plugging up free cheating.

[safemode]

Limits and restrictions are even more necessary in such a dynamic and flexible system as without them you'll quickly lose any resemblance of a believable and thus immersive reality. Players always tend to want less restrictions, less limits, as you can see with just about every cheat/trainer having an infinite ammo or infinite energy code/feature etc. When i see SPEC or wormholes and what not, I see it as a chip away at the realistic limits set within the game. If you can do that, then what stops you from doing this. And if that's this powerful, then That needs to be even more powerful to balance and back and forth, with no limitation because if you can have the power to do spec or wormholes then it makes sense you'd have enough power to continue the balancing of ever powerful weapons and defenses. There would be no end besides something arbitrarily set. The game no longer becomes fun.
So when someone suggests that wormhole travel or SPEC is just as good or should be kept and used then I would have to demand that a justification that sets limits to an appropriate level is made so as to stop and limit what we're saying players are capable of doing.

But in reality, i dont suspect this idea to get beyond this thread. None of the higher ups are interested in changing the story or tech behind it, at all it seems. And on the game side of things, well, you know how limited we are when it comes to development time. It's not a high priority. The back and forth discussion is what was intended here. The intention was to harden the theory and specifications for the Nexus system by defending it and pointing out failures in the other current systems. It's worked as what i first suggested has definitely evolved over the course of the thread to a more workable and what would be a more believable system.

Limits? Cheat/trainer? Infinite ammo/code/feature/[money]? Finally something we agree on. First, before taking SPEC or wormholes (which I don't see as abuse mechanisms anyway since even with those, it takes ages to get to the AI cores run which then I do see as abusive), we must take out the save file hacking. I - personally - stopped playing VS after I decided to hack the save file because it took me months to get money just for a mule. After that, it became an overkill. I had every single ship money could buy, and ceased playing after a little while. I've said it in other posts, save file hacking definitely cuts a good deal of time play, and I am pretty sure many people that come here and learn how to hack a save file, do so and stop playing after awhile. And just like you said, the game no longer becomes fun. After taking that overkill out, we then can change the current system of travel, which as I said I won't discuss any more .

It's very difficult to talk about squashing cheating when you can modify the source to the game and thus disable any sort of checking we put in to the savegame loading/saving functions. It's difficult when someone can just look at the code and see what we are doing, then create a separate utility that simply mimics it and allows users to take a savegame, load it in their fake game and modify values and write a new one then load that one in the real game.

You can stop casual cheating by simply compressing the savegame files and munging up the header such that it's not readable by external compressor/decompressor programs. I dont think anything we do can stop a cheater willing to go the extra mile to figure out either A, what they need to hex edit to fix the header or B, edit the compressor/decompressor to handle the munged header. It's an uphill battle we would never be able to win.

I think basically, you do that, and you stop pretty much all the people you're going to hope to stop. Anyone else who still cheats via the savegame, will still be cheating no matter how convoluted you make the checking in-game of the validity of the savegame.

[MC707]

It's very difficult to talk about squashing cheating when you can modify the source to the game and thus disable any sort of checking we put in to the savegame loading/saving functions. It's difficult when someone can just look at the code and see what we are doing, then create a separate utility that simply mimics it and allows users to take a savegame, load it in their fake game and modify values and write a new one then load that one in the real game.

You can stop casual cheating by simply compressing the savegame files and munging up the header such that it's not readable by external compressor/decompressor programs. I dont think anything we do can stop a cheater willing to go the extra mile to figure out either A, what they need to hex edit to fix the header or B, edit the compressor/decompressor to handle the munged header. It's an uphill battle we would never be able to win.

I think basically, you do that, and you stop pretty much all the people you're going to hope to stop. Anyone else who still cheats via the savegame, will still be cheating no matter how convoluted you make the checking in-game of the validity of the savegame.

At least we should destroy the current savegame cheating method. Because a person cheats through the savegame method, he/she is not necessarily going to cheat in a more advanced way. They might bother to open a simple text file and add 100G of money, but they won't bother to circumvent it from there if we destroy that mechanism. There will probably be someone who has enough time in their basement to do just that and post it somewhere on the internet, but people will still have to find it. And the forums won't be a place they will find it. And if you think about it, and if you've read the forums, you might just realize WE are the ones who told them how to cheat by modifying the save file. When I first came to the forums, I didn't even imagine you could cheat by just opening a text file and adding a bunch of zeros. After all, the folder containing them was hidden. Most people simply do not have the skills nor the time to find how to hack their way through the game, we pinpointed them the solution. If you have such an easy way to cheat then don't bother balancing the game, because most people will cheat at some point. They might feel the game too difficult, no problem, just hack the save file and have all the power. Then the game becomes an overkill, becomes boring, and the player goes off. If you are going to have such an easy way to cheat then don't even bother about fixing things in game

[Deus Siddis]

The main problems with removing easily changed save game files are:

1) There's no real benefit. Folks who want to cheat, should be able to. It isn't anyone else's job to save them from themselves outside of runtime. In fact many would most likely take offense to such an intervention.

2) If you need or want to cheat to get past a flaw or imbalance in the game, without this system you wouldn't have that option.

3) Content artists like me need this to test our work in game without having to play through up to hundreds of hours of gametime to do so (think rare aliens or large/obscure vessel classes).

[safemode]

Well, all we'd need to do is inline an implementation of gzip. it compiles on everything so that's not a problem, it's fast and lightweight, so that's not a problem. What gzip accomplishes is sufficiently obfuscating the body of the savegame file such that hex editing will not be a valid means of editing the new savegame file, as it would decompress to something messed up. It also obfuscates the file to make the location of where you would need to edit to access the money portion of the savegame hard to find. This alone will be sufficient to remove the vast majority of cheaters.

But to make it a bonus, we can corrupt the file intentionally, so that standard gzip clients can't decompress the file. This means if you want to cheat you have to pull the code, rip the functions out and compile your own client or hack the game to go back to using plain text. Both of which the vast majority of people wont or can't bother doing.

That's all rather easy to do. It would have to be something done at the cusp of a release however, since it would break backwards compatibility with all previous savegames. That type of thing can be said to be expected on a new release.

[MC707]

The main problems with removing easily changed save game files are:

1) There's no real benefit. Folks who want to cheat, should be able to. It isn't anyone else's job to save them from themselves outside of runtime. In fact many would most likely take offense to such an intervention.

2) If you need or want to cheat to get past a flaw or imbalance in the game, without this system you wouldn't have that option.

3) Content artists like me need this to test our work in game without having to play through up to hundreds of hours of gametime to do so (think rare aliens or large/obscure vessel classes).

1) I guess you might be right on that, but we should still make our efforts to make this game as playable and balanced as possible. Its like saying, we shouldn't help drug addicts, let them f**k themselves up, it isn't anyone else's job to save them from themselves.

2) Why not fix the flaw or imbalance in the first place? After all, thats exactly what we want to bring: balance.

3) That shouldn't be that big of a problem. Ok, say you want to test your brand new KolossaL capital ship. Before you give it a value of $100000000, you can give it a buyable value and test it... and even like that, there might be other solutions other people might bring about, I'm sure.

Well, all we'd need to do is inline an implementation of gzip. it compiles on everything so that's not a problem, it's fast and lightweight, so that's not a problem. What gzip accomplishes is sufficiently obfuscating the body of the savegame file such that hex editing will not be a valid means of editing the new savegame file, as it would decompress to something messed up. It also obfuscates the file to make the location of where you would need to edit to access the money portion of the savegame hard to find. This alone will be sufficient to remove the vast majority of cheaters.

But to make it a bonus, we can corrupt the file intentionally, so that standard gzip clients can't decompress the file. This means if you want to cheat you have to pull the code, rip the functions out and compile your own client or hack the game to go back to using plain text. Both of which the vast majority of people wont or can't bother doing.

That's all rather easy to do. It would have to be something done at the cusp of a release however, since it would break backwards compatibility with all previous savegames. That type of thing can be said to be expected on a new release.

Thats exactly what I meant, my friend. I'm glad we concur in this point

[safemode]

obviously, the goal with altering savegames isn't to put an end to cheating, it's to make cheating difficult enough such that the player wont resort to it the instant they're up against a difficult problem. savegame cheating is like putting a screwdriver and a power-screwdriver next to eachother and telling a person that they have to screw in 100 screws with just the handheld driver, not mentioning anything about the power driver. Of course, the person is going to end up using the power driver. It's right there and it makes everything easy. What we'd be doing is getting rid of the powertool. Sure, the person could go to home depot and buy one, but those people would represent only an extremely small portion of the number of people we're dealing with.

By making the choice a little harder, we decrease the urge to circumvent gameplay. Less people circumventing gameplay will yield more long term players. Players that circumvent gameplay are short term players that bounce into a game, do their cheating, then move on once the cheating has removed a sufficient amount of entertainment. You rarely have a player who can go from cheating back to playing vanilla.

[MC707]

obviously, the goal with altering savegames isn't to put an end to cheating, it's to make cheating difficult enough such that the player wont resort to it the instant they're up against a difficult problem. savegame cheating is like putting a screwdriver and a power-screwdriver next to eachother and telling a person that they have to screw in 100 screws with just the handheld driver, not mentioning anything about the power driver. Of course, the person is going to end up using the power driver. It's right there and it makes everything easy. What we'd be doing is getting rid of the powertool. Sure, the person could go to home depot and buy one, but those people would represent only an extremely small portion of the number of people we're dealing with.

By making the choice a little harder, we decrease the urge to circumvent gameplay. Less people circumventing gameplay will yield more long term players. Players that circumvent gameplay are short term players that bounce into a game, do their cheating, then move on once the cheating has removed a sufficient amount of entertainment. You rarely have a player who can go from cheating back to playing vanilla.

Again, that's EXACTLY what I meant. I never expected to eradicate cheating, probably no game has (that I am aware of). But it makes most people resort to playing fair and square. And with that, balance gameplay.

[athomic1]

obviously, the goal with altering savegames isn't to put an end to cheating, it's to make cheating difficult enough such that the player wont resort to it the instant they're up against a difficult problem. savegame cheating is like putting a screwdriver and a power-screwdriver next to eachother and telling a person that they have to screw in 100 screws with just the handheld driver, not mentioning anything about the power driver. Of course, the person is going to end up using the power driver. It's right there and it makes everything easy. What we'd be doing is getting rid of the powertool. Sure, the person could go to home depot and buy one, but those people would represent only an extremely small portion of the number of people we're dealing with.

By making the choice a little harder, we decrease the urge to circumvent gameplay. Less people circumventing gameplay will yield more long term players. Players that circumvent gameplay are short term players that bounce into a game, do their cheating, then move on once the cheating has removed a sufficient amount of entertainment. You rarely have a player who can go from cheating back to playing vanilla.

Again, that's EXACTLY what I meant. I never expected to eradicate cheating, probably no game has (that I am aware of). But it makes most people resort to playing fair and square. And with that, balance gameplay.

To ANY developers who may be seriously considering it: Please, please, PLEASE don't do this!!! Unless we're talking about multiple players going at each other, or some other issue among multiple human players, there is absolutely no need! If you want to implement an encrypted format for competition or "official" world record (uh, galaxy record) postings, fine, but given the size and complexity of the game file already, it really doesn't require further obfuscation.

This game is still an open source project, as far as I know, and I should think it would benefit from encouraging new and potential contributors. I just can't see how encrypting everything, even just the save games, could do anything but discourage them. So what if some lazy kid decides to hack himself a couple of billion, or the biggest ship in the galaxy? It's his copy; who else is he hurting? I'd rather be able to understand the data structures without having to plow through a mile of code first, myself.

Please, guys. Keep it open!

[Deus Siddis]

1) I guess you might be right on that, but we should still make our efforts to make this game as playable and balanced as possible. Its like saying, we shouldn't help drug addicts, let them f**k themselves up, it isn't anyone else's job to save them from themselves.

It has been proven to death that you can't help drug addicts by making drugs harder to get. They just get them anyway or get addicted to something that kills them faster. And then you have the fact that people have had absolutely full on access to drugs for the vast majority of human history and prehistory. Only in our miserable modern civilization have drugs become anykind of a problem, for those who even consider them to be.

Anyway, I'm not sure how closely drugs parallel save hacking, but either way I think people expect enough respect to be given them, that they are allowed to make their own choices on how they want to play, by a nonlinear FOSS sandbox / spaceflight game.

2) Why not fix the flaw or imbalance in the first place? After all, thats exactly what we want to bring: balance.

That's the idea but VS is big and can't be made balanced and flawless overnight. You've got to give us time and access. Messy compression decreases our access.

3) That shouldn't be that big of a problem. Ok, say you want to test your brand new KolossaL capital ship. Before you give it a value of $100000000, you can give it a buyable value and test it... and even like that, there might be other solutions other people might bring about, I'm sure.

Then you've just hacked. And if you can do that to units.csv, than so can a player with cheating on his mind. In fact that's much easier than save hacking.

And it is even a more round-about way for devs, who just want to test the ship incrementally and immediately, not go and fill out all of its stats and then go around looking for a place to buy it in game, or upgrade it with the turrets they are also working on.

[safemode]

first off, nobody said anything about encrypting anything or everything. So the poster prior to deus is mistaken. So i'll ignore it.

Secondly, I dont see what the point in caring about needing to edit the savegame file is to anyone. It's meant to be a machine readable only file, not to be edited or modified by users/developers/anyone. So it's format/readability/etc should be a non-issue for anyone. It's a savegame, not a backdoor api.

Developers/ artists introducing new ships would already have to play with the units.csv file to make the unit available for use, it's there that they can beta test via simply renaming it llama and having it for free or whatever else situation they wanted to have. Also, a simple and more logical means of testing work is to have a mission file created to do various common tasks artists/developers require when setting up new ships. You can code in any situation you want, without having to leave the main campaign/missions open to this backdoor access you feel is needed in the savegame file.

Any file generated by the game, for the game should be hands off. Let us know if there is something you used to do via a savegame hack and we can make the appropriate mission file that does that (which is what should have been done from the beginning). Many of these types of mission files exist already, they just require updating/extending to give all the features needed.

We're not trying to stop the real cheaters. We're trying to stop the frustrated user from resorting to cheating in a moment of laziness/desperation that is afforded to them by simply placing the means of cheating right in their face involving 0 effort from them to do it. These users aren't really cheaters, but by cheating, they destroy all the aspects of the game that made it fun and involving, and thus move away from the game, becoming disinterested. By making it harder to cheat, those users wont simply resort to cheating on a whim because now it costs a bit to do the cheating.

Better than the drug anology is the following. Put out a table of items. One side of the table is free. The other side with the same items costs 5 bucks. How many people are going to take the free items rather than pay 5 bucks? That's cheating via plain text human readable savegame vs what i suggested above. now if we remove the free side of the table and leave the 5 buck side. Some people will pay the 5 bucks who really want the item, but most people will simply pass it by, having only taken the free items because they were free but really didn't need/want the item.

So with it so obviously being a win/win to remove the free savegame hack, what features of the hack that you deem legitimate require the savegame hack rather than simply editing a purpose-wrote mission file for your uses? As for the players who use it and still play the game and want that avenue kept open, you're free to go through the trouble of hacking the game or playing it the right way.

[RedAdder]

Things that in my opinion should be done first before spending time on removing cheating and FTL travel:

Remove Travel mode: The NPC pilots don't know how to handle it, so it works like an in-game cheat.

Repair the Asteroid base. People need to cheat to get out of it or to recover the time spent.

Either make the faction system more obvious, for example put a viewer for it into the ship or announce (some) alignment events in-flight. Or change the negative effects to even lower numbers. Or maybe make it more obvious that you have to F1-sweet talk the enemy instead of fighting, for example in a training mission.

Maybe have the lower negative alignments make only a part of the misaligned faction change to "red" and attack you.

For the record, I cheated myself only once in my ongoing game, I gave myself the amount of money that I earned in a previous game that had become unusable due to alignment effects and fighting well against one faction. I think the savegame should be compressed XML, because I messed up editing the first time when I only wanted to tweak faction alignment.

[Deus Siddis]

Secondly, I dont see what the point in caring about needing to edit the savegame file is to anyone. It's meant to be a machine readable only file, not to be edited or modified by users/developers/anyone. So it's format/readability/etc should be a non-issue for anyone. It's a savegame, not a backdoor api.

The fact that it can be read and altered by humans certainly makes it seem like it was partially intended as a backdoor though, at least to my non-coding mind. Are you sure whichever dev designed the save game system made it so human-editable by accident?

Developers/ artists introducing new ships would already have to play with the units.csv file to make the unit available for use, it's there that they can beta test via simply renaming it llama and having it for free or whatever else situation they wanted to have.

That helps, but it applies to cheaters as well. Plus, for non-coders who want to test other things in the game besides units, save hacking helps.

Also, a simple and more logical means of testing work is to have a mission file created to do various common tasks artists/developers require when setting up new ships. You can code in any situation you want, without having to leave the main campaign/missions open to this backdoor access you feel is needed in the savegame file.

Those need coders/scripters to make and maintain, content creators shouldn't be reliant on them if they don't have to be, to test their work as quickly as possible. And alot of times, save hacking could be alot faster than scripting.

Any file generated by the game, for the game should be hands off. Let us know if there is something you used to do via a savegame hack and we can make the appropriate mission file that does that (which is what should have been done from the beginning). Many of these types of mission files exist already, they just require updating/extending to give all the features needed.

Changing current location, local ships present (including their faction affiliation), changing player fleet (and loadout), changing player-faction relations, player credits, and eventually campaign status, would all be useful, off the top of my head. But I really don't see how you can replace all the game with mission files though, it seems alot more straightforward to test somethings in the main game world.

We're not trying to stop the real cheaters. We're trying to stop the frustrated user from resorting to cheating in a moment of laziness/desperation that is afforded to them by simply placing the means of cheating right in their face involving 0 effort from them to do it. These users aren't really cheaters, but by cheating, they destroy all the aspects of the game that made it fun and involving, and thus move away from the game, becoming disinterested. By making it harder to cheat, those users wont simply resort to cheating on a whim because now it costs a bit to do the cheating.

That's the other thing, sometimes in this early stage of development, it really helps to just be able to edit back problems that eventually won't be problems with the game.

And these won't be going away anytime soon, take the faction system in 0.5.0, it is totally broken and goes medieval on a player, but wasn't an issue in 0.4.3. Currently the only way to get around this problem for normal players (that is, those who place stable builds) is to play the ancient version or save hack whenever too many factions hate them to death for insane and mysterious reasons.

[MC707]

first off, nobody said anything about encrypting anything or everything. So the poster prior to deus is mistaken. So i'll ignore it.

Secondly, I dont see what the point in caring about needing to edit the savegame file is to anyone. It's meant to be a machine readable only file, not to be edited or modified by users/developers/anyone. So it's format/readability/etc should be a non-issue for anyone. It's a savegame, not a backdoor api.

Developers/ artists introducing new ships would already have to play with the units.csv file to make the unit available for use, it's there that they can beta test via simply renaming it llama and having it for free or whatever else situation they wanted to have. Also, a simple and more logical means of testing work is to have a mission file created to do various common tasks artists/developers require when setting up new ships. You can code in any situation you want, without having to leave the main campaign/missions open to this backdoor access you feel is needed in the savegame file.

Any file generated by the game, for the game should be hands off. Let us know if there is something you used to do via a savegame hack and we can make the appropriate mission file that does that (which is what should have been done from the beginning). Many of these types of mission files exist already, they just require updating/extending to give all the features needed.

We're not trying to stop the real cheaters. We're trying to stop the frustrated user from resorting to cheating in a moment of laziness/desperation that is afforded to them by simply placing the means of cheating right in their face involving 0 effort from them to do it. These users aren't really cheaters, but by cheating, they destroy all the aspects of the game that made it fun and involving, and thus move away from the game, becoming disinterested. By making it harder to cheat, those users wont simply resort to cheating on a whim because now it costs a bit to do the cheating.

So with it so obviously being a win/win to remove the free savegame hack, what features of the hack that you deem legitimate require the savegame hack rather than simply editing a purpose-wrote mission file for your uses? As for the players who use it and still play the game and want that avenue kept open, you're free to go through the trouble of hacking the game or playing it the right way.

Exactly. Have you stopped for a second and think why we are making efforts in making this game? Not because of money, we ain't get any and never will. This is a FOSS we work because we enjoy doing teamwork and putting all that work to make a game. So why is it? Because we want people who play this game to have fun doing so. Not to give them the key to the city the moment they find a difficulty they can't overcome with a little brainwork and skill (you certainly need it).

Better than the drug anology is the following. Put out a table of items. One side of the table is free. The other side with the same items costs 5 bucks. How many people are going to take the free items rather than pay 5 bucks? That's cheating via plain text human readable savegame vs what i suggested above. now if we remove the free side of the table and leave the 5 buck side. Some people will pay the 5 bucks who really want the item, but most people will simply pass it by, having only taken the free items because they were free but really didn't need/want the item.

Thanks for making my point clearer. Drugs are the only thing that came to my mind (JK, seriously!)

[MC707]

The fact that it can be read and altered by humans certainly makes it seem like it was partially intended as a backdoor though, at least to my non-coding mind. Are you sure whichever dev designed the save game system made it so human-editable by accident?

Not necessarily. Half the times you edit a savefile you will end up corrupting it. In fact, the last time I cheated was because of the problem RedAdder said, getting stuck in the asteroid fighter base. Yes, I got all my money back and more of it, but it ended up messing up all my game. First minor problems like Universe reloading, then more serious like appearing somewhere in space in a system I do not remember ever being, finally the game loaded directly into a game, bypassing the menu and appearing in a corner of space I did not remember being, with a llama and fullscreen and other stuff messed up.

That helps, but it applies to cheaters as well. Plus, for non-coders who want to test other things in the game besides units, save hacking helps.

Testing things like what? What kind of those things would require save hacking? Anyway, whatever your answer, read further on.

Those need coders/scripters to make and maintain, content creators shouldn't be reliant on them if they don't have to be, to test their work as quickly as possible. And alot of times, save hacking could be alot faster than scripting.

Sooner or later we will need coders/scripters for missions, after all that is one part of the game that is lacking, and a problem to address.

Changing current location, local ships present (including their faction affiliation), changing player fleet (and loadout), changing player-faction relations, player credits, and eventually campaign status, would all be useful, off the top of my head. But I really don't see how you can replace all the game with mission files though, it seems alot more straightforward to test somethings in the main game world.

I recall you can modify all those things without save hacking. Check this thread, and you will see that Laraso and Greekgifted (new players/contributors) were able to modify all those things for a MP game. I'm pretty sure you can do that for SP, though if not (which I kinda doubt), you can always test in MP mode. In fact, we could use the MP engine, or another module made specially for developers/artists, which has the MP code but is optimized for dev/art testing. Though I guess I would have to wait for a dev (loki, safemode?) to confirm this possibility. With this possibility in mind, it would negate the need for using the SP engine and to have that as an excuse to not address a bigger problem. Why? Because people won't use a module that devs use to test their material, its simply not optimized for play. This would be like making an analogy to Unreal Editor. Developers and modders/mappers use UEd to create their stuff, they never do it with the actual engine. But in our case, we will also test the work within this module/application.

That's the other thing, sometimes in this early stage of development, it really helps to just be able to edit back problems that eventually won't be problems with the game.

And these won't be going away anytime soon, take the faction system in 0.5.0, it is totally broken and goes medieval on a player, but wasn't an issue in 0.4.3. Currently the only way to get around this problem for normal players (that is, those who place stable builds) is to play the ancient version or save hack whenever too many factions hate them to death for insane and mysterious reasons.

Maybe the timing might be wrong, but save hacking is going out the door sooner or later. Sooner or later all those problems will be gone. Think about addressing the actual problems, not bypassing them using a cheap technique.

[loki1950]

First off guys i do not have svn commit privileges and am not part of the Dev group but i am part of the
authoring group that is working on the campaign story line we are at a stand still ATM as we wait for the Minister of Information to post the new version of the universe background doc.

Enjoy the Choice

[Deus Siddis]

Not necessarily. Half the times you edit a savefile you will end up corrupting it. In fact, the last time I cheated was because of the problem RedAdder said, getting stuck in the asteroid fighter base. Yes, I got all my money back and more of it, but it ended up messing up all my game. First minor problems like Universe reloading, then more serious like appearing somewhere in space in a system I do not remember ever being, finally the game loaded directly into a game, bypassing the menu and appearing in a corner of space I did not remember being, with a llama and fullscreen and other stuff messed up.

That sounds like maybe it is a problem unrelated to save files? I don't see how they could cause you to bypass the main menu on startup; the main menu is how you load save files, until you get to it I don't think the game even looks at the save files.

Sooner or later we will need coders/scripters for missions, after all that is one part of the game that is lacking, and a problem to address.

But other content artists shouldn't have to rely on them. And they should also have any tools to test their work that are the easiest for them.

I recall you can modify all those things without save hacking. Check this thread, and you will see that Laraso and Greekgifted (new players/contributors) were able to modify all those things for a MP game. I'm pretty sure you can do that for SP, though if not (which I kinda doubt), you can always test in MP mode. In fact, we could use the MP engine, or another module made specially for developers/artists, which has the MP code but is optimized for dev/art testing. Though I guess I would have to wait for a dev (loki, safemode?) to confirm this possibility. With this possibility in mind, it would negate the need for using the SP engine and to have that as an excuse to not address a bigger problem. Why? Because people won't use a module that devs use to test their material, its simply not optimized for play. This would be like making an analogy to Unreal Editor. Developers and modders/mappers use UEd to create their stuff, they never do it with the actual engine. But in our case, we will also test the work within this module/application.

MP mode is just a mission file, basically. But mission files just don't cover the same ground or offer the wider context that the main SP game does.

For example, what if you wanted to test the balancing of the game for a player who has reached 100,000,000 credits? A quick save hack or similar hack could help you get an idea for how playable the game is at that point, in its current state, without wasting your limited time.

Maybe the timing might be wrong, but save hacking is going out the door sooner or later. Sooner or later all those problems will be gone. Think about addressing the actual problems, not bypassing them using a cheap technique.

We're a long ways from 1.0, but even then, this game will probably be so big in the FOSS world (as it already is, actually) that there will be no reason for it to stop improving, thus the game could be considered under indefinitely development. That is, after it is fully playable, folks will continue to add new features, graphics and stories to it.

This means easy under the hood access will remain needed indefinitely.

[MC707]

That sounds like maybe it is a problem unrelated to save files? I don't see how they could cause you to bypass the main menu on startup; the main menu is how you load save files, until you get to it I don't think the game even looks at the save files.

That never happened to me before I hacked the savegame. Only after I did the problems appeared. More than anything, I am really sure it messed up my current system. I loaded a game, but VS started reloading a new system. That did happen after I hacked, so I am sure about it. After all, it is a machine made file for the machine to modify... so if a human modifies it, chances are you mess it up and with it possibly other parts.

But other content artists shouldn't have to rely on them. And they should also have any tools to test their work that are the easiest for them.

What easier than mission files specifically made as a tool to test artists' work?

MP mode is just a mission file, basically. But mission files just don't cover the same ground or offer the wider context that the main SP game does.

For example, what if you wanted to test the balancing of the game for a player who has reached 100,000,000 credits? A quick save hack or similar hack could help you get an idea for how playable the game is at that point, in its current state, without wasting your limited time.

A mission file that gave you that money, no need for save hack. Oh what about testing a ship and how its poly count impacts gameplay? Fine, set the file to have certain number of ships in-system. You just set the parameters you want and test.

We're a long ways from 1.0, but even then, this game will probably be so big in the FOSS world (as it already is, actually) that there will be no reason for it to stop improving, thus the game could be considered under indefinitely development. That is, after it is fully playable, folks will continue to add new features, graphics and stories to it.

This means easy under the hood access will remain needed indefinitely.

Do you think closed source has stopped other games from modding indefinitely? Check Unreal and all the games the engine uses. Check Quake, and all the games the engine uses. Most games are still alive, and they are closed source (just check FileF.). Preventing cheats on those games has not stopped development in them, no sir. They have a tool, like the one I mentioned. And as safemode said, there is easy access under the hood, only that a file made for the computer to read and for people to exploit is still open.

[Deus Siddis]

What easier than mission files specifically made as a tool to test artists' work?

To test something in the context of the full game, test a game campaign or game balance or to test a part of the game that hasn't been covered in a mission file because they haven't been maintained as well as the main game (since they're lower profile/priority).

A mission file that gave you that money, no need for save hack.

But the mission file limits you to exploring it with that mony, not the whole game. Otherwise you've created an even easier cheat than a save hack. Just run that mission rather than the main executable.

Do you think closed source has stopped other games from modding indefinitely? Check Unreal and all the games the engine uses. Check Quake, and all the games the engine uses. Most games are still alive, and they are closed source (just check FileF.). Preventing cheats on those games has not stopped development in them, no sir.

Yes I think their lifetime is definite and relatively short. They can never be overhauled and adapted for more modern systems, so people have to go to greater lengths to run them through emulators and older hardware and such.

Also Quakes 1, 2 and 3 are FOSS. ID software releases each generation of engine as open source when they replace it with the next engine. Every major FOSS FPS is based on one of the Quake engines. And so is UFO: Alien Invasion (X-Com remake).

They have a tool, like the one I mentioned. And as safemode said, there is easy access under the hood, only that a file made for the computer to read and for people to exploit is still open.

VS has a very unpartitioned, dynamic, nonlinear form, as opposed to the small levels and linear campaigns of those games.

Also I'm not sure if they have a solid viewer for character and prop models. It seems like it might be the level editors that get more of the development attention.

[MC707]

To test something in the context of the full game, test a game campaign or game balance or to test a part of the game that hasn't been covered in a mission file because they haven't been maintained as well as the main game (since they're lower profile/priority).

And what would that be? To test a game campaign you need to test it under normal circumstances, you wouldn't need to savehack. "To test a part of the game that hasn't been covered in a mission" What could that be, too?

Also, that goes off of the artists scope. You wouldn't need that for art testing, and if other people (campaign scripters, etc) need to test, the mission would be adapted with the tool I mentioned.

But the mission file limits you to exploring it with that mony, not the whole game. Otherwise you've created an even easier cheat than a save hack. Just run that mission rather than the main executable.

Yeah, run the mission. But they are confined to what the mission has. A system or two, some planets and stations, and a bunch of fixed ships (by this I mean set by the mission, not dynamically). They can have all the money, but its no fun to be confined to such a space.

Yes I think their lifetime is definite and relatively short. They can never be overhauled and adapted for more modern systems, so people have to go to greater lengths to run them through emulators and older hardware and such.

Wrong. You haven't checked Filefront, then. Have you seen the Jedi Academy community? It has more people than we do and yet the game is almost six years old. In fact, just right now there are 118 users online _just_ for Jedi Knight Files. Thats near to the Most Ever Online here at the VS forums. The multiplayer engine's source was released, but the single player engine was never released. Yet there are the more amounts of Gigs in mods, maps, missions, skins, total conversions, etc only for SP than VS currently has for the entire game.

Thus, it works fine in Vista, XP, Win98, WinMe, WINE, even Linux natively IIRC (Unreal series definitely have native Linux for UT99 and UT2K4 in fact). Works fine under current hardware, runs acceptably in my 98 box (if I tell you the specs, you'll cry ). I can run Unreal Gold amazingly in my vista box, and even the older games.

Also Quakes 1, 2 and 3 are FOSS. ID software releases each generation of engine as open source when they replace it with the next engine. Every major FOSS FPS is based on one of the Quake engines. And so is UFO: Alien Invasion (X-Com remake).

Yep, I did know that, my friend. But what about Unreal? They have just as much mods in every way possible. And IIRC only UT99-down have released the source code.
I used to play the then free Killing Floor Total conversion, in which I (like many other fools) was used as beta tester only to then have them buy the engine license and release the full game for Steam.

VS has a very unpartitioned, dynamic, nonlinear form, as opposed to the small levels and linear campaigns of those games.

They are not necessarily linear with small levels. As I said previously, many, many mods have been created for both SP as well as MP. New total conversions. New mods like JA Lugor Mod, and incredible mod that lets players use SP maps (some are MASSIVE maps), add tons of objects (so many, that you'd need thousands of thousands to crash the server). In fact so many mods, I don't have time to explain them here and now .

Also I'm not sure if they have a solid viewer for character and prop models. It seems like it might be the level editors that get more of the development attention.

They definitely have. In fact, I was a skinner and mapper myself. Here, my bookmarks: You can use this utility,or you can use modview with a little help. Check this for a not so full list of utilities.

Back to work for now.

[parkel]

This thing called "free cheating" actually might help a little in this game.
Sorry to interfere halfway through this whole cheat or no cheat thing.

I'll ask this question first.
What is the point of encoding a save-game file when you know that there are decoders (programs) out there?
And what's the point of stopping cheating in an open-source game?

Open-source, meaning that you can do whatever you like to the game.
If we make this game cheat free, how will you people actually have mods like Elite Strike or even the more played Privateer mod? - editing of .csv files?
We will not have new mods if the devs actually encode everything.
Besides to that, encoding takes time. I believe that the devs are actually working hard for the next release than putting their time into making this game cheat free for the MP server... Right...? Correct me if I'm not.

If this game was cheat free, how will people (not the devs) contribute their ideas to this game?
Contributing ideas does not only mean making the model out in a program. It also means testing it out and making sure it works successfully before you post your idea or your work into the forums.
To test it out, you need to be "cheating" the game.
Setting ship availability, the price of the ship and include the ship inside the appropriate .csv files.

I do know that all those above have already been mentioned. I am only trying to emphasize that open-source games are supposed to be for people to cheat.

Yes. That's just what I said. For people to cheat.
Cheating is not actually bad afterall.
Like you really want that Goddard.milspec but you got no money at all.
You hack the savegame.
And you find a bug when using the Goddard.
You report it in the forums, and the devs will try their best to fix the bugs. So this actually does more good than bad to the community (my opinion).

And if this game was meant to be hack free, there wouldn't be something like the cheats section - http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/media ... ual:Cheats - in the vegastrike wiki.

I definitely disagree with those who say that this game should be cheat free. Put yourselves in the shoes of a player. We can hardly ever do any cheating of any form in any online game. So, playing these open-source, free games are for that purpose. Even if this game is not as completed or as perfect as EVE Online (no offense there), it is one of the best, free space simulator that you can find on the net.

Yeah, run the mission. But they are confined to what the mission has. A system or two, some planets and stations, and a bunch of fixed ships (by this I mean set by the mission, not dynamically). They can have all the money, but its no fun to be confined to such a space.

Are you sure about this? I beg to differ.
I'll explain more.

Wrong. You haven't checked Filefront, then. Have you seen the Jedi Academy community? It has more people than we do and yet the game is almost six years old. In fact, just right now there are 118 users online _just_ for Jedi Knight Files. Thats near to the Most Ever Online here at the VS forums. The multiplayer engine's source was released, but the single player engine was never released. Yet there are the more amounts of Gigs in mods, maps, missions, skins, total conversions, etc only for SP than VS currently has for the entire game.

So what? A P2P online game is totally different from a open-source game - compare it to WoW as well.
Take GTA (all series from III onwards) for example. The sources were NEVER released. But there were as well, cheats in the game. Money cheat, health cheat, armor cheat, car cheat - you name it you have it. That is what exactly makes the game popular in it's own aspect. GTA has missions - obviously. They are also somewhat "confined" to a particular space by the mission - chase this person, crash him etc etc.

VS IS FREE AND HAS CHEATS - GTA MINUS THE PAYMENT NEEDED.

Yep, I did know that, my friend. But what about Unreal? They have just as much mods in every way possible. And IIRC only UT99-down have released the source code.
I used to play the then free Killing Floor Total conversion, in which I (like many other fools) was used as beta tester only to then have them buy the engine license and release the full game for Steam.

I know you are quite upset after being used as a guinea pig. This game needs testers. For the SVNs. It's not like anyone is going to sell this game to Steam and make a huge profit out of this and leave us to wallow in our own ________ (whatever you want to put there).

~~~

[MC707]

This thing called "free cheating" actually might help a little in this game.
Sorry to interfere halfway through this whole cheat or no cheat thing.

I'll ask this question first.
What is the point of encoding a save-game file when you know that there are decoders (programs) out there?
And what's the point of stopping cheating in an open-source game?

Then you did not read the thread. Do it and you will understand.

Open-source, meaning that you can do whatever you like to the game.
If we make this game cheat free, how will you people actually have mods like Elite Strike or even the more played Privateer mod? - editing of .csv files?
We will not have new mods if the devs actually encode everything.
Besides to that, encoding takes time. I believe that the devs are actually working hard for the next release than putting their time into making this game cheat free for the MP server... Right...? Correct me if I'm not.

Again, you did not read the thread. No one said we were going to encode everything.
Also, you got the wrong idea behind open source. It doesn't mean "you can do whatever you like to the game". Visit either this page or this page for some reference on open source.

If this game was cheat free, how will people (not the devs) contribute their ideas to this game?
Contributing ideas does not only mean making the model out in a program. It also means testing it out and making sure it works successfully before you post your idea or your work into the forums.
To test it out, you need to be "cheating" the game.
Setting ship availability, the price of the ship and include the ship inside the appropriate .csv files.

Ditto my first statement. Read thread.

I do know that all those above have already been mentioned. I am only trying to emphasize that open-source games are supposed to be for people to cheat.

Yes. That's just what I said. For people to cheat.
Cheating is not actually bad afterall.
Like you really want that Goddard.milspec but you got no money at all.
You hack the savegame.
And you find a bug when using the Goddard.
You report it in the forums, and the devs will try their best to fix the bugs. So this actually does more good than bad to the community (my opinion).

Heh. What if the Goddard actually messed up because you did not modify the save file correctly in the first place? Devs will "try their best to fix the bugs" but they will only lose their time, because the bug was caused for modifying a computer generated file.

And if this game was meant to be hack free, there wouldn't be something like the cheats section - http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/media ... ual:Cheats - in the vegastrike wiki.

Cheating has not being argued before. It was probably put up there without even thinking the problems save hack cheating would bring. If a concensus is brought, it might just need to be abolished.

I definitely disagree with those who say that this game should be cheat free. Put yourselves in the shoes of a player. We can hardly ever do any cheating of any form in any online game. So, playing these open-source, free games are for that purpose. Even if this game is not as completed or as perfect as EVE Online (no offense there), it is one of the best, free space simulator that you can find on the net.

"We can hardly ever do any cheating of any form in any online game. So, playing these open-source, free games are for that purpose." I cannot believe you just said that. Cheating in single player is bad enough, but to cheat in _multi player_? Do you know how unfair that would be? So just because this game is open source, it fills the dirty purpose that closed source games do not enable?

Yeah, run the mission. But they are confined to what the mission has. A system or two, some planets and stations, and a bunch of fixed ships (by this I mean set by the mission, not dynamically). They can have all the money, but its no fun to be confined to such a space.

Are you sure about this? I beg to differ.
I'll explain more.

Yes, I am sure. Such a small system made just for testing purposes would not be too fun to play at all, not even with cheats. I did not understand the rest of your statement.

Wrong. You haven't checked Filefront, then. Have you seen the Jedi Academy community? It has more people than we do and yet the game is almost six years old. In fact, just right now there are 118 users online _just_ for Jedi Knight Files. Thats near to the Most Ever Online here at the VS forums. The multiplayer engine's source was released, but the single player engine was never released. Yet there are the more amounts of Gigs in mods, maps, missions, skins, total conversions, etc only for SP than VS currently has for the entire game.

So what? A P2P online game is totally different from a open-source game - compare it to WoW as well.

P2P online game?? Is JA a P2P online game??

Take GTA (all series from III onwards) for example. The sources were NEVER released. But there were as well, cheats in the game. Money cheat, health cheat, armor cheat, car cheat - you name it you have it. That is what exactly makes the game popular in it's own aspect. GTA has missions - obviously. They are also somewhat "confined" to a particular space by the mission - chase this person, crash him etc etc.

VS IS FREE AND HAS CHEATS - GTA MINUS THE PAYMENT NEEDED.

Yes EXACTLY. The sources were NEVER, EVER RELEASED. And guess what? Some talented coders created MULTIPLAYER MODS, without even cracking the source code or breaking ANY laws. Take GTA SAMP for example, a no longer supported game (not because they couldn't, but because a group of bitch hackers threatened with releasing the code of SAMP which was in turn also closed source). And guess what? When it was stopped being supported, the master list dissappeared. And guess what? There are still dedicated servers with websites all over the net, with servers that supported 200 players at max! Not only there was GTA SAMP, there is GTA MTA, yet another multiplayer mod. And as I said, SAMP was closed source.

Cheats cheats... Most descent servers have anti cheats scripts and/or admins with cheats/hacks detector scripts, after which they ban the selected hacker. I myself had a SAMP server, which had a PWN compiler to easily add mods to the server itself. Single player, single player... It is obvious they activated cheats. Of course, you needed to cope with a nag screen ALWAYS appearing when you save your game onwards after activating the first cheat. Not to mention it counted the times you have cheated.

Single player, yes it is kinda missions confined. However, you can roam a MASSIVE map, a little State in fact. And with GTA SAMP, RPG, death match, cops and robbers, etc etc etc, the game was never confined. Before the master list was no longer supported, there were thousands of servers, not to mention the paid massive ones.

Yep, I did know that, my friend. But what about Unreal? They have just as much mods in every way possible. And IIRC only UT99-down have released the source code.
I used to play the then free Killing Floor Total conversion, in which I (like many other fools) was used as beta tester only to then have them buy the engine license and release the full game for Steam.

I know you are quite upset after being used as a guinea pig. This game needs testers. For the SVNs. It's not like anyone is going to sell this game to Steam and make a huge profit out of this and leave us to wallow in our own ________ (whatever you want to put there).

~~~

You did not get the point in my statement. I did not emphasize I was stupidly used as a guinea pig, nor I EVER said I expected VS to do the same (I lol'd at that ). What I meant is that they started with a closed source engine, which of course (unreal ALWAYS does) had a developer SDK to do mods, skins, TOTAL CONVERSIONS (which I said in my previous post), and of course the UnEditor for map making.

[Deus Siddis]

Somehow it looks like the latter posts of this thread have disappeared.

[safemode]

indeed, not sure who did that either. It wasn't me. and no explanation apparently.

edit: might have something to do with the board crash i think that happened last night. I couldn't access the forum yesterday night, came up with some mysql error.

[CLoneWolf]

I was noticing the same in other threads and was wondering too, but now that it's mentioned here, yes, at some point yesterday I also got the sql error.

[MC707]

I actually have the SQL error still! I am stuck to certain forums, only when lucky I will be able to access the board index. And tons of posts have disappeared (like my new commercials ideas in the music and sound collaboration subforum.)