Are you aware of any game made in MMF/Blitz/Whatever that has been cracked?

If you have a good registration code scheme involving your server and asymetric keys, the weak point is the executable itself. Cracking a regular exe is relatively easy, a matter of disassembling it and tweaking it a little. As easy as NOPing the check protection call, or as "complicated" as reverse-engineering the key verification code and making a keygen, or changing the public key.

But what about virtual machines or bytecode interpreters in particular? I think it's much, much harder to disassemble and reverse-engineer something like that, specially if the cracker doesn't know what he is trying to crack.

So, maybe, the solution to the cracking problem could be

1. Design and implement a scripting language, bytecode compiler and interpreter
2. Embed the protection code in your game code, written in that language
(3. Profit?)

Note that I suggest making your own language instead of using Lua/Python/whatever because it's far more likely that a bytecode decompiler exists for those languages than for yours. Besides, sounds like fun :D

Any thoughts?

If anything that just makes it easier to crack. The bytecode in Alien Flux is trivial to hack out. As is often stated, people who look for cracks often aren't interested in buying your game in the first place, and people who make cracks mainly do it for fun. (In fact, the easier it is, the less likely they are to bother, eh ;) ?) Writing my own scripty language probably wouldn't help either as they'd just work their way through it until it was hacked eventually...

Cas :)

Well it really depends on how you do it. Unless you require a connection to your registration server or tie the game directly to the machine what's to stop someone from distributing the full version?

If the registration server provides more than verification (such as content) there's no need since it's possible to make a near uncrackable game.

Otherwise, there's two cases where I can see your method helping.
-Registration depends on the server (but server provides nothing else).
-Your game doesn't rely on the server at all and somehow the data is tied to the machine (such as generating a unique ID for that computer and the registration key depending on that).

The one thing you'd have to make sure of is that the language isn't used purely for registration. Otherwise it can possibly be bypassed with no ill effects. In any case though your method won't make it impossible to bypass, just more difficult.

If anything that just makes it easier to crack. The bytecode in Alien Flux is trivial to hack out.
Because it's Java. I said Note that I suggest making your own language instead of using Lua/Python/whatever because it's far more likely that a bytecode decompiler exists for those languages than for yours..
Registration depends on the server
I said If you have a good registration code scheme involving your server and asymetric keys
The one thing you'd have to make sure of is that the language isn't used purely for registration. Otherwise it can possibly be bypassed with no ill effects.
I said Embed the protection code in your game code, written in that language. I meant, embed the protection code everywhere in your game code also written in that language.
In any case though your method won't make it impossible to bypass, just more difficult.
Of course, and that's true for any protection method. If it can run, it can be cracked. Period.

OK, enough quoting myself :)

One of my MMF games, Tokyo War, has been cracked....well sort of.
Not cracked to obtain full version, but there have been a few trainers released for it by people (gain more money, all weapons, etc.)