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I've been thinking about taking that route: writing a simple proxy that
would sit between the server and the outside world, that would
intercept GameSpy status queries to the server and report back that
unlocks are off on the server, even if they are on (the time limit
issue goes away next week with the full server, I'm assuming). That
way GameSpy, EA, et al would have no idea that the server had been, uh,
"configured in a manner not approved by the manufacturer".<br>
<br>
I spent several hours playing the demo yesterday, though, and came to
the conclusion that the unlocked weapons are real yawners--I wasn't
doing any scientific experiments on them, but I really couldn't tell
the difference, or see any special advantage in them. And things are
generally moving fast enough in the game that people don't have time to
stop and say "wow, what a cool looking weapon that guy has". . . so,
I'm not sure that I see going through the trouble of writing such a
proxy to be worth it.<br>
<br>
The rankings, though, are a different manner. I own a cybercafe where
our most popular game for the last two years has been Desert Combat;
the only other game that's come close has been Counter-Strike. Most of
the reason for the popularity has been the game itself, but part of it
has been the availability of a local rankings system. People really
want to be able to show off how good they are to their friends, and
people will play for hours to vie for top spots in the rankings. I
think people will like the EA ranking system, but I think they would
like a local ranking system even more--in my experience, most people
want to know where they stand compared to people they know, not people
on the other side of the planet (or even the other side of the city)
that they've never met.<br>
<br>
Given that, I'm sure it's possible to create a local ranking system
that meets this need (although it might be necessary to re-invent
several wheels first: see parallel discussion on this list about "BF2
Event Logging"; is the apparent absence of an out-of-the-box logging
facility another plank in what appears to be an EA strategy to keep EA
the only ranking system available?) but if someone figures out how to
"wire" such a system into the game itself, a proxy like I described
might still come in handy.<br>
<br>
Hmmm. . . (sound of thinking). . .<br>
<br>
--Forrest<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Joe wrote:
<blockquote cite="midNDEELMBLGAFKIIADLEGBEENADBAA.sechon@blackmud.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">And I forgot to add - All someone has to do is wrap the binary to provide a
fake gamespy auth or whatever I'd bet..I'm far from a programmer, and have
no desire to host a server if I have to go to that length, but I'm sure it's
doable.
-----Original Message-----
From: Joe [<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="mailto:sechon@blackmud.com">mailto:sechon@blackmud.com</a>]
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 2:40 PM
To: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:bf1942@icculus.org">bf1942@icculus.org</a>
Subject: OT: RE: [bf1942] Another angle
Yeah it's called take the drive out, and use some tools in linux (some win32
available) to extract the data. I'm not 100% on that make, but my DishDVR
contains a standard IDE drive that you can connect to a PC. It's got three
partitions, the third containing recorded shows. Voids the warrenty though
by opening it, obviously.
-----Original Message-----
From: Lee Latham [<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="mailto:leeprivate@cgmlarson.com">mailto:leeprivate@cgmlarson.com</a>]
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 2:17 PM
To: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:bf1942@icculus.org">bf1942@icculus.org</a>
Subject: Re: [bf1942] Another angle
Actually I would respectfully disagree, and assert that they could indeed
force you to use gamespy only. If you look at the current crop of cable
boxes that, to my knowledge, have not yet been "hacked" despite being out
for several years, you might agree. When you can have a sort of rotating
hash system the only way to really hack it is to break the encryption,
which is not that easy to do.
In fact, it really annoys me that I can't copy recorded shows from my
Scientific Atlanta PVR, so if anyone knows of a hack to do it, I'd really
love a private email!
But my point is only that it could be made very, very hard if the binary
will accept only a verified gamespy query to start the client.
At 08:31 PM 6/15/2005, you wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">You hardly need to hack the game to create a separate master server
system. Just wrap the server binary in a script that pings your new master
on entry and pings it again on exit. The master then periodically issues a
regular qstat status query to your server to fill in the details. You
could probably implement the ping with an IRC bot so that the master can
be distributed over several IRC servers. This eliminates single point of
failure and allows volunteers to contribute servers from all over the
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->planet.
</pre>
</blockquote>
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