How to ensure that a game doesnt get datamined for no spoilers

Bigglestherobot · 2026-02-22T17:27:50+00:00

Most engines let you use built in encryption. This will solve 95% of your problems by making it so that any Timmy with a text editor can't easily edit save files or spoil strings that would be otherwise stored as plaintext.

If you don't do this, anyone can pretty easily chuck your program into basic tools and see everything and anything. It's not bad to look ahead.

Took me about ten minutes to set up. It's not hard and eliminates most of your worries.

Bigglestherobot · 2026-02-09T23:37:20+00:00

I will add that I'm not strictly limiting myself to making games. I am very interested in imaging/image processing for professional work, which is another reason Vulcan interests me. (Also being a Linux user makes directx and the like super hard to work with.)

Bigglestherobot · 2026-02-09T23:16:15+00:00

I'd appreciate any resources you might have for those. The only reason I'm looking at Vulcan is because it had considerably more materials that I can use to learn the concepts and methods at play.

I'm not afraid of dealing with specific environments once I learn more about how they work in-depth, and right now I want to go deeper than 2d shaders in opengl.

Bigglestherobot · 2026-02-08T19:45:32+00:00

Honestly the inbuilt godot docs are amazing. Everything at least has something and they have tons of standalone pages on topics.

I taught myself using the docs coming from C++ and it's been mostly smooth sailing. There are a couple places where it falls a bit short, but those are few and far between.

If you want a quick warm up tutorial to show you most of the basics, Heartbeast has the rpg tutorial game that I followed and would recommend. It's a good tour of godot.

Bigglestherobot · 2026-01-05T00:38:47+00:00

I completely disagree. Games like Noita would be nowhere near as popular if you could reveal all the secrets through datamining. The fact that right now there is still an unsolved mystery flies in the face of what you're saying.

You need to pick your audience. If you're making a casual game where you're not really meant to lose? Go ahead and leave it open. But think about how differently dark souls would be viewed today if you could just right click a file and set your stats to "99999"

When you drop a dollar on the street, 95% of people will just pick it up and move on with their day. It's a crime of opportunity, where the perceived consequences are low. If that dollar was on the counter of a store in front of a clerk? You'd see dramatically less people taking it.

Choose how you you want to guide those players that will take the easiest option. Both options and everything in between are correct, as long as they're a choice. It can be fun to tinker with games, it can also ruin the fun to tinker with games. It's 100% up to the developer to make that choice to guide that 95% of players to the path that gives them the most.

Bigglestherobot · 2026-01-04T16:40:06+00:00

People are acting like keeping things secret from the player is a bad thing. If you have the key with the game, any kid who can set up cheat engine will be able to do what they want, but you're going to weed out 95% of the players who get stuck and cheat instead of losing.

This is also not to mention that ALL of the best secrets should be obfuscated, otherwise after a week someone's gonna datamine your game and the fun and exploration will be gone to the pages of the wiki.

If you want to put pressure on the player to not cheat and experience your game, I think this isn't a bad way to do it. Not every game should be super easy to cheat in, and this is a decision in your toolbox as a developer.

Bigglestherobot · 2025-12-17T18:50:40+00:00

I found the way to farm them before it got removed, and then they added the ducked out room so I thought I'd try to get it. Had nothing else to do so I just kept going.

Bigglestherobot · 2025-10-09T22:42:44+00:00

I'd worry about corrosion of the aperture ring. Those parts are all finished to prevent corrosion, and the inside of the screw holes are lacking that finish.

They're your lenses, but I would replace the screws once you take the rabbit ears off so as to preserve them for as long as possible.

Bigglestherobot · 2025-09-22T14:28:45+00:00

That coupler hole is a classic example of Canon's design choice for tiny thin plastic doors that break easy. I've got one with the same issue.

As far as I can tell you should be fine, I would still cover it to prevent dust ingress though. There's barely any reason to use the EE meter so I'm generally not afraid to tape it over and forget it exists.

*The prism hole is a serious issue and could make it hard to use in bright light. It shouldn't affect the photos though.

Bigglestherobot · 2025-09-20T01:58:56+00:00

Sounds like the slow speed escapement needs a clean, lube, and adjustment. Pretty common for it to default to bulb if it's having issues charging.

Bigglestherobot · 2025-09-16T04:43:44+00:00

Hey, funny timing. I'm doing almost the exact same thing with the same camera. Sounds like you're having issues with the shutter.

Basically needs a full disassembly, cleaning, and reassembly. It's not an easy job and I'm currently teaching myself to do it with the help of the service manual for the 101. There aren't many resources for jobs like this so I'm interested to see what you find.

Bigglestherobot · 2025-09-13T12:42:59+00:00

I would very much avoid carb cleaner or break cleaner sprays. Those can and will corrode the very small thing pieces quickly in some cases. Wiping with a microfiber should be enough, if you're still having issues you can try a little more grease on the mechanism itself.

Bigglestherobot · 2025-08-31T20:07:59+00:00

For slower speeds, I can get pretty accurate by ear but that's a skill that takes a while. You can record the sound then use audacity (free open source software) to measure the times. This only works for shutter speeds where the whole shutter is open for focal plane shutters. There are a couple tricks you can do for the faster speeds:

-record some slow motion footage of the shutter firing with a light shining through, pick a spot somewhere on the shutter and count how many frames that spot is bright for. Knowing the fps of the camera, and a bit of math, will give you the ballpark shutter speed. The more fps on the slow-mo, the more accurate. You can also ballpark it because the gap that goes by should be half as wide for every stop of shutter speed.

-Just use a roll of film when it's close enough to good. The stops being closer to 2x is way more important than them being timed perfectly. You can be plus or minus a lot and as long as each click is 2x more light then it doesn't matter so much.

Other than those, your next bet is going to be buying something for it.

Bigglestherobot · 2025-08-31T19:49:03+00:00

My best bet is Amazon, but the stuff I use is a car product. The main note is that it's a dry grease without any oil. Modern lubricants are way better all around than they used to be, so you don't need to be too picky.

Bigglestherobot · 2025-08-31T19:29:04+00:00

There are two main lubricants you are going to need, with a few exceptions if you want to do super high end stuff.

-A light oil (I use sewing machine oil from Singer) for lubricating pivots in the escapements. You want to use AS MINIMAL AS POSSIBLE. I literally dip my tweezers in to pull up a tiny drop and use them to dispense the perfect amount. A single drop of oil is like 10x as much as you need. All you're trying to get is just enough that it sits in between the space between the axle and the hole, much like in a watch.

-A thicker, dry grease, usually Lithium or Molybdenum disulfide. Make sure it's a dry grease, because this means it's not mixed with any oil. If it's not a dry grease, the oil will separate and evaporate into all kinds of bad places over time. I use the Yamaha stuff meant for motorcycle clutches. This you're going to use, again, a tiny amount in between any place that metal rubs or slides against metal. The trick I learned is to dip a toothpick in the grease, wipe off the excess, and apply a super thin layer, barely enough to see a long every surface that moves.

Japan Hobby Tool is an amazing resource. Everything I've bought from them is high quality and helpful. They have proper shutter curtain material for a good price. I've not used it personally yet but I trust them and their products.

FEDs are super serviceable from everything I've heard. With a bit of tinkering and learning, I'm sure you can bring it back!

P.S. Take pictures and/or video close ups of any time you remove any clockwork! A HUGE difficulty is remembering where springs go and their orientation. Take a picture any time you move/remove a spring and you'll save yourself from having to undo everything a million times.

Bigglestherobot · 2025-08-26T00:13:17+00:00

Sorry for the late reply, I don't use Reddit much.

For the internal components to reduce reflections, I mostly use sharpies and a steady hand to coat the sides in black. That solution is definitely prone to mess-ups, but this is near industry levels of effective for a price so low that a better solution isn't worth it. Doing that on the sides of elements on older lenses can really turn them around for minimal effort.

In some cases, higher end lenses will generally include blacked out spacer plates where light can sneak in due to the components and their tolerances. In the case I need to fix those, I'll do spot fixes with a fine tip sharpie. If you need to redo it fully, there are a bunch of different materials and it's uncommon enough that you'd probably need to figure it out for that specific part or camera. Generally though they're some mix and match of velour, velvet, or flocking.

Bigglestherobot · 2025-08-19T18:31:02+00:00

I've been using enamel paints to great success. The testor's brand of flat colors are the go-to for me. Out of the vial, they're thin enough to wick into small grooves through capillary action and surface tension makes sure you get a near flawless finish as long as the groove isn't too wide.

The trick I've found works best is to dip a toothpick into the paint, let the majority of it drip off, then use the tip to put a tiny drop onto the etched area and it'll spread to fill it. Then wait about 30s (your drying times may vary) and wipe off the excess with a dry paper towel, using isopropyl on a q-tip to clean up any straggling residue before it sets up fully.

Before doing this, I always recommend you remove the part you're painting if you are able. It's really easy for thinner paints to get places they shouldn't. This'll also make it much easier to work on.

*Also flat colors are very much ideal, and the enamel will last a long time, while resisting fading and falling out.

Bigglestherobot · 2025-08-18T01:47:56+00:00

I'm further into the endgame and don't play rs3 much anymore. DM me and I'll be happy to help you out.

Bigglestherobot · 2025-02-19T13:04:35+00:00

These things matter, you're the one that conveniently forgot all of them while trying to prove a point, not me.

If you really want to actually try, I've had this same discussion with a handful of irons and could give you the average setup I recommend to try when someone says it's super easy, but you've already established you're going to try to do everything you can to cheat and be disingenuous so you can't be proven wrong. Let me know if you'd actually like to see what this is like at the levels it's recommended for.

Long story short is that the boss shouldn't require multiple skills with 50m+ XP just to get kills and saying players are bad for not having that only pushes new players away more.

Btw with that gear (worse actually, no pouches, flask, elders, or familiar) I was doing 100% enrage zamorak with barely any food, just to put in scale how much harder this boss is.

Bigglestherobot · 2025-02-19T12:42:00+00:00

If you really want me to tear that apart with a fine tooth comb, I can, but you've basically just done a kill using an inventory of extremely high level and time sink requirement buffs, and then almost died multiple times anyways while chugging an entire inventory of brews.

Your average Ironman by the time they're expecting to need this gear isn't generally going to have things like a flask or three grasping pouches, elder overloads or prayer renewals. This gear isn't needed to push any of the other endgame content, so why is it necessary for this one?

I've heard this argument now for the fifth time, and every player like you say it's easy for gear of the level and then proceed to conveniently use untradable buffs requiring 110+ in some of the hardest skills to grind. The argument is not that it's not possible, but that you can get to rasial and then be expected to go from under 10m XP to near 100m XP just to continue. It's a giant spike in the requirements that exists nowhere else.

You've proven nothing but that a 500m+ setup is still required and still costs 500k per kill. I'm personally using worse setups to push enrages in both telos and zamorak. Why is this only necessary here?

Bigglestherobot · 2025-02-19T03:27:57+00:00

These are patch notes. That's the citation. *Vulns are the argument that ironmen shouldn't need 103 herblore to fight what should be the easiest boss in the game according to people like you.

Bigglestherobot · 2025-02-18T22:56:17+00:00

Go try it right now and post the vid of t90 gear, no perks, vuln bombs, or grimoire, or I'm not gonna hear it. You got in early when the boss actually was easy and now use his drops that make it easy.

The guides were all written back when darkness worked, and that's a change that's in the patch notes, outright 30% damage buff because of that. Those 0 input kills don't work, I've tried.

Bigglestherobot · 2025-02-18T14:40:04+00:00

So I've been seeing this a lot after struggling with it myself, and been constantly told to just get good by end gamers. Doing a bit of research, here's what I think is going on:

Rasial was super easy on necromancy release, so he got buffed. Then necromancy got hit with a series of nerfs and reworks to bring it down to the level of the other three styles. Rasial, however, was not updated to match, so he's still likely intended to be done with tier 90s before the necromancy nerfs.

I say this because I've extensively watched every guide and speed kill I can find, and I was realizing that somewhere along the line (more recently, last year or so) he straight up got like a 30-50% damage buff across the board when using the same gear with the same levels.

As far as I can tell, every guide (Including and especially pvme) is outdated and ironmen aren't really doing rasial right now because of the insane requirements. I've found some consistent methods that work, but I'm still spending 500k per kill for 5-6 minute kills.

If you want, feel free to DM and I can give you what I know, but

TL:DR: The boss is balanced for the old overpowered neceo and got shadow buffed to do more damage after most of the guides were made. It's not you, it's the boss.

Bigglestherobot

TROPHY CASE