PlaneShift

Fan Area => The Hydlaa Plaza => Topic started by: Kixie on March 03, 2004, 04:31:48 am

Title: Crystal Beacon
Post by: Kixie on March 03, 2004, 04:31:48 am
well kids i have some news. i have made a huge breakthrough in the world of crystal hunting. as some of you already know i have figured out a way to see crystals miles away and find them very easily. this is good and bad news. I hope to first have a discussion with the devs about my discovery. i mean only good with this discovery and no harm. if anything is wrong and the devs do not want me to use this any longer, i consent and will drop all of my present crystals. to many this seems like a wonderfull thing and would like to know how to do it. i can only say that i would hate to bring such a burden of evil to planeshift. here are some screenshots of the crystal cheat

(http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v93/xphaser99x/good2.jpg)

(http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v93/xphaser99x/578d4ea1.jpg)

as you can see it makes a very large portion of the crystal stick into the air. this can be seen for many miles, although only from a certain side. if you look at it head on or from a different angle, it is invisible. But as you can see if you view it from the right side it is VERY visible.

I see this as a breakthrough and also a source of much evil. I am simply the scientist here people. I made this monster, and i am prepared to exterminate of it. i simply have found this out, i do not wish to cheat for my crystals or let others cheat, only to bring this to light so the developers can maybe fix this before its too late...

Thank you for your time.    
                                                            Whemyfield
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Post by: Karyuu on March 03, 2004, 04:38:41 am
This isn\'t what you told everyone in-game.

If anything can be done to prevent such hacks, it should be done.
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Post by: AendarCallenlasse on March 03, 2004, 04:46:34 am
Awwww I\'m on your buddy list....
Anyway as I said in-game it\'s not that big of a deal.  you get more crystals, that doesn\'t bother me any.
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Post by: hook on March 03, 2004, 10:40:51 am
i think it would be only fair to stop and prevent this cheat

...in my opinion you should keep those crystals, since you told about the cheat and offered to stop it ...now if only the devs would prevent it in the next releases (i can very well imagine what impact this cheat could have if it was used for something far more exquisite then crystals - let\'s say powerfull weapons or something even worse)

...is this just a streched model of the crystal? 8o
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Post by: AendarCallenlasse on March 03, 2004, 10:45:20 am
Well my arguement was that it would only be an MB isuue.  Since it only works for items that can be found on the ground.  With CB there probably won\'t be any crystals or at least not as many.  And I doubt we will be finding weapons, armor, or tria just laying around.

And yes all he did was edit the crystal model.
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Post by: Moogie on March 03, 2004, 11:41:31 am
Ehh... not so much a \"huge breakthrough\" as \"just another means to the same ends\". People have edited the crystal models to cheat before... it\'s really not hard.

All we can do is ask people not to do it, and monitor people\'s scores for abnormalities. Also, if anyone suspects a player is cheating, you should report it. :)

I suspect security will be tighter in CB, so these things hopefully won\'t occur in future.
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Post by: Karyuu on March 03, 2004, 02:02:57 pm
Now that you have Mogura\'s answer, Whemy, you\'ll need to stop using the thing. Like you\'re doing again in-game.
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Post by: AendarCallenlasse on March 03, 2004, 02:06:44 pm
Mogura is a forum mod and has no power over what goes on in-game.
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Post by: Karyuu on March 03, 2004, 02:09:51 pm
Whemy posted that if what he has done is recognized as wrong, he\'ll stop.

Well, big surprise.

I don\'t understand why you try to defend him so.
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Post by: AendarCallenlasse on March 03, 2004, 02:20:32 pm
If you check elsewhere on the forums you will realize that I hate Whemy.  A lot.  And when I say a lot I mean I really really hate him.  But my point is it\'s not worth making a big deal over.  I\'ve edited the textures on crystals to make them easier to see.  Many have.  Sure it\'s not as bad.  But who cares?  They\'re just crystals.  If he found some way of changing spawn points or some way of manipulating the server into giving him hundreds of diamonds then sure I would be against it.  But it\'s a tech-demo.  Things like this are bound to happen.  He found a bug and exploited it.  That\'s why we\'re here to find these sort of things.  Now the devs will be able to fix it.  Better now, than later on.
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Post by: Moogie on March 03, 2004, 03:44:26 pm
Quote
Originally posted by AendarCallenlasse
If you check elsewhere on the forums you will realize that I hate Whemy.  A lot.  And when I say a lot I mean I really really hate him.  But my point is it\'s not worth making a big deal over.  I\'ve edited the textures on crystals to make them easier to see.  Many have.  Sure it\'s not as bad.  But who cares?  They\'re just crystals.  If he found some way of changing spawn points or some way of manipulating the server into giving him hundreds of diamonds then sure I would be against it.  But it\'s a tech-demo.  Things like this are bound to happen.  He found a bug and exploited it.  That\'s why we\'re here to find these sort of things.  Now the devs will be able to fix it.  Better now, than later on.



*Nod* I agree with that, except, it\'d still be nice of you to be honest and change the crystals back to how they were before. :) I know it means little in the grand scheme of things, but in respect to other players, it\'s not very fair to give yourself \'illegal\' advantages over the rest of us.

And you\'re right, I have absolutely no power ingame. Venge does though. ;)


[Edit: You = Whemy, mostly... just incase it was confusing :P]
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Post by: Kixie on March 03, 2004, 04:27:25 pm
Quote
Originally posted by AendarCallenlasse
If you check elsewhere on the forums you will realize that I hate Whemy. COLOR]


awww but i like you aendar... your even on my buddy list...

anyways using the mod i gave lots of people crystals and stuff, but if the devs dont want me doing it, i have no problem stoping what i am doing.
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Post by: AendarCallenlasse on March 03, 2004, 04:31:45 pm
Well to be fair he did give some of the crystals away to other players.  He gave me 10 rubies.

But I still hate you Whemy and you\'re not on my buddylist.  :P
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Post by: Wedge on March 03, 2004, 11:20:36 pm
I imagine in the future they will make authenticating the graphics an automatic process so if you modify them you just get to download them again.  The updater already does this, it\'s just optional at this point.
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Post by: Karyuu on March 03, 2004, 11:31:31 pm
He gave me 10 crystals too. Decently, I returned them.

The thing is, who are you to decide who gets crystals and who doesn\'t, even if you\'re trying to be nice? Each player needs a fair chance of finding them -correctly- on his or her own. You can\'t cheat and collect buckets, then throw them on random people you happen to like, or just talk to. That\'s not a fair system.
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Post by: Xordan on March 03, 2004, 11:47:21 pm
Pfff, didn\'t give me any crystals.  X(
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Post by: Davis on March 04, 2004, 12:27:22 am
Nice work, Whemy. Though I\'m not sure if you really care or if you like showing off, I guess it was good of you to post this. So, in conclusion, oh well whatever never mind.
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Post by: Vengeance on March 04, 2004, 06:09:14 am
We have no way to detect hacked model files or textures from the server.

However, we have known about this cheat for at least 9 months and it is fixed in CB to a pretty good extent.  Now you will see people around you for 100meters but each item has a setting on it of how far it can be from you and you be aware of it.  Crystals might be 2-3 meters if they are in CB, for example.

-Venge
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Post by: Kixie on March 04, 2004, 01:49:39 pm
well vengence would that really work? the mod is a result of a stretched mesh. can you only see the xtal if the base spawn is 3 meters away or the crystal iself is 3 meters because someone could always mod the xtals to stretch horizontally in all directions, that way the crystal itself IS 2 or 3 meters away.

the only way i see possible to stop important items from getting hacked is making important files like those server side ONLY. keeping everything server side wont completely stop the l337 h4xx0rz but it will stop the common script kiddie from changin a couple numbers in a file to get a desired effect.
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Post by: Moogie on March 04, 2004, 11:46:22 pm
Quote
Originally posted by whemyfield
well vengence would that really work? the mod is a result of a stretched mesh. can you only see the xtal if the base spawn is 3 meters away or the crystal iself is 3 meters because someone could always mod the xtals to stretch horizontally in all directions, that way the crystal itself IS 2 or 3 meters away.

the only way i see possible to stop important items from getting hacked is making important files like those server side ONLY. keeping everything server side wont completely stop the l337 h4xx0rz but it will stop the common script kiddie from changin a couple numbers in a file to get a desired effect.



No, the 3 meters is counted from the object\'s center, so even if you stretched the mesh to cover the entire world, you wouldn\'t see it unless you were <3 meters away from its origin. :)
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Post by: Kixie on March 04, 2004, 11:48:30 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Mogura
Quote
Originally posted by whemyfield
well vengence would that really work? the mod is a result of a stretched mesh. can you only see the xtal if the base spawn is 3 meters away or the crystal iself is 3 meters because someone could always mod the xtals to stretch horizontally in all directions, that way the crystal itself IS 2 or 3 meters away.

the only way i see possible to stop important items from getting hacked is making important files like those server side ONLY. keeping everything server side wont completely stop the l337 h4xx0rz but it will stop the common script kiddie from changin a couple numbers in a file to get a desired effect.



No, the 3 meters is counted from the object\'s center, so even if you stretched the mesh to cover the entire world, you wouldn\'t see it unless you were <3 meters away from its origin. :)


thats what i meant from seeing it 3 meters from teh spawn point.
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Post by: DepthBlade on March 05, 2004, 05:54:52 pm
Must be really hard for you to cheat this way eh whelmy? I mean you must be going through such horrible agony, getting all those crystals so easily must really be putting a toll on you :D
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Post by: Kixie on March 05, 2004, 10:34:18 pm
oh yes ive developed a condition called \"cheater\'s crink\" basically i get a crink in my neck looking up at the sky so often... :P but in all seriousness i turned it off. crystal hunting is kind of pointless so why collect a whole bunch. cb is gonna be so much more fun than trying to get a claymore or galkard.
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Post by: DepthBlade on March 05, 2004, 10:45:05 pm
:D well good luck with that then ! Hope you the best of a luck, maybe PS should start a IRC room for cheat addicts? So you can discuss this problem :)
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Post by: Wedge on March 06, 2004, 09:14:58 am
I know whenever I modified art assets and ran the updater it would overwrite them with the original art files.  So wouldn\'t just forcing the updater to run work?  Or is that not how this hack works?  But shouldn\'t the updater be auto-run anyway?
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Post by: Grakrim on March 06, 2004, 09:26:21 am
Quote
Originally posted by Wedge
I know whenever I modified art assets and ran the updater it would overwrite them with the original art files.  So wouldn\'t just forcing the updater to run work?  Or is that not how this hack works?  But shouldn\'t the updater be auto-run anyway?

Its hard to force the client to update as this is open source.  The only safe security in a free MMORPG is server-side.

As long as the game is small, autorun updater is nice, but take my advice from SWG experience.  Calculating MD5s of 2 GB of data takes a looooong time...