rec.autos.simulators

by **Goy Larse** » Thu, 29 Aug 2002 04:09:47

> I figured as much the night I was in an "arcade" pickup race at WG and 4 or
> 5 guys were doing 1:12's. I won't mention their names, because they are too
> well known, but they were bragging about having "hybrid" race cars.

> So, how do these "cheats" get around the checksum "cheat checker" in the
> N2K2 servers?

There is a cheat checker ?

Admittedly I haven't been able to race on Sierra yet, but I've raced
online with it connecting through IP, and if you know how figure out the
IP to the race server you're connecting to through Sierra, what's to
stop me from from going on Sierra "clean", pick a server, connect to it,
find the IP, disco and reconnect through IP in "cheat mode"

People with more skills than mine have probably figured out a way past
the Sierra checker too

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

by **Goy Larse** » Thu, 29 Aug 2002 04:20:06

> I wish somebody would let the cat out of the bag. Sadly, it has to
> get worse before it can ever get better. Raise the visibility and
> force Papy to deal with it. They won't do shit until it starts
> affecting the bottom line.

By the looks of things, online *** isn't going to make a difference
on the "bottom line" one way or the other, I can't remember how many %
of the games sold have had their CD-keys registered with Sierra, but it
wasn't a huge number, 2-3 %

Papy could care less, financial wise, they'd make more money off of
their games by dropping the online bit altogether, I assume the only
reason it's still in there is because some of the guys there are
enthusiasts at heart

As for letting the cat out of the bag, I don't think so, I'll be happy
to pass on the info I have to Papy or private individuals trying to work
out a fix or at least a way of detecting cheaters, providing the people
who provided me with the info in the first place agree of course as the
info isn't mine to give away, but seeing how easy it is to cheat once
you know how to do it, it would ruin online ***, and no, the people I
got this info from is not using it to cheat in online racing, it was
accidental that it was discovered it could be used as a cheat

So what happens if we release the info and Papy decides not to do
anything, where do we stand then ?

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

by **ymenar** » Thu, 29 Aug 2002 06:26:28

> By the looks of things, online *** isn't going to make a difference
> on the "bottom line" one way or the other, I can't remember how many %
> of the games sold have had their CD-keys registered with Sierra, but it
> wasn't a huge number, 2-3 %

That number is severely too low. I speculate around 15%, perhaps even more.

--
-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
-- http://www.racesimcentral.net/
-- This announcement is brought to you by the Shimago-Dominguez
Corporation - helping America into the New World...

by **John Pancoas** » Thu, 29 Aug 2002 06:44:09

> > I figured as much the night I was in an "arcade" pickup race at WG and 4
or
> > 5 guys were doing 1:12's. I won't mention their names, because they are
too
> > well known, but they were bragging about having "hybrid" race cars.

> > So, how do these "cheats" get around the checksum "cheat checker" in the
> > N2K2 servers?

> There is a cheat checker ?

> Admittedly I haven't been able to race on Sierra yet, but I've raced
> online with it connecting through IP, and if you know how figure out the
> IP to the race server you're connecting to through Sierra, what's to
> stop me from from going on Sierra "clean", pick a server, connect to it,
> find the IP, disco and reconnect through IP in "cheat mode"

> People with more skills than mine have probably figured out a way past
> the Sierra checker too

> Beers and cheers
> (uncle) Goy

> http://www.theuspits.com

Servers registered on Sierra.com can't be connected to via IP.

John

- Show quoted text -

by **John Pancoas** » Thu, 29 Aug 2002 06:46:25

> > By the looks of things, online *** isn't going to make a difference
> > on the "bottom line" one way or the other, I can't remember how many %
> > of the games sold have had their CD-keys registered with Sierra, but it
> > wasn't a huge number, 2-3 %

> That number is severely too low. I speculate around 15%, perhaps even
more.

> --
> -- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
> -- http://www.racesimcentral.net/
> -- This announcement is brought to you by the Shimago-Dominguez
> Corporation - helping America into the New World...

Yeah, no offense Goy, but I'd be interested in seeing that proven.

John

- Show quoted text -

by **Goy Larse** » Thu, 29 Aug 2002 07:16:37

> > > By the looks of things, online *** isn't going to make a difference
> > > on the "bottom line" one way or the other, I can't remember how many %
> > > of the games sold have had their CD-keys registered with Sierra, but it
> > > wasn't a huge number, 2-3 %

> > That number is severely too low. I speculate around 15%, perhaps even
> more.

> > --
> > -- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
> > -- http://www.racesimcentral.net/
> > -- This announcement is brought to you by the Shimago-Dominguez
> > Corporation - helping America into the New World...

> Yeah, no offense Goy, but I'd be interested in seeing that proven.

Wish I could remember where I saw it, I could have sworn it was a post
here on RAS mentioning it, and although I can't remember the numbers,
I'm pretty sure it was less than 5%

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

by **Goy Larse** » Thu, 29 Aug 2002 07:17:10

> Servers registered on Sierra.com can't be connected to via IP.

Learn something new every day :-)

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

http://www.theuspits.com

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

by **Goy Larse** » Thu, 29 Aug 2002 07:29:33

> Wish I could remember where I saw it, I could have sworn it was a post
> here on RAS mentioning it, and although I can't remember the numbers,
> I'm pretty sure it was less than 5%

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl26615300d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF...

Ok, so it was 6% and it was Husted and we all know how reliable he
usually is, but I didn't see anyone jump up and quote different numbers
at the time either

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

http://www.theuspits.com

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

by **Eldre** » Thu, 29 Aug 2002 07:47:48

writes:

If they were bragging about it, then they obviously don't CARE who knows it...
I say you mention them...

Eldred
--
Homepage - http://www.umich.edu/~epickett
GPLRank:+8.09
N2002 Rank:+22.329

Remove SPAM-OFF to reply.

by **John Pancoas** » Thu, 29 Aug 2002 07:53:49

> > Wish I could remember where I saw it, I could have sworn it was a post
> > here on RAS mentioning it, and although I can't remember the numbers,
> > I'm pretty sure it was less than 5%

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl26615300d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF...
TF-8&selm=udy49.5103%24Fl.358206%40nnrp1.ptd.net

Pffffffffffffft..........Husted ? Hell, he think's the N2k damage model
is spot on, what does he know ?<G>

John

by **Gerald Moo** » Thu, 29 Aug 2002 23:18:41

> > I wish somebody would let the cat out of the bag. Sadly, it has to
> > get worse before it can ever get better. Raise the visibility and
> > force Papy to deal with it. They won't do shit until it starts
> > affecting the bottom line.

> By the looks of things, online *** isn't going to make a difference
> on the "bottom line" one way or the other, I can't remember how many %
> of the games sold have had their CD-keys registered with Sierra, but it
> wasn't a huge number, 2-3 %

Even 2-3% is a huge number if you start thinking about profit margins.

In terms of development time and support costs going away, that would
improve the margin. I think they would lose a signifigant amount of
sales, which would more than cancel out any gains. Only their
accountants know for sure... so far they haven't dropped it, and I
doubt the bean counters give a rats ass about enthusiast employee
desires.

From what I can tell, almost exactly the same place we are now.
Anyone who would be a cheater is probably already cheating. Some
additional folks would probably do it briefly to check it out or to
mess with their friends. The main difference would be more people
would complain that something needs to be done, and hopefully at that
point Papy would actually do something. They did "fix" wallriding.

Gerald

by **Jan Verschuere** » Thu, 29 Aug 2002 23:41:19

I don't know if would like that kind of fix, i.e. one that deminishes the
simulation aspect, in these cases.

Jan.
=---

by **jason moy** » Fri, 30 Aug 2002 03:06:34

I'll agree with the last bit, but I do have to wonder how much the
monthly cost of co-locating 13 servers (or providing the bandwidth, if
they're located in-house) is compared to the overall sales of the
game. If my math is right, they'd need over 10Mbit of bandwidth
either way, not counting the bandwidth used by the chat server and
racelist which should be minimal, and that's not cheap. 28k per racer
times 40 racers times 13 (?) servers.... 15Mbit. That's certainly
not cheap.

Jason

-----
GPLRank 24.50
N2002Rank -12.995

by **SimRace** » Fri, 30 Aug 2002 04:27:09

> > Servers registered on Sierra.com can't be connected to via IP.

> Learn something new every day :-)

> Beers and cheers
> (uncle) Goy

Yup, to do so would generate a popup to the effect "You must be logged into
Sierra to connect to this server" or similar. I think they did it this way
for several reasons, mainly so everyone was either rated or not. If a rated
server started up and folks could join by IP (going around the ratings which
take affect through the arenas only), they could ruin guys' LPI and not take
a hit on their own.

by **Goy Larse** » Fri, 30 Aug 2002 04:47:03

> Even 2-3% is a huge number if you start thinking about profit margins.

> In terms of development time and support costs going away, that would
> improve the margin. I think they would lose a signifigant amount of
> sales, which would more than cancel out any gains. Only their
> accountants know for sure... so far they haven't dropped it, and I
> doubt the bean counters give a rats ass about enthusiast employee
> desires.

2-3 %, or 6 if are to believe Husted, isn't a whole lot when it has to
pay for the whole development of the online code, as well as patching
and maintaining support, how many of those who haven't registered on
Sierra do you think have even DL'ed the patches ?

As far as Papy having a saying towards the Sierra beancounters, I
suspect that if your name is David Kaemner (sp) you can at least get
*some* of your wishes though the eye of the needle, but as outsiders we
can only speculate

Hmmm, well, I have to disagree on that, some of these cheats are very
easy to do.....as long as you know what to look for, I'm not going to
point people in the right direction, especially since we've been told
that Papy considers NR2002 to be it's final state now and that we can't
expect more patches (can't remember who posted that and where), meaning
this is what we've got, do we really want to inform more people how to
cheat ?

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

http://www.theuspits.com

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

rec.autos.simulators

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