has anyone ever designed a contest plug-in for ev/evo? the idea would be to create a set of missions with a narrow time frame, and see who can earn the most cash or complete the string in the shortest (game) time. naturally, there would be some things to overcome, such as making it impossible to dominate planets (as i believe Martin Turner accomplished with frozen heart), and having the plug write something to the pilot file if the player uses another plug to cheat (or tampers with the original).
does anyone know if there is a way to prevent, or at least find out if a player modifies a plug-in with another? i would like to be able to take things on faith, but human nature being what it is...

------------------
Impeach Scalia!

Quote

Originally posted by astro:
**
does anyone know if there is a way to prevent, or at least find out if a player modifies a plug-in with another? i would like to be able to take things on faith, but human nature being what it is...
**

Wow. This is a cool idea, but it would be really hard to check for cheating. Besides using plug-in cheats, there's enough pilot file info out there that the player could just go in and tamper with the pilot file values.

I can't think of any easy solutions right now. Maybe a side application that is distribued with the plug that reads the evo data files, plugins and pilot files, saves what outfits, ships, etc are available, and then launches EVO? The resulting log file would be really large, but would effectively record cheating activity. Oh! Instead of recording everything, just have it look for differences in resources. Provide this hypothetical third party application with the same resources as the standard EVO plugins, along with your content resources. Then it compares bewteen what it expects and what is being used with EVO. It'd record any deviations and save them in an encrypted form. Resources in this app would have to be encrypted as well to keep the cheater from altering them easily.

Lot of work, but once this third party application is made, it could be quite versatile.

-STH

------------------

Well, if one was to rely simply on the word that you wouldn't cheat, making a plug like that wouldn't be as hard as you think. Again, you'd need a few modifications to prevent as much cheating as possible, but if you know there's a certain limit on how much you can get, someone getting 4 million over that is going to be pretty obvious don't you think

You'd need to consider:

Domination of planets
trading
Missions

And also perhaps including factors such as:
How many people killed (status of gov)
Diff ships, weapons, or outfits

Just a few things to get anyone started.

CS

I came up with a simular idea in the EVO Webboard but the plug-in never really was put into production. I would like to see it. Anyway my idea was like the above except somehow you would calculate a score by how fast or how many missions you accomplished and then you would post your score on the webboard and compare it with others.

------------------
Hens love roosters
Geese love ganders
Everyone loves Ned Flanders!

There is an old saying that says something like "Locks keep only the honest out." The were obviously thinking of EV/0 when they said that. If someone is determined to cheat, they will.

------------------
Signed,
Brian Schack
"DOS Computers, manufactured by millions of companies, are by far the most popular, with about 70 million machines in use worldwide. Macintosh fans, on the other hand, may note that cockroaches are far more numerous than humans, and that numbers alone do not denote a higher life form."
--The New York Times, November 26, 1991 (also quoted in MacAddict 4)

Quote

Originally posted by Ellmist:
**There is an old saying that says something like "Locks keep only the honest out." The were obviously thinking of EV/0 when they said that. If someone is determined to cheat, they will.
**

I agree with this statement. I also feel, though, that if someone is clever enough to get around a security feature without getting caught, or without leaving a trace of their cheating, then they've earned some respect.

-STH

------------------

Client-side security is extremely hard to implement.

------------------
Signed,
Brian Schack
"DOS Computers, manufactured by millions of companies, are by far the most popular, with about 70 million machines in use worldwide. Macintosh fans, on the other hand, may note that cockroaches are far more numerous than humans, and that numbers alone do not denote a higher life form."
--The New York Times, November 26, 1991 (also quoted in MacAddict 4)