Here's what you do, you randomly change the keys for all the commands, so F1*CD would be G1*XL one time, and J1*BC next time... you have to read the help screen or prompt to know what to send... which are scrambled with ANSI movement...

hate to tell you this but that would confuse new players more than it would confuse scripts and/or bots and might turn potential players away from TW in general. a morphing menu? maybe it's the lack of sleep i had last night talking, but i know that if you beat a dead horse it will not suffer from the Lazarus effect, but in a way i am beating a horse that is sick or in this case immobile.

what attracted you to TW in the first place? is it the strategy? the competition? the sense of community? the amount of imagination needed to play a "graphic-less game?" or was it a way to see if you could program better then someone else using a program that is meant to be played by new players in a old format. over a dial up modem equivalent that got so ridiculously fast that the thinking is done by the programmer before it even happens.

find the answers to those questions and then you will see why it is hard to attract new players to a game that appears to have stalled. and why a programmer has put in so many "bugs" in his Stalled Project and has not "ironed" out these so called bugs.

i think it is mainly because a bug is seen as a bug only by a programmer that has an intended out come that is not the initial purpose of his original program. it is not the intended out come of his initial programing, because it is not his program. it is a hack of someone elses' program. thus he wants the original programmer to fix it so it works with his "helper" program. to "help" him become better then anyone else who plays just because they play for fun. and he plays for "glory"

Glory knowing that he is a better programmer then the programmer of the game's program.

in a way Tradewars has turned into two monsters. V1 AND V2 ONE WITH THE INTENT OF OTHER PROGRAMMERS IN MIND. and one for the fun that was and is Tradewars that is trying to bring in new players. you know what monster fights on your team. just don't become the monster your self defending it.

in the end it's just a game.

Yes, I know it would be worse for players, it was more of a joke... but combined with the other devices mentioned, it would be difficult to script...


There were no graphics when I started playing TradeWars... The attraction was pure strategy, and speed didn't really matter because your opponent wasn't in the game at the same time... The most impressive thing about TradeWars 2002 is the ANSI graphics... No game had anything like them at the time... and you turn them off... so your scripts can run faster...

TWX can just strip away the ANSI codes (or even temporarily turn ANSI off in CN) and then grab the new menu commands with getWord, sending the command instead as a variable macro, rather than a hard coded macro, for example.

^33[0;3Hl^33[0;0HH^33[0;2Hl^33[0;4Ho^33[0;2He

The above text displays as "Hello", but you would get "lHloe" if you stripped away the ANSI.

Obviously, you would remove the option to turn ANSI off.

In other words, you couldn't "strip" out the ANSI, but you would have to decode it. TWX already knows how to decode ANSI, so it wouldn't be hard though.

What if you actually changed the way the information was displayed though.

Random prompts:

Command [TL=00:00:00]:[9726] (?=Help)? :
[9726]:[TL=00:00:00] (?=Help) Command? :
[?=Help] Command [TL=00:00:00] <9726>? :

Which "word" would you be looking for exactly?

...That is too confusing for players though, nobody will want to play a game with changing syntax, commands, and the like, you would spend all of your time deciphering what your are looking at and trying out what you are suppose to be looking for now.

Though I imagine it would be possible to write a parser to remove all known ANSI codes and then work with what remains, but as mentioned, TWX already removes all ANSI codes as a built in function, unless you actually want to work with the ANSI with a single command (the only command missing on this point is a trigger that processes ANSI codes.)

You don't "remove" the codes. You have to interpret them. All TWX would have to do is trigger on what is being output to the screen instead of what is coming in.

Ultimately, nothing could stop a determined player. I just "unlocked" my android phone, voiding the warranty, so that I could cheat at some stupid Facebook games.

Well, you can do a blanket strip and then work with what remains, or run Boolean comparisons.

All these suggestions to stop scripting...

Beat a dead horse much?

I mean really, even if we figured out a complex way to stop scripting we would have a situation where someone like XIDE would figure it out again and then for 2-3 years he would have exclusive domain on the automation and would be "feared" for being the best killer like HellKitty did when he had fast internet vs. everyone else with sub 56k.

If you want to remove scripting advantage, then remove the advantage it offers by making it easier for new players to utilize those advantages, thus leveling the playing field.

At the end of the day a large majority of you wouldn't even play if you couldn't script ppt, colonization and other resource level scripts. Heck I know people who won't play tourneys without bots because of what it offers them from a time management perspective.

To improve the state of TW I believe:

1) JP should focus on the known bugs and releasing bot-link.

2) The players should work on improving the community (making it more inviting), game clients (removing complicated setups) and focus our efforts on a collaborative environment in regards to scripting.

+1000

Impossible to stop scripting. Cannot be detected given minimal randomization. Slight random delays before a packet exceeded, random "typoes" with a ^H and correction, endless list.

Something else that might help much to improve the game, it is a turn based engine durning battles, such as you see in RPGs, you have a shortsword so you get 2-4 swings then the opponent gets an opportunity to respond with their two-handed sword, with 1-2 swings (though they do not have to respond, but at least are afforded a timeframe for which to react, either by attacking back, running away, bringing up their shield, casting a spell, drinking a potion, whatever), this could also be further based upon other character features such as strength and weapon skills, which could be represented in TW by ship specs, such as how planets classifications determines how fast colos reproduce or die-off, daily product and fighter generation, etc.

As of now a macro-burst attack script can take another player out without any chance to react; you move into a sector, see weapons powering up message, try to press a button, and then have a long pause and find yourself booted to the login screen--even when in a fully loaded gold ship, even when you, yourself, attempt to macro in and out of a sector.

Also the xport menu is so very slow, making trying to xport to safety futile most of the time, at least when you have a large selection of ships, as it take about 1/2 a second to display each ship and you cannot abort the display.

If you are playing on a v2 server, and running a reactive script, you should be able to counter a macro burst attack... I haven't tested this personally, but I know it is something JP worked on fixing...

You can abort the xport menu display if you do it fast enough... The abort display has to be sent before the first ship is displayed... Mombot "X" command does this automatically...

I remember the first time I tried to setup TWX Proxy, and I wouldn't have been able to figure it out without assistance... Same goes for Mombot... Someone had to "Show me the ropes", and that's pretty bad considering that I am an IT professional... To some extent, it is just a matter of better documentation, but the other problem is that most public scripts are "buggy", and when someone fixes them, they keep that advantage to themselves.

wow did this tread ever get derailed or what...

heh