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Wait, so you're concerned that the people working at the university testing center â€" academic psychologists who also work closely with test publishers â€" will copy your student project and then distribute it for free online? Is that really the kind of thing you think they would do? (Do they hate students? Do they hate you in particular?)

Not all of the people working there are academic psychologists, some of them are just students like myself...but nevertheless you're probably right and nobody is going to copy anything.
It's just that after a year of work it's hard to let go I guess
But on a serious note, test copying is a real problem and happens quite often. Tests are expensive and people are always trying to get around that.
Nevertheless putting in a notice that this is not a final version could do the trick. All these sleepless nights and that idea has never crossed my mind
It seems like you're right and going to more effort than that would just slow me down. This way I can get back to the problem when the data collection is finished.
Btw the test is not intellectual property of the university that is already settled, otherwise I wouldn't be doing it at all

A Mind Forever Voyaging sounds awsome.

My name is not mentioned on screen, but my voice is in it...and you can dial my cell phone number as an easter egg

Selling the test behind my back is very unlikely. But the thing is a major test publisher is already working on something very similar and I don't want to give them any further inspiration so to speak
But what concerns me most is copying the test for private use.
At the moment I'm working with a compiled version which leaves me with an exe file that you can just copy paste to different PCs. And that was fine until now. In order to get anywhere near the 300-600 test participants I have to give the test out of my hands. Considering that you usually buy a license to run a psychological test once, having an unprotected version out there with unlimited use is just not cool at all...

So far my idea was to use some sort of exe wrapper to create a trial version of the exe, thus leaving anyone who tries to copy the test for their own amusement with a limited time frame.
Unfortunately I've never ever tried this before and wasn't very successful with it so far. Maybe someone could point me into the general direction of a compatible program or come up with a more elegant way of solving the problem?
I'm sure there is one but I'm not a bad ass programmer...wish I would be one, so much more fun then most of the psychology stuff I had to deal with

Thx for your answers and I'm serious

Maybe I should have described the current situation a bit more...
The mess is already behind me and I'm glad for that
This objective personality test is quite different from what you would expect.
The main problem with current psychological test inventories is that they don't utilize the full potential of modern day technology.
Just like you've said, they are just pen and paper test adapted for PC use (nothing more then a questionnaire).
What I've done is more of a simulation then a questionnaire, which means that I get my data from your response within that simulated environment.
This simulation is 2 dimensional as you've probably guessed and because of that AGS was my choice.
Basically you are wandering around an office doing stuff you usually tend to do in an office and the psychological part is woven into it.
And I managed to get everything I need out of it...heck it's the best looking personality test I've ever seen

Anyway, participant data is of course a priority, but again I guess I've to rephrase what I've said before...kinda difficult in a foreign language, so be easy on me
There is no threat to participant confidentiality. This test is not something you do at home alone. There is a testing center at the university which is always occupied by a psychologist.
This guy or woman  monitors the testing process etc. I'm in no way concerned about the test results. What I'm concerned about is the test itself (don't want to give away free copies) and all my lovely colleagues, who happen to work very closely with major test publisher's. Uploading the results was an idea to first of all speed up the evaluation of the test parameters and apart from that to soothe my paranoia
I would just like to know who uses my test and when, but that is not essential so I guess I skip that.

To sum it all up, I'm fairly sure that I'm not throwing it all away (although the test is going to be recreated in unity after the data is collected, but for different reasons) but copy protection is still an issue.

Hello everyone,

first of all I would like to say a big thank you to this forum and all of you guys.
My programming skills are marginal at best so i would not have gotten this far without you

Anyway my situation is the following:

About a year ago I started to utilize AGS to program an objective personality test as my diploma thesis in psychology.
Right now with the test finally being finished I would like to collect the first set of data.
In order to get as many test subjects as possible I'm going to use a couple of PCs located at the university.
Long story short, i can't control what happens to the test once I apply it to these machines.

I'm very reluctant to give the program out of hand, but maybe I'm just getting paranoid ...
Either way I'm looking for a way to ensure that nobody is able to copy the test against my will,
or at least to build a trial version which expires after a set period of time.

I'm grateful for any suggestions on what to do and how to do it and pardon my bad english

On a side note, is there a way for a AGS game to upload data e.g. all my scores?
I came across the TCP/IP-Plugin but it seems to be a dead end for me.