Anti Cheat, Wallhacks, X-Ray and the Balance of Cannibalism

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Hello! Have been thinking about Mechaenetia in context of public anarchy server, and some questions done rose.

  1. I know you want to create everything procedurally, but you can not do it just yet, because it needs time. So, the question rises: should the player know that something even is in the game? I mean, for example, if game character picks up a rock and can not identify it, will player be able to look at the texture and identify it for himself?
  2. This question is also about “should player know things that are not meant for him to know”, but in a more delicate manner. Do you have cheating in mind when projecting your game’s networking part? I mean, games like Minecraft allow for the most gross ways of cheating like wallhacking. The very idea of wallhacks/thunderhacks and this type of cheats as a whole is that client is trusted with information that he should not really know in a hope that he will not misuse it. So, as i understand solution of the problem, server should deduce what in-game character should and should not know and send the needed information to it, but this solution meets obvious problems of server latency, so i can not imagine anything (maybe weird things like server sending encrypted information in advance and then only sending encryption keys to the client… very turbid schemes).
  3. How defensible a building will be? Because in Minecraft anarchy setting if somebody knows position of any of your builds, you are practically done. Will Mechaenetia build be more like real-life, when building protects people living inside it, and not the people protecting the building?
  4. Will player characters leave corpses and will they be edible? In a complete public anarchy setting this could result in people just killing themselves to give food to their group members.

Thanks for the effort you are making on building the game.

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Players wont be sent most of the Information they could have. The best they could know is “can I collide with this?”, “what does this look like?” and “can I see through this?”, which both are very DUH pieces of Information once they walk up to something. The Octree Chunks will only give you small bits of information should you decide to X-Ray through them, since they wont be sent to you if you cant see them, so Caves wont be visible that way. As for Ores, they wont even generate until you can physically see them, so this is an additional layer of security compared to GT6, where you know “there is Ore” but dont know which Ore it is until you see it.

As for Inventory Items, you won’t be sent Information that you are not supposed to know either. :wink:

You can claim Chunks just fine so Buildings can be made Invincible to the point of you having to interact with your Door to get into the thing. And if the Iron Door doesn’t open when you press the Button next to it, then you are out of Luck, speaking in MC Terms. If you live in an NPC Town and aren’t online all that often, another Player might be able to convince the NPCs to evict you though, if they like that other Player more than you. XD

Wallhacking might be doable, because I might need to implement some leniency when it comes to precision positioning of the Player in the World, but that should only ever matter if Walls are less than a full block in thickness (0.25m), so that should not be too serious. Definitely need to make sure that Wallhacks get fixed if found though.

Hrrm, the Food thing would be interesting to fix. I will definitely make sure you wont get any nutrition from eating yourself, but other Group Members, well, I definitely need a Config for that for sure. The Meat will still exist, it just wont fill your Hunger at all. And in a more “PG Setting” the Players would leave behind a Backpack with all the Stuff that doesn’t have the “Keep Inventory” Functionality of Key Items.

Edit: I changed the Title to contain a bit more Info than “Questions and Thoughts” ;D

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Thanks for the answer!
Nice to see that information problem is being solved by you.
About chunk claiming. I understand that some people want this feature and it definitely should exist in the game, but i was talking about a scenario in which there is no upper power keeping you from destroying something. I really believe in people cooperating and fighting without restrictions, and so for me this is not a feature i would like in my own server (not talking about other people, big amount of them would love claiming chunks just not me), and so i wanted to ask again if it would be as easy to break something as in Minecraft or will a bastion stand? Also, i had two other questions that i forgot to ask in the first post.

  1. Will the world have some kind of persistence? Of course, every universum block’s collisions could not be deducted, computer just would not have enough power, but maybe some kind of approximate calculations for the parts of world player is not in at the moment?
  2. Will things like aimbot and clickers for combat be considered a cheat or just a feature of a game? You know, people always use cheats, and using this kind of “cheats” in a game, that is mostly devoted to building/engineering would be just much more fun, than to have to train your muscle memory to “get good” in things like combat. I think that preliminary preparation, intelligence and tactics should win the combat, and the other things like aiming and shooting should be done by the game for you.
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Well, Mining needs to be possible, same for modifying your own Buildings, the only logical thing one could do is creating un-minable Blocks that only the Owner or the Team of the Owner can harvest, I don’t think there could be another way apart from claiming Chunks for the Team in order to make things not easy to destroy by Enemies. And then there would be the Issue of Explosives too. So if you have a good Idea how to solve this, I might find a way to integrate it.

As for persistence, you mean things working in far away “Chunkloaded” Areas? This is a very complicated Topic, but “Regions” will be split up, so that Stuff can run on a Server Cluster. That is why I want (huge) Islands to be the first World Type, since those can be easily split up without Land Borders.

Plants will grow the instant you get close enough to see them, based on the time you have been away. And if it is NPC Crops they will just instantly harvest them one day after they are fully grown, if you are away that is. There is a lot of things that should work no matter where you are in the World.

Autoclickers wont be needed at all, since you can configure your Keybinds however the fuck you want, and most things will not require you to spam click or hold click or whatever. The Sifting Table in GT6 does something like that where you just “start sifting manually” when you rightclick it once, and as soon as you click somewhere else you will stop working. You can even chat while standing at the Sifting Table!

Aimbots will not really help much if the Stat System is in use, where the Stats dictate how well you aim, and then it would apply the Games own Target Selection. If you Aim close enough to your Target it will automatically lock on to it and then just let the Stats decide if your Projectile goes the right direction or not. The Lock On will however detect if you are leading the Shot or not, meaning you can decide if you shoot where the target is at, or where the target is going to be (The Projectile can be so fast that this doesn’t matter in case of Guns and such). The Lock On can be disabled if you are a Pro though (ingame, you dont even need the Settings Menu for that, even a Keybind for that would work), but then your Stats would apply a little RNG to your Projectile instead. XD

Those Aimbots already exist for Console and Mobile FPS Games, so it should not be too different from that. Though I did see how the Spiffing Brit just used a Keyboard and Mouse in a Mobile Game and wrecked everyone else. XD
But that is ofcourse because the others use a shitty Controller/Phone to play, and not because of their Skill.

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For the first question, i think the only answer is what we found in reality, meaning stuff that is easily built breaks as easily and if something is made out of fiberglass concrete it would not be that easy to break. Honestly, i do not know what are the exact numbers, sometime when the game will be a little bit more ready an experiment might be conducted to find out how sturdy a building should be for it to survive at least some kind of siege.
For the next part, good that you consider at least some level of persistence, unlike minecraft.
And the last part pleases me the most, i like it when there is no or at least not much arcade shit involved into playing your game. Thanks for fast answers, i think i got all the information i need for today. Also, if i want to ask more questions, i should start a new topic, right?

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Yeah just start a new Topic, makes it easier to search much later on. Don’t worry much about title or tags, I can do that easily. :wink:

And if you build something sturdy you basically will not be able to take it down again, especially if you are offline for maybe 22 hours or so and the other Players have huge amounts of time to just break a tiny hole into your Walls to get in. Do you want to wait 22 hours to make a tiny One-Block change to your Building? I dont think so. XD

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AS far as cheats go, just remember that “cheats happen”. If the client gets data, assume that data is always visible to the client.
If the client sends you data, always assume the client sent you incorrect data.

Oh and IIRC, the game wouldn’t be a global cluster. Right?
There would be private servers and with private servers you have admins and admins are the best way of keeping a server clean. (or likewise, admins are always going to cheat)

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Yeah no such thing. I wont make one global Server. I prefer decentralized Games, that’s why I wanted to make each Region its own instance, so that you can run it on multiple Raspberry Pis for example. And Admin Tools and such will ofcourse exist. :wink:

Data will only be sent if the Data is necessary, you won’t even be sent the Inventory Data of other Players, only the Stuff they currently wear and hold is known to you.

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It may be possible to make the block more difficult to destroy to prevent the building from being simply destroyed, and patrol or repair the wall through NPC or AFK systems. If you need to remove a wall, you might need an electric drill or a bomb instead of spending days digging through a pickaxe (if no one stops you). It probably makes war or stealing technology easier.

The player’s body should be as nutritious as the NPC, but after eating it may cause a lot of debuff, such as prions, nausea, etc., and resurrection may not be as simple as minecraft.

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Yeah that is why I said Blocks that only the Owner Team can easily break are the only real way of doing this without claiming Chunks.

And Debuffs are sadly not a good deterrent in such Situations. Heck this doesn’t even work in GT6 where eating too much of the same thing literally kills you, yet people still binge themselves to death on Stuff.

Also do note that at least early on I will avoid a “Modern” Setting. I need to get the Basics of Tech done first, before Electricity and such can come.

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Well, it is much easier for you to break your own buildings because it is your homeland, meaning you have the right machinery, power supply lines and nobody disturbs you while you are rebuilding something. And your enemy just probably will have non-powered tools and will be at constant threat of being killed by patrol. Also, in real life demolition is not that of an ease too, and i find this pretty fun as a gameplay mechanic.

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Thing is, people dont just run up with Pickaxes to your Building if you’re already at mining Drills, they will have similar Tech (unless they are new to the Server and even then, getting Tech from neutral NPCs is easy), and more importantly YOU CANT UNBUILD YOUR OWN STUFF EITHER which is the actual Problem of not biasing the whole thing towards its Owner. Ever tried to build with Obsidian in Minecraft? Yeah that is the Issue you want to cause to a point of Hours instead of a Minute. Not to mention you can just dig under the whole thing and Patrols wont be able to attack you while digging, only when you actually get out of the Hole, at which point you throw a Grenade first and BOOM the firing Squad you have positioned at the Hole is dead.

There is a lot of Problems with your Idea if you dont want it to be biased towards the one who placed the Blocks.

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Under normal circumstances, it is difficult for ordinary citizens to obtain a sufficiently powerful electric drill, and when the electric drill was invented, it should already have concrete that is not easily damaged as a building material. In construction, large machines will play a big role, and owners can use this machine to simply unbuild their own buildings, while non-owners will be blocked. In reality, the “owner” of a building is also not given any burden, only social protection and some fortifications.

Tunnel warfare should be a viable tactic (for example, the Ottoman Empire tried to enter the city through the tunnel in the battle of Constantinople), but it is not so easy to dig, so the tunnel needs some reinforcement and a lot of time, and will bring some sound.

Death should be a bit more painful than minecraft. Otherwise, in addition to unlimited food, it may also put the country in conflict and war forever, and put all the energy into technology rather than life.

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But these aren’t normal circumstances. If you are planning a bank heist you bring power tools.
Invading armies bring siege weapons…

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Power tools that are enough to dig out concrete are not easy to manufacture, and they will make a loud noise when used, thereby attracting guards.
If a war breaks out, then the enemy will indeed destroy the city walls, factories and other buildings. This is normal.

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You do not get the point. Ever seen demolition works in real life? This is work too, not only building is work, but demolition too, and this quality of real-life materials is why things like castles or houses or doors are useful even when there were no true state on the land. You say that in your opinion this turns against one who places blocks… then, ok i guess, because in reality it is this way. You build a castle - you can not just remove it in one minute, this is rational and common-sense in my opinion, and if you do not like it, you might not implement it, but for me this would have made game much more attractive.

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Here is the Problem, there is a Reason why in real life it is quite easy to damage Buildings: Explosives and Cannons.

And why does everybody seem to forget that Mining is IMPORTANT ? All your Solutions utterly break Gameplay if they are not biased towards one thing or another. If I bias it to Concrete however, once you misplace a single Concrete Block by accident you are fucked and cant remove it for hours. You always need to not only take the destructive Side into account, but also the creating Side!

NPCs are what “Normal Citizens” are, Players are the same but with a “Brain”. And where there is NPCs there is way to exploit them, like causing a Distraction, abusing Pathfinding, or ofcourse just knowing the exact thing the NPCs will do once they find you, so you can Plan for that and just throw Grenades or whatever at where you expect them to go.

You also forget that Players can be offline, and if you get raided while you are sleeping that is an absolute “No fun at all” Situation, meaning that claiming Areas is the only way to actually defend yourself in those Situations. I saw it on PLENTY of Anarchy Servers in different Games, trust me when I say that your Solution while it may be fun in some ways, is NOT WORKING.

Building is not fun if you take hours to place a single Block, that’s why it needs to be about as fast as Minecraft is right now. And if you build fast you also may end up misclicking and then you are fucked with that nearly indestructible Block where you did not want it to be.

I always have to take everything into account when doing Game Design, and your thing only ever works if there is prefab Castles where you dont have to design anything and just plonk it down and be safe once the Build Progress Bar reached 100%, which is not the point of a Voxel Game at all.

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Sorry, but I still have some questions about the building system. If the block is 1/64 of a block in Minecraft, it also means that it takes 64 times longer to build a house or dig a pit, may it take a lot of time, or is there some other construction method?

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You can pre-assemble Walls just fine and then place the pre-assembled Block Patterns in the World. It is easy to just craft them in the amount you want with just one click and waiting a little until the craft completes.

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But how to dig, such as digging out blocks within a range at once (like explosives)?
In addition, is “pre-assemble Walls” implemented by some kind of editor or by processing from raw materials?

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