How to protect your game development?

Hi there..
Im busy hard at work building my own game, and its coming along nicely.
I cannot code to save my life as my brain just isnt hardwired that way, but i do just about everything else from modelling, texturing, level design and UI. even Game documentation.

so given this perspective, im doing all that i can, but my game will never become a real functioning game without scripting and coding.

Im on discord running communities etc, and i do have interest from those who wish to help me.

so my question is this:
How do i protect my progress in unity by sharing my project to others i havent met in real life, and hanging on their word to help me?

ive put many hours of my time into where im currently at, and someone could quite easily take my project, and effectively steal my work. whether thats the assets, or the game itself.

Does anyone have any techniques or advice on how to share your project for collaboration, yet minimizing any factor of someone simply running away or stealing your work?

"reason im asking this, is because i have already been a victim of this issue. People say their interested and want to help, but once they are given the game project, they either disappear, or never work on the unity project.
basically to just play what you have or to simply steal it."

Thanks xxx

P.s this is a screenshot of where im at in my game so far.
also if anyone is a Programmer, and interested in building a Viking RPG life sim, with an RTS hybrid attached. basebuilding and other elements too. Here's my discord:
https://discord.gg/3nESqtt

 

Get a signed contract that protects yourself and deal with reputable people.

 

how would i go about making a contract, and given this would be legally binding, would it require payment to setup etc?
Also i find it sucky that i have to begin to look at legal complications for what is a hobby and passion.

reputable people are unkown online today. i could quite easily pretend to have a CV of work ive done previously to gain access to my project. also what ive learnt over the years, is to take peoples words with a pinch of salt. not everything that comes out someones mouth is necessarily the truth.

also given im poor, and unemployed and doing this as a hobby, potentially a job if i find a collegue to help me, then finding a "proffessional" that demands payment is a no go.
Its the kind of project that is worked on with a friend on discord, without income, until a kickstarter is obtained to begin a process of being paid and doing it as a job.

How would i go about finding someone who is "reputable"?
thanks xxx

 

I'm not a lawyer, so all I can say is do research on business contracts and NDA's, or talk to a lawyer. You're only looking at legal complications because you're concerned about protecting your code and assets, and that can only be done in one of 3 ways.
1) By legal means
2) By not letting anyone see it (hard to get help with the project though)
3) Through violence (not recommended)

So you're kind of stuck, unless you simply could stop caring if someone else benefited from your work.

As far as verifying people, you'd look at their portfolio, what they have worked on before, and you could contact companies they claimed to have done work for and verify they aren't lying.

 

sounds like im going to be forced to do it all on my own.
I dont want to go down the legal route. thats money and dealing with stuff i know nothing about.

to me its a hobby and something i want to chill out with someone on discord, talkign about the game and having fun along the journey developing a game we want to play.
that kind of thing is somethign you do with a freind but i dont have any so.

oh well... Ill just build it as far as i can even if its without code or any playability, and perhaps try to sell it or something.

Wasnt the answer i wanted really. I kind of hoped that unity had some kind of feature that can lock out parts of the project, or being able to disable accessability to certain gameobjects where sharing your work between other developers would keep your work save, and choosing what gets shared and what doesnt.

It seems unity or any games engine hasnt capitalized on that way of thinking, especially for indie developers, like myself working on their lonesome hoping to ifnd someone to help them out.

thanks for the reply none the less Joe. Much appreciated. xxx

 

You generally do not need to give your entire project to someone to get help. You can post specific questions with code snippets here on the forum. Who are you giving your project to, and how and why? If you are sending your entire project to people that you don't know, then buyer beware, just like most things in life. You generally don't let a stranger borrow your car, for example. But it's generally safe to take your car into a professional repair shop. And no offense, but if you are a beginner, then likely no one is going to want to steal your project. In your case, the person likely just did not follow up. You also mentioned locking out portions of the app, that wouldn't work either. The project would not compile with missing pieces. Granted there may be a way to encrypt objects or similar so they couldn't be reused, but again, it is rarely necessary to provide a complete project to someone to get assistance, especially to someone you don't know. You can use https://connect.unity.com/ to get reputable help, for a fee.

 

that is the issue im facing.
I could at my current state, delete alot of stuff in my project, and share the portion im happy for someone to use. sure.

however given how unity was made, that will be a nightmare for me to recover what i delete because unity doesnt have an undo feature for that. Unity can undo stuff deleted in the editor, but not stuff i delete within the projects folder. this means id have to manually place all my assets that goes into my dustbin back into unity, and effectively start from scratch by placing in all my assets 1 by 1 back into my game.
Thats my issue...

I dont want to delete stuff just within the editor. it would have to be from within the projects folder too, since ill have all my assets stored there, where people can grab and potentially steal.



My original thought @JeffDUnity3D was having a feature in unity, where just like hiding your game objects in the editor, you could padlock them. and what that would do is disable all the other assets. then you can tell unity to bake a new duplicate project, that only included what was padlocked.
what that would do is only include the stuff you padlocked into this new duplicate project.

Once unity had made a duplicate project of what was padlocked. you simply have a feature to unpadlock the assets within full game project, and for osmeone such as my self who has that, can carry on as normal building game.

you send that duplicate to someone to work on. and when that person has finished, you grab back the project from said person, and from there you could either tell unity to import the added / modified content from that duplicate, or you can then manually grab the files and place them into your project.

by doing something like that, would ensure my security of what ive worked on, and be able to share smaller bite sized chunks of my project and wouldnt concern encryption or anything like that. you wouldnt need too.
After gaining trust from said individuals, i can then begin to provide them with bigger chunks. by that stage, a kickstarter could be started, and myself and said helpers i can swing from being a casual hobbyist, to dealing with NDA contracts etc. by that stage, ill trust said people im making it with, and then i can give them the full game project since then ill be protected by a contract.

that was my thinking behind it.

As for your other comments, i agree. perhaps ill just do my best to delete everything manually and try to make snippets of the project to give to people. the problem is you can undo what i delete though.
Id be happy to make a forum thread dedicated fo my game project with instructions too.
that being said. forums wont be good enough. id need to be able to talk to people on voice, like using discord, because what im making isnt like a game that you currently can find in the industry that people would simply think, "oh this will work like this", due to being familiar with something similar in other games. written instructions can always describe something in detail enough to make someone fully understand.
almost every gameplay element in the game im building, hasnt been seen in the games industry before from an RPG / RTS point of view, so it will require some explanation.
Im also making the Games document parallel to my work flow and can act as instructions eitherway.

 

Im creating a Profile on connect.Unity
Ill post Bite sized projects on there with instructions aswell

thank you. xxx

 

No, you don't need to post full projects at all to get help. I meant, just show the specific lines of code that you have questions about, like most questions here on the forum.

 

In all honesty, i would prefer someone to do a good job rather than being reliant on text to do a job. As i said before, id rather talk to someone on voice since what im makin is rather unique compared to all games out there.
I want to make a game where it flows and gells well. You can often play games and feel like stuff just doesnt work or flow properly. Its also very common today that games are often buggy or broken because of shody code work.

I would be inclined to give someone a small portion of the project guided towards the code in question, to make sure the code worked and performed as intended. But as my posts above reflect, theres no simple way to do this in unity.

 

I find it ridiculous that you are asking for help to protect "your" game when you are using stolen assets in its creation. https://forum.unity.com/posts/3578811/

 

Hi Leila.
Im not using anything that is stolen.
yes ive stated that a friend gave me an earlier version of that unity package to look at, while i was learning unity, but it was not stolen. my friend brought it, and wanted to help me, get to grips with unity, that is all. would you not wish to help a friend who was curious to learn? I was unaware the unity package was deemed illegal in anyway.

As for going forward, i no longer touch any content and simply use stock unity.
I dont think id feel safe supporting any content here after that anyway. People are very trigger happy here, which is uncomfortable reading for those unaware and learning.

In terms of this thread. Iam making my own game using my own content, and that is what im cencerned about protecting. Ive already had those steal my own work and its that i wish to protect.
thank you x

 

As @JeffDUnity3D stated, since you are starting your journey into programming, you are likely find out next year, or two years later, how crap your code was back days. This is due to fact, that you will be learning and progressing.
Is not unusual to scrap part of the project and redo it, with better more performant approach.

Until then, is likely no one will be even bother to look into your spaghetti code, trying figure out what is doing.

I think you got quite misconception regarding forum support on the forum here. Guys already mentioned,
but giving even 1000 lines of code on forum, stripped of the project, will do nothing good to anyone.
In fact, if you post too much code into forum, people would be probably discouraged to help, due to too much noise.

As been said, you just copy, and paste code, with narrowed down problem. I will guarantee, you are not the first one, and not the last one, facing possible issues and challenges.

If you want secure support, pay somebody to do so. Otherwise, further rambling in general forum makes no point, since seams you have your mind set. Ideas are nothing, without actual execution of them. In many countries, your program intellectual property is protected by default. You just need prove, that is yours.

Also, you mentioned about your unique ideas. This days, almost any idea has been executed in one, or other way. All is happening, is shuffling ideas together, to make something out, appearing to be different.

 

Hey, one quick thing that might help if you want a cheap way to do something legal https://docontract.com/