How can so many of you guys talk about & claim to own RPG Maker 3 ( & especially wanting to share game data via the net) without being bothered that there seems to be no password ability in order to protect your creations...and, if any one of you really own the game you can inform those of us who are holding back on purchasing the game, about whether or not if there is a way to protect our custom-made RPG Maker 3 games.

Dude, I dont see a need for a password protected files in rpgm3.

Look "dude", sorry if my question somehow annoyed you, but (1) alot of people dont wanna work on a game for 200 hours+ just so some guy can cheat by starting off at level 99...If THAT is your thing, than by all means send me your game you toiled over when its done and see if you like it when I can recite your own story back to you in 1 day when it'll take you months to have balanced & tweaked that game. And (2) I was hoping that someone could answer this question once and for all: Is there a way for us to use password protection in RPG MAKER 3? (For those of us who take the product so seriously that Agetec felt it'd be a good idea to bring this series over to the U.S.) P.S. am I the only one who thinks that were entitled to be able to keep our games private...if we "should" show our secrets, than doesnt that sound kinda immature and communist-like...only those with the best imaginations will think of cool ways to manipulate the software into doing more & pushing it past its limits...those who cant will just .

No... there is no way to password protect your game. No matter what, someone will be able to edit your game and at least see all of the coding. However, that's not to say you can't protect it. You could put checks in to make sure they don't attain high levels fast, you could put checks in to make sure they don't have great equipment before they should, you could put all kinds of checks all over the game to preserve the integrity of your game. Most people, however, will just tell you that it is pointless to do so.

1: You aren't going to create a code that cannot be duplicated. There is nothing that I couldn't duplicate on RPGM3 that I saw on RPGM3. This holds true for many many people.

2: 99% of people aren't going to change your game, and the ones that do are playing your game anyhow... they just don't want to play it in the way you intended. Be happy your game is still being played.

3: Out of all the games that are great, the fewest of them are great because of combat balancing. It never hurts, but combat balancing isn't one of the major decisions thought upon when deciding to play your game (unless it has poor combat balancing).

So, don't worry about it. If you are that worried, then you won't mind putting in as many checks as you find room for.

thanks King Spoom! But, You said that if I am really that serious about password encryption that I should add "CHECKS" ---excuse me if im a lil naive but what are checks and are they mentioned in my RPGM3 instruction manual? Also, how tight can I keep control of the player from being able to cheat ? and Thanks for responding last time!

If your game is balanced well, you can place unbeatable monsters as checks. If they defeat them, then you know they cheated. This is the easiest way. Another thing you can do is place important variable changes during any scene in which you think a player might cheat. Then, later, you can check to make sure the value is what it's supposed to be. If it isn't, then you know they circumvented the code somehow and you can end the game. All the other ways involve knowing what equipment they have, what equipment you made, and being able to check all the internal variables they allowed access to in RPGM2 (mainly, database variables).

I still suggest that someone playing your game, even if they aren't playing as you intended, is still playing your game. It's impossible to stop someone who can edit your code, line by line, from doing what they want. All you can hope to do is slow them down and make them mad.

I could use codebreaker to start at level 99. If someone wanted to start at a certain level you can try and stop him but that could be difficult.

My biggest worry is if someone found out a HUGE secret in my game and shouted it out to the community on Day 1, when nobody should know until at least Day 6. Other than that, I'm not really worried. Not like you could include such a big secret in an RPGM3 game anyway.

thanks guys... but ( to spoom ) when you said I could put these checks in to frustrate i hade an idea, but am now wondering if it might work....is it possible to really create an event that could check for itself whether a variable should or shouldnt have been activated sooner than it should--as result of cheating ( if i programed it to do it)? And how would you guys feel if you could come up with a story that could even make square blush? Friends of mine have told me that my stories are so engaging that ( at least my girlfriend) cried when she read my top 3 stories....my point is I dont mean to try & sound so great but I dont want impatient players zipping through my games in a rush to see the ending--because the time imbetween story events will laso tie into the overall story....so what im saying is that: If agetec actually really does check out these forums, I for one dont want them to get the impression that releasing games like rgm3 without a password system is in any way BETTER than having it as an option. What the heck is going on at enterbrain that they could think this was a good idea? If you dont wanna use the password, than dont! But why should I spend countless hours on it just to get screwed....This is more than a game to me..its a chance for an artist with no programming knowledge to prove himself--in fact, the only games I own are RPGM 1+2 because right now games arent cutting it like they used to.

Yeah, I'm sure there's plenty of people that got into RPGMwhatever because of that.

Well, I think it's too hard to put square to shame because you lack the ability to show everything at once. You can make a great story, but the presentation will always be lacking on rpg maker. As for the variable thing:

Let's say you want the player to gather 40 mushrooms and then give them to someone for a ticket to enter the castle. When they try to enter the castle, you can check to make sure they collected the mushrooms as well as if they have the ticket, and if they talked to the guy who gave the ticket. All of these work as checks, and force the person cheating to cheat smart.