VASSAL 4 Design, Broad Overview

[JoelCFC25]

@djsullivan

I think you may be over-engineering the security protocol. Is cheating really that prevalent on VASSAL?

I doubt it, but there is an extraordinary amount of hand-wringing (at least among the wargaming crowd) about what less-than-savory opponents might do because the software doesn’t offer much deterrence–things like making a logfile over and over again until you get the dice results you want. The amount of discussion about it dwarfs the number of instances that anyone could point to as definitive cases of cheating.

I think of cheating as more a function of being a douchebag than a software issue (solution: don’t play with douchebags), but it’s clear to me that a significant number of people shy away from VASSAL or outright refuse to use it because of the prevailing view that it’s easy to cheat if you want to.

[Brent_Easton]

The point was not to send anything the client shouldn’t know about. The
server has the full state.

I thought the plan was to use Public Key Cryptography to be able to provide each client with the full state, but have the state that should be hidden from that client encrypted?

besides, this design goal

Clients will be encouraged to use locally-hosted game servers if possible

is incompatible since it implies that clients can host servers, so full information becomes available to them.

[djsullivan]

@uckelman

Realtime games can’t do what I’m proposing due to the volume of data
which would have to travel back and forth. Can you show me example of
some game server which is specifically not for RTS or FPS games which
has had a great deal of effort put into security but nontheless still
has a problem with cheaters?

–
J.

Fair enough. I just thought that eliminating the single point of failure by having the full game state on the client might be preferable. Or at least more flexible. It’s nice to be able to save the game state so you can come back to it if you want.

[soft-bug]

Hi,

Let me introduce some functional features that would be interesting. Sorry i don’t understand most of technical exchanges, but i guess that the end user is a “Vassal Designer” for the new Vassal release

- Meta Objects

The idea is to include dynamic creation of objets during a game. Like using a script language, you could create a deck, form …
A dynamic player registration to a module could affect a private window, because when you design a module you don’t know how many players will join the game.
It’s just an idea, but meta objects could be used and be started by “triggers” depending of conditions using internal elements (tokens, cards, counters). For example a deck is created with cards because of conditions gathered.

You could use Create objet and Kill objet as well …

This could add dynamic creation possibilities … using templates not activated (just an idea!)

- Linked Objets

When an objet is linked to another or a board, when you move the main one, the linked follow it at the same “relative” position, even if rotation are done.

Pitch move

Include a way to manage moves on pieces, token to simulate pitch games. Pieces are moving and when a collision is done the other elements are scattered.

- Cards

The current front card and back card are not linked when you use rotation … the result is a strange behavior … It could be better managed … add the masked trait and try to understand wich result you get !

Well simply just ideas that i wanted to share …

Think different, think Vassal 4 !

Regards

Grégory