Accounts

[Hellrider]

HIYA!

I am writting this post due to system accounts. Is it possible, in the future, to create its own and unique nickname, which will be connected to player database?
I mean, it is very easy to change nickname, and impossible to see history of the previous games results. Well, it would be fantastic to see players rank or last statistics.
At the moment, I see only a very few players, who had the same nicks, but cannot see their previous battles.
I think, it would be improvement. Kind of list-ranking.
Do you agree? Please comment,

Cheers,

Hellrider

[sado1]

search.php?keywords=accounts ----> viewtopic.php?f=26&t=2121&p=36447&hilit=accounts#p36447 for example. Generally, everyone agrees that accounts are needed, but devs don't know how to make them in a way that wouldn't mean we build a massive list of logins and passwords (which they'd like to avoid, cause if it gets stolen, everyone will be so happy that they'd kill the devs over the Internet) and it'll take some time before they think of a reasonable solution.

On a side note - we should finally create a FAQ sticky topic. And welcome to the forums

[Lewin]

We would love to have accounts, leaderboards, game stats, friends list, and all of that. The only thing holding us back is the sheer amount of time and effort it would take to implement, and then maintain such a system.

Such a complicated system would be much more prone to errors and downtime. The current system is fairly reliable because it's very simple. We may also need a more expensive server to run it, which increases our running costs.

A possibly simpler solution might be to integrate with a system like Desura, which could take care of all of the user account stuff for us. But I think we'd still need to implement a lot of features ourselves like stats, leaderboards, server lists, etc. which makes it kind of pointless. It would also make us dependent on a single platform and force everyone to use it which is bad.

[Esthlos]

Question: would it theoretically be possible to use the accounts from this very forum for the KaM Remake multiplayer, in case the admin agrees to this?
Would it still require a lot of work or would it simply need a change in the accounts' "KaM Skill Level:" value, in order to have them numeric?

[T*AnTi-V!RuZz]

Question: would it theoretically be possible to use the accounts from this very forum for the KaM Remake multiplayer, in case the admin agrees to this?
Would it still require a lot of work or would it simply need a change in the accounts' "KaM Skill Level:" value, in order to have them numeric?

Technically that's possible, especially since we're running on a VPS.

[Da Revolution]

But that would make it almost obligatory to register on the forum, unless there is some guest system as well.

[T*AnTi-V!RuZz]

But that would make it almost obligatory to register on the forum, unless there is some guest system as well.

Correct, that's why it's an option that is not really preferred. Though it could become something like: if you register on this forum, you're automatically registered for KaM Remake too. But if you don't want to, you can just register a KaM Remake account.

Or something like that.

If something like that were to happen, I wouldn't give my consent before moving to another forum software that allows more and easier custom code, because that's not really the case with phpBB.

[sado1]

The way I see it, guest login should be possible, as it doesn't hurt anyone. The difference between guest and registered must be obvious at first sight - so it's possible to use a random name, but impossible to make people think they're someone registered. Some font difference or something would be needed.

[Hellrider]

Hi,
Ah okay, it is technical issue. Thank you for your replies,
Best

H.

[Lewin]

Question: would it theoretically be possible to use the accounts from this very forum for the KaM Remake multiplayer, in case the admin agrees to this?
Would it still require a lot of work or would it simply need a change in the accounts' "KaM Skill Level:" value, in order to have them numeric?

We could do something like that, but it would still be a lot of work to implement. And it would be quite inflexible since we would want to store lots of additional information for each account.

We still need some way to protect and validate requests, since otherwise someone can modify the source code and make the game report that they won 1000 matches putting them on top of the leader board. So we may have to force everyone to play on secure verified servers (i.e. hosted only by us), and change our servers to actually simulate the entire game report the statistics, so we can trust that the reported information about games played is correct. Even then it probably wouldn't be too hard to trick the system.

And if we can't stop people hacking the game to report that they have won 1000 games, then we can't use leaderboards or "number of times you left a game early", or anything like that. So then the only advantage of accounts is to stop people taking your username (and being able to verify that someone is who they say they are). But that probably still requires verified secure servers to work properly... Which means we put a lot of work into accounts for very little gain. I think there's way more important features to work on.

But if we do ever implement accounts I think we would allow people to play without an account, but obviously people may trust you less and be less inclined to play with you (since leaving early wouldn't damage your reputation). Also guest accounts would have some prefix on their nickname like "Guest" so a nickname like "Lewin" can actually be claimed and not taken by others.

[Krom]

Lewin is right. Accounts require a lot of work to be implemented, but they will offer little gain. To make advanced features of accounts really work (cheat-proof) on an open-source game it needs heaps more time and research.

[Esthlos]

Ok, thanks for the answers.

About cheating, though: would it be possible to use statistical deviation instead of secure dedicated servers in order to prevent or at least detect cheating?
Something like: at the start of the game, every player's computer sends a report that increases the number of played games by 1, but only in case 2 or more players' computers send it.
Of course, it would only apply to players with an account - I guess games with or versus guests only shouldn't be considered when building leaderboards anyway.

Then, when the game ends, each one sends a report about the outcome; if 2 or more players claim to have won the game (or if a player claims to have won a game that no other account reported as started), all of the players that sent the start-game report get a +1 on their "cheated games" count.

At this point, the ratio of their cheated games versus played games could be confronted with that of the general player pool: if it is 10% higher than the total cheated/played ratio, the account is marked as "suspect of cheating" (maybe with a different nickname color?).
If 25% higher, it's marked as "cheater" and banned from the leaderboards and its data left out from the general player pool ratio (in order to keep it consistent with what ratio you'd expect from a non-cheater).

This wouldn't prevent cheats that increase your lost games count and would not be useful to detect leavers, but would this at least allow detection of those theoretical cheaters Lewin wrote about?

[Krom]

Relying on played games statistics to catch cheaters is .... omg.

Registering a handful of accounts is a piece of cake, so any kind of punishing of "all" players in the lobby for actions of "suicide-bombers" is a flaw.
Simple example, A creates a game and joins from second PC as B, then wait for someone to join (C) and cheats the game. Now innocent player C got his cheat counter +1.

Same technique might be used for boosting scores, fake games with 1day accounts to boost a real account.

[Esthlos]

Relying on played games statistics to catch cheaters is .... omg.

Registering a handful of accounts is a piece of cake, so any kind of punishing of "all" players in the lobby for actions of "suicide-bombers" is a flaw.
Simple example, A creates a game and joins from second PC as B, then wait for someone to join (C) and cheats the game. Now innocent player C got his cheat counter +1.

It's not a punishment, as the value itself would mean nothing.
It's the statistical deviation that would count.

Let's say that the accounts "Lupin" and "Zenigata" play 100 games each; "Zenigata" gets a total of 35/100 cheated games count, while "Lupin" goes to 60/100.
From the general player pool, the sum of all "cheated" counts divided by the sum of all "played" counts is, let's say, 30/100.
This means that accounts with a ratio ranging from 0/100 to 40/100 are marked as non-cheaters; with more than that but less than 55/100, the account is suspect: he may be a mild cheater, or just an unlucky player.

Accounts with more than 55/100 would instead be considered cheaters.

(Of course those 10% and 25% are just values thrown in for the example's sake; they'd have to be adjusted as needed. As far as I know, in Statistics the "standard" value used is 5%)

Thus, "Zenigata" would be considered innocent, while "Lupin" would be considered a cheater, even though both have a "cheated" count higher than 0.
Having every player, innocents too, get a +1 on their "cheated" value is only needed in order to have an "innocent" reference value, the ratio of cheated/played you'd expect from someone who plays the game, happens to be in cheated games, but doesn't actually cheat.

Same technique might be used for boosting scores, fake games with 1day accounts to boost a real account.

True, that'd still be a problem.
It could be solved if there was a matchmaking system, as only matchmade games could be considered for the leaderboards, but without one at the moment I can't think of any solution for this, sorry.

[Krom]

This is the flaw: "he may be a mild cheater, or just an unlucky player."

We know that on average fair players don't cheat. We also know that cheaters cheat more or less. Since we can't identify cheater with current architecture, that means that the score will represent not the cheat-attempts count, but a "was seen around a cheater" count. Now we can't base any sort of ban actions around that.

Global matchmaking is not a solution, cos many times players want to play with people they know and/or avoid some too. That could work for the "Ladder" servers, but they will need to be specially rigged and etc, as Lewin described.