From:	James W Sager Iii <sager+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Newsgroups:	comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject:	Anti hacker game theory.
Date:	Sat, 2 Sep 2000 14:26:19 -0400
Organization:	Fifth yr. senior, MCS Undeclared, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines:	37
Message-ID:	<0tgIN=200UwE0O9VhY@andrew.cmu.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host:	po9.andrew.cmu.edu
X-Trace:	bb3.andrew.cmu.edu 967919319 26850 128.2.10.109 (2 Sep 2000 18:28:39 GMT)
X-Complaints-To:	advisor AT andrew DOT cmu DOT edu
NNTP-Posting-Date:	2 Sep 2000 18:28:39 GMT
X-Added:	With Flames (outnews v2.6)
Path:	news.mv.net!newspeer.phoen-x.net!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.cis.ohio-state.edu!xxxx1.sei.cmu.edu!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!sager+
Xref:	news.mv.net comp.os.msdos.djgpp:103102

Due to the problems with Diablo 1 & 2, and Starcraft, attention must be
drawn to hackers of ladder rated games.
I have been toying with some cool game theory, and made 2 discoveries.

1) For a random number generated competition game involving two people,
you can keep stuff secret, by having each player send the other an
encoded seed, and one of the two high primes needed to do NSA encoding,
then after the match, both can send the second prime, and decode the RNG
seed to replay the match and confirm no one was cheating by affecting
the dice.

2) If you are afraid people will do randomly weird stuff, allow
officiators watch.  By allowing players to police themselves, you not
only get rid of hackers, you discourage win trading etc.  Automated
watchers can do a degree of policing for every match, in addition to the
allowing of human officiators.  People will then have records that show
results such as this:
Officiator Joe Bob issued an illegal motion in the match of A vs. B

If these results pile up on a person, they can be ousted from the group.


Also, since I was plotting to make a 'telephone list' technology game,
it is possible to run a secure MMOG without a central server by using
player police, but no one can have any secrecy with their characters. 
The one thing stopping me from making such a virus style game. I call it
a virus because it can't be tramped out by a corporation at the central
server... The one thing that stops me is that there is no way of IDing
people on the 'phone list'

Ip addresses are not static on the net, and as far as I know, there is
no 'general server' on the internet providing a secure login, then
giving you IP adresses attached to log ins.

Its a cool area to think about.  I don't know if anyone is intrested in
hearing more of this 'no server' secure MMOG  stuff on this NG, but if
it is appropriate I will detail it further. 

- Raw text -