Making MMO Game Open Source == Bad Idea?

John Shedletsky · 2004-01-02T16:37:05

Hey, I''m currently working on a massively multiplayer space game that''s similar to Elite. I''m surprised at how quickly it is progressing and it actually looks like I''ll have some sort of playable game soon. Which brings us to the issue at hand. I''d really like to be able to release the source on my programming webpage like I do with all my other projects. I think the source to my game would have a lot of value to other developers for several reasons (it''s a large project in C#, uses managed directx, and there aren''t many (any?) open source mmo games). The problem is, I don''t want people to be able alter the client in such a way that would let them cheat in the game (it''s easy to imagine lots of things one might hack into the client to get an edge - maybe an aimbot or something like that). Is there anyway to prevent this and still release the source? I have been structuring my net code so that the client is trusted with very little, so that the number of possible client hacks is reduced, but it''s impossible to stop them all. Also, it seems like a bad thing if potential hackers get the DPlay Guid for the program (though I guess it''s compiling into the exe with the rest of the string literals). I was reading in my C# book something about signing executables with certificates that guarantee in a cryptographically strong way that the exe has not been tampered with since it was compiled. Would something like this work in a MMO setting? I don''t see how it would, but cryptography can be magic sometimes. I don''t think I would release the source without any such gaurantee that people could easily cheat. There''s no way I''ve worked on this game for so long only to play against cheaters. Comments please! ---------------------------------------- Let be be finale of seem, seems to me. ---------------------------------------- Coding: http://www.stanford.edu/~jjshed/coding Miscellany: http://www.stanford.edu/~jjshed

Networking and Multiplayer Programming

Started by Telamon December 31, 2003 12:39 AM

20 comments, last by Telamon 21 years, 1 month ago

acraig

471

January 02, 2004 03:09 PM

quote:
Original post by bpopp
Andrew, do you know if this is something that Planeshift is planning to do at some point? Last time I looked you were just dumping stuff to the server console.

Yes. I think we will be doing something like this. Since we will have a lot of skills/stats I think it will be a valuable tool. This will probably be in the plans for a future version since we are trying to finish up the next release soon.

If anybody wants to get together sometime and discuss some of the implications/technicalities behind this type of mining we can probably meet on irc sometime.

-------
Andrew
PlaneShift - A MMORPG in development.

bpopp

122

January 02, 2004 04:37 PM

quote:
If anybody wants to get together sometime and discuss some of the implications/technicalities behind this type of mining we can probably meet on irc sometime.

I definitely would. I''d actually love to chat about all your progress so far. Planeshift has come a long way and I''ve spent a lot of time in the code. It would be nice to hear what''s worked and what hasn''t.

I''m planning on implementing this functionality in my project anyway, so we might be able to come up with a modular way of doing it so that you could use the same (or similar) code in Planeshift.

bpopp (bpopp.net)

bpopp - My Gamedev Journal

Making MMO Game Open Source == Bad Idea?

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Making MMO Game Open Source == Bad Idea?

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