Re: cheating

[Jason Fosback <jason.fosback@mccaw.com>]

> I disagree.  In any sort of a multiuser game where actions of one player
> can influence another the decision of what should reside on the server and
> what should reside on the client is critical.  Why open up yourself to
> problems before they exist?  LOS calculations are not so excrutiatingly
> intensive that they _must_ be farmed out to the clients.  If my client
> gets object A, and thus prevents you from getting object A, and my client
> was computer controlled, you'd be upset.  Now, I may be able to get object
> A before you do because I can see that "tile X" is really a destructable
> wall, or just because I can see the staircase leading up to the area where
> object A exists.

Okay, but if the LOS calculations are done on the server, you have to transmit EVERYTHING  
THAT'S VISIBLE, every time you move.  At minimum, the server would have to transmit an  
on-off packet which would represent squares that're visible and squares which aren't, along  
with new squares that have come into view.  If the client is aware of the map, either having it  
locally or via transmission, it has all the information about the map already.  The only thing the  
server has to send is updates in x, y coordinates for items and monsters.  All LOS calculation  
and displaying of the map is done by the client, vastly reducing the load on the server, as well  
as transmission over the wire.

> They'll cheat more, they'll kill your characters with the items they got
> cheating, they'll brag about solving a quest without telling you they
> cheated (what, are you expecting honest cheaters only?).  This works akin
> to the idea that ignoring a bully will make him go away.  Sorry, some
> people like the attention, but some just like to make people feel pain.

Sure, but taking a bully's sling-shot away doesn't mean he can't go out and get a BB gun or a  
two-by-four.  I'm sorry, but your analogy doesn't hold water.

If there is a concern about cheaters, the sysadmin can delete a user's character, or someone  
could implement a forbid-type thing for users and/or hosts.  Just don't allow cheaters to play,  
it's that simple.  Sure, you couldn't always detect cheating, but no one really can all the time,  
can they?

> Move anything the player should know or that is essential to the client to
> the client.  LOS is not so computation expensive as to require being
> embedded into the client, so don't, but since I'm not going to write it
> and since I currently play crossfire about one hour per week, I don't
> care. :)

It may not be really compute-intensive, but it forces more reliance on the server to do things.   
We live in a distributed computing environment with computers that are more than capable of  
sharing the load of computation.  So, why limit yourself so much?  Especially intentionally.  It  
just doesn't make sense to me.

-jason
____________________________________________________________
 Jason Fosback, Systems Engineer   | No sir, I didn't like it
  --- Paradigm Systems Corp ---    |                 -R&S
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