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Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

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Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#51

Post by srumple »

dangoldin wrote: post #25
vyrotek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically a very pretty slot machine. I played quite a bit of D2 and D3. The thrill comes from grinding for hours (and hours and hours) and finding that one item that earns you hundreds of dollars. (Yes real dollars) You can thank the the Real-Money Auction House for both destroying the game and being the one thing that keeps so many people coming back for more.

I loved Diablo 2 and probably spent a good portion of my high school hours playing it. I was very excited for Diablo 3 and tried to get into it but just couldn't. I felt that they just took a ton of ideas from WoW and implanted them into Diablo. Sure it may have made them more money but it made it a lot less fun.

If you liked Diablo 2, Torchlight 2 was made by the same people, and is the spiritual successor to Diablo 2.

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#52

Post by lucian1900 »

astrodust wrote: post #43
unwind wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is handy enough to have two "scales", where these words have different meanings. In the short scale, you'd be right, but the author probably uses the long scale. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_scale#Comparison . It's one of those things that makes English ... interesting to learn as a foreign language. :) EDIT : Actually no, I mis-read the table on the Wikipedia page. The author was simply mistaken, an…

Long-scale should be officially retired, it's needless. Keep rocking with fortnights and stone if you must, nobody else is laying claim to those. It's things like having three different "gallons" that all mean wildly different things that make communication difficult.

Or perhaps short-scale should be retired instead, since pretty much all other languages use long-scale anyway.

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#53

Post by Glyptodon »

I feel sorry for the players who were amused by this and will now likely get banned. I don't know when video games started to be like a bad elementary school where you get punished for experimenting or finding a loophole, but it seems like it's punishing one of the fundamental joys of games. Or at least one of the joys I remember being particularly rewarding as a child.

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#54

Post by dangoldin »

srumple wrote: post #51
dangoldin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved Diablo 2 and probably spent a good portion of my high school hours playing it. I was very excited for Diablo 3 and tried to get into it but just couldn't. I felt that they just took a ton of ideas from WoW and implanted them into Diablo. Sure it may have made them more money but it made it a lot less fun.

If you liked Diablo 2, Torchlight 2 was made by the same people, and is the spiritual successor to Diablo 2.

Thanks for mentioning. I'll take a look.

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#55

Post by MBCook »

Guvante wrote: post #29
lmm wrote: post #3

Just another reminder that it's never worth bypassing the normal deployment process. Every year or two I learn a similar lesson myself: it's so tempting, the fix is so small, it couldn't possibly break anything (heck, I once had a data-gathering script that made a bunch of read-only calls to our system's API cause a live issue). Just say no.

To be fair, I am not sure if anyone would try posting 6 billion gold onto a PTR equivalent of the RMAH or whether the RMAH is even available on the PTR, which might explain why it wasn't tested.

If you set the limit to 10 billion of something, you need to test that 10 billion actually works.

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#56

Post by mikevm »

The scary thing is that integer overflows are considered rare so unlike things like null-pointer dereference no one really checks for them (heck, it seems impractical checking for it).

In this case, how should they defend against an overflow? Impose an arbitrary limit on gold?

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#57

Post by Jabbles »

mikevm wrote: post #56

The scary thing is that integer overflows are considered rare so unlike things like null-pointer dereference no one really checks for them (heck, it seems impractical checking for it). In this case, how should they defend against an overflow? Impose an arbitrary limit on gold?

Use 64 bit integers everywhere.

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#58

Post by maaku »

mikevm wrote: post #56

The scary thing is that integer overflows are considered rare so unlike things like null-pointer dereference no one really checks for them (heck, it seems impractical checking for it). In this case, how should they defend against an overflow? Impose an arbitrary limit on gold?

Check for them. There's no lazy way out.

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#59

Post by maaku »

vyrotek wrote: post #23
eduardordm wrote: post #16

Hard to understand why people spend so much time on a short game like Diablo III. Even before I finished it on inferno the game didn't make much sense, I just finished for the sake of it, which I regret. Most Super Mario games requires way more abilities than that and less time. Don't waste your limited time on earth playing consumption-driven games. I've been trying Eve online for a few days, It does not looks promi…

It's basically a very pretty slot machine. I played quite a bit of D2 and D3. The thrill comes from grinding for hours (and hours and hours) and finding that one item that earns you hundreds of dollars. (Yes real dollars) You can thank the the Real-Money Auction House for both destroying the game and being the one thing that keeps so many people coming back for more.

> It's basically a very pretty slot machine.

I didn't see the connection so clearly until now. How is D3 even legal?

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#60

Post by specialist »

lmm wrote: post #3

Just another reminder that it's never worth bypassing the normal deployment process. Every year or two I learn a similar lesson myself: it's so tempting, the fix is so small, it couldn't possibly break anything (heck, I once had a data-gathering script that made a bunch of read-only calls to our system's API cause a live issue). Just say no.

Hmmm. I dunno.

Why wouldn't currency by handled by the type system? You could still have an overrun. But it'd be handled more appropriately.

Long ago, I wrote a budgeting / estimating tool. Costs were represented with binary coded decimals (BCDs). Not floating point numbers. Just like an accounting system.

Competing products could have weird roundoff errors. Not mine.

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