priitk passing the client on..what do you think

[»freakmonger]

yes plenty of people "could" do it. But at least *I* can be !@#$%^&*ured that with priitk being the only one with the source that it will not get leaked out.

 

Lets say priitk gave the src to "playerB" and playerB did 1 or 2 nice updates. Perfect for us!! yay!!!! but then all of a sudden "real life" takes over (like it does OFTEN in subspace) and PlayerB decides to p!@#$%^&* the src on to another player. So on and So on. Then by the end of this cycle a lot of ppl would have the src.

 

Another thing that could happen is priitk passes the src to "playerC" and playerC thinks all 'his work' or 'his projects' should be open source. Well as I am a fan of SOMETHINGS being open source, continuum isn't one of them. Cheats would run ramped, it'd be twister x 10 all over again. And you can't deney that twister almost completely killed subspace before they were able to stop it. (and that was without open source)

 

So yea open src continuum might get more updates, but in the end i think the cheaters would win and kill subspace a lot faster than what its dieing at now with not having ANY updates.

 

If I could rest !@#$%^&*ured that only the player that priitk gives the src to would keep it then I *might* be all for that, but there are very few ppl *I* would want to have the src. Because I know a lot of subspace devs are 100% for open source and would release it.

 

I'm sure i'll get a lot of flames for this but guess what....I DON'T CARE

[BDwinsAlt]

Grel is someone I trust. He rocks with ASSS. Give him a chance. I doubt priitk really cares at all. I wouldn't.

[Confess]

But would grel be active, including in the extended long run line? Upwards of 5-10 yrs?

 

The odds of Priitk actually passing the code along are slim to none...Even GS, one of the only persons he trust on SS, couldnt get it off of him.

[»doc flabby]

Meh if all these new twister-style hacks for continuum improve and become more public it becomes somewhat irrelivent who has the source.

[candygirl]

Meh if all these new twister-style hacks for continuum improve and become more public it becomes somewhat irrelivent who has the source.

 

there is a cheat prog. and some have used it.

[»freakmonger]

there are two 'major' cheats that people use. One has cheats to a lot of games. If the src went public then you would see more continuum specific cheats.

[»Admiral Kirk]

Continuums problem is the holy client authoritative protocol. Itll always be easy to cheat in Ctm, weather the source is out or not. The only thing thats difficult about continuum is initiating the encryption protocol with the server, this makes it VERY hard to write bots that can pose as continuum clients. The actual encryption itself is fairly weak (as in, listening to an encrypted stream, one could likely decipher its contents fairly easily).

 

Thier are also many anti-debuging methods in Continuum itself, however this is HARDLY full-proof and its actualy not that hard to gain access to Ctms memory space. Harder than just some regular joe program for sure, but not impossible.

 

Thier is realy only one way to fix the cheating problem, and thats to redesign the entire protocol to be server authoritative and then make constant updates to the client (at least once a month or more). This is how the profesional MMOs do it. Server authed protocol makes almost all types of cheats impossible, allowing almost nothing more (for SS anyway) than aiming bots left. And constant changes to the client (and subtle changes to the protocol) will make those obsolete faster than they can spread.

 

But unfortunatly that ammount of work is pretty much unpractical for a voluntear community working with a closed source client. Thier is another game out thier, Allegiance. Thier client and server both are entirly open source, thier community consists of less than 10 developers, however they have a better handle on cheating then Ctm does ^^. So open source CAN work, just not with this design.

 

Unfortunatly all these discusions are mostly academic. Can the entire can of worms be redisgned to work with a completely open sourced client/server? Ya, will it? No. The endevour is way more work than any developer would be willing to put into it I think. Priit and Grel are the only two who have made any earth shattering contributions to the game, and even thier work would be considered tiny compared to what would be required to redesign the game properly. Basicly, everytying will plug along pretty much as it has for the last several years, and every time the hole can of worms almost dies due to cheating, Priit will come back, save the day, mabye stick around for a few more updates and then leave again.

 

And for a rediculously old 2d asteroids game, thats realy not that bad. I doubt that something with the cult following that SS has will ever realy die, but I dont think itll never realy evolve either. But honestly, thats not such a bad thing, SS is realy more about the people than it is the game. Its a fun game with a tiny learning curve that almost anyone can pretty easily pick up, and its filled with people you can talk to ^^. Aaanyway, thats my $21.42

[»Ceiu]

Well said. It's good that we can count on you for sage like advise hidden behind a veil of terrible English and bad grammar.

[Gravitron]

And you can't deney that twister almost completely killed subspace before they were able to stop it.

I can. I did. I do. I would.

 

Sage386 has cracked continuum long ago and upgraded twister to work with it.

People are cheating with continuum via other means, there are plenty of ways. Lag itself creates an ugly imbalance in the gameplay (and this client be less effective than VIE in handling the lag).

CE, FYI, is an ancient program which managed to evolve over time since the days of DOS and keep up to date with contemporary times...what's all the rokus about?

 

SubSpace could transfer to a more server authora!@#$%^&*ive model, ala Infantry; however, it may never function being completely server authora!@#$%^&*ive as it requires twitch-movement and immediate reaction of the client, the latency will render 95% of the population incapacitated.

MMOG(/RPG)s make for a poor comparison, as their worlds mainly based upon the placement of AI !@#$%^&*ets for the player to combat and are designed to revolve the RTS model engine.

While INF may perform RTS-oriented gameplay, SubSpace be not a RTS in any way or form and full server-side running of the game will render it defunct.

 

The reason people will cheat in SubSpace be simple: there be nothing to lose and playing is free.

Can make the banning more difficult to cir!@#$%^&*vent, can place more watchful eyes.

But in the end, the drive to cheat will conquer some reckless punks.

On the other hand, there are also in the end far less cheaters than they make it out to appear to be.

All in all, the fear of the mega-death cheating be irrational nor can it not be countered with proper tools.

 

 

Their

There.

Repeat.

 

 

Infantry is superior to SubSpace.

[»freakmonger]

And you can't deney that twister almost completely killed subspace before they were able to stop it.

I can. I did. I do. I would.

 

So you are saying twister did NOT almost kill subspace?

 

 

 

Infantry is superior to SubSpace.

 

Not in population thats for sure

[Slicer]

In the end its up to Priitk, if he believes he can trust someone with the client source then let him hand it over to them but if not thats his choice. He does care about continuum if only a little if he has decided to work on the client a bit. What does continuum really need to stay alive? Well thats for another post

[»freakmonger]

Well I got tired of ppl saying "well if priitk is too lazy to work on the client give it to someone else". That is why I started this topic, because some ppl don't see the downside of priitk just giving the src to someother player

 

And of course its his choice, HE IS THE ONLY ONE WITH THE SRC

[Sass]

Infantry is superior to SubSpace.

 

Simply not true.

[Gravitron]

I'm speaking software wise, S!@#$%^&*.

 

 

And no, Twister did not almost kill SubSpace.

SubSpace is dead due to various factors and Twister isn't necessarily one of them.

Twister never really was that much of a problem; naturally the council, spearheaded by their office of PR/public adressing/explanation -- MikeTheNose & BDVine (two big dumb newbies), saw it as a chance to grab exclusive unchallenged power (oldest trick in the book, security & terrorism...sounds familiar, USA?) and exploited it, playing on everyone's fears and blowing it way out of proportions.

[»freakmonger]

I was in zones that would have 50+ players PLAYING and then somebody would come into the zone and shoot thors all over the place, after about 2 mintues of that guess how many players would still be playing?? Maybe 10. I've seen it too many times until they got control over it.

[»Admiral Kirk]

Ill have to agree with freak and others on this. Having been thier when this was all happening, Twister certainly wasnt the games only problem, but it was one of the biggest. Thiers AMPLE evidence in MANY differnt online games, that cheating does do a very good job of killing a game. Diablo 2, Allegiance (almost same story as SS), many others. Ill never quite understand the mentality of one who cheats. Mistake me not, I dont blame Sage386 for making it, I can understand the curiosity in that. I blame him for releasing it, but at least that I can understand (wanting recognition for his work). But for those that actualy used it? No clue at all, stupidity is the only factor I can fathom. At any rate, cheating in general was certainly one of SS's largest factors determining its health. Mabye not Twister specificly, but cheating in general, most certainly.

[»doc flabby]

correct me if im wrong but the cracking of the subspace encryption allowed the development of bots etc.

As in it sparked a massive amount of development.

[Drake7707]

Well I got tired of ppl saying "well if priitk is too lazy to work on the client give it to someone else". That is why I started this topic, because some ppl don't see the downside of priitk just giving the src to someother player

 

And of course its his choice, HE IS THE ONLY ONE WITH THE SRC

 

 

Why do you need the source anyway ? If you can't code it from scratch, what makes you think you can alter things well enough to upgrade the client ?

[»freakmonger]

who the !@#$%^&* said *I* wanted it. I said I have seen players whine and cry "why doesn't he give the src to somebody else who is capable of upgrading it"

 

and

 

If you can't code it from scratch, what makes you think you can alter things well enough to upgrade the client ?

 

Because even ppl who CAN code it from scratch would not waste the time to go back and do it from scratch because

1) you're talking a year+ of work

2) no client besides 'his' client would be allowed to connect to SSC anyways

 

so if they had the src then they wouldn't have to start from step 1.

[Dav]

surly if bots can do it then an encryption can be written that to the server itself is continuum and it will work just as well.

 

If more time is available the rewrite the server side as well with a way to copy the DB over to make a seamless transition.

[Drake7707]

bots use the old connection method as previously mentioned somewhere, thats why they need to be in a txt file (to allow it).

 

And i think that source code is old, if you find something old and want to have a new look and feel to it, then you buy/make a new one ... right ? Besides by editing you take away most of the fun of making it

 

and i didn't mean you personally freakmonger, it was to anyone who wants it

[»freakmonger]

exactly, bots use the VIE connection, hence why they have to be on vip.txt or sysop.txt. And you can work on anything you want server side, but it still comes down to priitk allowing it on SSC being he is the only one with physical access to the biller / host the biller is on.

[»Ceiu]

Drake, there's a number of issues with recoding it from scratch:

 

1) It would take !@#$%^&*ing forever -- especially for those of us with girlfriends, jobs, school, etc.

2) You run the risk of having compatiblity issues if you don't do everything exactly how continuum does things (See: encryption).

3) You'd have to convince Priit to upgrade subgame to even allow your custom client, or convince a ton of people to use your client with ASSS (or similar).

 

All of those are serious problems, and the latter two are even roadblocks that would flat out prevent or severely reduce the likelyhood of network-wide adoption.

 

If someone else had the source, we could simply update what needs to be updated without having to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.

[Gravitron]

Well, seems I'm going to have some entertainment here.

 

1. Sage386 made Twister not out of curiosity; he was a member of the UCF something such as SS was nigh zero on his curiosity meter.

Twister was created as a response to the cheating-by-power-abuse (to this day) staff of Extreme Games; he decided merely to show them how it's being done and return in kind of same coin. His mistake has been to grant access to several of his friends who then continued to spread it further.

He later on helped SSC to patch it and provided twister-proof client/server patches.

 

2. As one who been playing for quite long I also happened to be present in many zones whence Twister stroke, including EG – the first to have been hit.

I did not necessarily notice any population drops and in all fact the zones have persevered. What I did saw was a lack of proper banning system (nowadays present -- BanG) as well as high incompetence of sysops to make proper use of IP-banning (they didn't know how – entirely oblivious to the machinations of SubSpace's game server) and the permission list (some zones, EG included, adopted this method later).

 

3. However, I have observed many zones, which lasted or sprung-up post-Twister, fail due to reasons such as their staff being abusive, fail to cater to the population, degrade the zone's quality, stagnation, et cetera.

 

 

Contradiction:

Thier is another game out thier, Allegiance. Thier client and server both are entirly open source, thier community consists of less than 10 developers, however they have a better handle on cheating then Ctm does ^^. So open source CAN work, just not with this design.

Thiers AMPLE evidence in MANY differnt online games, that cheating does do a very good job of killing a game. Diablo 2,Allegiance (almost same story as SS),

Also:

Their. (x4)

Entirely.

Than.

There's.

Different.

 

 

On a side note, design-wise, SS be inherently flawed.

Were someone to indeed posses the time and will to work on such a project, best be to discard the source and redo all (client and server) from scratch with a more proper approach to gameplay in mind.

This would also fix any adaptations/compatibility issues.

[»Admiral Kirk]

Not a contradition at all. Allegiance had a massive problem with cheating while it was owned by, and subsequently dropped by Microsoft, the games creator (big surprise). But once the game went Open Source the community developed a means to authenticate the client code by way of a 3rd party app, and maintain the client and server as open sourced. Since that point thier hasnt been a single report of cheating since, although SS's population is probably more than 10x larger than Allegiances so that might skew the results a bit.

 

As for reversing the encpryption for Ctm and creating a new client that could pose AS Ctm? Yes its possible, the Ctm encryption has been reversed by a particularly gifted individual. But thier would be no point in releasing it. No one is going to spend the time necisary to re-code an SS client from scratch, and I seriously doubt anyone could do a better job of making it cheat resistant than Priit did. The encryption key generation technique was particularly impresive ^^. At any rate, the point is, its priit's game, anyone who wants to make a _new_ game, SubSpace2 perhaps? Should go ahead and try, mabye it will be better. But SS is as it is and I doubt that it will ever change without becoming a new game.

 

As both Grav and I have mentioned in previous posts, the unerlying Protocol is inherently flawed, and any actual "improvements" to this game beyond what has already been done would realy require a complete redesign of the protocol, client and server on almost all fronts. While this isnt an impossible task, its probably FAR more work than Priit would feal like doing, and thier isnt realy anyone else in this community with both the skill and (heres the important part) free time and motivation to do that much work.