Free Allegiance Forums

Bard wrote:QUOTE (Bard @ Jun 15 2010, 12:55 AM) Actually the server logs can catch that to some degree because generally the people who do it use the game client to relay messages to each other.
In theory, they could use ventrilo or IM or what-have-you and it'd be much harder to catch but in general people don't bother because unless the whole team is in on it, someone's going to start questioning where one pilot keeps getting 100% accurate information/consistently eyes every con/miner/bombtrain.

FAZ-readme.txt wrote:QUOTE (FAZ-readme.txt)The files you'll be interested are:
...\AGC\AGC.dll DLL needed by Allsrv and Allegiance

That's something I just saw. A single DLL is shared by the server and the game. It is included in both the server and client install. Yah! Does anyone know if there are any checks that are done to ensure that the server and client use the same DLL? I'm guessing it does not matter, as long as there aren't major changes.

Bard wrote:QUOTE (Bard @ Jun 15 2010, 12:55 AM) The server currently outputs ALL events (including ship positioning and what-have-you) as plain text. You'll be able to see what this looks like as soon as you set up a server.

Yeh, I've looked at that. I don't know if that is good enough for my purposes, however. More investigation needed.

we have a strong security system gandalf, anyone ever caught cheating would be shredded alive and perma-banned. I doubt it will be an issue. especially in a squad game, squad members have much more to lose.

i also want to point to starcraft (2), they have competions worth 1000s of $ that they broadcast live on things like ustream (or even tv, apparently south korea has a starcraft channel). thats 1000s of *anonymous* spectators, theyve never had any serious issues as far as i know.

but this is an issue that can be ignored until spxza is done.

scratchee wrote:QUOTE (scratchee @ Jun 15 2010, 07:38 AM) we have a strong security system gandalf

Who is "we"? If you're talking about the Allegiance community, Gandalf knows ASGS's security capabilities as well as any other vet.
He's been around longer than I have and he's very technologically savvy. See: World Cup Predictions Website complete with input sanitization.
I'd put dollars to donuts that he understands more about application security than you do. (

scratchee wrote:QUOTE (scratchee @ Jun 15 2010, 07:38 AM) i also want to point to starcraft (2), they have competions worth 1000s of $ that they broadcast live on things like ustream (or even tv, apparently south korea has a starcraft channel). thats 1000s of *anonymous* spectators, theyve never had any serious issues as far as i know.

I have an old acquaintance who took contracts coordinating tournaments like that locally for various sponsors along with providing hardware for things like software training seminars and "we're a group that does stuff" conferences.
A great deal of effort goes into monitoring and recording actions on a per-machine basis during any decently ruled tournament/event and ALL of the ones that are done properly are set up as 100% controlled environments. Someone would have to be wearing an earpiece and on the phone with a friend in order to cheat and cell jammers are cheap and in fairly consistent demand (often required by the client for some sorts of events. Getting measured for a jammer license is a *$&%@, but once you have the ability to file temporary papers the RFP's fly in.) so cheating is often more difficult to arrange due to area security obfuscation that it is beneficial once it's pulled off.

To wit and tl;dr: Your example of how effective most gaming tournaments involving viewing are is only applicable if we all play squad games inside the same convention center on a monitored LAN with no access to other internet sources or outside information.


(edit -- not only is it bad that I left a leading ( there out of bracketing habit, I used the wrong one and I didn't put in a closing bracket. Syntax Fail.)

Bard wrote:QUOTE (Bard @ Jun 17 2010, 11:44 PM) Gandalf knows ASGS's security capabilities as well as any other vet.

If he knows its capabilities, I hope "any other vet" does not. That would be bad.

fuzzylunkin1 wrote:QUOTE (fuzzylunkin1 @ Jun 17 2010, 11:53 PM) If he knows its capabilities, I hope "any other vet" does not. That would be bad.

capabilities, not vulnerabilities.

I can see why an observer option is needed to get to the final project, but I would advise something for the final product along the lines of this:

A Replay can be done in the following, and can be switched at will: Team view and complete view. Team view shows just what that team can see and nothing else. Complete view shows everything.

In-game, a player can join a team as an observer. They'd be locked into that team's command view, but would not be playing as part of that team, and their chat would come out of NOAT. They would be able to join the team they were observing if a spot was available, but could not join the other team. You could possibly allow the player to talk to the team and see the team's chat. This would be great for things like observing a squad game or an event, without causing issues such as being able to see everything. Allowing the option to limit the number of observers (Including 0 max observers) and having an option for the commander to accept/reject observers just like team members would severely limit the capability for cheating. And if the Commander could boot an observer just like a regular player, it would be no more difficult to solve a cheating problem than it is currently.

Additionally, you could have a stat output with "Observed games won" and "Observed games lost" - While useless for the most part, it could lead to some interesting revelations. Someone who likes to "Backseat Command" would have a higher number of "Observed Games Won" (As long as they were a decent commander) and someone who reveals information would have a lower number of "Observed Games Won" and a higher number of "Observed Games Lost". Granted, that's nothing to go by, since people can and do have bad luck when choosing sides, but I'm sure fwiffo would love to get his hands on it.

this is a $#@!ing great idea and I hope it turns out well!

I may not have been a part of this community long, but I know my way around a compiler. This system would be very hard to impliment in game without a strong server base to start with. I suggest you start with something like real-time stats auto recorded to an xml, not hard to do, from every game meeting certain crieteria. e.g. you don't want stats for every 2 twinks in aa private server. Oracle could be easily used for this, but if we did so the observer system couldn't piggyback off of it.

If your serious about this, I think I might be able to provide a base for the observer system, e.g. transfering certain packets to a seperate "user" in the game, even though in the beginning the "user" would really just be a virtual file. This virtual file would have all the data needed to display the ship in real time, but as for actually creating another system to transfer that data to any observer/recorder, thats another story.

You gotta start somewhere. I'm not trying to take this over, but being new I feel as if I should contribute somehow.

also... ^How's that for a third post?^

Andon wrote:QUOTE (Andon @ Jun 18 2010, 06:22 AM) In-game, a player can join a team as an observer. They'd be locked into that team's command view

I'm not sure I see a reason to lock them only to command view (in terms of cheating). It wold be quite nice to allow them to see what players on their team see (e.g. f6 -> click player -> click "Share vision" button). So you can see what the top dogfighters see as if they frapped it. It would be like the observer things in Steam games like TF2 and CS:S - where you see what other players on your team see and you can cycle through who you're watching.

Would someone please move this to CB&S?