, that you couldnt simply change in DCS anyway? Of course implementing this control, can simply be circumvented like we see people cheat online by putting weapons on their client that didnt exist in the mission, that's all the proof you need to see that making a mission and passwording it will have no effect on your ultimate goal. As a mission host, all control has to be with the hosts server. Even when dedicated server and before that exists.

 

Or to put it another way, simply passwording the mission file would not stop what you want, you could run the mission in easy mode, run the mission with Tacview export, run the mission with no integrity checks, generally, you run the mission, you must have control over it. It's like expecting people not to run their computer as administrator, someone has to be administrator, Windows tried this crap by running things with UAC, but does it really stop people? Does it? Nope. Virus's exist to exploit it, the same as cheaters exist to exploit games.

 

Besides, and here is the most practical part of the explanation...Would DCS honestly get a usefully designed method done outside of DLC that would work, in time for you to get a solution for your squadron? Would it?

 

Much better to concentrate efforts in things you CAN change, than things you can't, I've seen people fight DCS for years, the sooner you give up and work around the problem with your own solution, the easier and less stressful time you have!

 

There's ways you can work around your problem, passwording isn't one of them, let it go!

Its simple.. There is given area... Mission is recon on that area (it could be 100 Km radius for instance in mountains) and find enemy outpost.. purpose of mission is flytime and VFR and of course to stall guys while I'm making next one..

 

Squad is fluid, people come, people quit.. Not all of them I can trust to not check mission file, so then specifically fly to that place and provide me tacview with result later (and screenshots ofcourse).

 

I just made one example, there is others I'm sure. Mostly when training involved you need to lock things and current DCS tools can't provide that...

[shagrat]

It's not as simple as you think, LazzySeal, sorry to be so disagreeable but you have to consider a larger picture than your own circumstances mate :).

DCS has a primary functionality that Lockon never had in terms of its ability to export data mid mission and via tracks. This data export additionally allows most full modules on client aircraft to export things, so that you can review flight performance. However it is the HOST SERVER that decides the level of export and sets the difficulty and many other things. You CANNOT set what a server decides in a mission file and have it honoured by export, you have to assume that the person running the mission has COMPLETE control over the mission design. If you cannot set server/client options as the mission host, you cannot actually function running a mission. How would I deny you, with a mission only, to run your own DCS options, that you couldnt simply change in DCS anyway? Of course implementing this control, can simply be circumvented like we see people cheat online by putting weapons on their client that didnt exist in the mission, that's all the proof you need to see that making a mission and passwording it will have no effect on your ultimate goal. As a mission host, all control has to be with the hosts server. Even when dedicated server and before that exists.

 

Or to put it another way, simply passwording the mission file would not stop what you want, you could run the mission in easy mode, run the mission with Tacview export, run the mission with no integrity checks, generally, you run the mission, you must have control over it. It's like expecting people not to run their computer as administrator, someone has to be administrator, Windows tried this crap by running things with UAC, but does it really stop people? Does it? Nope. Virus's exist to exploit it, the same as cheaters exist to exploit games.

 

Besides, and here is the most practical part of the explanation...Would DCS honestly get a usefully designed method done outside of DLC that would work, in time for you to get a solution for your squadron? Would it?

 

Much better to concentrate efforts in things you CAN change, than things you can't, I've seen people fight DCS for years, the sooner you give up and work around the problem with your own solution, the easier and less stressful time you have!

 

There's ways you can work around your problem, passwording isn't one of them, let it go!

Ehm, the Server options are forced for the mission in Multiplayer! You can run the mission offline and set your own, but not while somebody else hosts the mission.

If you "cheat" aka mod any weapons in comparison to the server the integrity check prevents you from joining.

 

If the server admin limits export settings, the server does not send telemetry or any other data to the clients.

 

The only thing you could do is use the mission in single player and have a look, or host your own server with relaxed settings, etc.

 

So the "cheater" argument is invalid since 1.5...

 

The only thing I can see is "protecting your work to monetize it" which would be a violation of the EULA without a permission by ED.