|
I think I have it. The way to make the System stronger, faster, and harder to hack. We farm out the Server's tasks to random players.
Not just
Server: "Give player42 all the processor load of the Server", but more like
Server: "player2's asking what the Bomy Lord's doing. Have player(int(rand(0,playercount))) figure it out."
Then, since that raises the problem of some clever scriptkiddy coming up with a trainer that gives bad answers every time he's asked, have the server spend its idle moments testing:
Server: "Hey player38, player2 wants to know what the BomyLord's doing"
player38: "Now's my chance! Server, the Bomylord lays down a bunch of bombs in this pattern, then shouts expletives."
Server: "That's funny, by My math it should have moved to 32,28. FLAGGED!"
GP: "What the-Player 38 got flagged for returning...oh wow, yeah, that's a banhammer..."
-and because only the System NPC knows which ones are tests and which ones are actual requests, player38 never knows if he's Actually screwing with the server or just letting the server know he's being a bad little scriptkiddy.
Also, since player38's never asked to calculate things for player38, he can't very well edit the world to his own liking. If the only players online were all hacking at the same time it'd be a problem, but then again, Graal would have some considerable problems if the only people playing on a server were all trainerers...and it might be best to just let them have their fun in such circumstances. Similarly, the server would have to do the math on its own, normally, when the playercount got too low (but then, the server should be able to handle a load of 3 players)...and some minor scripting would have to go into "If player96 doesn't return an answer within 0.4 seconds, go to somebody else and raise 96's latency index. If they don't return an answer within 0.4 seconds, calculate it personally and return the answer immediately"
It's a thought, I dunno enough about the server infrastructure to say if it's really feasable. |