Re: Premature concerns about spell system


Subject: Re: Premature concerns about spell system
From: Jari P Saukkonen (jsaukkon@cs.Helsinki.FI)
Date: Fri Feb 18 2000 - 11:36:09 EET


On Thu, 17 Feb 2000, Kevan Benson wrote:

> So, would a good way to implement different symbols for different people be an encryption code that matches with the
> server, or just more player info being kept on the server?  I just keep thinking that anything done on the client side
> could possibly be hacked.  Wouldn't want anything like what happened to Quake when it was open-sourced happening.  This
> game looks WAY to promising for that.  I don't know, maybe that isn't really a concern if the game is designed around
> that in the first place, not open-sourced as an afterthought.
> 
> BTW, what are your plans for avoiding hacks?

First, we try to minimize the amount of information that can usefully be
distributed OOC, for example by having different magic symbols for
different people as Yorkaturr pointed out. Personally I don't have much
good feelings towards "spoiler" sites as in the world of Majik knowledge
is power there shouldn't be any shortcuts for gaining it. 

Second, the server does NOT trust the client. Any information that a
client doesn't need will not be sent to it and all data sent by client
will be checked by the server before they are accepted. Thus having
"showeq"-style traffic snoopers will not give much benefit. (showeq is a
hack for Everquest that listens to ongoing network traffic while you're
playing the game and displays quite _everything_ in the current zone,
including all monsters, their movement, stats, equipment, player's exact
stats etc).

And third, the protocol used for communication between the client and
the server must be encrypted to make things harder. 

Of course, there is nothing we can do against hacked clients that would
simply have transparent walls etc. We just try to keep the information
sent to client as minimal as possible so that the possible
"information-leak" will not be that big.


++dazzt

---
Jari Saukkonen + jari.saukkonen@cs.helsinki.fi | Coral
programming, music, keyboards, web, demos,  b5 | Nah-kolor
dazzt @ Majik3D RPG     https://majik3d-legacy.org | Majik



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