Longturn Forum

Hi, all.
I have been snoooping around in IRC lately.
There I came over a piece of information, that I think deserve to be a member of «LT hall of fame».
I have showed this to some fellow players, and they thought this was hillarious too.

Here is a copy from earlier chat.
To not step on anybodys toes, I have carefully annonymized the names of the people participating in this chat

----

<player_P> my client is lagging and others have problems to log in
<player_P> I wonder if he is going to the the whole server down when we
take another city from is minions
<pekka_> plz back up your claim
<pekka_> with some evidence
<player_P> others can confirm it here
<player_P> well it seems to be stopped now
<pekka_> Server has been unstable. But from that to dos attack from
named player..
<player_A> pekka_: you needed to have visibility to that area to make
clients sluggish
<player_P> pekka_: he used script to flash units between fortified and
sentried status
<player_P> several units rather quickly
<player_P> well.. I don't want player_T to be removed, I just want him to
play fair
<player_S> I started experiencing problems after he started that as
well
<player_A> pekka_: basically change status of 2 units few times/s
between fortified/sentried/mining (depending on unit)
* player_A has video about it too, but.. do we really need to go that
far?
<player_A> and another player had problems logging in after that
<pekka_> yeah, post it in blog. that should do the trick
<player_A> anyway, it has stopped now, player_T not logged in anymore
<pekka_> I would love it
<player_A> drama is always nice to read
<player_A> I don't care really as long as its not permanent or too
frequent
<player_P> its funny, because after all player_T did start this war
<player_P> I gave him chance not to participate
<pekka_> we need drama in this game..
<pekka_> so, if someone want to be dramaqueen, post it on youtube.
make it famous
<player_P>
<player_P> maybe when the game is over
<pekka_> better to give creative players 15 min of fame at once,
instead of insinuating. make it into a joke. New strategy in freeciv:
cook your own script
<player_P> this client-side scripting is really getting out of hand
<player_P> but there is little that could be done to prevent it
<player_P> and actually shouldn't be done
<player_A> player_P: ther are 2 things: active and passive scripts
<player_A> +e
<player_A> active can be detected, passive not
<player_P> instead freeciv should be made such that every player can
rewind and review what moved and there
<player_P> and sentry-feature removed
<player_A> yeah, that would be nice feature

----

Here is a plausable explantaion for what the chat is about:
Alliance_U has apparently modified their clients to log the movements of all
visible units
As countermeassure player_T's modified client is locking up
Alliance_U clients.

This explains the strange comment about "active and passive scripts",
and why some players are always logged on.

----

About my BASIC-script:
I feel guilty. I think its really smelly if I modify my client without informing other players first. If I knew someone had a patch that give them an advantage, I would like to have this patch myself from T1. To enable me to play on equal terms with them, of course. Even if Im totally noob, and will never match you ultra-pro players, I may just want to play on equal terms. For the fun of it.

To show a leading example I hereby go officially with my patch.
You may have already read about it in chat. Its my BASIC script, that that you can flash into your BIOS. This code is really paying off, and I would advice you all to modify your BIOS to get the same advantage as me:

<pekka_> here it is:

<pekka_> 10 REM PEKKAS PASSIVE GOLD SCRIPT
<pekka_> 20 REM SET VALUES
<pekka_> 30 LOAD UN ALLIANCE
<pekka_> 31 PASSIVE HELP FROM UN
<pekka_> 40 SET MAX TAX
<pekka_> 50 LOAD TERROR ALLIANCE
<pekka_> 51 PASSIVE HELP FORM TERROR
<pekka_> 60 SET MAX TAX
<pekka_> 80 ALL TRANSFER GOLD TO PEKKA
<pekka_> 90 SLEEP 82800
<pekka_> 100 GOTO 30

<pekka_> do you think it would work?
<pekka_> Its tested on my CBM64
<pekka_> Its totally passive


New BASIC script coming up:
Im currently working with a new script, but the code is getting difficult. Its long time since I did code in BASIC on my CBM64 back in the 80-ties. Im thinking about the «transparent units» patch.
This will enable me to have transparent units, and really give me an egde. You will not even notice Im there. I will post this BASIC-script when its ready, so you can uppgrade your BIOS too.

Blitz-units patch is also an ide an other player gave me. Units that move so fast that you you cant see them..
But I really think the «teleport» patch would be totally unfair. This BASIC-code is too powerful, so I will keep it for myself. I assure you, I swear on my mothers grave, that I will never flash my BIOS with the «teleport» code without informing you guys first. It would give me a too powerful advantage, even if its totally passive.

----

A hacker must hack

Good and fair LT..

----

pekka


Edit: Horrible english..

Dear IllvilJa:
IllvilJa> Hm. What about switching attention to a more grown up thread...?

Reply in chat:
<Pekka> so, now you are petronizing other players? Grown up?
<Pekka> or are you petronizing my BASIC-scripting abilities?


Since you are not on IRC, here is my reply:

<pekka_> ok, here is the thing
<pekka_> I told some other players about our/your chat here in IRC
<pekka_> And he didn't want to listen to it. He said it was not a part of the game.
<pekka_> He did not want to take this scripting into account before it went public
<pekka_> He told me to post it on forum.
<pekka_> And since you didnt. I did
<pekka_> So now you can shooot me. But I didnt start this
<pekka_> You did
<pekka_> The least thing you can do is to inform other players about your creativity.
<pekka_> So we can device strategies to live with your 24/7 patch
<pekka_> its possible for good players to match your database using their brain. But then the Brain need the relevant information..
<pekka_> and you didnt provide that, to nobody
<pekka_> Now the ghost is out of the bottle, now good players can take this piece of information into account
<pekka_> And when I talk about good players, I dont talk about scripting-ablities of that player..
<pekka_> As you may notice, I pretty much suck in BASIC


Pekka

This really amuses me how much effort some players take to gain some advantage against other players in an unfair way using unfair practice. If only all that potential would be used to work on making freeciv a better game... As for moves logging I think there is only one way to deal with it: constrain the time a player can be logged in from the server side. Time should be constrained between 30 and 60 minutes, that should be enough to do all the moves even if you have 200 cities - just use the city commander man!
To those logging guys: Sure keep that movement logging. If you want to win knowing that you were unfair - do it.

Someone once challenged me to solve a rubix cube when I was a kid. Being an engineer I peeled off the middle stickers, undid the screws and rebuilt it with all the cubes in the right place. They thought I was clever when I came back with the finished cube but it was more satisfying when I solved it properly.....

KG wrote: If only all that potential would be used to work on making freeciv a better game...

This is the main thing that baffles me with the concept of people hacking the C-code of the client with the only purpose to create their own private super-client. Where do they get their time?

I cannot even get time to implement the things I would like to see in the main freeciv client code.

Movement logging would actually be nice if one got enough server and network bandwidth: just carry it out on the server side, then send the entire log to the client upon request. Then the player might review everything that his/her country have observed. But it would require considerable much more server, network and probably also client resources.

pekka wrote:<pekka_> ok, here is the thing
<pekka_> I told some other players about our/your chat here in IRC
<pekka_> And he didn't want to listen to it. He said it was not a part of the game.
<pekka_> He did not want to take this scripting into account before it went public
<pekka_> He told me to post it on forum.
<pekka_> And since you didnt. I did
<pekka_> So now you can shooot me. But I didnt start this
<pekka_> You did
<pekka_> The least thing you can do is to inform other players about your creativity.
<pekka_> So we can device strategies to live with your 24/7 patch
<pekka_> its possible for good players to match your database using their brain. But then the Brain need the relevant information..
<pekka_> and you didnt provide that, to nobody
<pekka_> Now the ghost is out of the bottle, now good players can take this piece of information into account
<pekka_> And when I talk about good players, I dont talk about scripting-ablities of that player..
<pekka_> As you may notice, I pretty much suck in BASIC

Again, I wonder who you are addressing the above lines to. Please enlighten us, and please do so without cop outs like "use your brain" or "read 10 times".

Because you are addressing the above to someone who you quite apparently claim writes a custom freeciv client and I'm really curious who that is (and how you came to the conclusion... because I really hope that person is not me.).

Thanks in advance.

/IllvilJa

That said, any script which only extracts info that would be normally available to someone with a lot of time typing things manually into a spreadsheet should be acceptable. I would personally like a script to assemble all the data from the Nations/Intelligence report screens into some handy graphs.

Lord_P you got some graphs on the bottom of this page http://longturn.org/game/LT30/ if you are logged in.

IllvilJa wrote:

KG wrote: If only all that potential would be used to work on making freeciv a better game...

This is the main thing that baffles me with the concept of people hacking the C-code of the client with the only purpose to create their own private super-client. Where do they get their time?

I cannot even get time to implement the things I would like to see in the main freeciv client code.

Movement logging would actually be nice if one got enough server and network bandwidth: just carry it out on the server side, then send the entire log to the client upon request. Then the player might review everything that his/her country have observed. But it would require considerable much more server, network and probably also client resources.

pekka wrote:<pekka_> ok, here is the thing
<pekka_> I told some other players about our/your chat here in IRC
<pekka_> And he didn't want to listen to it. He said it was not a part of the game.
<pekka_> He did not want to take this scripting into account before it went public
<pekka_> He told me to post it on forum.
<pekka_> And since you didnt. I did
<pekka_> So now you can shooot me. But I didnt start this
<pekka_> You did
<pekka_> The least thing you can do is to inform other players about your creativity.
<pekka_> So we can device strategies to live with your 24/7 patch
<pekka_> its possible for good players to match your database using their brain. But then the Brain need the relevant information..
<pekka_> and you didnt provide that, to nobody
<pekka_> Now the ghost is out of the bottle, now good players can take this piece of information into account
<pekka_> And when I talk about good players, I dont talk about scripting-ablities of that player..
<pekka_> As you may notice, I pretty much suck in BASIC

Again, I wonder who you are addressing the above lines to. Please enlighten us, and please do so without cop outs like "use your brain" or "read 10 times".

Because you are addressing the above to someone who you quite apparently claim writes a custom freeciv client and I'm really curious who that is (and how you came to the conclusion... because I really hope that person is not me.).

Thanks in advance.

/IllvilJa

Sorry to disappoint you.
This is one of the riddles of the world

pekka

The cycling of unit activities doesn't cause lag for people who aren't running a logger, and I've had no complaints from the server owner about a spike in bandwidth.

Just saying...

I don't have the time to read such long posts. Could someone please sum up what is happening? Pekka, your "gold patch" etc is a joke right?

Marduk wrote:I don't have the time to read such long posts. Could someone please sum up what is happening? Pekka, your "gold patch" etc is a joke right?

It's a joke, and I really hope people didnt take this BASIC-madness seriously.

But its also a statement. This game is turning into being a programming contest, not a game anymore. For us code-illiterate, where is the fun part?


pekka



Edit: My english..

I guess a summary to this thread is don't bitch about a slow connection if there is a possibility that your logging programme [is] actually causing the problems.

I'm not involved with this stuff - so I'm just guessing/commenting from a distance.

det0r wrote:The cycling of unit activities doesn't cause lag for people who aren't running a logger, and I've had no complaints from the server owner about a spike in bandwidth.

Just saying...

There was some really weird lags like 2 days ago, and happening when someone logged in(don't remember who was it, just thought that it was weird). And I can sure you it wasn't happening on my client side, so something was affecting the server dramatically.

This thread contains a very serious allegation in the guise of a joke.

Using a scripted client to overload server connections is not acceptable. Is this happening?

Using a scripted client (toggle switching units) to overwhelm other scripted clients (movement loggers) is as Pekka states turning the game into a programming contest. It is going to lessen the fun for most players.

Having a time limit for daily connection would solve this particular issue, but the programmers are likely to come up with another exploit soon enough. We should think of ways to counteract them.

det0r wrote:The cycling of unit activities doesn't cause lag for people who aren't running a logger, and I've had no complaints from the server owner about a spike in bandwidth.

Just saying...

I don't have a modified client and I started experiencing pretty heavy lag just before I noticed someone is running an activity cycling script / patch. Might be a coincidence, but I doubt it. It didn't have anything to do with bandwith I think, but rather making the client hog up local memory and processor cycles (maybe a bug? I'm using ubuntu btw). So action cycling isn't really justified. It's not as bad anymore -maybe because there aren't as many stacks / units doing it visible to me, but a couple days ago it was really ruining the playing experience.

And what's wrong with movement tracking anyway? The information is there so why shouldn't it be logged, if someone wants it to be? I think it's just common sense, you don't have to try guessing whether a unit in your visible area moved there this turn or last turn, which is information that should obviously be available to ALL players in an ideal world. And why should units be invisible when they are moving but not between moves? Though I couldn't be arsed myself to modify the client like that and go through some separate log file every turn and I don't want to keep a computer online 24/7 just for this.

EDIT: and when logging in again I just realized how annoying it is to scan through all your visible area carefully and click through every enemy stack to get some idea of who moved where..

pekka wrote:

Marduk wrote:I don't have the time to read such long posts. Could someone please sum up what is happening? Pekka, your "gold patch" etc is a joke right?

It's a joke, and I really hope people didnt take this BASIC-madness seriously.

I did take it as a good joke from the start. Then I treated it as the joke you admit it is and then I ended up being accused of getting an edge by scripting my client. (You have still neglected to clarify if you were referring someone else, so I still assume I'm the one you consider the original offending script author.)

pekka wrote:But its also a statement. This game is turning into being a programming contest, not a game anymore. For us code-illiterate, where is the fun part?

As a freeciv ruler, I'm pretty much a code illiterate myself in spite of being a coder for a living IRL. I run the vanilla Gentoo Linux 2.3.1 client as it comes, unmodified, and don't intend to do any development on it for features I would not make available for EVERYONE (windows users included) by submitting the resulting patches to main freeciv maintainers.

I still think the game is a fun challenge, even if there are some people writing custom code. If they get an edge over me, so be it, I doubt they really dominate the playing field using their features. The freeciv game with the ruling of the country (and trading, war, economical development and not the least... DIPLOMACY and ALLIANCES) is still there. And it is at least fun for me.

How much advantage in the actual game does this use of customized code really give? I understand from other peoples reactions that this has a demoralizing effect for some players, but how much of that stems for actual disadvantage vs imagined disadvantage?

Of course, I'm not a competetive player and completely ignores the concept of measuring skills. I just ranks players in my mind on how potentially dangerous they are. Then if that danger potential comes from their skills, any custom scripts or their mom giving them useful freeciv advice (or a combination) is completely uninteresting to me.

pekka wrote:Edit: My english..

Don't worry. I edit almost all my posts here 0.3 seconds after I submit them in order to sort out embarrasing language errors I have produced.

/IllvilJa

Edit: Maybe time for a separate thread where we discuss custom features we would find useful in the LT freeciv client and thus also useful to be included in the vanilla client...