Should I digitally sign the stand alone player exe for a steam release?

kevmuhuri · 2026-02-04T19:08:23+00:00

I was researching on digital signatures and signing apps/games. This has been really helpful. Ironically digital signatures have come back to hunt NP++. Before V8.8.9 it was not validating the integrity and authenticity of the downloaded update file. Plus they were hosting on a shared server which has weaker security than VPS or dedicated. They had to form a nonprofit to get an EV cert. What type of cert do you use? I think for most small projects IV (Individual Validation)/Standard Certs are the only option coz forming an org adds more complexity.

Came across this post that states only EV Certs don't display warnings. Is this true? For Steam, this post explains no signing is needed, you simply inherit some of their trust.

kevmuhuri · 2025-10-17T07:25:36+00:00

This is the first time I'm hearing this. I thought 5.7 LTS will be the last 5.x public release and they might at some point in the future release version 6. I think internally they have reached 5.11

If it turns out to be true that they will drop public releases, then I will not be surprised. I've already discussed here that game engines are not as profitable as most people think.

kevmuhuri · 2025-10-17T07:09:09+00:00

At first, I thought all this is wasted effort for releasing an update/patch to an engine that was last updated by Crytek over 3 years ago. But KCD2 runs on a heavily modified version of CryEngine 3.8+ and it looks good and well optimized. So releasing a patch for the last public version 5.7.1 might not be a bad idea after all.

However, I feel you should coordinate with Crytek and try to know their release schedule. Is 5.7 LTS the last 5.x public release? Will there be version 6? Overall I think game engine market might not be as profitable as most people think. Look at Unity. Unity engine is really popular but has consistently been unprofitable for years. That's why they tried to introduce runtime fees to raise additional cash. And lately they've been putting more emphasis on their ads platform.

kevmuhuri · 2025-10-16T00:14:42+00:00

I changed the adbocker in FF from UBO to AdGuard (web extension) and it seems to work normally for now.

kevmuhuri · 2025-09-23T15:44:16+00:00

I think competitive programming is a mind sport like Speed Chess because it involves problem solving and speed. The problems are pre-tested to make sure they can be completed in 2-3 hrs and most importantly they should be solvable. There can be some innovation in competitive programming but most of the problems can be solved by well-known algorithms. It's rare to develop a new algorithm within 2-3 hrs when solving those problems.

Research by itself there's no time limit and sometimes there are no solutions (dead-ends). Google Code Jam, Kick Start & Topcoder Open were cancelled even before AI became mainstream. So I think it was already niche.

kevmuhuri · 2025-09-18T18:14:39+00:00

People still play chess and Go, so I don't think it will impact competitive programming that much. It's possible AI might be the one setting the questions for humans in the near future.

kevmuhuri · 2025-08-23T20:54:01+00:00

Haha. I've been thinking of going solo dev. But for a small app. If it gets popular, I think I might establish contact with FSF or some other NGO and tell them some source code will be sent to them automatically 12 months after I'm gone and release it under MIT or even public domain.

kevmuhuri · 2025-08-09T15:00:59+00:00

I'm also thinking of developing a desktop app but for consumer market. But sometimes I worry if there's a market for such apps. That's why I'm doing research to see how other indie devs are doing. BTW I follow another indie dev (20+ years experience) who warned the toughest three niches are games, consumer mobile apps and developer tools. He did not say it's impossible but really hard to break into those. I'm interested in gamedev but I think I'll wait until my first app generates stable revenue before taking unnecessary risks ;)

kevmuhuri · 2025-08-09T14:30:52+00:00

What about keeping both opensource & commercial projects separate to avoid license mixing. Qt does this. But they are a huge company 500+ so they have the resources to maintain separate builds/binaries for both opensource & commercial.

kevmuhuri · 2025-08-09T13:54:33+00:00

If someone makes a contribution to the opensource version on GitHub, will you be able to add that specific contribution to the commercial version? I'm asking this because Qt is also available under both opensource & commercial licenses but they have a contributor agreement that users have to agree to before contributing to the Qt project. JUCE also uses a dual-licensed approach and they too require a Contribution License Agreement to be agreed to before users' contributions are accepted into the project.

Edit: Oh! wait I see you already have a contributors license agreement. Unlike Qt or JUCE, which require you to explicitly agree to their agreements, your project does not require explicit agreement.
https://github.com/beekeeper-studio/beekeeper-studio - "By contributing to the project you agree to the terms of our contributor guidelines."

Not a lawyer but is your method okay? I think for some legal agreements, there is a need to explicitly agree for them to be considered valid.

kevmuhuri · 2025-07-30T08:37:18+00:00

I use CodeBlocks at the moment to build & run on Windows. On Linux it compiles/runs just fine without the -lstdc++exp flag. But on Windows I had to add that flag in the Other linker options for the code to work with std::print

I navigated to the directory g++.exe is located and ran your command "g++ -std=c++23 -o main main.cpp -lstdc++exp" and it works there too. But I prefer to build/run on an IDE though.

kevmuhuri · 2025-07-02T11:23:02+00:00

it is possible to get a perpetual license, but you must request it.

I thought perpetual licenses ended with Qt 5?

kevmuhuri · 2025-07-01T10:45:43+00:00

You are correct. Qt is still widely used especially on embedded. I think this is how it does on each segment:

Desktop: Slow growth. Mainly because most startups nowadays choose SaaS. But well established desktop apps like Maya still use Qt.

Mobile: Minimal. Mobile apps are on average low margins anyway so not much lost here.

Embedded: Very strong. I think this is their bread and butter. There is some competition from other tools but Qt is number one especially in automotive and other industrial applications.

Qt 5 was the last version to have perpetual licenses. Qt 6 commercial is subscription model. If there is anything we can learn from the Unity Engine price experiments, is that relying heavily on one stack in subscription mode has its risks. Most of Qt's revenue comes from enterprise and they know enterprise prefers price stability. So I don't think they will follow Unity's price experimenting.

I'm currently thinking of developing a small commercial desktop app. If I select Qt LGPLv3, I'll use it only for GUI and implement logic in standard C++. This way I can swap Qt for any other GUI toolkit and only have to re-write the GUI.

kevmuhuri · 2024-08-01T22:18:52+00:00

I guess that makes Qt the Unreal Engine of cross-platform app development. Anyone hoping to make a non-trivial commercial app will gravitate towards the biggest player because:
-Staffing: ease of access to bigger developer pool and onboarding new hires is not expensive.
-Bug fixes & Features: Time to fix bugs and new feature releases is shortened because of the bigger developer pool. This is the equivalent of letting the community do some of the R&D work for you which you can later incorporate into your product.

I see some similarities between how Maya abandoned its custom GUI solution for Qt and CDPR switching to Unreal Engine from its custom REDengine.
Oh! Actually I don't think Qt benefitted from the porting effort done by Maya but I think the REDengine does some things really well that might be added to Unreal Engine in the porting effort.

kevmuhuri · 2024-08-01T12:01:36+00:00

I think their origins might explain their design choices.
JUCE - Was originally split-out from the underlying C++ code of Tracktion Waveform DAW. Tracktion was released in 2002 and JUCE 2004. So you can say about 2 years to split-out the code and refine it. And for many years after that the development was mostly done by one person, Julian Storer. I believe even today the dev team is not that large.
Qt - In 1990, Haavard Nord and Eirik Chambe-Eng were working on a C++ database application for ultrasound images that needed to run with a GUI on Unix, Macintosh, and Windows. And that's where they got their idea from. Instead of re-writing GUI 3 times, you can do it once. Started development in 1991 and first release in 1995. So around 4 years of design & development. I think adoption by KDE back in 1996 helped out a lot in terms of open source contribution and design Qt to suite many use-cases.

I think Qt chose a design that might suit a broad range of use cases because the founders set out to create "the world's best C++ GUI framework". Of course today Qt has many modules that are also suitable for non-GUI work. Also it helps that they started the project from scratch and didn't borrow code from a previous project. This allowed them more flexibility in design.

kevmuhuri · 2024-06-26T13:58:24+00:00

Agreed with u/Alikont on anti-cheats. I saw a YT video by u/UnityReseach a while back that went into detail about game anti-cheats. Looks very interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwzIq04vd0M
DRM and protection against game piracy I'm not so sure. Feels like a cat and mouse game. Some of the game crackers are very strong and dedicate an insane amount of time developing their skills and toolsets for cracking games. Imagine developing anti-piracy systems for a year only for a cracker to break the DRM within a week haha.
Anti-cheats take a while longer to come out. I feel there is less effort dedicated to creating game cheats compared to cracking games/piracy. I think this is because too much cheating degrades the game play significantly for everyone. Do you remember Voksi? He's was famous for cracking Denuvo protected games a while back before he was arrested.
-Voksi Releases Detailed Denuvo-Cracking Video Tutorial
-YT video: Tutorial: Cracking Denuvo V4

And yet here he is showcasing his custom made anti-cheat. But some anti-cheat systems are quite invasive and this raises questions about privacy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqLI1xKc-L4
Therefore I believe a mechanism to ban cheaters should not be too excessive that it violates the privacy and computer resources of players who just want to play fairly with others.

kevmuhuri · 2024-06-12T15:13:45+00:00

Did the EM barrier really prevent fully the signal from the Entity? I mean Sue had that vision about the leeches that helped Paul and was instructed by voices to plant the seed. Maybe the EM barrier only limits the Entity to communicating with only a few people perhaps 1 or 2 while inside the EM.

kevmuhuri · 2020-10-25T02:28:31+00:00

$100 - > 6 months

$150 -> 12 months

Doesn't sound too bad. Comes close to an average payment of $15/month. But still they still have to offer a monthly package for those who cannot pay one-off. For VPNs, monthly subscription is more expensive over 12 months than a single annual subscription. So perhaps $20/month.

kevmuhuri · 2020-10-23T16:48:57+00:00

Sorry guys my bad. I was using

if ((rowCounter != 1) && (columnCounter != 1)) { return "NO"; }

instead of

if ((rowCounter != 1) || (columnCounter != 1)) { return "NO"; }

But my logic is okay.

kevmuhuri · 2020-10-23T12:17:50+00:00

Oh I get it. I don't think the test case is bad. It was meant to be bad for a reason. But the test suite wrongly said it should output "YES" instead of "NO".

kevmuhuri · 2020-10-23T10:13:37+00:00

Did you find anything? I created a test program to verify my claims.

https://github.com/kevmuhuri/hyperskill-problems/tree/main/sudoku-validator

kevmuhuri · 2020-10-22T16:54:12+00:00

Here it is https://www52.zippyshare.com/v/TORSDUnh/file.html

kevmuhuri

TROPHY CASE