[MUD-Dev] distributed objects

Vijay Weasel Prabhakar weasel at cs.columbia.edu
Mon Feb 14 03:52:49 CET 2000


	If I understand you correctly, which I may not be doing :), you
want to get rid of some of the server's work and distribute it to the
players?  This problem is one into which I've put a lot of thought.  I've
realized that only trivial tasks can really be given to the player.
Anything that is at all important increases the abuse potential
tremendously.  Of course, it takes a sophisticated player to pull it off,
but it's not really hard.  I thought it would be cool for players to "tell
the server" where they are and if they hit something, etc..
Unfortunately, I realized I could easily spoof any message or request.  Or
I could choose not to participate in a battle with a higher level player
by refusing the allow anyone to change my hit points.  I could even spoof
what version of the code I was running quite easily.  So you can never
really verify what the player is doing and if they are cheating (at least
not effectively).  However, you could make it sufficiently difficult that
people won't bother.  However, it's totally impossible to verify anything
on the client's side without a trusted authority on their system.  Oh
well, what can you do?

-Vijay





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