Maybe calling this thread “How to prevent readers from cheating?” was the wrong way of solving my problem. I don’t mind the argument that was created by it even if I can’t understand why you would pirate a game only so you could cheat.
Because this thread was born by the thought: “I want to create a secret ending which can’t be found and triggered by just looking at the code.” But this is not quite right either. I wouldn’t mind if people were able to solve the secret by looking at the code if it wasn’t for the fact that it is “way too easy” to cheat. The time I would spend creating a secret hidden in the narrative would be solved in mere seconds.
Maybe it is just me but in this situation cheating in a single-player game feels to me like stabbing the creator in the back. When you take your time into creating something special for people who love your game and who try to find every little piece of content in form of a secret it wouldn’t be really a reward if anyone could make some clicks here some there without real knowledge of how to hack something and just change up/check up one line to get it.
And yeah it is hiding content but I am not stupid enough to hide essential content behind something like this (just saying before we start this conversation again). I just can’t find the motivation to create something like this if the reward can be earned with no effort at all. However, I don’t judge or hate people who cheat for stat checks or achievement hunting. I just think that CS is at fault here because of the fact that you can reach and manipulate the code too easily.
I am sorry if I was in any way disrespectful or offensive but I have deleted this bloody mess over ten times and then rewritten it to erase it again.
But I don’t want to save thw people so I don’t want lost time on it. Is just straightforward painful Only one way to solve the situation. So is just an annoying no choice game if only there is a way there is no choice. If there is no choice there is no player agency so role-playing is impossible. If I see a choice like that. Is an automated stop playing and not buying or not recommend it.
@ChibaHateme If I pay for a game I pay for its code and there are many people who don’t want suffering a boring trial error during hours to find out a five lines ending. That is a terrible way of planning your story. That only lead to people become angry and give you bad scores. Is not fun trial and error and replay over and over and over to just read five lines . Is cheap for the author. I don’t care those supposed clever endings I nust stop reading. But there are people who want read that without the suffering. And after all they pay for your code
Perfect! So what if you enter a different code in which sets the device to kaboom as soon as you have quietly left the building and are far enough away? That could be the start of your villain career.
But yeah, this isn’t a work in progress thread, lol… let’s not frankenstein a generic idea into life
Sorry if this is rude but, it has nothing to do with the author or backstabbing. I don’t look at code while I play because preference but also since I buy through the app store, it’s not even possible. But I’m not into this. The reader’s paid for their game. It’s not about the author.
Let the reader go through it how they choose to. (Choice is in the site’s name!) Most of us are big kids who can decide for ourselves. And it’s been pointed out that most people don’t use code like that. So it seems like a lot of effort to frustrate a few people. Don’t worry about it.
I have some questions regarding this: who do you want to find the secret ending? Is it the people whose character just happens to line up exactly with the requirements? Or is it more for random choices? What exactly are you rewarding? And why are you rewarding those players specifically, and no-one else? For that matter, is it even a reward? I mean, the way you’ve talked about it does suggest that it’s something players will want to get. These are the sorts of things you have to think about.
For a comparison, my WIP has a non-essential fight that’s very hard to win. It was designed to reward players who’d increased two stats (because I was sick of all the games that force you to only increase one stat), although it did end up keeping the reward from players who’d increased all three stats. Of course, this resulted in multiple players just asking “how do you beat this guy?” and being told by players who had managed it (and myself). Did those players deserve the reward for simply asking how to get it? I don’t see why not, and they did far less than the code readers would.
Finally, I just want to say that I read code because I enjoy seeing how a writer has created it. I enjoy seeing all the details put into it that a normal player might miss. I don’t see how enjoying the work in its purest form is anything like “backstabbing”.
I think you’re looking at this from the wrong perspective. I play plenty of games with cheat codes. You can mod Bethesda games until you’re an immortal, unstoppable god with an undead army. I don’t play like that (it’s dull to me), but I certainly tweak the game to make it more fun for myself.
But the fact that it’s an option doesn’t diminish my sense of accomplishment when I stare down a charging boss with a rifle and take him out. Just because I could cheat and defeat him, or knowing that others have cheated to defeat him doesn’t change the fact that I did it organically and “Holy crap my character looked like a badass.”
And, frankly, it shouldn’t insult you either. You’re not being betrayed by people, you just have people playing your game (they liked it enough to buy it) who like the plot and the characters but don’t find the idea of doing riddles fun. So they peek a bit and get on with the parts they do like. These people like your game enough to want to play it, in spite of mechanics they don’t particularly enjoy.
Let them do what they want. They’re not in a competition, so it’s not like they get a leg up on the other players. And the ones who want to solve the riddle organically will do it because it’s fun to them. They’ll enjoy the challenge of piecing together the answers and feel that much more satisfied because, well yeah they could have looked at the answer like some sort of weakling but they didn’t and dang aren’t they such a badass for figuring it out?
I’m not sure your code really solves the issue. Yeah it’ll keep me from peeking and seeing that the password is “4857” but I can still see that I find the password in the underground tunnel once I get through the guards with either a charisma check or strength check. Or that I find the 4 on the roof, the 8 in my boot, the 5 in my aunt’s panties and the 7 stuck to the remote in the sofa.
And it’s not like it’d be hard to track down the pieces either, since all I’d need is to Ctrl+F the variable and see where else it pops up (or if there’s a gosub_scene somewhere that takes me to a different txt file).
And, frankly, I hate when a game that makes me put in a specific code makes me hunt for it all over again (this is solely an opinion and has no bearing on what people should actually do with their games). I figured it out the first time, let me punch it in again if I remember it (and maybe make a joke about how the character randomly hit numbers and it worked) rather than making me jump through hoops. The first time it was a puzzle, the second time a fetch quest, the third time a chore… (Not to say you can’t make me do it, but when I get to punch in an actual string, it gives me the impression that I “should” be able to punch in the code from memory. Make me find a paper or a key instead of giving me real life numbers)
Ok, awesome, and thank you for the feedback.
So…
Let’s say after you do “the puzzle” the first time, you get an achievement.
On subsequent gameplay, you just check for the achievement and have the option to bypass that puzzle.
I still think it’s a design issue.
I’d be down for that. Makes me do it once so I have to actually, y’know, work for things, but lets me stop it once it gets tedious (or, in the best case scenario lets me bypass it during repeated playthroughs until I forget enough about how to solve the puzzle to play through it again).
(As a side note, for some reason I never noticed that you could check for the presence of achievements despite the fact that I’ve played games where this is a necessary thing.)
I’m still not big on the randomized password thing, but like you said to someone above, it’s a style choice. It definitely wouldn’t turn me off a game.
Even 50 posts later, the first reply in the thread answers the question and is all you need to know concerning the matter.
Companies that pursue security measures to an extreme (EA and Ubisoft come immediately to mind) eventually realize the reality; the best way to combat “cheating” or piracy is to build your gaming community into a strong, loyal and fanatical consumer base for your product.
Concerning code-crawling - it will happen, sooner or later, its just a fact of nature in the gaming world. As said in that first reply too.
The thought of asking @Gower to write a paper on a subject related to CoG had come across my mind in the past (given that we seem to be the two academics on this forum?). And then I slapped myself on the face, and remembered that I had decided to start less papers, finish the ones that I’ve got half written, and work more on my WIPs (but who knows, maybe in the future?)
Mmmmmm… interesting… (slapping myself on the face again, as I am reading the forum instead of working on my papers or CSComp WIP, as I had planned all week!)
In one of my moments thinking about such issues I bought myself the “You are the hero” book, which I thought would be a nice starting point for the literature survey… to be honest, it would be nice to have a student work on this topic, though the ones that come through my program are typically interested in other stuff.
By the way, how do you know about these kinds of things, are you also somehow in academia?
Hi all. Longtime lurker with an odd question. I think it’s safe to say most folks here have looked at other games code and done a 100-stat playthrough on our favorite games. There’s always a time for a Doc Savage playthrough. My question is, is there a way to put anti-cheating stuff into a game, but that doesn’t involve an “authorial tableflip”? Would it be a Finger of God type thing such as this : https://youtu.be/DzOvTavIn40 ? Sorry if this is poorly written.
Wdym with Finger of God thing? I checked the video, but the 1h duration kills the mood.
In any case, if you really want to complicate your system to prevent players from code-diving, let it be known that the code you’re writing is the code they will see; this is an integral part of CS and can’t be changed without a long process of asking Dan or Jason to let the .txt files hosted on server side. As long as your players can see and understand the code, they can “cheat” it by picking the best options based on the code they read.
I think you should look at the first reply of this thread. It sums it up pretty well.
Plus, two recently released HG games lets you “cheat” officially (as in maxing all of your stats to 100 in-game and yes, the authors did this).
I think this also sums up the whole discussion pretty nicely.
As a last thought, it would be a chore on the author’s side as well. Why waste time putting an anti-cheat system in an IF, when you could spend that time polishing the story?
Finger of God, at least from my limited understanding, is a character/characters that a GM would unleash on a group of rebellious players who either have sent the whole story off-rails with murderhobo antics or are blatantly cheesing the system. It’s pretty much a rather heavy-handed way for the GM to spank the player.
And yeah, sorry about the long video. I suggest downloading it and listening during a commute or long break.
