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Id Software and Activision Wolfenstein Source

Posted by timothy on from the surely-great-education-games-will-result dept.

An enthusiastic Anonymous Coward writes: "Id Software and Activision released the sources of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Single-player and multiplayer included. Unbelievable! Another great surprise from Id Software!" Update: 04/14 15:19 GMT by T : Note: don't get your hopes up -- these are the sources for the game code, not the engine.

3 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Here come the hacked, never-miss multiplayers by carm$y$ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The license agreement (included, and clicked on in order to install), says, under "2. Prohibitions": "j. prepare or develop derivatives based on the software".

    Clear enough for correct people - and if think different, maybe the whole GPL/Open Source concept is flawed...

    --
    -- No sig today
  2. Re:Here come the hacked, never-miss multiplayers by Masem · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Except that v 1.3 and beyond will have PunkBuster software in place. Basically, if a server admin wants to minimize the cheaters on their system, they can force this on their server; all connecting clients will have to have this enabled to play on the server. The software scans key dll and other files in the RCTW folders and other factors to try to determine if any modification has been made to those files, and if so, the client is flagged as a cheater, and typically kicked from the server.

    Last time I checked, about 50% of the 1.3 servers in GSArcade claimed to have PB on and running. And the other thing that I've noticed from playing it is the first 2 or so minutes of playing are typically a bit choppy due to the security tests, so it's not very intrusive.

    --
    "Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
    "I can see my house from here!" - ST:
  3. Re:Here come the hacked, never-miss multiplayers by defile · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Meant to include this in the parent post.

    A less hopeless attempt at cheat prevention would be to integrate a "web of trust" system into gaming communities.

    This is all doable through cryptography, but I'll explain the protocol without the implementation details:

    Players take a vow to play cheat free. They get their friends to confirm that they play cheat free. Friends confirm other friends. The web develops. This relationship is published to a well known repository and linked to other webs of trust submitted by other groups based on common participants.

    Alice and Bob have never met before, but they can be pretty sure that niether is cheating because Alice trusts Frank, who trusts Trent, who trusts Eve, who trusts Andrew, who trusts Bob. This many levels of displacement is probaby enough to cover the population of the United States.

    When you join a server to play, the server checks your position in the web of trust to that of others on the web, and tells you their trustworthiness. By playing against people who are trusted by people you trust you can play with higher confidence. You could set policies to only allow players who meet a certain trust level.

    Someone who is actually confirmed to be cheating could damage the trustworthiness of a huge set of players, and would motivate the participants to quickly distance themselves from the cheater or be classified as cheaters themselves.

    A lot of the attacks against this model are based on the implementation, but it sounds more promising to me than pursuing ridiculous anti-cheat clients.