Leaving...

castledoc · 2014-08-14 05:27:21

Summary: People currently playing the game are cheating. Over the last week since I started playing, I noticed an inordinate number of playbacks where someone would walk into my house and make a seemingly impossible number of correct choices walking through commit gate after commit gate to walk to the vault. At first, I faulted my house design. I read up on traps, and I started getting kills. My enthusiasm grew and I started really getting sneaky. Then I noticed that there were some people who could seemingly walk through everything without a problem. When I watched someone choose a 2^6 after a 1/2 and 1/5 choice, I started getting a bit more skeptical. When a 2nd person did it an hour later after I'd changed the "right" choices, I started calculating the odds. Without knowledge of the map, there's almost no way 2 people in an hour can and make a 1/2 , 1/5, and 1 in 2^6. Seriously, it's like winning powerball after getting hit by lightning in the bathtub. Just can't happen. So I started digging, details (but not a spoiler) below.

First, from ~24 hours ago.

1) I'd like to apologize to the dude with a $5600 house. I didn't kill your wife; but I did walk right through your house to the vault. I did take the cash but I should have suicided out. You did nothing wrong to me and I shouldn't have tested my theory on you. To you, I'm truly sorry.

2) Most of the poor guys in the game got $1000 in merchandise over the last (2) days as I walked through your maps and suicided after reaching your vault. Your map is fine, I'm through here anyway. I won't come back, but know that others are doing what I did to get there and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

Jason was very up front in source that the enjoyment of the game relied on people doing the right thing. I honestly understand some poor, tired, fuck cheating to get ahead. The thought honestly never occurred to me, until I watched a very wealthy person (specifically Timothy Bradford Griffin) walk into my place after my traps started working, and make (3) perfect choices defying all odds to rob me. I assumed I'd screwed something up, so I started over again. New 2K house, new traps, new POV traps, new everything. Make some kills, have some success, and here comes Mr. Fuckstick again. (3) more choices, and nobody prior to him making it through the traps. What's funny, is that I was monitoring them, so if someone made a correct choice on (1) and died on (2), I'd reset (1) and (2) - to different choices. In walks Timothy Bradford Griffin, (3) perfect selections (two times, two different maps, 3 days).

Sooo, I started digging. It's semi-trivial to modify client source and map every house you rob. That's what I did ~24 hours ago, and again 5 minutes ago. Notice the straight walk through to your vault. My assumption, it's either A) someone with an admin account screwing people because he or she can OR B) Someone who couldn't take being incapable of solving a puzzle without cheating and who has a self-esteem so low that they cannot resist cheating on a game with like 25 active players world-fucking-wide. No shit. I'm leaning towards B), but willing to accept that it's A).

Either way, I'll roll my own server and clients and play with people who don't feel the need to cheat in a community this small. To those who played in good-faith, I salute you and thank you for the 2 weeks of fun. Jason, thanks for the game. It works. To the small dicked, flapping loose pussy, douche bag(s) who cheated to ruin the game? Fuck you.

cullman · 2014-08-14 08:25:49

Sorry to hear you are leaving. These issues are pretty well known here. In fact, someone has even demonstrated a map dumping hack on Iceman's closed source version of the game (though that was not that difficult as he didn't really change the map code from the original and it could be done with a DLL injection).

As you've probably seen, I am working on a reboot that will be closed source and there will be considerable work done to make extracting the map from the client much harder. Also, I am contemplating eventually having a flagging mechanism so people can sort of modify robber's "karma" and those will bad scores can be looked at by admins. If you want to be put on my update list send me a private message. We expect to be launching in a few months.

Last edited by cullman (2014-08-14 22:36:20)

jordi13 · 2014-08-14 11:48:17

I never knew about this! can't it be fixed?
maybe I have never had enough money to be worth it...

castledoc · 2014-08-14 14:12:39

jordi13, the point is that you and I are the targets. Watch your security cams after you've been robbed. Did the guy wander around, make mistakes, almost go down dead-end trap roads, etc.? Or did he walk straight to your vault? Watch the cheaters walk straight into your place and immediately choose the right 1 out of 10 doors. Watch him walk in and choose the 2nd right door out of 10 doors AFTER YOU CHANGED DOORS. Watched it in multiple $2000 houses, right after they were worth about $3000.

voxel · 2014-08-15 05:38:56

Damn, I had hoped that with rather few active players that there wouldn't be any cheaters left. But hopefully there's just one: Timothy B. Griffin, and it's easy enough to ban one player. Have you complained to Jason?

cullman wrote:

As you've probably seen, I am working on a reboot that will be closed source and there will be considerable work done to make extracting the map from the client much harder.

I have a request though: if you've made improvements to the game such as porting it to android and iOS, can't you release the source code for those changes and just keep later changes to obfuscate stuff closed source?

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