Engine swaps my view

I just posted this over at Nunnini's site, thought I'd post it here.. I'll probably get flamed from one side or the other..oh well. I haven't downloaded the tool, and probably wont. Even though I think its the best tool to come along for gpl for quite some time. The reason that so many people are against it is, there were no safe guards put in. Some way of telling it was being used. If this issue had been addressed, it would've been accepted by the gpl community as a whole. As it stands now, there are two camps. Not good. Being divided, how can we put a united front to Papy to develope gpl further, as people would say, gpl2 the detection issue is why so many are upset. The majority of the gpl community was happy looking at the record tables and advancing up them knowing the brabham in front of them had a brabham engine etc.. The world ranking site is shut down. So where do people go now to compare themselves to everyone else. If you're a member of a league, you know each other and trust each other to say if you're using the tool. Its the pickup races that is getting people upset. We all don't have time to race in an online league. I'm married with a child. League racing from Australia is out of the question for me. I work evening and nights and weekends. I'm a member of Comet , but have never raced online with the guys, for the just mentioned reasons. That leaves me with pickup races. There isn't going to be much joy there. Imagine this. Some one does a legit qual lap in a legit chassis/engine. Someone else thinks its an engine swap. Then the name calling and abuse starts. Then the host boots one of them from the race. Back in vroc chat, all the abuse starts again. Like I said at the start, I think this is the best tool for gpl to come along. But if it causes division, anger and hurt(yes people are going to get hurt emmotionally), maybe it should've been left with access to it by just a few. steve

Hmm, I don't think you fully understand the problem. The engine swapper is in simplest terms just a "hack". That is to say, you can do the same thing the engine swapper app does simply by editing the gpl.exe in a hex editor. So people could have easily performed this hack BEFORE the engine swapper was released. I reckon some people, possibly cheaters, have probably known about this little hack for some time. Maybe a year or two, who knows. So the release of the engine swapper hasn't really changed anything, all it has done is make the public aware of this hack. I see this as a good thing, since it makes it a hell of a lot easier to spot the cheaters. Programming some sort of detection mechanism (which would be extremely difficult without Papy's source code) would only create the illusion of integrity, since people who had only used a hex editor would still be able to cheat! "steve whitty" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:3a3328ab$0$19430$[email hidden]... > I just posted this over at Nunnini's site, thought I'd post it here.. > > I'll probably get flamed from one side or the other..oh well. > I haven't downloaded the tool, and probably wont. Even though I think its > the best tool to come along for gpl for quite some time. The reason thatso > many people are against it is, there were no safe guards put in. Some wayof > telling it was being used. If this issue had been addressed, it would've > been accepted by the gpl community as a whole. As it stands now, there are > two camps. Not good. Being divided, how can we put a united front to Papyto

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> develope gpl further, as people would say, gpl2 > > the detection issue is why so many are upset. The majority of the gpl > community was happy looking at the record tables and advancing up them > knowing the brabham in front of them had a brabham engine etc.. The world > ranking site is shut down. So where do people go now to compare themselves > to everyone else. > If you're a member of a league, you know each other and trust each other

to > say if you're using the tool. Its the pickup races that is getting people > upset. We all don't have time to race in an online league. I'm marriedwith > a child. League racing from Australia is out of the question for me. Iwork > evening and nights and weekends. I'm a member of Comet , but have never > raced online with the guys, for the just mentioned reasons. That leaves me > with pickup races. There isn't going to be much joy there. Imagine this. > Some one does a legit qual lap in a legit chassis/engine. Someone else > thinks its an engine swap. Then the name calling and abuse starts. Thenthe > host boots one of them from the race. Back in vroc chat, all the abuse > starts again. > Like I said at the start, I think this is the best tool for gpl to come > along. But if it causes division, anger and hurt(yes people are going toget > hurt emmotionally), maybe it should've been left with access to it by justa > few. > > steve > > >

"steve whitty" <[email hidden]> wrote > Being divided, how can we put a united front to Papy to > develope gpl further, as people would say, gpl2 Please slap anybody who is wasting their effort doing so. There won't ever be a GPL2. Stop dreaming. -- -- Fran�ois M�nard <ymenard> -- May the Downforce be with you... -- http://www.WeRace.net -- People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.

ymenard wrote on 10 Dec 2000: >"steve whitty" <[email hidden]> wrote >> Being divided, how can we put a united front to Papy to >> develope gpl further, as people would say, gpl2 > >Please slap anybody who is wasting their effort doing so. There won't >ever be a GPL2. Stop dreaming. Sadly, I have to agree. UNless someone comes long with millions of quid and offers to pay for the entire project themselevs (including all the licensing issues), GPL1 is the best we'll get. Which is why it's so important to keep it as fair as possible. If you don't like one particular modern F1 or NASCAR sim, there are plenty of others. Not so with GPL. -- David. (final [?] GPLRank handicap: -5.92) The GPL Scrapyard - http://www.hillclimbfan.f2s.com "After all, a mere thousand yards - such a harmless little knoll, really" - Raymond Mays on Shelsley Walsh.

Aubrey wrote on 10 Dec 2000: <snip> >Programming some sort of detection mechanism (which would be extremely >difficult without Papy's source code) would only create the illusion of >integrity, since people who had only used a hex editor would still be >able to cheat! Actually, I'm a little more optimistic here in some regards. Several people on the GPLRank admins' mailing list who know about these things are of the opinion that inserting an extra flag into VROC wouldn't be particularly difficult, given certain knowledge being available. It doesn't help GPLRank itself, though, of course. -- David. (final [?] GPLRank handicap: -5.92) The GPL Scrapyard - http://www.hillclimbfan.f2s.com "After all, a mere thousand yards - such a harmless little knoll, really" - Raymond Mays on Shelsley Walsh.

> Being divided, how can we put a united front to Papy to > > develope gpl further, as people would say, gpl2 > > Please slap anybody who is wasting their effort doing so. There won'tever > be a GPL2. Stop dreaming. nono...GPL2 is in final beta testing now...it's called N4. ;> dave henrie

"David Buttery" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> Aubrey wrote on 10 Dec 2000: > > <snip> > >Programming some sort of detection mechanism (which would be extremely > >difficult without Papy's source code) would only create the illusion of > >integrity, since people who had only used a hex editor would still be > >able to cheat! > > Actually, I'm a little more optimistic here in some regards. Several

people > on the GPLRank admins' mailing list who know about these things are of the > opinion that inserting an extra flag into VROC wouldn't be particularly > difficult, given certain knowledge being available. It doesn't helpGPLRank > itself, though, of course. Well, there's ways to get around pretty much anything that VROC checks. I'll spare you the details for the obvious reasons, but you can use your imagination. I bet it would be fairly trivial. If they're smart enough to hack the exe themselves, and infantile enough to cheat with it, then they won't let VROC get in their way. But it certainly would be a nice feature to allow the race hosts to make it clear that they don't intend for the engine swapper to be used in their races. But my main point is that cheating is very easy. So publicly releasing a hack like this really shouldn't be a big deal, since the hacks have always been there for the taking. It's just a matter of who knows about them and who doesn't.

Well, if GPL is as dead as you presume, why don't they publish the tools they used to draw the cars, to draw the tracks. I understand very well that they don't want to publish the source of their magnificent physics engine (except it won't be magnificent for many years more now), because they don't want other people to make their own sims and make money from their engine. But if the sim is dead in all respects, even in the physics model department, in a couple of years,they could publish the code, and we could make our own stuff, new cars, etc. An open source environment would work very well with the racing sim community because we have so many talented programmers here. And we are well united, and that accounts for something too... ---Asgeir--- ymenard wrote:

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> "steve whitty" <[email hidden]> wrote > > Being divided, how can we put a united front to Papy to > > develope gpl further, as people would say, gpl2 > > Please slap anybody who is wasting their effort doing so. There won't ever > be a GPL2. Stop dreaming. > > -- > -- Fran�ois M�nard <ymenard> > -- May the Downforce be with you... > -- http://www.WeRace.net > -- People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise > how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.

>"Asgeir Nesoen" <[email hidden]> wrote > Well, if GPL is as dead as you presume, why don't they publish the toolsthey > used to draw the cars, to draw the tracks. Because their new game engine is their game engine of the future. They used it for N4, they will use it for future titles. They won't make it open-source, they need to eat and sleep. > But if the sim is dead in all respects, even in the physics modeldepartment, > in a couple of years,they could publish the code, and we could make ourown > stuff, new cars, etc. A couple of years is probably closer to a decade. The game engine is enough sufficient for a long list of titles in the future. The WSC guys once said in an interview that it's 99% close to reality (or was it David Kaemmer?), so the only things left are minor physics adjustments. > An open source environment would work very well with the > racing sim community because we have so many talented programmers here. Won't happen. It's an utopia. -- -- Fran�ois M�nard <ymenard> -- May the Downforce be with you... -- http://www.WeRace.net -- People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.