I'm not sure where else to post this, but I was wondering the community's thoughts on the possibility of modding for GTA VI. From the patents filed by Rockstar/Take Two, the encryption for GTA VI will be WAY worse than it was for GTA V and RDR 2. The files will now jump randomly around your computer, at unpredictable intervals. So we no longer have "Vehicles are saved to this folder." We now have "Vehicles are saved.... Somewhere. Until 5 minutes from now and then they're somewhere else. Oh, and it re-encrypts itself every time it moves so.... No mods for you I guess?"


 

Spoiler

The locations of important variables are moved around in the games memory at random intervals. This makes it harder for cheaters to find the position of the variables in the memory file, thus making it harder for cheaters to alter them.

These variables are also encrypted in a special way. When a variable needs to be changed by the game itself (e.g. adding money to a players bank account after a mission), the variable is decrypted for a moment, gets changed and then gets encrypted again. This all happens automatically.

Developers can easily make any variable in the game use this automatic encryption and decryption system by simply adding a single tag to the variable.

However, the increased workload (decrypting and encrypting the variable) is more performance intensive. Developers have to be mindful of which variables to use this decryption system for, to not unnecessarily slow down the game and its performance.

 

 

I'm surprised they got that patent I'll be honest. I did not fully read it but the fundamental method is not novel and has been used in multiple other multiplayer games for some time - which by the way, still get modded/hacked. I'm sure this will only be used for online functionality, but even if it is used in singleplayer, will be worked around.

 

It may have even been implemented already in GTA Online, although I am not familiar with recent GTA Online developments. Previously a good number of variables were boobytrapped already in GTA V.

27 minutes ago, VRDog said:

The files will now jump randomly around your computer, at unpredictable intervals.

This would be to protect in-memory information, for example, player health, vehicle health or vehicle velocity. The patent doesn't cover files / file modding.

3 hours ago, Cyan said:

I'm surprised they got that patent I'll be honest. I did not fully read it but the fundamental method is not novel and has been used in multiple other multiplayer games for some time - which by the way, still get modded/hacked. I'm sure this will only be used for online functionality, but even if it is used in singleplayer, will be worked around.

 

It may have even been implemented already in GTA Online, although I am not familiar with recent GTA Online developments. Previously a good number of variables were boobytrapped already in GTA V.

This would be to protect in-memory information, for example, player health, vehicle health or vehicle velocity. The patent doesn't cover files / file modding.

Ah, then I stand corrected. Thank you Cyan for giving us hope 🙂

Since they didn't specify whether this method will be used in single-player or multiplayer, and according to the quoted statement, they mentioned "cheaters" instead of "modders," so I assume this is more like an anti-cheating protection for GTA Online. 

 

Because modders are not necessarily "cheaters." Cheaters in GTA are defined as players who seek unfair advantage through the use of third-party scripts in a multiplayer competition, such as the use of god mode etc.  

 

 

I mean if it's once again an upgraded version of the RAGE engine then it will be hacked within a year of PC release. It was crazy how fast RDR2 was done.

When it says "important variables are moved around in the games memory", it means things like your money, your health etc will change location in the game's process allocated RAM. It does not have any correlation to game files, which is what you install.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_(computer_science)

No way to know until 1) the game is released and 2) the game exists on PC.

 

There were similar discussions around GTA V before it was released, that it would be hard to mod, Rockstar hates modders etc etc, but in the end, it all... kind of... worked out. 

but i want to catch alligator's as a cop 😞 

If anything, we still have GTA V which probably will have a playerbase looking how its not outdated

GTA 6 will be just like RDR2. Not moddable! They still haven't be able to mod that game. We're screwed 

46 minutes ago, medicbobs said:

GTA 6 will be just like RDR2. Not moddable! They still haven't be able to mod that game. We're screwed 

Not sure what you're on about. CodeWalker has made huge strides on the file formats. RDR2 is moddable, work however slowed because there's not a huge amount of community interest (at least compared to GTA). We had our own code running on RDR2 within hours of it being released.

There's a few things that are annoying (like a lot of filenames are hashed instead of being easily accessible) but it's not insurmountable.