Tic-80: Disable Editors

[ZYOUNG10]

The ability to disable editors in a "finished product" of a game would be nice :D

[HomineLudens]

Like it.

[hseiken]

+1 but only for webplayer for obvious reasons. I think the editor shouldn't be disabled from viewing code, however, but in terms of editing, there's no point to have it in the webplayer if the point of the webplayer is pure distribution of projects to non-TIC users.

[darkhog]

Well, "on site" webplayer should have this functionality as it makes it easier to see how other people done certain things, but yeah, after issuing export command the resulting binary or html/js shouldn't have editors enabled unless you specifically allow for them (it should be an option to keep them for the developers who would like their game to be modded)

[Yukitty]

If the console and editors were _completely stripped out_ of exported builds, they could potentially be a lot smaller too, and maybe my text editor wouldn't barf at how big the html is...

[DjPale]

A lot of player hit Esc by default since it often means "cancel" or "back" or similar. So an option for disabling would be good. Agree that one could consider only having it the a web-player. Another solution would be to make a different, less used shortcut for breaking out the game like Ctrl-Q or similar.

[nesbox]

it can be a part of TIC-80 Pro :)
encrypted game resources without editors...

[jahodfra]

I like that all games have visible code and assets. It makes tic80 nice learning tool. Disabling editors would prevent cheating, but in the same way it would make harder to lure gamers into game making (and programming).

[andrechalom]

I think this links to #387 - maybe games that have reuse licenses should have some sort of "read-only editors" at least, but games with no license can strip editors completely?

[Jummit]

I would like this feature to give the finished game to a friend or so. On the web page, editors should be always enabled by default (see what jahodfra said).

[carlsmith]

On remapping Escape to Ctrl-Q, Ctrl-Q is commonly bound to Quit, so it would need to be something different, but I think it's a bad idea anyway.

If you don't want end users accessing the code from in the game, the solution is to disable that feature, not to obscure it behind a more awkward keybinding. That doesn't solve the problem (it only minimises it), and it makes life a little bit more difficult for the vast majority of users, two hundred times a day.

[ChildishGiant]

Is this still on the cards?

[RobLoach]

Tossing my vote in against this. A big part of what makes TIC-80 appealing is the open nature to it. Being able to see how a project was made invites collaboration and more involvement.

What are you trying to hide by disabling the editor? Have you stolen some assets and don't want people to know? Are you using some malicious code that goes against the original author's license? Keeping things open and transparent protects yourself and encourages community growth.

If you really want to keep people from seeing your work, however, you could obsuscate the source code, and embed it in a TIC-80 player binary directly. But why?

[ChildishGiant]

Well if one wanted to publish a game to steam or something like that I think most people would agree that it looks more professional to not have the editors enabled. Imagine if every unity game came with the editor installed and by pressing F1 you could change anything to do with the game. This video by Game Maker's Toolkit comes to mind. Enabling a player to cheat can, despite what they think, ruin their experience.

[RobLoach]

You could embed the cart binary into your own sdl player:
https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/blob/master/src/player/sdl.c#L42-L43

Would give you the added benefit of using SDL to add your own application icon, window title, etc.