Cheat Protection, yo

This falls into a similar category to what I do to protect my high scores service from cheating. The service itself is sound enough, but with memory editors out there client games also have to have special measures taken if their table is to mean anything

Is it reasonable to try and use ActiveX controls to close these external programs? Or at least close the game if one tries to open them?

You can.. but you can go around stuff like that if you really want to cheat :x

Good luck ;o, I've never even seen a commercial game that could do anything like that

This post has been edited by Banana Head on Feb 10 2005, 07:02 PM

gahhhh

It is in my estimation that such a thing would work just fine; but it would take a shortlist of all memory editing program out there.

I would gladly write the code for 100s of programs and make it readily available because cheat = no no

I will be personally monitoring accounts too though *gives inquisitive eye*

This post has been edited by Tron on Feb 10 2005, 07:03 PM

I don't think you'd ever be able to determine all these programs.
In Kuribo Catch I combatted memory editors with various checksumming of scores and keys, so if the score was changed artificially, the checksum would fail. If the memory hacker was able to figure out what the key was, this method would be vulnerable, but obtaining the key from memory would be far more difficult than monitoring score values and changing them when you think you've determined them.

XD, All you would have to do get around that is throw the program into a resource hacker and change its internal name, then your method would be useless ;o

Then I will simply prevent the user from minimizing the window at all >O

You minimize; you forfeit; game over man, game is off, info will be in memory but it won't be sent anywhere so POO

Then you simply freeze the process, then your game will never know anything happened at all

There are lots of programs like that for starcraft, that work to detect if the player uses any program that messes with the game's memory.

But when making an online game, the more of the game's functions that you make that work on the server's side, the more secure it is.

If the client holds all of the player's information and game's functions, it's all pretty much all functions a cheater can use.

As a random example >.>.. Say you made a pokemon game, and the battle engine and everything and strength of the player's pokemon are all calculated on each individual player's computer, then the player can make their pokemon any strength and basically ... blah ;[..

yeah but the second you unfreeze it *something you'll have to do so it can send the info to the server* it'll close instead of do jack crap

I still say you live with the fact that people will hack your memory and do your best to combat it internally

AIM would ruin people ;P

Doesn't matter, you'll still have managed to get a list of possible values, so you can just start the program up again and then freeze it again and sieve the values

Oh well; they won't get mad, it's not a subscription fee game or anything

I think that would work *rubs hands*

But the game is what is sending the values; if the game closes it won't send anything, that's what I'm saying. If you restart it the game is going to close (thus using different memory values upon restart), and what you just did will have no effect; but the 4x weakness to electric x1.1 by magnet will do... 292 damage to a neutral pokemon if you have 260 special attack



(if it isn't a critical hit)

This post has been edited by Tron on Feb 10 2005, 07:14 PM

Of course the values will be different ;o, thats essential to narrowing your list of possible matches

Oh, and don't forget you'll have to contend with packet sniffers

Yes but; if I am correct (and I hope I am or this is going to get really hardcore serverside real fast)

If you freeze the process and figure out what memory values are what, the game won't be ab.. oh damn it... it won't even detect the other proggie ran because of the frozen process.

GRRRR

Me no like serverside INI; it's another one of those things that doesn't like working without an expensive fancy FTP

Anything that's client side will be hacked if the game's popular enough o.o