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Sonic 2 HD

Discussion in 'Fangaming Discussion' started by Canned Karma, Mar 28, 2012.

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  1. SANiK

    SANiK

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    The people who decided to push this story to the top, did so not because of the evidence, but because of grudges they have against the individual programming the game.

    Welcome to Sonic Retro!
     
  2. Gen

    Gen

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    The Mobius Engine
    Honestly, if the application had not been watching for key presses from the background, or had at least been up front about it and had provided a means to disable the functionality, people wouldn't be raging their balls off right now.

    I can understand that the functionality would be preferable for setting up demos or some such, but does it have any place being enabled by default? Nope.

    Is there cause for concern because of it? Fuck yeah there is.

    Some seemingly paranoid programmer embedded a means to track key presses when the application is in the background in a fan game that had references to some kind of ubisoft-like "always on" DRM, and apparently the ubisoft-like DRM wasn't even the worse DRM option at LOst's disposal. That shit should genuinely seem shady to people, even if it was just terrible programming.

    Until there's further clarification on the matter from the responsible party, putting out a PSA is well justified action. The community reaction may be slightly rabid, but what can you expect when any community is told that there's functionality that recognizes key presses in the foreground application while the game is running in the background in a major fan game that's been sought after for so long.
     
  3. Either way, it still ended up with LOst being an idiot and making a complete mockery of the S2HD project, if not the entire Retro community, by plaguing it with completely unnecessary "features" such as DRM and other terrible forms of content control. But I digress.

    It's nice to see LOst off the team. Hopefully you guys can find a new programmer who's much more capable of working efficiently with others and is more open when it comes to development.
     
  4. Blivsey

    Blivsey

    Charismatic Sonicaholic Member
    I'm surprised how I went through these things yesterday, and I can tell LOst is the only sketchy one of the bunch.

    Was gonna question your two posts of authority, but then I recognized who you were and what you did. Welcome to Sonic Retro, we're all dicks when it comes down to it.
     
  5. SANiK

    SANiK

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    It's a bug. It should have been cited as a bug. And noted to the developer as a bug.
    Did that happen?

    No. They screamed keylogger.
     
  6. Metal Man88

    Metal Man88

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    I don't think anyone needed to do much of anything here, LOst is pretty good at shooting himself in the foot. Hasn't really changed in this aspect in over 9 years.

    Now if he had not obfuscated his code and made everything so paranoid and weird, then it would become clear whether or not the keylogging does anything malicious. But since we cannot know, and there is no reason to trust him with the keypresses of thousands of people, it had to be taken down just to be safe.
     
  7. Xkeeper

    Xkeeper

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    FCEUX, BSNES, and so on also have the feature of accepting input in the background, but they don't trip virus scanners.

    There's a reason S2HD does.
     
  8. Aerosol

    Aerosol

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    Sonic (?): Coming summer of 2055...?
    Who is this informant? Or did s/he ask to remain anonymous?
     
  9. SANiK

    SANiK

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    That's because of the obfuscation that it trips the scanners.

    The simplest way to fix this is to fix the input bug and have LOst remove the obfuscation.

    Calling for a new programmer/resetting the project back to square one, etc. is too harsh of a reaction.
     
  10. Gen

    Gen

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    Well no shit. The application knows when you've pushed a key while it's in the background. The first reaction most people would have is it's doing something potentially shady given the overall track record thus far of LOst's "mistakes" in the project. Couple that with the fact that LOst also made attempts to obfuscate his code by way of packaging the application in a separate executable also doesn't help.
     
  11. CornetTheory

    CornetTheory

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    We never had issues with scanners, we play tested it on many computers and never had an issue. And how am I supposed to know that keys working outside of focus can be construed as a keylogger? And the program does not run in the background when it is closed. stop making shit up.
     
  12. Aerosol

    Aerosol

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    Sonic (?): Coming summer of 2055...?
    But isn't the fact that all this could have been done WITHOUT obfuscating the code the problem? You may say it's just a bug and everyone is overreacting, but when you combine that with the obfuscation, it's not hard to see where there could be alarm.

    That and it should have been mentioned that Sonic 2 HD was going to be installing things to the registry for this purpose. Apparently, LOst wasn't the only one who knew about it so I'd like an explanation as to why noone was informed. Not in this topic, not in the readme. Nowhere.

    EDIT: Also, he didn't say "while the program is closed". He said "while you're doing other things". Stop making shit up. I know you're frustrated but seriously.
     
  13. Metal Man88

    Metal Man88

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    You may trust LOst, but nobody else does. They could have kept him I guess, but I think you'd have to pay people to dare to download anything he makes after this.
     
  14. Cinossu

    Cinossu

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    Never gonna happen.
    If it were just a case of the obfuscation and the "keylogger", then I'd agree. But, it's a lot more than just that. While specifics haven't been completely revealed, LOst has essentially been, as others have put it, "holding the project to ransom'. This isn't just a simple case of programmer fucked up, he's done things deliberately with a conscious mind behind it.
     
  15. CornetTheory

    CornetTheory

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    Because he said "running in the background" which implies that you closed it first.

    Also, to be clear, I am not defending any of the obfuscation or whatever. I just made some photoshops that are in a game, and I want the game to work properly like everyone else.
     
  16. Gen

    Gen

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    Closed means it's closed. Running in the background implies that it's not running in a foreground window, further meaning you've either clicked/alt-tabbed to another window to make it the "active" foreground window, or have minimized it.
     
  17. CornetTheory

    CornetTheory

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    Look, I'm not going to contribute 20 pages of the definition of an application being closed. If you have a problem with programs that keep accepting input while you are browsing the internet, then fine. I'm just pointing out that that function does not equal "OMG keylogging hack yo banks"
     
  18. evilhamwizard

    evilhamwizard

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    I believe he should've been kicked off as soon as it became apparent that he wasn't really communicating and collaborating well with the rest of the team. Or at least that's what I'm imagining what happened.

    I can understand why LOst would do the things he did to the game (if they were planning to do leaderboards), but why is it that the team members were the last ones to find out what he was implementing? Did they have any say into what he was doing to the game? Was there any outside direction on programming besides LOst himself? Didn't anyone intervene LOst during development and ask him "why did you do this when I told you to do this instead"? I think the real issue is just the lack of collaboration and management among team members on the project, which to me seems like the cause of every project's down fall.

    To me, this is something that should've been caught very early on in development. And I hope that this recent change will manage to fix that, if this be the case.
     
  19. ZeroShift

    ZeroShift

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    It's easy to jump on the keylogger bandwagon, unfortunately. While all of this added up does look suspicious, without hard evidence it's difficult to come to a true conclusion. The code obfuscation may just be for preventing reverse engineering (which I am very much against,) and from what I've read the engine accepting input even when the window is out of focus has to do with some function automatically enabled when using DirectInput.

    All in all, it's circumstantial evidence. Hardly enough to warrant a guilty verdict.
     
  20. Polygon Jim

    Polygon Jim

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    All the bitches.
    So you guy's do know that you're retarded right? You can turn off this "keylogger" in the options. It's a fucking DInput bug because LOst is a terrible programmer and should not be behind a large project like this. Now can we all shut the fuck up about it being a keylogger and try to fix the damage SS's stupid-ass article did to the project?
     
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