[Kde-games-devel] Two questions about kbattleship

[Erik Sigra]

lördagen den 2 augusti 2003 03.41 skrev Henry W. Miller:
> On Sat, 2 Aug 2003, Albert 'TSDgeos' Astals Cid wrote:
> > At 00:22 02/08/2003 +0200, you wrote:
> > >Don't the programs exchange ship positions on game start?
> >
> > I've looked at the code and i'm almost sure they don't, each time you
> > click on a map position the client sends a message asking if it has water
> > or a ship and the other player answers. It is better that way, because if
> > the ships positions were exchanged at game start you could use tcpdump or
> > a similar utility and cheat the game.
>
> Of course now you can write a client that won't place ships until you tell
> it to, or there is now only one possible way for the ships to be placed
> given the shots already taken.

Thanks for reminding us about it. I didn't occur to me right away when reading 
the previous messages. If I intended to play KBattleship I would implement 
that in the client.

> Eliminating cheating isn't an easy problem.  If it was there wouldn't be
> any cheating.   For that matter if it was easy I'd post the soilution
> instead of pointing out one potential way to cheat.

Like always, the solution is to play on a trusted public server. Only games 
with completely known state (like chess) can be designed as peer-to-peer.