Games and Hacking

Haha IndieKiwi, I have no clue how it really works now, so not sure how they affect each other but am trying to slowly understand it.

Thanks for that Beaverlicious, I never saw that post. I tried looking for it but couldn't find it. If you do see it again, would you please share the link.

rekjl

I´m not sure if it was this one, because I thought it was a little longer.

Thanks Beaverlicious! It was definitely interesting indeed. It was a year ago, wondering if any strides have been made.....by both the softwares and the hackers!

Hmm....I'm really leaning towards doing a replay scenario. Where the game stores how the game was played, and saved into an array or something, than I can rerun it with the settings that I also used to create the game. I think it would be a good first protection to immediately find out which are genuine results and which have been altered. If the hackers still want to study and hack the replay values....well hats of to them than

I am leaning towards replay scenario and it being stored in a php server.....well that's the plan, but it is still a few months early as I finish the testing and graphics for the game, so in the mean time I am looking at the various methods available and see how much I need to change my game to implement them.

I recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Protecting-Games- ... _2?ie=UTF8

It's seriously awesome for beginners and pros alike, it even includes things like "how to deal with gold farmers on MMOs"

Fimbul, thanks for that link. It definitely does look interesting. Only thing is it was written in 2009, and we need to check if it is still relevant since security and hacking has vastly improved since than. I will have a look at the more recent reviews to see if what is discussed in the book is still effective nowadays. Again, thanks for sharing!

It is still relevant, trust me. Everything the book says is still as true today as it was when it was written.

The only faults are by omission, for instance it doesnt deal with free2play or mobile that much, since in 2009 the hot stuff was Farmville, although even un those cases it has highly relevant advice.

The book isn't dated at all, trust me. I wouldn't be recommending it if it were.

Fimbul, Thanks! I will definitely take your word for it. But the game I am making is for mobile, so since you mention that it doesn't deal with mobile that much, do you think it is still worth buying and reading? If it does delve into the approaches of how hackers hack, maybe it might be worth it as it might be universal and maybe think up of a solution to reduce the effects or make it too troublesome that less of them attempt it.

Chapters 17 (there's a section about collusion in trivia and puzzle games) and 18 (high-score security) seem especially relevant to your interests. In fact, page 186 talks specifically about "Replayable Game Logs" as a technique to detect cheating, just like you said. However, it says:

[quote:2k9brx4n]Some lightweight browser languages like JavaScript and Java do not allow applications to store data on the platform, others like Flash do.

This was somewhat true at the time of writing, but is no longer the case now (since we now have webStorage).

Chapter 20 talks about tournaments, and how some players work to disrupt and cheat them - this seems especially relevant since you're planning a contest.

Chapter 31 talks about gambling: "Skill games, contests, promotions" which is also, again, insanely relevant to your game, especially since you want to offer prizes.

Fimbul, thanks for that in review! Appreciate it! Will look into getting the book and hopefully start into reading it soon. Now still working on the bugs and founds some lag in the game, so need to work on those for now. Again, thank you!