Hi,
I'm very new to Godot (just started yesterday). I tried to create and export some sample games, and found the "issue" that the PCK file format has almost no protection. The contents can be directly extracted or viewed in a hex editor.
I wonder whether it is possible to make the PCK format customizable (i.e. a user can define his/her own routine to read/write the file, e.g. xor the data with a mask, or apply some basic compression, etc.). The user should of course be responsible for the correctness and performance.
- Why do I think this is doable?
I searched the whole source code for the references of PACK_HEADER_MAGIC (defined in file_access_pack.h). There are essentially two writing routines: one in EditorExportPlatform::save_pack, with two references, and one in PCKPacker::pck_start. There is essentially one reading routine: in PackedSourcePCK::try_open_pack. These routines look quite simple, as is the PCK file format.
If one can unify the two writing routines, then it should be easy to expose the reading/writing interfaces so that one can do extra prcessing before writing/after reading. With the current version, I can do it myself by manually inserting codes into these places, but I'm not sure whether these are the complete list of usages of this file format. Also I would have to do this for every new release.
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- Why is this useful?
One advantage is more protection of the resources. If the file format is specified by the engine, then one single depacker can depack all games created with the engine. Custom formats will not have this problem. Another advantage is the possibility to compress the data, even with a very basic algorithm, so that the file size can be reduced. For those who don't care about the format, the current PCK format could be the default option.
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- Why do we need protection?
Let me first mention that I have read through all the discussions in this post.
I think there are two different things here: security and protection. Security by obscurity is not really security. However, it provides some protection. The meaning of protection is two-sided. In my opition, this works more or less like a "spoiler" tag on some forums. It not only protects the content from being seen, but also protects the reader from seeing the content that they don't really want to see immediately.
There are games that don't hide their resources at all. The player may open a folder and see the picture of all enemies up to the final boss, or watch all the CG movies up to the ending. I don't think this is a plus to the game.
