Official forums for BZFlag.org

How about a special BZFlag server / client pair which have built in security measures (hashes, encryption) and which are incompatible with the current open-source version. This would solve the problem of cheaters once and for all. This would give people a lot more confidence that the game is fair.

It would still be free, off course, and be based on the open-source version, but the hashes would be secret and only known to the BZFlag site admin who has sworn an oath to secrecy!

nope, this has been discussed many times. Besides the fact that it is against the license, couldn't be distributed on most linux systems, would be impossible to build for all platforms, it is also not real security. The server would still have to trust the network stream and that could be faked.

The project will never go this route. The best way to fix it is to simply make the game protocol not allow those cheats in the first place.

Nope can't be done. I still see people cheating all the time even with the newest clients and servers. Besides people can put in 'subtle' cheats such as auto-aim, auto-jump (there are some players which I suspect have some of these).

If there's no other way, someone should make an entirely new BZFlag game from scratch, maybe partially using the protocol design. It's a lot of work but there are some good C++ libraries out there which can help (Ogre3D)

Oh and another thing: you could put in security hashes which wouldn't be part of the source code (i.e. in a seperate config file), so you wouldn't be violating the GPL or anything like that. The hashes would be secret and can't be faked.

Look, you are wasting our time. As Jeff has said this has been discussed many, many times. You are more than welcome to code up your own "super secure" BZFlag rip-off, but you cannot use our code for it. Let us know how it goes...

PS if the security hashes aren't in the source code how will they be accessed? by downloading them? sounds secret and secure to me...

I have several problems with this idea. First, you would be taking away the freedom of users to do what they want. Second, there is no such thing as perfect network security, you could reverse-engineer your own client to send the exact same hashes and everything that the closed-source version tries to keep secret. Third, you would have no idea what's going on under the hood of the game. It could be doing anything whatsoever, and I like to have a way to know what the programs I run are doing. Fourth, the number of players of BZFlag would be reduced, because as JeffM said, it would be impossible to build for all platforms. Also, the code hosting, bug tracker, and all that stuff would have to move, and old information would be lost. And how would the game get new developers? You couldn't just add anyone to the project because he might make important information publicly available. All the developers would constantly be suspicious of each other. All these reasons, and probably some others I didn't think of, lead me to believe that closed-source software is bad. I now dislike closed-source software more than when I started writing this post. Thank you very much, and good luck with your pseudo-BZFlag closed-source project.