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1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)

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Re: 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)

#41
post #35
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Re: 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)

#42

> Cheating to reveal information locally was still possible, but these few leaks were relatively easy to secure in subsequent patches and revisions. I don't understand this. Running the whole simulation locally on both ends means that a modified client would have access to the whole game state, and I don't really see how you could patch that out. Anyone have any idea what they actually did? Try to detect modified cli…

In age II, it was CRC checks of game state that prevented cheating! Games would get out of sync if there was a mismatch, which could happen for various reasons. I worked at MacSoft during the Age2 and Age3 days. The ports were faithful to the windows versions, but cross platform hadn’t been solved at the time because of this problem. It also made long game play sessions longer because the calculated state kept gettin…

He wasn't asking about that - as far as I can tell - but rather about read-only cheating.

Which would let you know what your opponents are up to, without impacting state.

Re: 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)

#43

Seeing stuff like this on here fills me with nostalgia. I basically learned to code thanks to a few helpful and extremely patient IRC members in the Spring RTS engine[1] community (some of whom I spot in these comment sections on occasion - hi!), and deterministic lockstep simulation for online play was one of the first ideas that totally blew my mind when I learned about it ("b-but that means all the "random" number…

If the randomness is deterministic doesn't that mean players could peek into the future?

Generally (I hope I get this explanation right), the PRNGs on all players' computers are the same algorithm, with the same seed, executing the same player commands in the same order. So as soon as the game starts, you can predict what all future calls to random() will return.

However, you can't predict the other players' actions, and those actions can insert an arbitrary (and unpredictable) number of random() calls between now and when your next action executes, so practically there is no gameplay advantage you can get from that avenue (AFAIK).

Re: 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)

#45
post #16

For those who don’t want to suffer from eye-bleeds due to ads, interstitial scrolling ads, more ads, and awful formatting, Googling the title yields this PDF: https://zoo.cs.yale.edu/classes/cs538/readings/papers/terran... Maybe the link can be replaced? Also can (2001) be added to the title?

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The grandparent poster chooses a life of honesty with publishers despite the obvious distress it’s causing them.

Re: 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)

#46

For those who don’t want to suffer from eye-bleeds due to ads, interstitial scrolling ads, more ads, and awful formatting, Googling the title yields this PDF: https://zoo.cs.yale.edu/classes/cs538/readings/papers/terran... Maybe the link can be replaced? Also can (2001) be added to the title?

[deleted]

Re: 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)

#47

Seeing stuff like this on here fills me with nostalgia. I basically learned to code thanks to a few helpful and extremely patient IRC members in the Spring RTS engine[1] community (some of whom I spot in these comment sections on occasion - hi!), and deterministic lockstep simulation for online play was one of the first ideas that totally blew my mind when I learned about it ("b-but that means all the "random" number…

If the randomness is deterministic doesn't that mean players could peek into the future?

I'm gonna take an uneducated guess that though the simulation is in lockstep, the order of inputs from all players is not known ahead of time so you can't peek too far.

Though maybe a cheat engine could simulate a few branches of possible inputs a few steps ahead and adjust inputs when it discovers split-second advantages?

Re: 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)

#48
post #46

For those who don’t want to suffer from eye-bleeds due to ads, interstitial scrolling ads, more ads, and awful formatting, Googling the title yields this PDF: https://zoo.cs.yale.edu/classes/cs538/readings/papers/terran... Maybe the link can be replaced? Also can (2001) be added to the title?

[deleted]

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