Re: Game idea....

[Michael Day <mikeday@corplink.com.au>]

> Depends. But IMHO we´re focusing too much on Quake-style games here.
> What about the UltimaOnline-style ones? How much can those be affected
> by cheating? There´s no noticeable benefit from fiddling around with the
> client-side display (well, you could save some torches, but that´s it)
> and both your player data and the world data are stored on the server...

The WorldForge project (www.worldforge.org) was devoting some thought to
this issue just recently, those who are interested could maybe drop by for
a look around or browse our mailing list archives.

Once again, simple issues of walking through walls and bumping up your
health are not a problem, as these are all controlled by the server. There
is still the problem of inadvertedly revealing secrets or hidden plot
elements by sending a little too much information though. For speed
purposes the clients need to know what is coming up a little way ahead of
them, to compensate for any minor lag, but someone can then just recompile
their client so they can see a little further than other people. Or if you
send too much information about objects an altered client can be capable
of "seeing through" illusion spells or morphed creates to see what they
really are.

The problems are much less serious compared with Quake though because
usually your strength in the game is not determined by reaction time or
accurate targeting.

Michael