El Trial4Lyfe Dev Blog(type thing).
Sup. So this is long overdue. My application was put into the trial phase some time ago. The reason as to why I'm still on trial is because I was unable to put hours into Gunz for two weeks or so after originally being put on trial. Real work comes first, unfortunately, and a new version of Angular came out and I was tasked to update all previous works to the new RC. My trial period is set to end when my code gets pushed to a live update, which I'm being told is somewhat soon.
That being said, on to what I've been doing.
As a lot of you are aware, GunZ is an old game. Very old. Original development started anywhere between 1999 and 2002. The earliest date I've been able to find in the source code is sometime in 1999. With that in mind, understand that Gunz is not a game that is inherently secure. There really is no end-all be-all way of "patching" hacks. There is, however, ways of detecting them. Along with that, I've made recent strides in making FGunZ in particular, harder to debug. The operative word here is "harder". While I am confident this will completely stop low to mid-level developers from having free-reign on the game, I am not as confident that those at a higher level of skill will be completely stopped.
With the new system being developed and implemented, these developers are going to have a rougher time. That's not to say that the game will not have those questionable few, it will. But they'll be few and far between in comparison to past iterations of the game.
This is a decade old if not more cat & mouse game that will never come to an end. The cheat developers will always be at an advantage, leaving people like Jeff, Silent, Linear, and I, fighting an uphill battle. But it's one that we're willing to keep on fighting.
I want to move in a direction that lets the dev team focus more on new features, and less on preventing cheats. Which is why I'm not going to focus on patching individual cheats. All patches will be applied in as broad of a manner as possible. Meaning a single runnable won't be targeted by any one patch.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you have nothing to worry about, you do. People will always find a way to give themselves an advantage. S1lent has made some really cool features that will both prevent certain issues, as well as improve game play at its' core. I hope that's something that you guys get excited for.
The bottom line is this: If you cheat, you will be banned. It doesn't matter if the person you bought from promised you it was "unpatchable" because it doesn't touch the Gunz process. I promise you, it is.
On a side note, I'd like to encourage players to report more often. As I'm confident in what's being developed, there's no reason to not do manual inspections when players feel they are necessary. Don't be afraid to make a report. If making a thread with clips and screenshots seems like too much work for a report, please understand that making a report is something that directly benefits both you, and the game.
