CBASS run you over?

I figured I would jump in here from a programming perspective.

First, lets talk about Atari400's claim.   There have been claims about a Mule cheats since I started playing on here, and prob before..  No one has ever produced any evidence of their existence, other than "I have been told by someone"

I myself have been accused of cheating.. "your bots tell you where the tite is.." etc etc..

Now that I have released the software for the bots, you can obviously see that there is no connection between the bot software and the Mule, other then keystrokes, log monitoring and mouse clicks.   One of the crystite tracker (in which the source was released) looks for certain pixels to be a certain color on the mule screen to track what is being made and who owns each plot.

Like it has been said, plot placement and coversion strategy is much better then having 3 high tites.   

Now from a programmers perspective:

So how would a cheat for Mule work if someone wanted to build one?

Well first the idea of tite tiles being generated off of the sector id is a little out there.  More then likely the tite tiles are being generated at a random values for x, y.   then the medium and low values are filled in after.   But is it really random?  in programming most random number generators are based off of a seed value, this seed value is usually set to the timer of the computer (seconds since midnight)

The assumption is that the Host machine in mule would be the one that generates the map and then sync's the map to the other clients at the beginning of the game.   

So two possible cheats would be possible.  Write a program that could read a memory location on which the map values are stored.  This would require you writting a program that would be able to break into the Java runtime and read these values without causing an access violation, this may difficult but I'm sure someone who is good at writing viruses would be able to figure it out.

the second method would be using a network sniffer and monitor the packets from the host, and then figure out which packets contain the map information

the first and second method would only work if the host actually sends the map to the clients, (and the clients not request the tite values from the host when a survey is done)

Without decompiling or having access to the source for planet mule either way would be hard to figure out.

Most cheats for games involve changing values in save games or specific memory locations where the value is stored for money or inventory etc.

Can it be done for Planet Mule?  sure... but I don't think many of the people that have the skills to do it would waste their time on PlanetMule cheats.

and until someone has specific details on how the cheat works or proof then these are just rumors usually started by people who are losing and want an excuse.

I'm not a Planet Mule programmer but I would expect that if it was an easy fix, they would have done it by now.

I believe the game requires all clients to be synced at all times.   In order to allow a client to rejoin, the host would have to send it enough information that would allow it to resync.

Until we get more dependable hosts up, I will keep some of my Bots running.

I have just sent Private Messages to the first 4 people who requested the MuleTools hosting software.

Check your messages for the download instructions. 

After I have gotten some feedback, i will expand the host list to other ethical hosts.


Please keep an eye out for these new hosts.

sjleader,

No this has nothing to do with how Planet Mule hosts games.    The hosting software is being distributed to some very qualified players to host games automatically, this should expand the number of reliable hosts and make playing games easier.

With the release of the hosting Bot software this week I will be shutting down the hosting bots

Thank-you to all the good players that have expressed interest in acquiring the software.   Expect a PM early this week with download details.

The bots have hosted 11000 games and I believe it is time to pass the torch to other well qualified hosts

I looked at the log and it looks like it was never sent in from the Mule4u3 host machine.

I think this issue happens to non bot host too, the bots have hosted over 11000 games combined

With the release of the hosting software, I will be retiring the bots for good.

I will soon be releasing the hosting bot software to qualified individuals.   This will allow others to host games for others, and automatically rehost.

I will be providing it to a select few good known players/hosts to begin with to make sure everything good.

The software also has a Tite Tracker, and Event Tracker built in for Non-Hosted games.  Event Tracking is automatic, Tite Tracking is manual just like the other tite tools out there.

Here are some screen shots, and if you are interested in hosting please reply to this topic so others can see who may be hosting, and object if needed.   

I may release a Lite version with the hosting disabled as a tracker tool for everyone regardless.   

Cheers,
Mainstream

I think Chucky explained it well..   I will eventually make the Bot software available to decent hosters to allow for more auto hosted games, once I fix some of the database issues with it.    Would be nice for Europe players to have a decent server.

The Bots run in virtual machines, and I have actually had 4 of them running at once before.    I usually only run 1 or 2 based on demand.     

The host computer is an 4ghz 8 core 32g of memory machine.   

Any computer that can run Mule can run the BOT software, so most would be able to host atleast 1 game.

Bots have been updated

The virtual machine software that has been running the Bot's has had some problems since the last update.   As a result the Bot's were crashing and not restarting.

I have updated the bots to a beta build of the virtual machine software that is supposed to fix the problem.

If you have been playing on a bot game and have had it crash on you, please try again as hopefully this new virtual machine software is better.

Sorry guys, haven't been around much... Due to some power crashes some of the smurf check data has been lost.   It will take some time to redownload the logs for bot games and re-process.    I will have to do some additional programing to fix this on a more permanent bases.

Both bots run in virtualbox virtual machines.

You need to install the guest addons to allow mouse conrol and 3d support

It does work.

You need to use virtualbox instead.

goto virtualbox.com and download it install windows on it, you will need to enable the 3d graphics mode as well.