Ot: online 'high scores'

SDL Development
1

i’m planning to eventually add an online 'high scores’
feature for one of my games. should be easy enough, i’m
not worried about implementing it. likely through a
short http session. (otherwise i have to get some
server out there to ‘host’ a scores server program)

as i think about it, i can’t think of a possible way
to keep the list hackproof. if the game is open source,
it seems anyone can rip out the client code and change
whatever they’d please.

i really don’t want people to register a login/password
(which would be easy enough to fake accounts anyways)

is there any sort of challenge i can issue to be
pretty sure that an incoming high score is legit?

i can’t see how to use any type of encryption or
hashing techniques, since anyone looking at the code
has easy access to the keys.

i just can’t think of a way to do it. i’m sure there’s
really smart people out there who need to come up with
things like this for ‘real world critical’ programs.
anyone know what they have come up with? or where their
websites might be?

thanks

2

Pete Shinners wrote:

i’m planning to eventually add an online 'high scores’
feature for one of my games. should be easy enough, i’m
not worried about implementing it. likely through a
short http session. (otherwise i have to get some
server out there to ‘host’ a scores server program)
…
thanks

I think that it can’t be done.
This is the problem of verifying that a software is a certain unmodified
version.

I have had the same problem with verifying that the client is the same
that I release. But I have come to the conclusion that it can’t be done.

You just need to recieve from the client all the actions it is going to
do and send it the answer.
To improve speed you could let it guess the server answer, but when
server reply you should update the client.

So in the server you can reproduce the client game to see if it possible
to have such score and if it isn’t you have a cheater. I suggest that
you ban that IP for 4-48 hours to avoid loss CPU power on cheaters.

I expect that you have now a more clear idea.–
Miguel Angel Blanch Lardin

         -- http://www.arianne.cx -- Arianne --

The free open source massively multiplayer online role playing game

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