How to publish a game?

Question

I don't just mean publish, but pretty much everything between when the pure coding is finished and the first version is released. For example, how do games make it so that their save files are hidden/unhackable, how do they include their resources within the game as opposed to having a resource file containing all of the sprites, etc., how do they make it so that there are special file extensions like .rect and .screen_mode, and so on and so forth.

So does anyone know any good books, articles, websites, etc. that explain the process between completing the pure code for a game and the release of it?

Answer 1

For circumventing saved file modifications, you can implement a simple encryption algorithm and use it to encrypt saved files, and then decrypt them when loading. File extensions are simply a matter of choice.

Answer 2

If you develop for Windows or XBox 360, Microsoft might offer some help here. Check out their Game Development tools for Visual Studio C++ Express Edition.

Answer 3

To use special file extensions in your game, just do the following:

1. Create some files in a format of your choice that have that extension, and then
2. write some code that knows how to read that format, and point it at those files.

File extensions are conventions, nothing more; there's nothing magic about them.

ETA: As for embedding resources, there are a few different ways to approach that problem. One common technique is to keep all your resources bundled together in a small number of files - maybe only one (Guild Wars takes that approach).

At the other extreme, you can leave your resources spread across many files in a directory tree, maybe in a custom format that requires special tools to modify, and maybe not. Civilization 4 does things this way, as do all the Turbine games I'm familiar with. This is a matter of taste, and not very important either way.

Answer 4

If you are looking for books the Game Development Essentials series should answer your questions.

Answer 5

I think a better solution is two break your images in tiles of some known size and then join them back to back in some random order in a new file. This random order is only known to you and hence only you know how to jumble the tiles to get the original image back.

The approach would be to maintain a single dimensional array and maintains the position of tiles in it. Know use the crop functions of MIDP to extract each tile and render each tile back to the console.

If you need, I can post the code for you.

Answer 6

I don't think developers make much of an effort to ensure saves are hidden or unhackable. PC games usually just save out to a folder, one file per save, and any obfuscation is likely the result of using a binary file format (which requires some level of effort to reverse-engineer) or plaintext values that aren't very meaningful out of context, but not deliberate attempts to circumvent hacking. There are probably a ton of PC games that have shipped with very easily hackable text or XML save files, but I've never been a save hacker so I don't have any specific examples. On consoles the save files are going to a memory card or the console's hard drive, which makes them inherently inconvenient to access, but beyond that I don't think console developers make much of an effort to encrypt or otherwise obfuscate save data. That energy would more likely be directed towards securing the game against cheating if it's on online game or just making other systems work better.

Special file extensions come from just using your own extensions and/or defining your own file formats. You can use any extension for any file, so there are tons of "special" file formats that are just text files with a different extension, I've done this plenty of times myself. In other cases, if they have defined their own binary file format, that means they also have their own file parsers to process those files at runtime.

I don't know what platforms you have in mind, but for PC and console games, resources are not embedded in the executable. You will generally see a separate executable and then various archives and configuration files. Depending on the game, it may be a single resource pack, or perhaps a handful of packs for related resources like graphics, sound, level data, etc. As a general observation console games are more aggressively archived (to minimize file operations on slow optical media, and perhaps to overcome limitations of the native file systems on more primitive platforms). Some PC games have very loose assets, with even script files hanging out in the open.

Answer 7

I would suggest to check the presentation from the developers of World of Goo (great game): http://2dboy.com/public/eyawtkagibwata.pdf.