All of you shut up and listen up :)

DeVore

Once again this is rumour control.


There is no cheating going on.

Celt is not cheating nor is he abusing the system.

The system is *flawed* in a way I wasnt aware of before and am kinda surprised at.

Celt (and others) are simply playing a (flawed) game to the best of their abilities. Most of you are just annoyed you didnt find them first if we were being honest

Clearly this cant continue as now Celt and to a lesser extent others can just wander around the systems beating the living **** out of anyone who gets in their way. This does not make for a good game, even for Celt I'm sure.

We need to find out *why* these ports exist and either publically declare where they are or get rid of them in the next round.

We need to reset and start again but give a lot of notice of when it will start again so people can be prepared for it and we need to decide what we are going to do with these dumb ports.

When I asked Celt what was going on he told me exactly what he was doing and even gave me the coords to go see for myself.

A game is played to the utmost limit of the rules to the best of your abilities, there is no such thing as "doing too good" if you are not cheating. That said this round is fatally flawed but its another learning experience for us.

For the moment, lets muck about and play the game until we figure out what we are going to do about them. Celt stay away from starting fights please. Lets see if theres anything else we can learn from this round before restarting.

If anyone can find out if this is a "feature" of the game I'd appreciate it. (ie: if this ****ed code or someones idea of a cute feature in the game).
Is there anyway to turn it off?

The game is opensource so we could fix it if we wanted to.

Sorry about this but I'm as surprised as you are but there's no point in hanging Celt for getting good trade routes, ridiculous as they are!

DeV.

Trojan

Originally posted by DeVore

There is no cheating going on.

Celt is not cheating nor is he abusing the system.

The system is *flawed* in a way I wasnt aware of before and am kinda surprised at.

Originally posted by www.boards.ie/blacknova/faq.html


The Rules

These are the official rules for the game. As this is a web based game it's fairly hard to enforce these rules.

1. You are not allowed to have multiple accounts. In other words, if you have more than one player in the game you are breaking the rules. A
s above, if you need two accounts to test a theory, host your own game. If you are caught with multiple accounts you can voluntarily self destr
uct all but one and keep playing that one or lose them all. Remember, the admin can always remove your player from the game.
2. No inheritance exploits. I have to define this one first. A certain player (ok, me) got caught doing this and argued that it wasn't reall
y cheating. Pretty much everyone on the forums agreed that he was full of crap and I do too. The deal is this. When you're new you get 200 turn
s. You can trade trade trade, leave the money somewhere safe and self destruct. Then sign on again with a new account and pick up the money. Ke
ep doing this and you get a really high score right off the bat. The trick is that everyone knows you're doing this because your score is way t
oo high for the low number of turns you have. There are measures being taken in the code to prevent this trick from being possible.
3. Please, no cursing in the beacons or the forums.
4. If you find a bug it is against the rules to exploit it. You must report it right away to the webmaster and preferably to the forums a
s well.

Seems pretty cut&dry to me...

Al.


[edit]tag fix[/edit]

GreenHell

The way I see it, the only way celt can be classed as a cheater is if he knew about the expliot when he started playing. Given the lack of complains on the blacknova boards about this exploit I doubt that it was common knowledge.

Dazzer

DeVore Logic has agreed to take a look at the code tonight and over the next few days to see if it can be removed from the code.

The bug occurs when a port as a huge amount of stock, altho the game is suppose put a limit on each and every port and hasa certain "regain" limit at which it regains stock.

I have managed to find 3 such ports, 2 of which I knew of because I used them myself unbe known to myself that it was a bug, I thought I was getting lucky The other one was at Rich and Celts home sector. I reduced the stock the three ports carry and it seemed to have fixed the problem.

Now I agree with yourself that if we can fix the bug the game should be allowed to be reset with due notice and with a little more knowledge of how to work the game.

I was'nt online yesterday and came back to see the game in a small bit of trouble so I was not too pleased and posted a message about it, please ignore it.

castie

Originally posted by DeVore

Celt (and others) are simply playing a (flawed) game to the best of their abilities. Most of you are just annoyed you didnt find them first if we were being honest

DeV.

got it in one.

but in my opinion these ports also make the game a bit more exciting as i spent a good deal of this morning looking for one to no avail :rolleyes:
Face it its only a little online game so the more exciting and entertaining it can be made the better.

DeVore

Noone knew about them in the first place, and anyone stumbling over them must have thought all his christmasses had come at once.

Muchos kudos to Logic if he can find the problem, I think a little varience would be nice to reward a diligent searcher but too much introduces a lot of luck into the game.

DeV.

castie

yea gwan logic we are all routing for you

Kraken

Yeah logic was kinda voluntered for it but he accepted he said if he gets the chance he might even change its apperance, so heres all rooting for logic.

Devore is bang on in what he said its not a cheat its a flaw, celt and a few others daz included took advantage of it but at the time were unaware of what exactly it was so just let it be, mess around for rest of round and hopefully it will be sorted for next reset

Celt

This does not make for a good game, even for Celt I'm sure.

Your right, anything I do now, be it attack or build planets will be atrributed to the "exploit" and not any person skills of mine, even if I attack someone doubtless I will get whined at.
That's why I havent spent any turns since then and will continue to do so.

Also getting whinged, heckled and moaned at for 5 hours on irc by a group of players who insist im exploiting a bug and a cheater IS NOT FUN.

Coyote

Originally posted by Celt

Also getting whinged, heckled and moaned at for 5 hours on irc by a group of players who insist im exploiting a bug and a cheater IS NOT FUN.

Celt I never said you were cheating.
All I said was you were exploiting a bug that made the game pointless and no fun.
1. It has been proven that it was a bug
2. You your self said you were exploiting it.
3. 99% of people who found out about it thought it was buggy code and not meant to be part of the game

And the reason people were annoying you were, you were being obscure about it.
You would not even tell people how you were making the credits, you could have told people that without telling them the port that you were doing it at.

I'm sure you will be one of the top 5 players if not the no.1 in the next round, but would it not have been more satisfying to win with out using buggy code to help you.

Coyote

Celt

Originally posted by Coyote


Celt I never said you were cheating.
All I said was you were exploiting a bug that made the game pointless and no fun.
1. It has been proven that it was a bug
2. You your self said you were exploiting it.
3. 99% of people who found out about it thought it was buggy code and not meant to be part of the game

And the reason people were annoying you were, you were being obscure about it.
You would not even tell people how you were making the credits, you could have told people that without telling them the port that you were doing it at.

I'm sure you will be one of the top 5 players if not the no.1 in the next round, but would it not have been more satisfying to win with out using buggy code to help you.

Coyote

Yes, you were the only one who didnt say I was cheating.

Devore said it was a "flaw", whether that makes it a bug or not I do not know.

Exploiting isnt bad.

No-one needed to be told, I had explained it fully to him and left it at that.

Also it turns out the rest of the top5 were doing a similar thing.

Coyote

Originally posted by Celt

Exploiting isnt bad.

your right exploiting isnt a bad thing by it's self
exploiting a bug is a bad thing.

Originally posted by Celt

Also it turns out the rest of the top5 were doing a similar thing.

funny you should say that, do you not think that the reson that they were the top five was becose they were exploiting the bug.
most of them were not top 5 players befor they started exploiting the bug. just some were better at exploiting it that others.

Celt

Originally posted by Coyote


your right exploiting isnt a bad thing by it's self
exploiting a bug is a bad thing.

I still dont see proof that it is a bug, did you see how Devore was hesistant to call it a bug?

funny you should say that, do you not think that the reson that they were the top five was becose they were exploiting the bug.
most of them were not top 5 players befor they started exploiting the bug. just some were better at exploiting it that others.

Actually, afaik they all would have been top5 anyway.

Coyote

they were not the top five players when the bug was found, yes they were high up but not in the top 5, then they became the top five players after the bug was found

Celt

Originally posted by Coyote
they were not the top five players when the bug was found, yes they were high up but not in the top 5, then they became the top five players after the bug was found

And you wonder why I got pissed off at you on irc? :rolleyes:

DeVore

in the tone of the new Penguin ads...

LEAVE IT!!!

DeV.

Kraken

ok im locking this post to stop any unnessary arguments. that and the fact that well Dev has final word and what ho posted at top was right so just leave it be.