Re: Game idea....

[Mads Bondo Dydensborg <madsdyd@challenge.dk>]

On Thu, 8 Jul 1999, Brad Johnson wrote:

> > This also didn't work, checksums+downloads+peeks didn't help.
> > If someone want to cheat with free/open source, I know now way to stop him.
> 
> 	I don't think this is really something to be worried about. I mean,
> yeah, it's possible to cheat... but how many people will actually make the
> effort for it? I know it happens in Quake, but don't forget that Quake is one
> of the most popular games around. I doubt the amount of people willing to
> hack apart an open source Linux game to cheat will be very high.

I think it is an very interessting problem, both because it actually is
hard to solve, and because it is a direct argument against making the
source for games available.

I think the problem is so hard to solve, that we may never see a solution
- unless similar problems exists in other areas, where a solution already
exists.

In a normal client server setup, the protocol and state at the server is
the only thing that really matters. Here, the problem is that information
that can be obtained from combining other information can be considering
cheating. For most other client server app I can think of, this would
simply not matter. (Not very clear - I hope you understand what I mean).

It nags me a lot.

Mads

-- 
Mads Bondo Dydensborg.                               madsdyd@challenge.dk
Unix is here to stay. The Internet is Unix, all network administrators cut 
their teeth on Unix, and many of them say they'll give up Unix when you pry
it from their cold, dead fingers.