Awhile ago, I had some discussions in here about the possibility of having a central server with a database of self-referencing questions that could be used as challenge questions in the game to verify that a human is at keys. The idea seemed interesting, but that's as far as it went. Just something to consider, but the need to generate a large enough database of questions seemed like a major hurdle.

Yesterday, Jaybird directed me to a simple service that provides exactly the sort of questions that I had in mind. It took me half an hour to integrate it into TW, and now TW has the ability to ask any one of millions of questions as a method of discouraging bot play. The option is available in v3.22 and works as intended.

So now the question becomes, is there a way to integrate these challenge questions into the game so that certain kinds of play are unhindered, while other kinds of play are discouraged if not completely denied. There could be many options to configure how this is used, so an op could restrict games in a range from very anti-automation to slightly anti-automation. Perhaps certain types of scripts could be pinpointed so that the op could pick and choose which tactics to allow and which to not allow. Imagine if ZTM is disabled through the use of challenge questions, with a question asked every 1000 course plots.

I think at a minimum, the game could ask a challenge question on entry, and this would disable scripts that camp at the menus and automatically login when activity is detected. But there are many possibilities here, I think. And I don't think one-size-fits-all is a good answer. I'm sure every op will have their own preferences on how intrusive to make this and what to accomplish with it.

Failed answers could have a few different consequences. They could be logged to a file for the op to act on. They could result in a player being booted from the game for a period of time, or just not allowed in. Of course it's possible to answer incorrectly, so more than one question would probably need to be asked before acting on the failed answer. There would be options to effect how this is handled as well.

In general, I don't expect any script user to see this as a good thing. But gameops who would like more option to control script use on their servers, would you see this as a valuable tool? Or would you consider it too much of a nuisance for your non-scripting players to be of use?

My hope is that having this option active in a game would be like hanging a sign that says "scripters not wanted", and people who want to use scripts would just play in games that are intended for them and leave those who don't want scripts to play in their own games. Sort of a means of segregating the two kinds of players. If that's the case, then the actual challenge questions may not have to be asked so frequently during non-script/bot use that human players feel inconvenienced by them. That would be ideal, if those who script would simply avoid such games and those who do not could feel a sense of certainty that they're not going to be running into bots while they're playing.

Questions would have to be very basic if TW related because new players may not know the answers. If the questions are not TW related, then there may be major problems for the users. A multiple guess test might work to eliminate problems.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

The questions are not TW related. They are also very basic logic questions which any English speaker of average intelligence should be able to answer. Any knowledge required to answer the question is either in the question itself or is the kind of thing you would know anyway. Some examples, although I'm just making these up, are:
What is the number twenty-one thousand one hundred ninety-seven in digits?
Computer, cow, money. Which of these is an animal?
If today is Saturday, what was yesterday?
Is ice hot or cold?
Out of a truck, an iPhone, the number 42 and the color blue, which of these has wheels?
The red car is what color?
What is Virgil's name?

The basic idea is that the questions are self-referencing. I think there are times when you'll accidentally get a question wrong, but these are not knowledge or skill based questions. Difficulty of questions won't be an issue. The only questions are whether this actually would deter certain kinds of bot use and whether players would be willing to put up with the questions if it kept those kinds of bot tactics out of a game.

You can get a sample in the sandbox game.

LOL. You build it and they will come.

The AI developers that is.... (sic)

Yeh, I give it 6 months before it's completely cracked.

While I somewhat agree about some of the questions where the answer is in the question itself, there are the questions requiring knowledge only a human would have. The question, "Is ice hot or cold?" is probably a somewhat bad example, since there are only two possible answers. A bot taking a stab in the dark has a 50/50 chance of getting this one right. A question like, "Ice cream, compact disc, space shuttle, hedge trimmer. Which of these is food?" is more difficult. Any human knows the answer, but a bot only has a 25% chance of geting it right. And of course, if you get it wrong, you would get another question, not a second try at the same question, so bots can't brute force their way through it by trying all possible answers until they get it right.
There's also the fact that there are well over 100,000,000 questions in the database. While I don't know if this is used, there could also be the technique of asking the same question in all sorts of different ways just to foil parsing attempts. For instance, a script that can answer the question, "What is Steven's name?" would probably be totally stopped by the same question reworded, "If you are Steven, what should I call you?"

Any of you people have lives? Seriously.

That is their life apparently... geeks!

How often is the challenge question supposed to pop up in the game? Just as you enter, at random intervals? When it detects somone is using Mombot? hehe..

It never ceases to amaze me the lengths we go through just to carve out a few games for humans to play.

Well, I don't know, it took me half an hour to implement it, and according to Sing, will take them 6 months to break. Seems like they're the ones going to great lengths. I just don't get it.

One thing I'd like to do is have options to target it at specific activities so if you don't do that activity, you won't be bothered. Just as an example, not saying everyone will want this, if you wanted to discourage the use of ztm scripts, you could throw out a question every 1000 course plots, or even better, every 1000 plots if they're greater than a given frequency. A player at keys will rarely see these questions. But someone scripting course plots will have to deal with them. And I think the subspace scan is fixed, but if it wasn't, this could deal with that as well. Every 10 channel changes, ask the question. Nobody who isn't trying to subspace scan is going to be bothered by it.

The point is, everyone keeps saying ops need a way to enforce rules they set. This is a good way to do that. It can log when someone is missing a lot of questions and you'll know that's a bot or someone who's trying to "crack" the system. But most of all, I hope it's a big fat cocklebur in the undies of any player who ignores an op's anti-bot rules and forces him/herself on players who don't want to play that kind of game. It's a big hint. You're not wanted! Go bother someone else! Stay off my lawn! ;)

Ok, I went into the Sandbox game. It asked me if Ice was hot or cold. I answered hot and it let me right in....

BTW, 4 starts and I have yet to make it to SD... Blockades are for weenies

btw, bots and scripts are not necessarily the same thing. Stand alone scripts are just that - they are not used to control other players. I see "bots" used a lot to talk about scripts. To me it is an insult to call a script a "bot" when that is not its purpose. I also equate bots as glorified duping, but that is a whole other subject.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

I do recognize a difference. That's why I usually talk about bots, scripts, and macros. Where I draw the line is on bots or scripts that react to player events.

Master Blaster, it's a demo. Just to show you the questions. I haven't decided what ways to actually use it.

Join my corp, pw is TEST.