The Physio by sportd ***Final*** (HTML)

[wodahSShadow]

DRM has negative connotations at the moment.

DRM has had negative connotations since the time it was created, it has always been a hassle to both the creators and the consumers and very ineffective. If you know it's worth the trouble then so be it. I'll be waiting to try your game.

[Greyelf]

DRM has had negative connotations since the time it was created

DRM is not a new concept, protection of software has existed as long as there have been programing languages, longer if you consider that the knowledge required by the technicians running the earliest machines was restricted.

What has changed over the years is how easy it has become to "copy" and distribute someone else's work due to the internet, and how easy it is to see the code of an application due to the rise in usage of interpreter based languages and the general public's access to debugging tools.
What has also changed is people expectations to have (free) access to whatever they want, whenever they want. It seems that Patience is no long a virtue.

But during all this time the desire of a creator to protect their hard work has not changed, and this is an understandable (at least by reasonable people) desire.

[wodahSShadow]

It is understandable, I agree.

I don't know how that little history lesson is supposed to connect with what I said and I dislike the insinuation at the end.

DRM has always been a hassle by restricting how the paying consumer can interact with it and clearly it is not very effective else there wouldn't be this entitlement and ease of piracy you speak of. Most DRM technologies get cracked quickly, those that can't be cracked are so restrictive that legit buyers complain about it.

Making the game depend on information you alone control, like sportd does, is definitely strong DRM with the downside that the game's continued existence depends entirely on sportd's will to keep the server up.

This is probably where our opinions diverge the most. The nature of software (and how easy it is to copy and share like you said) makes it akin to ideas and I don't think ideas are best kept locked. This might be taken in the wrong way, I don't mean that sportd should share everything, it's more about software that is already public.

[Greyelf]

The nature of software (and how easy it is to copy and share like you said) makes it akin to ideas and I don't think ideas are best kept locked.

I would say that software is ideas that through (more?) hard work are turned into form, and that because of that extra effort some creators want to protect their works.

I don't mean that sportd should share everything, it's more about software that is already public.

Is it correct to think of software that is only accessible via subscription / donation as public?

[sportd]

@wodahSShadow:

I have a couple of questions for you,

Do you think I should be able to make a living from writing these games?
Do you think other people should profit financially from me writing these games without my consent?
Do you think I should have a say in how my games are hosted on the internet? (ie on a site that encourages violence against women... which I am against)

My answers are Yes (but currently can't), No and Yes.

If your answers are the same, how would you go about it?

[wodahSShadow]

My answers are:

Yes, of course, if people pay for it. An year ago I found an author, Wildbow, who writes web serials. He makes a living off of donations and Patreon, when they reach a certain mark we get extra chapters with more background of the worlds and characters he creates. He has completed two serials, fully available for free. You can even download them.

All profits should go to the creator although the profits can be hard to quantify in some cases. Knowing exactly who created/modified a software and making sure that information is always attached is even more important than finding ways to block access to it, in my opinion.

If you're being wrongly associated with violence (why only women?) that's called defamation and there are laws for that. Otherwise no, you should have no say. You can make any statements you want about it, just not be legally able to force those women beating lovers to change their site.

@Greyelf

I think we disagree on how much control is reasonable.

No, it isn't correct, I mean the actually publicly available games. Allowing access to subscribers/donors only is fine by me, even if disappointing (muh entitlement), but when it's out and popular it will spread like gonorrhea in a frat house. Trying to lock the game is like trying to stop the gonorrhea by force, it hurts more than it helps.

[sportd]

My answers are:

If you're being wrongly associated with violence (why only women?) that's called defamation and there are laws for that. Otherwise no, you should have no say. You can make any statements you want about it, just not be legally able to force those women beating lovers to change their site.

It was an example to better highlight the point. I am against a lot of things but won't list them all here.

Otherwise no, you should have no say. You can make any statements you want about it, just not be legally able to force those women beating lovers to change their site.

I am not forcing anyone to change their site, it's about whether I should have a say in who hosts my content and what content is also on the page?

He makes a living off of donations and Patreon, when they reach a certain mark we get extra chapters

Hi had considered holding the games back until a donation total was reached but thought that would be unfair to those that pledged their support. Donors are hard to find and where possible, I try and provide them with a thank you for their support. Then I make the game free (but not redistributable). If I was to sell my games for a set price, then downloading would be a topic I would have to wrestle with.

@wodahSShadow:
So what could you consider an appropriate way to manage my situation?

[wodahSShadow]

I am not forcing anyone to change their site, it's about whether I should have a say in who hosts my content and what content is also on the page?

What does "have a say" mean to you? You can talk about it of course, obviously that's not what you mean so I assume you want to be able to take action against those who use the game in a way you dislike. I've already answered that...

So what could you consider an appropriate way to manage my situation?

Ditch the "always online" requirement, it is unnecessary to the gameplay, adds complexity to development and annoyance to the players.

What do you need a database for? So many similar games have been done with much simpler tools, it is overkill.

It seems The Gym loads all the images right at the start., if The Physio does the same I think the bandwidth problem could be helped by changing that. The normal load-as-you-go works fine in most internet connections, use file hosts for those stuck in dial-up.

[sportd]

Ditch the "always online" requirement, it is unnecessary to the gameplay, adds complexity to development and annoyance to the players.

I'm looking at a "sometimes online" option for the 4th game. Having this allows me to update a game once at the core to deal with bugs after launch (or add workarounds like I needed to for ThePhysio). This was much more effective than the downloadable copy of theGym I had. There is also the DRM aspect which I think we have talked through and we are going to just keep waving to each other from opposite sides of this fence.

What do you need a database for? So many similar games have been done with much simpler tools, it is overkill.

The database reduced the overall size of the game(excluding images) and increased the speed at which I was able to turn out the next game. It also reduces the likelyhood if typos. theGym had arrays with hundreds of entries and a misplaced comma would crash the game, there was no trouble with the database. It also easily handles the repeatable content (url's etc). There are other ways (as there always are) but this fixed all the problems I had with the first game (and made some more). The sniper will host the database within the browser. This should give me the best of both worlds.

It seems The Gym loads all the images right at the start., if The Physio does the same I think the bandwidth problem could be helped by changing that. The normal load-as-you-go works fine in most internet connections, use file hosts for those stuck in dial-up.

thePhysio loads a day at a time and if a file is corrupt it will retry later while the game is being played. I really tried to have the image ready to pop up as the text came onto the screen. The the load-as-you-go produced lag that bugged me so I have tried to remedy it. There are also one off animations using jpg* (that don't loop) and if it's not all preloaded then the effect is lost. My thinking is that for all players not using private browsing, the images should only need to be downloaded once and will be cached. This isn't my bottleneck currently (although it will be a problem for a couple of weeks going live but I expect it to settle again.)

*I have animations in jpg and gif versions. The gif version has a bigger filesize and poorer quality. The jpg version is smaller, better quality but flickers in some browsers, hence the need for a jpg option.

[Greyelf]

I think we disagree on how much control is reasonable.

probably, for me it is a balance between what I would like (free everything! lol), and believing that a creator should have the right to do with their creations as they see fit, even if it is not what I would do myself.
note: the last part is not a comment on the choices @sportd made.

No, it isn't correct, I mean the actually publicly available games. Allowing access to subscribers/donors only is fine by me, even if disappointing (muh entitlement), but when it's out and popular it will spread like gonorrhea in a frat house. Trying to lock the game is like trying to stop the gonorrhea by force, it hurts more than it helps.

It is interesting to see the differences to peoples thinking that digital content has brought about.

If a carpenter built a table which someone else then took without permission and made money from it would be seen as a crime consisting of two parts. 1. Depriving the creator of said object, and 2. Unreasonable gain from another person's effort, both I would argue are of equal importance.

It seems that if the item being created is digital then the above situation changes because the taking part is seen to not deprive the creator of anything because they still have their copy of the item, the Unreasonable Gain also seems to be deemed less important or a minor inconvenience for the creator.

As a developer, 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing when it comes to the design choices made when creating a new piece of software.

[Greyelf]

@sportd: I am assuming you have looked into database connection pooling, prepared statements, and using timed/state-change based caching of query results.

[sportd]

@sportd: I am assuming you have looked into database connection pooling, prepared statements, and using timed/state-change based caching of query results.

Nope, yip, Nope.

Thanks for those. Google is going to take a hiding I think. I did a lot of googling before thePhysio to try and find the best way to implement mysql database queries after I made the decision and neither of those terms popped up.

[Greyelf]

Thanks for those. Google is going to take a hiding I think. I did a lot of googling before thePhysio to try and find the best way to implement mysql database queries after I made the decision and neither of those terms popped up.

The four general things that slow a SQL database query down are:
a. The time it takes to create a new connection to the database, the connection pooling helps offset this delay.
b. The time it takes to prepare and analyst a query, prepared statements can help offset this delay but it depends on the query.
c. Having to re-retrieve data that does not change often or is the same for each user, caching of query results can help offset this delay at the cost of memory.
d. Not analyzing the execution plan of heavy queries to see if there is a better way to write the same query, same result lower cost. LOL

[wodahSShadow]

the Unreasonable Gain also seems to be deemed less important or a minor inconvenience for the creator.

With a physical good a transaction can be (or should be) tracked to the specific good that was traded, there's an actual exchange of goods, when the table is stolen and sold the money can be tracked back to it and associated with it. That would be much harder to do if you could just copy tables. There's no longer an exchange of goods, the buyer still gives money but the seller is no longer giving anything back, the seller is now providing a service. The digital seller uses electricity to apply the desired pattern on the costumer's storage media, the same way cleaners use cleaning products to clean, that's a service.

What happens now that the costumer has all the requirements to provide the same service? You want to be able to tell him what he can or can not do. Should the cleaning company have a say on how the costumer uses his newly clean property?

Imagine you could copy the cleanliness (no idea how that would work) and instantly clean your friend's house. Are you in the wrong for taking a potential sale from the cleaning company?

@sportd

You're saying "This tool is what I know best so it is best for this task." which is at best marginally true, it's cool that you know how to make it work but stick to only using the DRM benefit to justify its use.

[kexter]

I have animations in jpg and gif versions. The gif version has a bigger filesize and poorer quality. The jpg version is smaller, better quality but flickers in some browsers, hence the need for a jpg option.

Regarding the flicker: browsers are getting smarter and smarter at unloading unused/invisible images, making precaching a bit trickier than simply adding all images to an invisible div ("display: none;"). Currently the following caching technique seems to work with all browsers. Create a 1px div somewhere visible and make its overflow hidden. Append x divs to it (where x = frameCount). Set each child-div's style.background to "url(image-name) no-repeat -9999px -9999px" (where "image-name" is the URL of the individual frames). Codified, it looks something like this:

Code: Select all

// frames is an array containing the URL of each individual image to be cached.
// For example:
//   cacheFrames(["images/frame01.jpg", "images/frame02.jpg", "images/frame03.jpg"]);
function cacheFrames(frames) {
  var i, div, img;
  div = document.getElementById("cached-frames");
  if (div === null) {
    div = document.createElement("div");
    div.id = "cached-frames";
    div.style.position = "absolute";
    div.style.overflow = "hidden";
    div.style.top = "0";
    div.style.left = "0";
    div.style.width = "1px";
    div.style.height = "1px";
    document.body.appendChild(div);
  }
  for (i = 0; i < frames.length; i++) {
    img = document.createElement("div");
    img.style.background = "url(" + frames[i] + ") no-repeat -9999px -9999px";
    div.appendChild(img);
  }
}


If this works for you than you can ditch the gifs, save some space and loose some complexity. Also I'm not familiar with your specific system but you might want to clear the "cached-frames" div before adding new images to it so as to avoid unnecessarily caching frames for more than one animation.