Rally Trophy Rank: Early beta available

Hi folks, I've been working together with David Cook on integrating Rally Trophy with GPLRank. You can take a look at our results at http://gplrank.schuerkamp.de/rt_index.html while the site still looks quite gplrank-ish this is about to change rather soon. Also I'll try to add all the functionality that you have come to expect from GPLRank. Let us know what you think and please tell us about any bugs you encounter on the new site. Thanks as always to Brian Wong for allowing us to abuse his server in this manner. Cheers, uwe -- Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/ Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E) Ever wondered what's wrong with the world? http://bnetwork.com/ PGP Fingerprint: 2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F 67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61

I read in a previous thread that someone managed to crack the bzf file format in some ridiculously low time. They also said that physics values were stored in those bzf files in plain text. This means that the physics could be altered and he even went on to say that he could set his Mini to have a power value greater than the Lancia/Alpine. Do you have anything to protect from cheats? As far as I can see you are only uploading the highscore file. Does the highscore file contain physics information or can you detect cheating? I ask this because I am tired of putting efforts into such ranks such as yours only to find out that there is a cheat floating around and that pretty much renders such ranking sites tainted. I understand the Honor System, but it seems that not too many others do. The guy who posted earlier on this topic said that they were not going to allow cheats with their editors or whatever but I'd like to have some peace of mind regardless. Thanks for your great efforts. Regards James

James Precott wrote:

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> I read in a previous thread that someone managed to crack the bzf file > format in some ridiculously low time. They also said that physics values > were stored in those bzf files in plain text. This means that the physics > could be altered and he even went on to say that he could set his Mini to > have a power value greater than the Lancia/Alpine. Do you have anything to > protect from cheats? As far as I can see you are only uploading the > highscore file. Does the highscore file contain physics information or can > you detect cheating? I ask this because I am tired of putting efforts into > such ranks such as yours only to find out that there is a cheat floating > around and that pretty much renders such ranking sites tainted. I understand > the Honor System, but it seems that not too many others do. The guy who > posted earlier on this topic said that they were not going to allow cheats > with their editors or whatever but I'd like to have some peace of mind > regardless. Thanks for your great efforts. > > Regards > James > > >

James, GPL stores the fastest times in Plain text, if anyone is cheating they are just fooling themselves, whats the point? As long as there is no money involved I think most people will be honest. Perhaps I am a little too trusting ;) It would be nice to have completely uncrackable records, but I doubt if that is possible :( All the best, Ash

well you could always put a checksum in the original bzf file or wahetever it is and refuse anything without this checksum..would take about 10 seconds to do,n the problem is if the guy has "several" bzf files one for "playing" and one for "submitting", then you're fucked... "James Precott" <[email hidden]> a �crit dans le message de news: pvGO7.17157$[email hidden]...

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> I read in a previous thread that someone managed to crack the bzf file > format in some ridiculously low time. They also said that physics values > were stored in those bzf files in plain text. This means that the physics > could be altered and he even went on to say that he could set his Mini to > have a power value greater than the Lancia/Alpine. Do you have anything to > protect from cheats? As far as I can see you are only uploading the > highscore file. Does the highscore file contain physics information or can > you detect cheating? I ask this because I am tired of putting efforts into > such ranks such as yours only to find out that there is a cheat floating > around and that pretty much renders such ranking sites tainted. I

understand

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> the Honor System, but it seems that not too many others do. The guy who > posted earlier on this topic said that they were not going to allow cheats > with their editors or whatever but I'd like to have some peace of mind > regardless. Thanks for your great efforts. > > Regards > James > >

On Mon, 03 Dec 2001 08:14:13 GMT, James Precott <[email hidden]> wrote: > I read in a previous thread that someone managed to crack the bzf file > format in some ridiculously low time. They also said that physics values Hi James, protection from cheats is one of the hardest topics to implement, and I'd rather spend my time extending gplrank / RT rank than fighting an uphill battle against those idiots. I'll transfer the buddy list functionality to RT rank shortly so you can create a list of people you trust and have fun racing them instead of looking at the "public rankings" which of course might contain some cheaters. It's the same with gplrank for me: I hardly ever visit the public rankings, most of the fun is climbing up my buddy list. Cheers, uwe

I think you should give yourself the power to just disqualify ridiculously fast times, which I'm assuming that you already do. If a guy's time is very fast, ask him or her to prove it to you in an online, one-on-one race. A refusal would mean disqualification. Alanb "Uwe Schuerkamp" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > On Mon, 03 Dec 2001 08:14:13 GMT, James Precott <[email hidden]>wrote:

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> > I read in a previous thread that someone managed to crack the bzf file > > format in some ridiculously low time. They also said that physics values > > Hi James, > > protection from cheats is one of the hardest topics to implement, > and I'd rather spend my time extending gplrank / RT rank than > fighting an uphill battle against those idiots. > > I'll transfer the buddy list functionality to RT rank shortly so > you can create a list of people you trust and have fun racing > them instead of looking at the "public rankings" which of > course might contain some cheaters. > > It's the same with gplrank for me: I hardly ever visit > the public rankings, most of the fun is climbing up my > buddy list. > > Cheers, > > uwe

On Mon, 3 Dec 2001 11:03:14 +0100, Txl <[email hidden]> wrote: > well you could always put a checksum in the original bzf file or wahetever > it is and refuse anything without this checksum..would take about 10 seconds > to do,n the problem is if the guy has "several" bzf files one for "playing" > and one for "submitting", then you're fucked... > The checksumming routines would be the first to go after copy protection. It really isn't worth bothering, trust your peers and get a decent buddy list ;-) uwe

Alan Bernardo <[email hidden]> wrote on 03 Dec 2001: > I think you should give yourself the power to just disqualify > ridiculously fast times, which I'm assuming that you already do. > If a guy's time is very fast, ask him or her to prove it to you in > an online, one-on-one race. A refusal would mean disqualification. What happens with GPLRank, very roughly, is this: if a time comes in which is considered absurdly fast, or if anyone is claiming a new World Record time, that person is asked to provide a replay as proof. No replay, no time. The most common thing is a clock smash leading to a 1:25 at Monza or whatever. -- Sceptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense -- Carl Sagan The GPL Scrapyard returns (slowly): http://www.hillclimbfan.f2s.com