@glhf: I'm a little confused, do you have a specific game genre in mind? It sounded like you were talking about FPS, but then turn-based and card games came up. Or do you just want to generally create a game that can be bet on, and the genre will suit that goal?
Just to broaden the scope for a bit, here's some general thoughts on cheating. The types of cheat that come to mind for me are:
- Reaction time/motor skills, e.g. an aim-bot.
- Privileged information, e.g. seeing through walls, knowing other players cards.
- Number crunching, e.g. poker hand odds calculators, apparently frequently used online with plugins for many sites and poker apps.
- Taking a dive, e.g. boxing, horseracing, or anything where you bet on someone else's performance.
- Players forming teams outside the rules, e.g. poker players or FPS players teaming up to destroy another player.
- Multiple people = 1 player, e.g. assistance at trivia games.
- You scratch my back... and I won't scratch yours, e.g. gear swaps where there's no built-in mechanism.
- Making promises outside the rules and reneging, e.g. gentlemen's agreements in poker or EVE. Broader version of the above.
- Me and my friends are all top chaps, e.g. karma hacks.
So if people will be betting money there's more than just the technical issues to deal with. Some will probably fall in the "it was your own fault" category, e.g. if greedy players get scammed. Some could be moderation hell.
As far as my (admittedly confusing) suggestions regarding FPS games, I'll try to explain more. Below are two handsome stick-men which represent the idle model for a player. The first game the server moved the co-ordinates of the model down and left. The second game it moved the co-ordinates of the model up and right. In game one the server would compensate by telling the client that the player position is further up and right, which would leave the polygons nicely centred. In game two the server would compensate by telling the client that the player position is further down and left, which would also leave the polygons nicely centred. However an aim-bot which just used the co-ordinates of the player without correcting for the bias in the models would consistently miss shooting the player's head, and hit them in the arm instead. This bias would both make the aim-bot suck, and be statistically detectable by the server. A bot could be written to analyse the model geometry and estimate the offset, but a polygon soup can be obfuscated a bit, plus it may cause a noticeable delay detecting the bias. In addition, for distant players a model can be so low-polygon that it could be created and randomly offset at run-time, providing no time for those calculations without dropping the cheater's framerate from the extra load.
As far as the thing about them aiming too well, it's essentially using an auto-aiming system that is based on how people aim, e.g. the more distant the target, the faster the target moves, the less aiming time the player has, the harder it will be to hit. If the player is more accurate than the auto-aim would be, their aim is dumbed down to be as good as the auto-aim.
Anti botting design in combat systems?
Yeah.. I think it's easier to create something advanced like poker or magic the gathering because they are card games.. and RTS because it's just... so damn much thhings todo and control.
What about a FPS or RPG combat like world of warcraft? That's pretty hard to create somethign as advanced as a card game.
The last time I played online poker, it was actually rampant with bots. As a testament to their efficacy, poker sites say that bots give players an unfair advantage and banned them. Bots are also able to beat professional players: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_poker_players.
Actually, I am going to eat my words: it might not be harder to make bots for Magic: The Gathering and Starcraft than Chess or poker. There are probably so many more bots for chess and poker because they receive a lot of academic attention, and there is a lot more money involved. I work in a university mathematics department, and I am pretty sure a handful of professors and graduate students could easily build a Magic: The Gathering or Starcraft bot if sufficiently motivated.
So, I think if you are planning incorporate gambling into your game, people will certainly start trying to "beat the system" using bots. Unfortunately, I do not think it would be fruitful for you to think about how to design the mechanics of your game to prevent bots. The question of "why is it easier to bot in some games (e.g. Chess) but much more difficult in others (e.g. Go)" is complicated and highly technical. It is not as straight forward as "making the game more complex" because what is "complex" to a human might not be "complex" to a computer and vice versa.
Perhaps there is another approach.
Actually, I am going to eat my words: it might not be harder to make bots for Magic: The Gathering and Starcraft than Chess or poker. There are probably so many more bots for chess and poker because they receive a lot of academic attention, and there is a lot more money involved. I work in a university mathematics department, and I am pretty sure a handful of professors and graduate students could easily build a Magic: The Gathering or Starcraft bot if sufficiently motivated.
So, I think if you are planning incorporate gambling into your game, people will certainly start trying to "beat the system" using bots. Unfortunately, I do not think it would be fruitful for you to think about how to design the mechanics of your game to prevent bots. The question of "why is it easier to bot in some games (e.g. Chess) but much more difficult in others (e.g. Go)" is complicated and highly technical. It is not as straight forward as "making the game more complex" because what is "complex" to a human might not be "complex" to a computer and vice versa.
Computers offer a definite advantage in statistics (humans are terrible) and some advantage at exploring future outcomes (humans are more intuitive, computers are more precise). My suggestion is to look at games where (a) potential outcomes cannot be efficiently enumerated (b) a position part way through the game cannot be accurately scored or ( c) human psychology is a large factor in winning. For (a), combinatorial explosion or continuous (rather than discrete) domains are good. For (b)... hard to say. Very complex domains, incomplete knowledge, sudden game-changers. And ( c), things like betting work quite well. It can be hard to suck a human into betting when you want them to, and they may guess your betting strategy and use it as another conduit for information. Add in bluffs, double bluffs, etc, it gets complicated.
Botting is prevalent in every complexity of game. Here's a subscription based software for numerous 3d MMO's that killed a game I loved called Darkfall Online. If the game is any good to the point of items/accounts having real value, people will pay money to have an advantage. http://www.damncheaters.com/ Notice their "In Development" section has Diablo 3 and Tera Online.
That's a polished product that charges money to cheat in games, almost every game I've played has had small time 3rd party scripting programs created by players/guild leaders who pass it to their guildmates/friends.
That's a polished product that charges money to cheat in games, almost every game I've played has had small time 3rd party scripting programs created by players/guild leaders who pass it to their guildmates/friends.
[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][background=rgb(250, 251, 252)]We will assume that ALL of your playerbase are using the best bot available for the game. (even field)[/background]
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[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][background=rgb(250, 251, 252)]How do you think this would work out?[/background]
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Well, you'll achieve your goal of players playing on an even level... But let's try not assuming that if you allow players to use bots then every single one will use the same bot. Assuming the game is a deathmatch kind, and autoaim and a radar is something that's easy to implement, the real competition in bot AI will be in making the right decisions on when and where to go. Because when your bot and another bot face each other the winner is determined by damage/health ratio, a duel is pretty straightforward, but once a third bot is added in the equation your bot has a lot less chances of surviving another encounter since the third bot might take an opportunistic approach. In the end who's AI can take more variables into account and read the other bot's behaviour better is going to be the winner. Just like it is with poker bots.
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