Thank you Stormbinder!

[Leif_-]

It is possible to make a game such as Dom2 much more hackproof against various forms of cheats, including "dreaded" hex editing.

Putting on my software engineering hat for a moment:

While it is possible to make a bullet-proof server, it is not necessarily practically possible to make an existing server bullet-proof. Judging by some of the previous bugs, I suspect that in Dominions 2 the GUI is mashed in with the underlying game logic to such a degree that it would probably take an almost complete redesign and rewriting of the game engine to accomplish. That would be too much work to invest over some very rare incidents of cheating.

Remember, if it was easy to make secure software, people would do it more often.

The combination of better and more powerful encryption methods that those that are being used now,

Just a very minor nitpick here, but you can't really encrypt the turn files from the eyes of the player. As the player has access to the binary which generates the turn-file in the first place, he has always theoretical access to the plain-text - regardless of what encryption method is applied. The correct term to use would be "obfuscate."

(And yes, this is hair-splitting - at least when we're talking of nothing more important than turns for a game.)

Finally, I just don't think that the solution that Gandalf proposed "Sorry, but this game can always be hacked, just choose your partners carefully" would be an acceptable solution to a lot of Dom2 players.

Why not? It's not like anyone plays this game professionally for money, and even if people did, the existance of some amount of cheating is accepted in other games and sports that people play for money.

[Stormbinder]

It is possible to make a game such as Dom2 much more hackproof against various forms of cheats, including "dreaded" hex editing.

Putting on my software engineering hat for a moment:

While it is possible to make a bullet-proof server, it is not necessarily practically possible to make an existing server bullet-proof. Judging by some of the previous bugs, I suspect that in Dominions 2 the GUI is mashed in with the underlying game logic to such a degree that it would probably take an almost complete redesign and rewriting of the game engine to accomplish.

It is hard to tell for sure without actually looking into source code Leif. But I also have noticed that Dom2's GUI is indeed likely to be mashed with arhitecture code.

That would be too much work to invest over some very rare incidents of cheating.

How can you possibly know that these are rare incidents? If you have followed this cheat discovery story, you know that this particular cheat was catched only because of unique combination of many factors. And if cheater would not be so blatant with the amount of which he cheat, it would be impossible to prove. It would also be compltetly impossible to prove if the game would not be stoped by turn 23 but Lasted even 20 more turns. Et cetera...

Remember, if it was easy to make secure software, people would do it more often.

Hey, I never said it was easy.

The combination of better and more powerful encryption methods that those that are being used now,

Just a very minor nitpick here, but you can't really encrypt the turn files from the eyes of the player. As the player has access to the binary which generates the turn-file in the first place, he has always theoretical access to the plain-text - regardless of what encryption method is applied. The correct term to use would be "obfuscate."

(And yes, this is hair-splitting - at least when we're talking of nothing more important than turns for a game.)

You are right.

Finally, I just don't think that the solution that Gandalf proposed "Sorry, but this game can always be hacked, just choose your partners carefully" would be an acceptable solution to a lot of Dom2 players.

Why not? It's not like anyone plays this game professionally for money, and even if people did, the existance of some amount of cheating is accepted in other games and sports that people play for money.

It also know to devastate computer games communites in many other MP games. I have witnsses several examples of this myself, and I've heard and read of many more. And Dom2 is very time intensive game as far as strategic MP games go.

A long bow and a strong bow, and let the sky grow dark!
The cord to the nock, the shaft to the ear, and the king of Koth for a mark!

Great signature/quote Leif.

[Leif_-]

How can you possibly know that these are rare incidents?

Two reasons. First of all, very few people have the skills and plain stubborness of mind that's necessary to fiddle with obfuscated binary files. Secondly, if this cheating was common, Norfleet wouldn't have had the unique reputation he did - both because his "strategies" wouldn't have been as efficent, and because other people would have managed to get them to "work."

Great signature/quote Leif.

Yes, I rather like it. It's a chapter heading from one of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories.

[Stormbinder]

Two reasons. First of all, very few people have the skills and plain stubborness of mind that's necessary to fiddle with obfuscated binary files. Secondly, if this cheating was common, Norfleet wouldn't have had the unique reputation he did - both because his "strategies" wouldn't have been as efficent, and because other people would have managed to get them to "work."

Hmmm, why do you think that the Norf was nesseserly the one who discovered how to hack the files? I may be wrong, but he didn't struck me as somebody with good technical skills and programing knowledge. Besides once the protection is cracked, simple "trainer" program can be writen to modify client's turns before they are send to the server, with something like simple shortcut to reset all gems to 200, or whatever. Once it is done any 5 year old kid can use it.

As for the strategies, "madcastling" and "massive clamhoarding" strategies are still very efficient ones, if boring, norf was not the only one who used them successefully. Just like VQ was still overpowered before it was nerfed, regardless of the fact that Norf used her in all his games while cheating.

Basicly I am not saying that there are tons of cheaters out there, and I hope there are none or just a few.

I just wanted to point out these three facts:

First, we have no real way of knowing if there are other cheaters out there and if there are - how many of them.

Second - Norf's kind of cheats are virtually impossible to detect by other players, unless cheater is really greedy or stupid, and the curcumstanses are right.

Third - from my personal experience with computer MP games once the cheat is out the number of people using it would only grew in time, never shrink, until the loophole is closed. Call it human nature, or murphy law, or whatever. But I never seen cheats appear, and just slowly fade by themself with time.

Great signature/quote Leif.

Yes, I rather like it. It's a chapter heading from one of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories.

Yeap, I remember you told me about it long time ago, answering my question. I even tried to find that particular Howard's Conan story, but couldn't. Do you happen to remember its name by any chance?

[Wendigo]

How can you possibly know that these are rare incidents?

Now you are getting contagioned with Norfleet's paranoia.

In my 3+ years of playing first DomI & now DomII I have only been burned once, and that was a 'map edit'. The cheating host was spotted & exposed easily.

I have joined many games in different servers since then with mostly unknown (at the time) opponents, and always met some excellent people. No cheating in them at all I believe.

I dispute also the idea that 'mild' cheating could become common: cheating in a MP games when no rewards are available always comes down to an ego issue: 'must win at all cost' for recognition or whatever, so it's never mild but rather tries to _fully_ guarantee victory, all the more the more opponents involved. Both the data KO offered re Norfleet's empire at turn 23 & my own experience confirm this.

The problem with this issue is IMO that Norfleet was such a dedicated player, involved in a dozen or more games at the same time...so it looks like many people might have been burned by him and a good deal of newbies at that, which is a sad first experience.

As for the strategies, "madcastling" and "massive clamhoarding" strategies are still very efficient ones, if boring, norf was not the only one who used them successefully. Just like VQ was still overpowered before it was nerfed, regardless of the fact that Norf used her in all his games while cheating.

From our discussions at the time I certainly recall that a bunch of us defended that 'economic building' & 'turtling' strategies were only viable in big maps & vs non agressive opponents, and that argument was never countered at the time, but rather we were told 'look, Doom horrors wished for at turn 30!! after empowering to As9, this proves you are wrong'...now we know how those Doom horrors were wished for.

It all comes down to investing scarce resources in either the short term or the long, and the answer to the question of what to do with someone that is putting all his eggs in the long term is always 'kill him before he gets his return on his investment'.

[Cainehill]

And just to point out something: if there is a way to have gems set to 200 specifically / exactly, it seems much more likely that this is a debugging / internal game testing command that was left in and discovered. Possibly a bogus way of using the wish spell, without having the astral / research necessary.

Say, Stormbinder : you're demanding / whining for Illwinter to make the game cheat-proof. You going to donate them the money to hire a couple of dedicated security/encryption specialist programmers, considering that big companies (Blizzard, for example) with multi-million budgets can't manage it with programmers largely dedicated to said task?