[Ruatha]

Originally posted by Jack Simth:

quote:

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Originally posted by dogscoff:
I guess it's to stop in-game cheating, but I'm sure an equally effective solution would have been possible while still enabling players to write their own map editors.

There was a game I played a long time ago - VGA planets, I think - that figured out a way around player cheating. The host kept files for everything, and the program generated files from that which were subsets of the total data (only the stuff the player would be able to see). When the turn was run on the host, the host program compared all the changes which were made to the various players' turns, and checked to see if they were possible. If one wasn't, the host would get a message that the player's status was in the red, and the offending materials/supplies/ships/money was destroyed, with the player getting a message along the lines of "1000 credits have been discovered to be counterfit!" or "A ship has spontaneously exploded!" et cetera. Players couldn't open the save files up to get information on their opponents, becuase it wasn't there to get. Players couldn't edit their available resources because the host checked for the possibility of the changes (with very few exceptions, a player couldn't edit the files to do anything that couldn't be done honestly). The host, however, could do anything, as the host had all of the base files that turns get compared to.

A similar system might allow for editing maps without allowing for the possibility of cheating.

Then again, it might be impossible to implement for real time play.

Just my 2 cents worth.

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Yes, but it did happen that the dreaded "Tim Continuum" stroke without cause, not often but it did happen.