I just need someone to join my game ( zechios game ) for a min or so to test out a UI only mod that might have some side effects. Will have it hosted for a bit til someone joins.
Got one going, and confirmed my fears. Mod will remain unposted until this is fixed:(
methinks this has something to do with being able to view other player's info?
Pssh, I want to see my opponent's cooldowns.
No, its worse than that actually. I don't want to say what it is, as someone else would probably beable to figure it out from there and make it for themselves. It would seriously imbalance multiplayer. No response from frogboy or sorian yet.
yeah there are a lot of ... bad things you can do with the UI >.< Figured out several myself by w/e
Yo Zechio, I'll help if you need any.
Very disappointing... I was starting to think this wasn't the case (outside of being able to view your oppoents gold), but I'm pretty sure we are going to see yet another wave of cheating in our little community. Host disconnect exploit, desync, and pretty soon, mods that enable you to see through the fog of war... and instantly recharge your cooldown. I personally hope this isn't the case, but I would not be surprized in the slightest to read about people finding a way to bypass the system. For instance, I hear Doc Oc is being released next week. You can play him today if you download a mod (to bypass the DLC system stardock is developing).
Modding should not have been released (much as I love it) if it isn't properly locked down. Seriously, does demigod need any other ways to ruin games?
Edit - thanks for reporting this to sorian and the frog though.
i wouldnt go so far to say that modding is bad. well you can perhaps do things with it that shouldnt be possible but overall its great!
you can't do anything that actually causes a change to the game rules (reduce cooldown, insta-gib etc) because even if you bypass the check that everyone has the mod installed, it would cause a desync. I'm assuming zechio was testing some way to get information you should not have since things like that won't cause a desync. Theoretically, such illicit information is not available to the UI but you never know...
the exploit i found does involve game play, and the testing i was doing was to see if it causes a desync....and it didnt. (i was able to complete several games with it, no problem )
I think they need to just remove the ui only portion. if both sides have to have the mod, any exploits would have to be agreed by both sides.
I was dreading the second I saw your initial and follow up post. I know you are trying to help, but what's going to happen now is that some people are going to do some digging to see what they can find out. I was already suspicious when we learned we could see our opponents gold. This thread will lead to suspicion that people are using mods that give them an unfair advantage. And because this post is so vague, people will jump to their own conclusion as to what the mod is. This will end up in the wild before any sort of fix or attempt to fix it is made. And even if SD decided to disable UI mods (which would really suck, btw, as UI mods are the only mods that the community can consistently use at this point), it would be quite some time before we saw that fix go into a build and get released. So, now yet another shitty thing happens with Demigod.
This brings our list of ways to cheat to this (crossed out items that have been resolved): host disconnect exploit, desyncs, fighting AI for experience in pantheon, quitting just before a game ends to keep exp, and a magical, mysterious ui mod that impacts gameplay that doesn't trigger a desync and gives individuals with the mod some sort of unfair advantage. The only bannable offense appears to be getting caught triggering a desync.
Your call on how you want to handle this now. Spill the beans if you want and many will cheat, but some of us will make quite a bit of noise until people exploting are banned. I don't even know what to look for at this point to spot this type of cheating.
Well that is pretty annoying. Is there a way to build a UI-only "exploit detector mod" that will detect if the other person is using this exploit?
Believe me, I thought a lot about this. ( I actually spent around an hour deciding how to handle it. ) It is a very sticky situation, and the lack of response is a bit surprising. I have been considering just putting it out there so that people can try and self police a bit, and hopefully this would help get GPG/SD moving faster. However, I don't want to put them in this situation, or hurt DG multiplayer more than it already is. This is why I am trying to give absolutely no hint of any kind, because as you mentioned, many people are probably trying to dig it up.
For now, I wouldnt worry too awfully much about it being used in MP. While it does give an advantage, its definately no invincibility or anything. I probably couldnt beat you even with it for example:)
As for UI only mods being removed, I really dont want to see it go either. I thought it was a great idea...it is just extremely flawed. The entire game is run by lua, even the way mods themselves are handled. Very little is actually handled outside the lua. In theory, you could probably make a UI only mod, that would reload the entire game into a mod folder, and do just about anything you want ( of course, this would still be limited to stuff that does not desync the game, as this is one of those things handled outside the lua. ) This would be a massive undertaking to remod probably, and is not the exploit i mention, just an example of the ui-only being taken to the extreme.
Something that would be helpful to the modding community, would be mod sharing. If you try to connect to me, and you dont have the mod...my game would transfer the files over. This would fix many of the current problems...but it brings up its own. If any of the code is able to interact with anything outside of demigod, this could allow the spread of viruses through DG.
For now, I will continue to remain relatively silent, cross my fingers, and await an official response.
I also wish to reassure everyone, that while it definately gives a gameplay advantage outside of just information, it is not a major change ( that I have been able to do. Like I said, I have not fully explored the potential of it yet.) So, if you got WTFPWNed, it wasn't cause they used this exploit..its cause you got WTFPWNed. If it was a close fight, sure, it coulda made the difference....but a close fight is usually a fun one, and thus the game still performed its duty fine:)
Oh, and as for a detection mod: Interesting idea. I'm on holiday break atm, so I will be slowing down on the work I put into DG modding, but I will look into it. Also, even if I found a way to detect it, I can't release that mod until this exploit has become public knowledge, as it would definately allow other to trace back and create the exploit.
If you found one of the two things I have, I know that one is fairly detectable. It'd be quite easy to build a counter-UI mod... not sure about the other but it's not that big of a deal xP
One thing the game could/should do is just log the active mods for each player. So if you cared or thought something was funky you could check the log and see what UI mods they had in addation to whatever common non ui mods were used in the game.
Or have it list all the active mods in the game chat on start if people need to know ahead of time.
If i had to guess. Maybe remove fog of war? Take that off and its not a super advantage, but can be a tactical advantage. Its not going to desynch the game.
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One thing the game could/should do is just log the active mods for each player. So if you cared or thought something was funky you could check the log and see what UI mods they had in addation to whatever common non ui mods were used in the game."
You could use a fake GUID from another popular mod. You'd have to do some sort of checksum instead. Not sure how that would work for multi-file mods.
I'd call that "illicit information". Based on what zechio has said, I'm expecting something more than that...like being able to switch favor items or respect your skills or something.
Just an update: I am back from vacation now, so will see about putting more time into DG.
As for this particular issue, I have sent another PM to Frogboy and a Support ticket. I'm just trying to get some sort of response that they are aware of it, and looking into it.
However, I figure if I don't hear back in a week ( Frog is usually on every day, and the support takes about 48 hours for a reply...so both should have had plenty of time. ), then things must be working as intended, and I will release the mod.
On a side note: I have been trying to work on a Music Player for DG, so you can play and control your own music without having to use another program behind DG....however, I am having problems getting the FMOD event ( .fev ) file to load. Without that, I think sound modding might just be a no go. I'll keep trying for now though:)
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