Is This Legal ??

[??????]

No. Of course not, but that is what I assume they fear would happen if they allowed such activity.

 

[bgillisp]

I think his point is that if you call what he did reverse engineering, then technically we could call what degica did reverse engineering someone else's project, and they are then probably in violation of another company's ELUA.

 

[Andar]

Technically* the custom exe only calls functions from the rgss301.dll. any features within the custom exe aren't re-engineered. They simply use logic to call functions from said dll. Obviously, that is what the default exe does too - this is basic programming techniques shared by most programs though. - call functions from some dll to assist in the performance of the application.


( I suppose one could also argue that this in fact re-ngineering the exe, but in that case, degica re-engineered some other dudes exe to begin with, and he probably re-engineered some other exe before then and so on... )

You're mixing two different elements together here.
The DLL has no official documentation that will tell you what those calls and functions are. Enterbrain wrote that DLL (or paid someone to write it, I don't know which) and got the documentation telling what functions to call with what arguments, and they got the licence to use those functioncalls from their programs.


And they decided not to publish that information, so other people cannot write programs calling that DLL.


Reverse engineering is the process of analysing that DLL in order to get those function calls without paying the licence to get the documentation from its official source.


Paying the programmer of an DLL to get the data on the function calls of that DLL is not reverse-engineering, so Degica/Enterbrain did not reverse-engineer.


But the sources you found on the internet did get their data by reverse-engineering, so that data source is illegal - if there were any official publication of those calls, then it would be known to EB/D.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

If the DLL was made by/for EB/Degica there's no reverse engineering here...

 

[??????]

@Andar, yea, I completely get what you are saying there, but...

I legally own RPG Maker, therefore, I should be allowed to enhance my games using the equipment/tools given. This includes the editor, graphics, audio game exe and the rgss301.dll. Yes, the EULA forbids me to obtain data from the aforementioned exe and dll, which I have not done.

You state :

...And they decided not to publish that information, so other people cannot write programs calling that DLL....

I am not making some other competitor program or anything like that, I am simply using a few calls to the dll to help increase security (all-be-it very slightly) within my own project(s) - which are games made using RM.

Reverse engineering is the process of analysing that DLL in order to get those function calls without paying the licence to get the documentation from its official source.

As stated, I never done that.

Paying the programmer of an DLL to get the data on the function calls of that DLL is not reverse-engineering, so Degica/Enterbrain did not reverse-engineer.

How would I contact said programmer to raise inquiry regarding obtaining said documentation / license?

But the sources you found on the internet did get their data by reverse-engineering, so that data source is illegal - if there were any official publication of those calls, then it would be known to EB/D.

Yea, its quite possible (more than likely) that they did partake in such activities to obtain the data, but as mentioned previously, its not exactly hard to see information about the functions when it can easily be viewed in notepad - along with more information than just function calls.

Kinda get the feeling that this thread is starting to turn into 'what your doing is wrong/illegal' when really, the thread was created to find out if it was illegal and if so, exactly what was illegal and also, to find out how to perform similar actions without it being so 'illegal'.

So far, I have yet to be pointed towards someone who is able to answer my queries properly. That s all I ask for

 

[Andar]

As stated, I never done that.

We understand that, but that doesn't change the fact that the information was gained by reverse engineering, even if you didn't do it.
It's the same as with other resources - you need an absolute and completely legal sequence to be allowed legal use of anything.


If a game contains even a single sprite edited from a ripped resource, even if the edit and the rip were done by other persons, that game can be taken down for containing ripped resources and the developer might face court fines because of this - because it's the developer's responsibility to make sure he/she has licences to use for everything in that project.

How would I contact said programmer to raise inquiry regarding obtaining said documentation / license?


So far, I have yet to be pointed towards someone who is able to answer my queries properly. That s all I ask for

Enterbrain is the only source that can give you that info, and in the past they have ignored or refused every such question.


It might be that they change this in the future (they are working on other improvements like large resolution and mobile export after all, so they might decide to work on encryption later), but that remains to be seen.

Kinda get the feeling that this thread is starting to turn into 'what your doing is wrong/illegal' when really, the thread was created to find out if it was illegal and if so, exactly what was illegal and also, to find out how to perform similar actions without it being so 'illegal'.

That is partially because you insisted that you didn't do anything wrong when using illegal data from the internet instead of focusing how you could get the info in a legal way...
However, I can tell you one thing:


You will NEVER get that information by asking on a public forum - there are too many problems with public posts. You allways have to remember that legalese is a different language from english.


What you need to do is get a private contact to Enterbrain, then sign an offered non-disclosure-agreement (if THEY decide that you could help them with the encryption problem or any other problem that requires direct access), and then get the info by private channels.


Remember: The developer for the test-game for the mobile exporter wasn't allowed to even talk about the existance of said exporter until the completed game was advertised by Enterbrain itself.


I personally believe that the more publically vocal you are about that theme, the less chance you have of being selected to work with them on the problem. However, so far there have been no specifics so you might still have a chance if you can give EB a good reason why they should work together with you to solve the problems.

 

[??????]

Yep, those are some very valid points you make there.

I suppose I only have one more questions the (at least for this topic )

How would one initiate direct contact with EB? I assume there is some chain of command I must follow?

If you could give me some email address or a person from the forums to message privately regarding this, I would be happy to do so (if you can of course, also - I assume this information would be sent via pm?)

I'm not really looking to attempt to improve security for RM games as a whole. All I am looking to do is provide my own projects with a little more security than the script editor provides. The problem with attempting to improve on a grand scale is that there will always be someone better who can crack it - obviously this problem still exists for smaller scale, but its also a smaller circle of people who would be willing to crack it

And its not that I wasn't focused on getting information legally, that is exactly what I was trying to do - Find out what makes it illegal and who I can contact to discuss it in finer detail.

 

[TheSorcerer]

Seems like you now have a green light to go ahead with your project. That is awesome news. I'd love to see where you take this.

 

[bgillisp]

I think the poster has moved on to MV now and no longer wishes to continue with this project. Am I correct @?????? ? If so I can close this thread for you.

 

[??????]

yea, I have no reason to go back to ace. not even sure I still have the source code for this tbh

 

[bgillisp]

Closed at Request of OP