Re: [VANILLA-LIST:2760] Quake1 client cheating

[Mats Olsson <matso@dtek.chalmers.se>]

> Pretty neat article at
> 
> http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/finger.pl?id=1&time=19991226003141
> 
> About cheats in the open source version of Quake1. Funny, didn't the vanilla
> community fix client-hacking a long time ago?

    Not really. The bar was raised high enough to make it non-trivial. This,
together with a smaller playerbase which is more interrested in playing the
game rather than winning at all costs, means that the RSA authentification
works for us.

> Maybe we should let them in on our "secret" relatively open solution.

    "There is some prior art in various unix games that would probably be 
    helpfull" 

    Maybe our "secret" isn't so.

    "The server operator would determine which versions of the game are to
     be allowed to connect to their server if they wish to enforce proxy
    protection"

    ... sounds pretty much like the netrek servers.

> I hate to see a closed source solution to a problem that can be solved with
> relatively open solutions.

    What Carmack proposes is just as closed as RSA - having a closed/trusted
part in an otherwise open source system in order to handle validation. 
That it uses separate programs[1] is a detail which is pretty much
necessary in order to let people compile their own binaries.

    /Mats

[1] ... meaning that if you crack these programs, you can do whatever you
want with your client.