Pixel Scaling And Licenses

[Eniko]

Edit: Just pondered CyruzDraxs's comments and realized that it should be a pretty effective anti-botting measure that has no effect on gameplay for humans (no, we are not "confusing botting with cheating/hacking"). He said:

collision detection was handled by the server, so even if you managed to match the correct ID, if you tried to make the character move you would just get stuck in a tree or something.
Essentially, by not passing collision information to the client, instead just giving object locations, you've turned the whole thing into a computer vision problem. A human can quickly tell when a character is stuck and compensate for it, but a bot would have to analyze the screen output; pretty much no one can make decent computer vision applications, let alone spare-time bot makers. It might be easier for the bot, since the textures are all predefined, but it seemed to work well enough for CyruzDraxs.
Well maybe CyruzDraxs can explain it in more detail, because either I don't understand it or it wouldn't work. If a client makes an illegal move they need to be notified of such, either by the client by not letting them move in the first place or the server. Otherwise clients would get completely desynchronized with reality. Then beyond that it's trivial to intercept whatever message tells you your move is illegal and build your own maps client side for a bot to navigate.

Seems a lot more trouble than it's worth.
QUOTE
BenT -- compelling arguments. Getting a lot of content and playtime with little development work would be a wonderful thing, particularly for this three-person team. Though with this kind of community, and your MUD-dev archive, hopefully we can collect some ideas to reduce the boring, bottable grind, while still maintaining content and that "reward cycle" addiction feeling (though these ideas probably deserve their own thread). Am i being too much of an idealist here?

You may be an idealist. MMO feature discussion seems to bring that out in people, I've noticed over the years. For my project in particular it's unlikely I'll ever replace map spawns with something completely new and more interesting, just because the manpower isn't there. That's not to say that a clever idea implemented correctly couldn't be very interesting, though!

This project will have a few advantages in terms of content. Unfortunately right now I can't say much about stuff like quests yet, since nothing's solid yet. One thing that is for sure that GMs will be able to create and edit maps collaboratively online in real time. Ideally, if I make that work, I'd like to expand that concept to include a lot more like NPCs, quests, etc. But I have a hunch even just the map editing part will be hard enough to implement.

But at least there'll be a wide expansive world with lots of nooks and crannies to explore if the GMs get bored enough?

 

[echisketch]

I don't see why it'd be a problem to GPL an MMO client...just code smart.

The first rule when coding an MMO client is to never trust the user. All the client app should do is render the graphics, play the sound and collect keypreses to hand off directly to the server. Everything else should be handled on the server, that way there is nothing a bot could work with. The only returning data would be changes in asset states, such as an NPC's coordinates changing or the length of your health bar decreasing.

I made a small 2D MMO before and, with a year of improving the code to try and deter the rampant hackers, I learned that the client app should never be trusted for anything.

I combined all NPCs, objects and even maps into one big asset array with nothing to distinguish one type from another--just an ID that was shared with the server and changed frequently.

I also had one nasty trick that the hackers weren't too fond of; collision detection was handled by the server, so even if you managed to match the correct ID, if you tried to make the character move you would just get stuck in a tree or something.

The hackers pretty much just gave up at that point...it's hard to hack an app that doesn't actually do anything.

Pixel detection and Keypress emulation through autoit, within 1-2 hours a mmorpg farming bot can be produced, and almost undetectable through any server-side memory reads.

Botting is inevitable, and almost unpreventable for any RPG that requires grinding or rewards based on trivial, predictable effort. One has to hope the majority of the playerbase is unaware of these programs, or just enjoy the game enough as is.