Sunday, December 26, 1999

John Carmack on Quake 1 Hacks -- 12:00 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

John Carmack updated his .plan with a solution to the complaints that the release of the Quake 1 source code will make it impossible to have cheat-free games of Quake 1/QuakeWorld any more. Here's part of his rather lengthy post:

So, the problem then becomes a matter of making sure the clients are all playing with an acceptable version before allowing them to connect to the server. You obviously can't just ask the client, because if it is hacked it can just tell you what you want to hear. Because of thenature of the GPL, you can't just have a hidden part of the code to do verification.

What needs to be done is to create two closed source programs that act as executable loaders / verifiers and communication proxies for theclient and server. These would need to be produced for each platform the game runs on. Some modifications will need to be done to the open source code to allow it to (optionally) communicate with these proxies.

These programs would perform a robust binary digest of the programs theyare loading and communicate with their peer in a complex encrypted protocol before allowing the game connection to start. It may be possible to bypass the proxy for normal packets to avoid adding any scheduling or latency issues, but it will need to be involved to some degree to prevent a cheater from hijacking the connection once it is created.

As an aside, UGO seems to have their routing problems fixed. Webdog and Blue's News are flying now.

News for 12/26/1999

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