Re: Redspot, blood and paril. First public beta released!
Let's develop a game without cheaters - or rather a game where the cheaters aren't a problem.
I personally think we've been looking at cheating preventions in the wrong light. For me, it's never been about banning the offending user, but rather to put them in their own safe environment removed from the rest of us.
For this, I'm going to take a game like Redspot as an example. Not actually Redspot, but a game in a similar fassion.
Step 1: detecting the cheaters and others who would seak to disrupt gameplay.
This can only be done by carefully observing players in the beginning and look at server statistics. We can write speedhack detections, and I saw a game once used double values to varify. Basically, as soon as you modified one value it would compare it to it's counterpart and if they didn't match it would know it was modified by an outside source and would adjust itself back to match the original using the second counterpart. For example var hp1=20 var hp2=20 and if at any cycle of the loop the first or second variable were changed it would just correct to match the other counterpart. So if hp1 was changed to 15, hp2 would still be 20 and in the next cycle of the game loop the game would see this and set hp1==hp2.
We can also write sanity checks of every proportion; anti-spam code for the chat, etc, etc.
Step 2: flagging the cheater
This is the same issue where a lot of games that use the simple banning system also has the same problem. I have a more advanced idea in mind but let's save it for later.
You can retrieve computer ID, location, you can have the game place hidden information in the registry, hidden under some obscure name like telecom driver rutines to fool people who seak to modify the registry values.
Once you can varify from the client itself that the user is in fact cheating, the fun begins.
Step 3: we don't want to punish the innocent now do we
If someone is clearly cheating, enough alarms will come up for the server ... let's say
Speedhack detected 5 seconds after login, then 10 minutes later, then the game detects chat spam 30 minutes into the gameplay.
This user is most likely not looking to disrupt the fun for others and is most likely a victim of false positives. Reset and move on to monitoring.
Now, consider the second example.
User logs in, speedhack detected continuously for the first 2 minutes of gameplay. Sanity check shows the user moved 300 tiles in 2 seconds. User is standing inside a wall.
Repeated spam over chat channel, disconnecting and connecting repeatedly.
Both cases are clearly malicious.
User is flagged secretly as cheater.
Here is where we can divert and either choose some extreme methods of trolling right away or punish the user lightly based on what the user did.
Step 4: taking action
Consider a couple of the following examples.
User has been flagged for spamming and logging on and off.
Throw the user onto a dummy chat channel with stupid AI.
Spam the user with private communications from AI. Tell the rest of the server that they can spam the user.
Disable all possible ways of retaliation by disabling all forms of communications, already done so by moving the user to a different channel but also disable his or her private means of communication.
If the user logs off the user will be rejected to join the server for a set amount of time.
User has received exessive speedhack detections.
Meh for this one, as it takes up server resources. Just put the user on a map with others with the same flag, while slowing down the clock to compensate client side.
For example if the client normally allows one to fire a certain weapon with a 150 ms interval, then after the speedhack the same check applies but it's with a 500 ms interval instead.
User changes values like shields, hp and other things.
Enter a mode where the users values are randomly switched around over time, usually in a negative way.
Randomly teleport the user around the map.
The idea is to give back what the inconvenient player is trying to give others. Instead of out right banning him or her the aim is to humiliate the cheater and associate his or her actions with something negative and unpleasant.
Step 5: moderator roles
Do I even have to tell you to get trustworthy admins? Admin duty isn't a luxury, it's a responsibility. No one should ever want to be an admin, and if anyone feels that the game needs admins it's quite sad.
After picking well-recognized, trusted faces to represent most parts of the publics, and to cover any possible time, time to implement your admin staff.
The admin staff will never have the power to ban someone directly.
They can however lift the various cheater flags due to a restricted command flagged users will get access to to send in appeals to the administration and explain their situation, and if the two parties can reach an understanding and the situation be explained, the admin can return the user to normal.
For most situations this shouldn't be a problem. The cheater flag will only be around for a couple of hours anyway, enough to where the situation can defuse and heads can calm down. It's not a permanent means of locking someone out. If they want to come back a couple of hours later and be assholes, they will undoubtedly suffer the same consequences over and over and over again.
Admins can at most put suspicious flags on people which tells the server to be a little more strict on said player and check more consistantly for eregularities.
The admins main function is to serve as a trusted face between the developer and community, and to help out players, particularly new to the game, as well as acclimate everyone into a pleasant social environment fitting to the situation.
Step 7: concl ... you know what, fuck this
I could edit this at a later state and put it in the articles room depending on what people think. Enjoy my typos.
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