Re: Game idea....

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

On Thu, 8 Jul 1999, Christoph Reichenbach wrote:

> > 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.
> 
> Hmm, an improvement (though not a solution) for this problem might be to send
> the lookahead data encrypted. The key will still have to be sent, but, since
> it's usually considerably smaller, the server will be able to wait much longer
> before starting the transfer, while actually transmitting more and better
> lookahead data. (This might also help performance). Since even very weak
> encryption (RSA with 128 bits or something like that) is quite hard to break
> with conventional means, the client data is "almost safe"; updating it (with a
> new key) regularly will make it "practically safe".

But, since the player have access to the source code, he can -still-
modify the client. Or, as many of my objections focus on; he can use the
client code to write a proxy that enable him to cheat in a wide varity of
ways.

With binary distributed code only, encryption (where the keys are updated
frequently) can help solve a lot of the problems. With source available,
I cant really see a solution.

Unfortunatly I consider this an argument -against- open source - although
only in this very special case.

Mads

-- 
Mads Bondo Dydensborg.                               madsdyd@challenge.dk
'Open Systems' means no fences. And no fences means no use for Gates.
                                                        - Sun Microsystems