Cheat Protection, yo

What are your ideas for cheat protection in saving a game; file encryption is a pointless process that can be broken dudes with any heehaw HexEditor program dudes. So throw that **** out the window!

What ideas are good to implement in your estimation?

Obscure filenames. Obscure locations. And label your variables as very strange things that not even any "dudes with any heehaw HexEditor program dudes" will figure out. =O

What about blowfish

Put that b****** savefile in the system folder with some weird name

Do a few of Knux's things and use the binary object.

O HAY!

Build your game up using normal savefiles, like INI's or some ****. Use an effecient method so you can figure it all out.

Now go through and switch those INI files for a custom file type. Make their layout extremely ineffecient (as well as the method of saving to and loading from).

In this manner, a hacker can't use the same method for every piece of data. That's why you make it ineffecient and inconsistent last, so you don't **** up your game while you make it.

Obscurity isn't security

It's very rude to save files in random folders, and you could always do a windows search as soon as the game saves something and find out exactly where the file is.

Just use some sort of blowfish encryption or something like that.

I think if someone actually takes the time to decrypt some 128-bit passworded encrypted file, they deserve to get to level 7 of your game =P

... but who's going to put that much effort into illegal activies hacking a fangame

o.o

\/
oo
O
\/

Use a binary format, generate an MD5 checksum [using the binary object] from your file and a 'salt', some key that only you know.

Ex: md5(FileContents + "osdfiudkjhsdfegs")

And save the checksum to the file. Whenever you read the file, you generate the checksum in the same format (but exclude the checksum itself in FileContents), and compare it against the checksum you wrote earlier. If anyone changed ANY part of the file, the checksums will fail to match and you can handle it accordingly. As long as your key is secure no one should be able to calculate their own checksums after modifying the content.

I said if they do, they deserve to get to said level >.>, A lot of things are done on computers, being illegal tends to not stop people if they can't be caught.

Blowfish glitches up in MMF; for instance events will end up triggering, but ignoring the decryption command =/

Yes but even with obscure

And this isn't about getting to Level 7 of a fangame; this is about not having a Phantasy Star Online or Diablo level catastrophe when my game goes online, and paying customers are a little upset about the hacked items they're seeing >O

Blowfish; great idea, won't work in MMF for some reason, and no one is able to tell me why anywhere I go, this has happened on multiple machines and with different sets of events

Obscure file naming; helpful, but you can search by date the file was created or modified. Also, the values in the file are easy to look at and tell what they are

One idea I had was a serverside, inert CD-key like check. Each game program you send out has a built in code that is transferred to an FTP server or just a server proggie on a host machine. It checks the code; and if the code checks out (totally randomly generated 200 digit code if need be, no algorithm to break), it lets the person play. If the code misses or a dupe code is on... kick!

Never use just one variable to store things like score, lives etc, that makes it really easy to cheat using a memory editor ;o

The only way to stop cheating in online games is to not let users have access to or send any information that can affect the gameplay of others...

Also; that thing about people deserving to get that far if they go through the trouble of hacking? That is the biggest HOCK OF BULL**** I've ever heard. Why do so many people adopt that mind set, so for working around the presets to make the game -fun- they somehow deserve to not enjoy the game, and thus ruin it for everyone else?!

I'm against any sort of online cheating.. but if someone goes through the trouble to decrypt a save file so they can get to a further level... o.o;

Yeah admittedly that isn't as bad

CD key checks wont stop everyone, no matter how much work you put into them ;o

Tell me the one that resembles a Banana is full of ****; because unless I use active X controls or a general no other apps open thing, preventing the memory from being tampered with ... grrr