Server Help

Polar · Guest Offline

Hi all:

I've been looking at some bot code, mainly the merv bot which seems to be the bot most people are using.

It seems that all the bots require either entering the bot into vip.txt, or having synop pw. I understand that this is because something about these bots using the 1.34 protocol?

Is there anyway to not use the protocol to connect the bot? So something like connecting to the server using the same stuff the continuum client uses.

Thanks

Cyan~Fire · Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2003 8:12 am Post subject:

I don't really know the answer to your question, but I think it has something to do with how MERV acts. I think Continuum login settings are a bit stricter? I'm not quite sure, but I am sure Catid has his reasons. After all, it's not that tough to put it in vip.txt.
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Smong · Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2003 10:39 am Post subject:

Most bots use SS/134 encryption, so they need vip/sysop to enter using encryption that the client can choose (otherwise the server forces continuum encryption). Some bots may not handle the security packets correctly either.

Most importantly bots can move flags, fire invalid level weapons at high speed, ignore damage, etc, this is cheating so the zone owner must allow only the bot to be able to perform these actions.

If a bot with continuum encryption was publicly available it may help others to reverse engineer the algorithm. It wouldn't be anymore useful than a bot with 134 enc because you still need smod/sysop access to prevent the bot from being kicked from cheating.

ExplodyThingy · Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2003 10:41 am Post subject:

Continuum has a diferent login method and a modified protocol from 1.34. This means that the server can handle both clients, but the client connection methods are varied enough to signal the server.

I personally prefer that it be like this, because zone owners can control who is allowed to spawn a bot in their server.
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Snark · Staff Joined: Aug 02 2002 Posts: 19 Offline

If your zone allows the old ss client to connect then bots should work fine too without vip or sysop but they might get kicked for spamming or invalid checksums etc.
Aslong the bot only stays in spec and knows how to handle the security checks it can stay connected without sysop.