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Newcomers DBPro Corner / Game Data Files

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Ozor Mox
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Joined: 30th Mar 2003
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Posted: 13th Jun 2003 02:01
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In a game I wrote, game data is read and wrote from files in a directory in program files that it sets up, mostly in LONG format. It used to store data in TXT format, but when it is stored like this it is possible for the player to open a file (such as hiscore.txt), enter a random letter in and then save it. The result is that the high score will go to about 20,000,000. I changed the file format to DAT which means you have to use open with to edit it, but it still works. Since files always go to about 20,000,000 or above, a temporary fix is to make the game detect if a file has a number greater than 10,000,000 and if it has say the file has become corrupt to avoid cheating. However, I would prefer a more permanent method of avoiding files being edited altogether or having an easier check for corruption, since it will be a problem if some files need to have numbers over 10,000,000 for the actual game.

Sorry for the (quite) long post, any help is appreciated!
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Goatpuzzle
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Posted: 13th Jun 2003 07:58 Edited at: 13th Jun 2003 08:00
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Well, you could just try scrambling the data a bit. Like, say, writing the bytes for the score in reverse. If you wanted to get a bit fancier, you could multiply the score by the ASCII value of the first character of the name a player enters, and then write every other byte, starting back at the ones you missed after the first batch.

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BatVink
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Posted: 13th Jun 2003 10:56
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If you use the SAVE ARRAY and LOAD ARRAY commands, it encrypts it for you. You can simply have a one or two dimensional array of the info you are wanting to save.

Thanks in advance.
All the Best,
StevieVee
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indi
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Posted: 13th Jun 2003 11:12
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when saving arrays ignore how many dimensions it is in DBC and just place a zero in the location of the save command where u would have placed the array dimension sizes.

http://www.lunarpixel.com
http://www.lunarpixel.com/dt/
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androo
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Posted: 13th Jun 2003 22:45 Edited at: 13th Jun 2003 22:46
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when saving, devide 1 by score and then multiply by set number (eg 41245).
When score is being displayed, undo this by deviding by set number and then again do 1 devide result.
This will avoid blatent cheating.
Also, why not save score as eg "NOTHING_IMPORTANT.txt"?
You could even add comment in that line of code so you know what its doing.

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andrew11
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Posted: 13th Jun 2003 23:50
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You could try to make a file that looks like this:



If the two at the top are edited. you could delete all data in the file and force the player to start over.

"Food is güd!" -Dean
"All programmers are playwrites and all computers are lousy actors" -Anon
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Ozor Mox
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Posted: 15th Jun 2003 17:21
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All good ideas, and I'll try them and see which works best. Thanks!

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