Ceiu

A new forum has been added at cericlabs.com to address several needs. The purpose of the publicly accessible portion of this new forum (which is the only part you non-members will care about) is to provide yet another way for the non-members to ask Hybrid members questions and for other general discussion about the squad. For all general forum needs, including setting up inter-squad practices and league results, SSForum.net is still the place to go. The non-members portion of this new forum is not meant to serve as a discussion board. The non-members portion of this new forum will hopefully help resolve some players' concerns about Hybrid completely dominating the !@#$%^&* out of this game by allowing you peons to talk to us. It will hopefully help improve Continuum in general.

Which is perfectly understandable and the answer I was looking for. Thank you. I just wish you guys would say stuff like this before I completely unload with one of my rants and look silly later when statements like these are made.

Agreed. The public doesn't need to know about such a thing and knowing that they are intentionally being left out or "chosen" for what are largely arbitrary reasons is just going to piss them off. And the public forum is largely a waste since you guys could just as easily join this existing community for public matters. Making people register on some special forums to talk to you guys is very much creating a gated community (not to mention, tedious). I don't think anyone's getting all up in arms, really. It's just a silly idea to split things up unnecessarily. Further, lots of people who's read this topic see it as kind of a power-flexing move on Ace's part.

@Blue: What sysop chat? Do you honestly have players visit it to ask you guys questions, or is it largely just a hangout for people who want to join a clique? D1st0rt is the only official HS sysop, and he definitely qualifies for access. Arnk Dylie is an official HZ sysop and already has access anyway. Cerium has sysop access in HS but is not actually !@#$%^&*led an HS sysop, so he doesn't automatically qualify. People can have sysop access in a zone but not actually be !@#$%^&*led a zone sysop (heck, I've had a Moderator/Developer in SWE in the past who had sysop access in the zone for bot development purposes); these people don't automatically qualify as far as I'm concerned. If you clarify that Cerium is actually !@#$%^&*led an HS sysop, he would then automatically qualify for access. I need to start by saying I don't give a !@#$%^&* about any access, nor do I want it. I am simply using myself as an example. What does it matter how "official" my !@#$%^&*le is? What about people who are sysops in subarenas? Are they any more or less trusted/!@#$%^&*ociated with their zone than I am? Wouldn't that kind of !@#$%^&* over zones like Premier and DZA who reside entirely as a subarenas in another zone? Why do you (guys) feel it's necessary to require some arbitrary labels before they can join your elite group? Isn't that kind of counter-intuitive to the whole collaboration thing? Before you can respond with some nonsense about how this helps balance zone representation in your little gated community or something: -What's to stop someone from setting up some no-name zone for the sake of getting access? -How do you prevent an owner/sysop from adding new sysops for the sole purpose of them having access? -How do you define sysop on ASSS, where the term only exists for legacy purposes? -Exactly what is the point of this gated community, again? Tch.

So, since I'm not going to let you continue to evade this question: Exactly what reason do you have for not releasing the source? A quick recap of this mess: - The source provides no additional functionality or thread beyond that of the Oracle. That is, anything you could do by having the source could also be done by using the Oracle. - The Oracle is, for all intents and purposes, unreliable for any serious applications (which in turn means you'll see nothing but more chat clients... which we certainly do not need). The "advantage" Oracle has is that it's easy to use and it's controlled. Of course, I would argue that the latter is a major disadvantage and the main reason I'm even wasting my time here, but even I can't deny how it could serve as the kill-switch should the dreaded ss-apocalypse ever come about from this (heh). Now, since I'd just be reiterating these points over and over again, I'll just stop here and give you (Snruuub) a chance to respond. Ok go.

So why bother bringing it up? Further, exactly who's !@#$%^&* are you licking that you're the representative for the SSC all of the sudden? If anyone should be their PR person, it should be me (for obvious reasons, lulz). Apparently the apathy everyone has displayed towards this idea wasn't clear enough, so let me spell it out for ya: The public does not care, does not need to care and does not want to care about the SSC. There is only three cases where joe player will ever deal with an SSC member: (1) When disputing a ban. (2) When attempting to get biller access for the nth incarnation of a super zone. (3) Casually in the game when they're actually being useful and/or playing. These issues are already addressed quite well by the subforms here. Your forum, !@#$%^&*uming anyone wastes time to register and post, will consist entirely of a/s/l questions and general trivia bull!@#$%^&* that could be answered by anyone who's IQ is higher than their shoe size. Once again: Nothing to see here. Move along.

What the !@#$%^&* does the SSC need a forum for anyway? They're largely an inactive bunch of elitists who could give a !@#$%^&* about us (with a few exceptions, of course). They have their mailing list for anything that's super important. A new forum would largely be a waste of space. As for the lack of power here... what lack of power? One SSC member hosts* the server this site resides on and another is an administrator on the forums. The only issue that could possibly make any sense is that anything they discussed on there could be read by people who aren't SSC members (ie: other admins, etc). But, again, they've got their mailing list and they're almost entirely inactive. Nothing to see here. Move along. * If you can call it hosting. I consider it to be closer to clicking around a control panel and bragging about upgrading to software that's already been dropped by the company that owns it.

About as much time as you spent proof-reading your post.

Well that would be your fault then for developing an app which relies on a webservice. I don't really see why this is a problem. I hardly see anyone rushing out to develop for the oracle service. Its been advailable for months now and this is the first app, written by the same person who wrote orcale. What the !@#$%^&*? That's exactly the point I've been making. You can't develop any serious application because you're relying on something that's unreliable (from a development pov). You honestly think either myself or bak are even considering using CTM or VIE encryption for a new client/server? In the case of my development, i'm rolling my own encryption method. I've already written my own ASSS module to support it. In that case, we need to make a huge distinction here: You're not making a new client, you're making a new game and advertising it to the people who currently play Subspace. The big problem here is that your target audience isn't going to download a new client to play on a server with a very small population -- especially since that server will isolate them from other people who are playing what is essentially the same game. Look at it like this: You'll have a problem getting people using your client for many of the same reasons we're having problems getting people to use a new biller. Now, if your client supported the ctm/ss protocol, not only could it be used as a replacement for the existing client, but also be expanded on newer ASSS servers. ZOMG, you have a user-base now! Not much point writing a hack that can be turned off with the flick of a switch. The same goes for apps Acctually there is little point writting additional apps for SS as there isnt much in the way left to write. We have all the apps we need, true, some need some improvement, but theres little dem I agree. Again, this is the point of my whole !@#$%^&*ing rant; pay attention. And I imagine there would be more to write if we had more tools to use. I actually meant I was going to cover other topics in the posts I was quoting as I thought of them. The other nonsense sprinkled throughout this thread doesn't interest me enough to bother addressing it.

http://hybrid.shanky.com/misc/hslogo.png Best logo ever. Edit: What the F? Reason #12571509125 that SVG sucks: NOTHING SUPPORTS IT. HOLY JESUS !@#$%^&*TY F. It took me like 15 minutes to get that !@#$%^&* image working on the forums. F svg. logo.svg

If that's the case, it would have been nice if he had said that a month ago when I first emailed him. It would have saved the time I spent typing this !@#$%^&*.

Holy !@#$%^&*... where to begin? For starters: My tone didn't come across right last time because some !@#$%^&*head mod decided to edit my posts into something that resembles a flowery complement. I really meant to make fun of you on the internets, but that aside... How is that not possible now? The Oracle server allows the same capability to a programmer who had the source himself except without the work. If anything, this means that it's even more likely since the jack!@#$%^&* in question here won't have to do the hard part of porting the asm dumps that snusrasfga has taken the time to do. Again, see above. The protocol is open enough at this point for the level of abuse you described. Any damage that could be done in the doomsday scenarios described by the ctm source being open are now very possible. Shut the !@#$%^&* up. Having your !@#$%^&* obsoleted means you weren't working on it hard enough in the first place. This bull!@#$%^&* idea you've got that developing something gives you some level of en!@#$%^&*lement is exactly that -- bull!@#$%^&*. To reiterate my counter-point to this: Shut the !@#$%^&* up. Blah blah blah. All of this is irrelevant babble chat spewed by someone who has a very loose grasp on the topic at hand and the situation being discussed. The only thing accomplished in this block was some more !@#$%^&* slobbering. Says the guy who unbanned his back-door writing, zone-stealing buddy. Don't you have a chainsaw you can jump onto? What are we relying on him for? ... If you develop any application that uses his Oracle server, you and your program are relying on him to provide this service indefinitely. The day he takes down the server is the day your program dies. End of story. Did you even read my post in it's entirety before responding? For a chat client, who cares -- you can use snruuub's idea to fall back to standard vie protocol w/permission. For a new game client (like Discretion or the ONE YOU'RE DEVELOPING), that's not an option. Holy !@#$%^&* -- I'm seriously starting to wonder if this game is cheat-free only because the developers are idiot-savants. The Oracle service provides the exact same thing as the source would. The only difference is he has control, which is the problem I have with it. (1) If anyone's not looking at the big picture, it's you for exactly the points I've laid out above. (2) No !@#$%^&* discretion isn't ready, but it's good you decide to tackle that topic when it's convenient for your non-argument. Good job. (3) Once again, the source to Oracle is no more dangerous than Oracle itself. That's because !@#$%^&*es like you guys are willing to take whatever you can get instead of building on what tools you guys have. I'll cover this more after I'm done addressing the abundance of stupidity you guys decided to unleash on the internet. What directly the !@#$%^&* are you babbling about? Prior to the Oracle, no application other than Continuum could connect to a server unless the user logging in was granted special privileges. Despite this restriction, many useful applications have been developed. As it stands, you are still free to develop applications that do not make use of the Oracle. If the Oracle is unavailable for any reason, your application can fall back to the SubSpace protocol and continue operation as before. Alternatively, if you feel that building a fault-tolerant application is not worthwhile, you can rely solely on the SubSpace protocol. The choice is entirely yours. You are no worse off with the Oracle than you were without it. As per Kirk's suggestion, I will add a ping packet to help you determine the liveness of the Oracle so that your application can decide which protocol to use before attempting a connection. I guess that's a handy feature for the suggestion you've presented, but it doesn't solve the original problem. The simple fact of the matter is that it can not be relied on for anything important (see: new client). The stability of your program should not be affected in any way. If it's a transient problem and the Oracle cannot respond to a key expansion request, your application should re-initiate the connection request and ask for a new key. If there's a transient problem while you're connected, your application can try asking for a checksum response again. If the problem is persistent, you'll know that by pinging and getting an extremely delayed response. Keep in mind that after the login sequence, SubSpace is quite tolerant of transient delays. Do you honestly believe what you typed there, or have you simply never worked with an end-user? They're not going to understand the difference between a bug and their fancy chat client randomly disconnecting because some server they don't know about is lagged to all !@#$%^&*. They're going to !@#$%^&* about it being broken -- because it is. As for the protocol, I will retain backwards compatibility and extend it when necessary. As for the ip/port: you should be using DNS to resolve the IP address and the port will stay constant. If you're still nervous about this, I can register the Oracle as a subgame server in the public directory servers. I'm more than willing to make this addition if it's in high demand. You're smart enough to know that the points kirk brought up are almost entirely bull!@#$%^&*, but let's pretend for a second that someone decided to make a cheat client that uses Oracle to connect. How do you combat them? Do you ban their IP? What if they release it? Do you change the protocol so the cheat no longer works? Do you simply stop hosting it for the sake of cutting off the cheaters? (See my notes below for my thoughts on this). And this is just one scenario I can present to you based entirely off the mindless ramblings of some yes-man. You need to accept the fact that there are a plethora of possible reasons for you to want or need to change or drop the service. The security checksums happen every 2 minutes. Even if 2000 users were connected simultaneously 24x7 (which is approx. 2 times the current daily peak), that's a mere 17 requests per second to the Oracle. At 12 bytes per request/response pair, we're dealing with 204 bytes per second. Even with 20,000 concurrent users, we're still only hitting 2KB/s. Even if all 2000 requested at the same time, that's still 32KB in one second. I think a DoS from too many players is out of the question. Fair enough. However, what if one of the "utilities" that pops up has a bug that causes it to check more often than that? What if no one really notices and lots of people use it? You can't just go on !@#$%^&*uming the best case scenario. Ick, marketing nonsense. I guess I'll address these one at a time: (1) People are smart and those with time and the ability can/will port it to their language of choice -- or simply learn asm. (2) Yeah? The source isn't exactly platform dependent, either. (3) This is the only valid point you've made. And while this is certainly a convenience, I could just as easily write my application to check my own server for updates and push a new encryption dll as necessary. Or post the new module on a website. Whichever. ... You're a smart enough guy -- how do you let yourself get convinced by such idiotic statements? Or is this just some bs so you don't have people !@#$%^&*ing at you? Whatever the case, I guess I'll bite (again... sigh). The source I've asked you to release is no more dangerous than your Oracle service. (For those of you not keeping up: The source would allow people to write programs which can use the continuum protocol to connect to a zone, where the Oracle service allows people to write programs which can use the continuum protocol to connect to a zone. Holy !@#$%^&*, it's the same thing oh noesssihfashf!). In fact, I would argue that the Oracle is even more dangerous for the very 3 reasons you posted above -- You don't have to be a great developer, it works on any platform/language, and it will auto-update for you. !@#$%^&*, I don't even have to look at a single line of !@#$%^&*embly if I don't want to. And, since you're a fairly seasoned developer, I shouldn't need to tell you where the majority of malicious programs come from. I tried via email, away from the public eye where the information we discussed could give some random !@#$%^&* a bad idea. Not my fault you take 3+ weeks to reply. And if I wanted to simply flame you, I'd have done so. Don't get all butthurt because I used a naughty word in your direction -- It's going to happen a lot if you keep doing overly stupid things. -C P.S. For the love of christ, Kirk. Learn how to !@#$%^&*ing spell. ** Regarding the doomsday scenario described above: The one advantage the Oracle service you provide has that releasing the source will never have is control. Should cheats start showing up en-mass you still have the option to pull the Oracle and drop them all (at the small cost of killing any utilities also making use of it). However, by releasing the source, we'd need have to update the client. Both scenarios suck, but the latter is infinitely worse if we're still relying on Priit. I personally doubt it will ever come to it due to the fact that getting far enough to make a cheat worth using (aka, so the cheater can actually see what he's accomplishing) would require much more work than simply porting an asm dump of a checksum routine, and that in itself would stop the large majority of the people who would write one. ** Regarding other !@#$%^&*: If I forgot to cover something again... I'll probably say it 95125 times in my next reply.

Don't be re!@#$%^&*ed. The last thing this game needs is yet ANOTHER self-important !@#$%^&*head who desires to have an entire community rely on him. The fact that you'd gleefully accept that position is telling of the state this game is in. We've finally got the opportunity to truly rid ourselves of Priit's client and the person who has the key (literally, in this case) would much rather make other people reinvent the wheel or go through some bull!@#$%^&* extra steps to make use of his work. Three facts that make his Oracle server useless for any serious project: - If his server decides to take a !@#$%^&* or is otherwise unavailable from the location your program is running from, your program no longer works. - If his server gets extremely lagged for whatever reason, your program becomes unstable. - If he decides to change the ip/port/protocol, your program (or configuration, if you're smart) needs an update or it no longer works. Think about this: Discretion is arguably the closest we've come to a replacement client for this awful game since Continuum, but it means nothing if it can't connect to existing servers -- not many people are willing to download a whole new client just for one or two zones; and that in itself will lead to a lack of server development (which, ASSS is already hurting for dev as it is). Sure, Bak could probably write it to use Oracle to do the checksum nonsense, but do you really want to be depending on two servers to stay connected? Further, what effect is this going to have if every player is essentially DOSing the Oracle server to stay connected? I've been trying to reason with him for a month or so now trying to understand his position on the matter, but this program of his makes his intentions clear. Did we really need another chat client for this game? No. We've already got three that I can think of that are as or more capable and extendable, minus the feature of connecting to any zone without needing VIP. Peh. I'd continue this rant, but I've to go to work. The bottom line here is that it's stupid for him to require developers to rely on him for such a thing.

Good job -- you got your uber chat client out first. Mission accomplished. Now release the key expansion and checksum source so the rest of us can make use of it.

Oh, so it wasn't the over-abundance of gay sex that lead to your infection...?

#2, because lollipops do not make good logos. Also, what the !@#$%^&* is up with this trend for vector graphics lately? THEY SUCK. Yes, they're good at resizing stuff, but you don't have the same flexibility for effects and style that you do with bitmaps. And realistically, how often do you need to resize this thing?

plz don't eat teh video gamez!

Actually, Arnk... As far as the whole balancing issue goes, you should embrace this. If you start seeing a lot of the same setup, you've likely got a balance issue. This is a quick (and well do!@#$%^&*ented) way to weed out such issues. However, the downside is that people with the money and time to fund such broken setups will likely dominate. Skill is important as well, but considering the number of one-hit-kill setups that exist currently (AHEM, wtf Arnk), it only takes a single move to win or lose a duel. My prediction: Sig setups will consist largely of the upgraded shredder, omega and/or ampere, with a falcon/shrap enhancement setup on the side. In fact, I believe you will see this setup dominate for the reason I stated above. Spam + OHK == TW == Fail. Negativity aside, Kudos to Unix for finally putting this together and not spending months debating how to solve the never-ending debate on what ships to use. I believe the people I'm ripping on with this comment know who we are.

Bak was indeed hacking... for great justice!

...Err, April Fools? If not then, sadly, I agree with x`!@#$%^&*. For someone who's presenting an "group" which will ...do anything... it's generally a good idea to, you know, not fail at basic communication skills. Abbreviating the !@#$%^&* out of anything and everything is a good way to get yourself labeled immature (My favorite example of this would be Admiral Kirk. Smart enough guy, but types like a downs child). Some hints: -Stop using 'u'. It's two extra keystrokes to type "you". -Same goes for other common internet abbreviations. -Ellipses (...) have three periods. Not two. Not four. Not five. Three. [/grammar police] More fun questions: -What is the point of your "organization", again? -What can you do that others can't (realistically)? Further, what advantage do you have by remaining anonymous? -How do you plan on tracking people who byp!@#$%^&* bans, when all you'll have is logs and screenshots? What do you plan on doing once you've found someone byp!@#$%^&*ing a ban? What makes you think that they won't already have been dealt with (again)? -How do you plan on stopping the people who know what several of us know to byp!@#$%^&* -- quite literally -- any ban this game can give out? -What gave you the idea that what this game needs is another body of !@#$%^&*es who make arbitrary decisions that amount to essentially nothing? Your answers will be due on Friday, April 4th. I expect at least 2 pages, double spaced using a font no larger than 11pt. Also, make sure the report uses MLA format.

A command is so inconvenient. If only there was a way to add some kind of function in the client that allowed you to attach to a player. They could map this function to a button and even call it the "attach button". Maybe even make it so when you press it again, you detach. Man, that would be great.

GLUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU U UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUE

I disagree. However, they should be casual enough for everyone to get involved and not favor someone who basically trolls the forums.

Slowly. It's got the structure to be extended and turned into a "bot core" for chatnet bots, but right now that's all it supports. It could easily be modified to do a lot more (ie: replace hybrid/twcore), but that requires more work than this game is worth to me these days. I still maintain this, but since HS just had a reset the interest in writing bots to make money died. Plus, everyone who wants to make money in HS is just making slight modifications to BaK's casino bot. Long story short, this is a shelved project until myself or someone with a brain starts working on a chatnet project using this as it's core.

and you expected to be allowed to work here? almost ALL zones frown upon multi-zone staffers trust me, i used to be one I don't see why "working" in multiple zones is a problem, but whatever.