Dev Tracker: Discussion (Old)

[Obsidian]

Between logins, sure maybe. Re-loading it when zoning? Why bother?

Like:
* You have an inventory list before you zone.
* You have the same inventory list after you zone.

How could simply not deleting it while zoning lead to any exploits?

That stuff needs to be reloaded when you zone, whether by communicating with the server or by loading the cached character data. If you only check the cached character data, said data will be unreliable because it can be manipulated. Now the game has to communicate with the server anyway, to make sure you actually have whatever you're saying you have. Otherwise you could just zone out, give yourself a dozen key items, zone back in, go pop whatever, and then repeat. Or, zone out, give yourself an Afterglow Aegis, zone back in, and watch everyone go wtf. You can't trust that whatever you stored on the client is valid, which defeats the purpose of storing it there. You'll either take ten seconds to zone, or ten seconds to pop an NM because the server will need to compare its version of you inventory against your own before it processes the spawn request.

Again, maybe I'm just not understanding how the client-server communication is actually handled (and when it happens), but I don't see caching, or storing, anything on the client as viable (or possible, potentially, in the case of the 360/PS2).

[Prothescar]

i'd make a guriguribanban just for the name

[Kyreth]

inb4 the 12 swords in the flag of Adoulin represent more than just the metaphorical symbols of the 11 knights and King August. In the main story of TOAU, the player/the citizens of Aht Urghan were 'the treasures of aht urghan' but then after the missions you find out the TRUE treasures of aht urghan weren't some bullshit metaphor for its people but actually the mythics. In SoA I wouldn't be surprised if the 12 swords on the flag actually represent the new 'legendary weapons' wielded by those 12 knights.

Was I the only one who had the thought that if one was King August, the knights were January, February, March...

(I know. Bad Kyreth. No trail cookie.)

[Spira]

Lol....
Maybe they'd each be represented by a zodiac sign too? >_>

[Hashmalum]

That stuff needs to be reloaded when you zone, whether by communicating with the server or by loading the cached character data. If you only check the cached character data, said data will be unreliable because it can be manipulated. Now the game has to communicate with the server anyway, to make sure you actually have whatever you're saying you have. Otherwise you could just zone out, give yourself a dozen key items, zone back in, go pop whatever, and then repeat. Or, zone out, give yourself an Afterglow Aegis, zone back in, and watch everyone go wtf. You can't trust that whatever you stored on the client is valid, which defeats the purpose of storing it there. You'll either take ten seconds to zone, or ten seconds to pop an NM because the server will need to compare its version of you inventory against your own before it processes the spawn request.

Again, maybe I'm just not understanding how the client-server communication is actually handled (and when it happens), but I don't see caching, or storing, anything on the client as viable (or possible, potentially, in the case of the 360/PS2).

No, no you're not understanding it. You're not understanding it at all. You don't, in fact, have the slightest clue.

[ronin sparthos]

Just give me my Battle on the Big Bridge and remix the theme for an alliance Gilgamesh fight. Stick an extra pair of arms on the Naraka model and lets get this thing goin'

[vadre]

Story - Gilgamesh steals the 12 swords / weapons from the story and proceeds to beat the shit out of everyone. The end.

[Obsidian]

No, no you're not understanding it. You're not understanding it at all. You don't, in fact, have the slightest clue.

Awesome explanation.

[dasva]

Awesome explanation.

Lol I was thinking the same thing

[Casey_]

That stuff needs to be reloaded when you zone, whether by communicating with the server or by loading the cached character data. If you only check the cached character data, said data will be unreliable because it can be manipulated. Now the game has to communicate with the server anyway, to make sure you actually have whatever you're saying you have. Otherwise you could just zone out, give yourself a dozen key items, zone back in, go pop whatever, and then repeat. Or, zone out, give yourself an Afterglow Aegis, zone back in, and watch everyone go wtf. You can't trust that whatever you stored on the client is valid, which defeats the purpose of storing it there. You'll either take ten seconds to zone, or ten seconds to pop an NM because the server will need to compare its version of you inventory against your own before it processes the spawn request.

Your argument is flawed. You make the assumption that inventory is never validated and didn't address how if it's currently not validated anywhere but zoning, you could just give yourself an afterglow aegis and zone. If it were the case that the client mysteriously sends data to the server to then propagate to other clients, you could modify client data right now and pop an afterglow aegis. Zoning has nothing to do with it.

If the client had any control over server side objects like inventory, FFXI would've been exploited a long long time ago.

I do agree in theory that the cached data could be unreliable, but it won't be unreliable enough care about it. You can just validate specific items on demand, which I'm sure it does already. When you fake your race to Mithra or whatever and try to equip it via and equip command it doesn't work, at some point the server has to check your race before allowing you to equip an item.. even though the client will attempt to allow you to equip it and will even go so far as to unequip old RSE in the menu that isn't "valid" anymore.

[Obsidian]

Indeed, I forgot about RSE and plasticsurgeon, which is an interesting interaction. However, I wonder if that transaction is analogous to checking one's inventory for an item. In this case, the server already knows what item you want to equip. It's not checking to see if you have it, it's checking to see if you can wear it. It may even be a local interaction with game rules, because using plasticsurgeon to change from a Hume M to a Mithra won't change my stats.

How I understand the system to currently work (perhaps you can elaborate on where I'm going off track without calling me an imbecile like the other guy) is that when you zone, the game "forgets" your character data and has to retrieve the entire structure from the server (if it didn't, zoning wouldn't be an issue). Once your character data is loaded, the game maintains a list of your inventory by updating the character data on the server every time you get/drop something. Does the game send the entire character structure, or just the items that need to be added? Or maybe the game just updates the entire structure every time any change happens, whether it be movement, inventory, taking damage, or whatever.

Regardless, if, when we zone, the game uses a locally stored cache of your character data as a restoration point, we create a situation where things can be added to our inventory, even if temporarily. So, say we zone and add a pop item to our inventory. Having just zoned, the game is now presumably updating our character data on the server. Here is my first question; does the game now compare your inventory to your inventory on the server? If so, that pop item we gave ourselves will disappear. If not, we move on. However, comparing both inventories on every action/server update is likely to be network intensive, and will only get worse if they expand our inventory further.

So, we've zoned, and the server didn't compare our two inventories, so we still have the pop item. Assuming the game doesn't compare our inventory to the server's version of it on every update-able action, we get to the spawn location for the NM we want to pop. Next question; does the server trust that the client hasn't been tampered with, and allows you to pop the NM? Or does it now compare your inventory to its own records to see if you actually have that pop item? Assuming the server didn't already wipe the item from your inventory, and assuming that the item wasn't already saved to your character data on the server (which would make this check redundant), the game will have to compare your entire inventory against the server's records. If it sees you did indeed have the pop item, boom; NM spawns. If it finds you didn't actually have one, the item goes poof and you take a trip to Mordion Gaol.

Under this model, any cached information on the client is untrustworthy and therefore redundant, because the server will have to validate your inventory at some point (or several), which will cause delays. Can you explain to me where my leaps in logic are, and how you think the model works?

[Khamsin]

I was under the impression that all inputs were validated, and any data on the client end is purely for display purposes.

Trading a nonexistent item from your inventory shouldn't be any different than typing /item "Thing", and the only reason your client knows what items you have at all is for the benefit of the GUI so you can use menus and select things instead of typing them like a text adventure.

[Kohan]

No, no you're not understanding it. You're not understanding it at all. You don't, in fact, have the slightest clue.

Here, Hashmalum. Have a seat. Just for a moment, please. This won't take long.

Now, look. I understand how hard life must be for you. You're the most amazing game designer, slash artist, director, slash programmer, slash—well, let's just cut this list short by saying you're the most amazing everything. We know that. You must be, and you emphasize it when you call everything and everyone around you out on their inability to understand your magnificence. It's rough.

When Square Enix didn't personally listen to your own impassioned and profanity-laden explanation as to their idiocy—which they should have, considering that they're a miserable game developer that's been around for over twenty years while you're the sole pinnacle of brilliance rising above them on the Internet, the Golden Voice, if you will—they made an awful mistake. You told them what to do, and it doesn't matter that you've never seen their source code, nor their internal design tools, nor anything else related to their processes, because you're right. Always. Every time.

And when this random person, this fellow named "Obsidian," tried to theorize as to how things could work, you blasted them for daring to reveal such curiosity, for they were wrong. No one can ever be wrong, not in your presence. It is so disgusting that you cannot even bear it. Despite your ordinarily indomitable intelligence, their offensive normalcy has exhausted you so that you cannot be bothered to enlighten them.

I can sympathize with you, and the daily struggles you endure. You are magnificent, special, and all-knowing, and the rest of the world—so insignificant, so insufferable—just irritates you. How bothersome it is.

Try, though. Try, for the sake of your fellow man, to manage it. Struggle against the knowledge of your being the most fantastical two-legged creature to ever grace this Earth with its presence, and fight against the desire to look down upon all of these lowly beings.

Don't spare them actual content and explanation. However will they learn if you do? Further, don't spray your hateful spittle all over them. They cannot learn from that.

You, as an omnipotent being, can clearly bring about the salvation of the human race. But you must try, Hashmalum. You must try.

Do it for them.

[Dazusu]

Here, Hashmalum. Have a seat. Just for a moment, please. ...

Wish BG had a like button

[Prothescar]

(':

[Casey_]

More than likely what Khasmin says is correct. It appears almost everything but movement is server side, which is why Fleetool and etc work. The client is only for our convenience; or inconvenience, if you want to know cool things like Ranged Attack..

That said, this game was designed around dial up and probably uses verification server side only WITH a copy of your current "valid" inventory, so if you try to use an item when you don't have it on you already, it'll throw an error at you. The classic "An error has occurred.."

There also also examples where the server doesn't try to validate what the client gets, such as auto translator messages screwing up randomly and only showing up as () presumably because the clientside auto translator index is fucked somehow.

As for your pop item example, it's probably something simple like this: "I am player X, and I am targeting this ??? with ID U. I am trading item Z to my current target". behind the scenes, the server checks "Is trading item Z going to do something to this ??? with ID Y?" and if it does, it'll delete the item from the server copy of the players inventory, then issue a command "Ok delete item Z from your inventory" to use as little bandwidth as possible. This also ensures that the server and client are still synced, assuming the update command is transmitted via TCP and will resend vs UDP and just plain doesn't care.

Realistically with a game this terribly old the server probably doesn't care what the client has, so much as we do things the server likes. They do want to try to keep the inventory as synced as possible as shown in their post, but if everything else is functioning properly it should be fine to just disregard the every-zone inventory update... paranoia goes a long way with programming a whole game like this.

[Obsidian]

I was under the impression that all inputs were validated, and any data on the client end is purely for display purposes.

Trading a nonexistent item from your inventory shouldn't be any different than typing /item "Thing", and the only reason your client knows what items you have at all is for the benefit of the GUI so you can use menus and select things instead of typing them like a text adventure.

In this case, the client would be telling the server that the item exists (trying to /item "abcdefg" would result in the client not finding the item, and a request to the server would never be sent). The server, being unable to trust the client, would then have to verify that it does actually exist, which would cause a delay before popping.

The game may currently rely solely on server transmissions and your inventory/gear/whatever may only be for display purposes (although I hesitate to assume this because of how auto-translate picks up things in your inventory, but it also recognizes things you've simply seen on other characters, so I dunno), but in a situation where data from the server is being cached to the client to expedite loading, that data must be trusted implicitly (because now it's being sent back to the server), otherwise it's useless. Once you start storing anything on the client, redundancy needs to be implemented, which will increase server load and potentially make things worse than if they had just settled on increased loading times.

[Damane]

what have I done with this translation ¬.¬

[CoreyX]

Here, Hashmalum. Have a seat. Just for a moment, please. This won't take long.

Now, look. I understand how hard life must be for you. You're the most amazing game designer, slash artist, director, slash programmer, slash—well, let's just cut this list short by saying you're the most amazing everything. We know that. You must be, and you emphasize it when you call everything and everyone around you out on their inability to understand your magnificence. It's rough.

When Square Enix didn't personally listen to your own impassioned and profanity-laden explanation as to their idiocy—which they should have, considering that they're a miserable game developer that's been around for over twenty years while you're the sole pinnacle of brilliance rising above them on the Internet, the Golden Voice, if you will—they made an awful mistake. You told them what to do, and it doesn't matter that you've never seen their source code, nor their internal design tools, nor anything else related to their processes, because you're right. Always. Every time.

And when this random person, this fellow named "Obsidian," tried to theorize as to how things could work, you blasted them for daring to reveal such curiosity, for they were wrong. No one can ever be wrong, not in your presence. It is so disgusting that you cannot even bear it. Despite your ordinarily indomitable intelligence, their offensive normalcy has exhausted you so that you cannot be bothered to enlighten them.

I can sympathize with you, and the daily struggles you endure. You are magnificent, special, and all-knowing, and the rest of the world—so insignificant, so insufferable—just irritates you. How bothersome it is.

Try, though. Try, for the sake of your fellow man, to manage it. Struggle against the knowledge of your being the most fantastical two-legged creature to ever grace this Earth with its presence, and fight against the desire to look down upon all of these lowly beings.

Don't spare them actual content and explanation. However will they learn if you do? Further, don't spray your hateful spittle all over them. They cannot learn from that.

You, as an omnipotent being, can clearly bring about the salvation of the human race. But you must try, Hashmalum. You must try.

Do it for them.

[ ] Not Told
[ ] Told
[X] Cash4Told.com

[Churchill]

You have a solution you dumb fucks, I gave it to you at the very end of that gigantic thread where everyone posted what they wanted Matsui to read. Client side caching of the data that doesn't change. There is absolutely no need to re-download all my spells and inventory and magical maps (you ever get that spurious message about not having a map of this area when trying to view a map shortly after zoning?) just because I changed zones. The client should remember all that shit. And being able to save the location of the doors and NPCs that don't move would be fucking golden too.

Who the fuck are you kid? Why don't you get the fuck out.