Hi davidc!

In your next version of Gootool, could you add some sort of functionality that strips the pers2.dat file of extra information related to modified levels after they have been uninstalled or disabled? Trouble is, as people add more custom levels they collect more goo, and although it doesnt appear on the leaderboards for levels, it does however appear on the leaderboard for total goos collected (something I'm trying to get to the top of at the moment  ;)) - people are pulling 50-100 goos out of custom levels and shooting up the ranks!

[quote author=Tair link=topic=1105.msg7658#msg7658 date=1230035256]
Hi davidc!

In your next version of Gootool, could you add some sort of functionality that strips the pers2.dat file of extra information related to modified levels after they have been uninstalled or disabled? Trouble is, as people add more custom levels they collect more goo, and although it doesnt appear on the leaderboards for levels, it does however appear on the leaderboard for total goos collected (something I'm trying to get to the top of at the moment  ;)) - people are pulling 50-100 goos out of custom levels and shooting up the ranks!


Ya i did a extra level once and got 10 and like now i do it on another profile but I didn't realize back then that it would change anything.

I can't really force this on people. As the simplest example, load a level with 100 balls in it, complete it, then never run GooTool again - it has no opportunity to remove the extra balls.

That said, the leaderboards on goofans.com (from the profile upload feature coming in gootool 0.10) only include core levels.

The best way to fix this for the official leaderboard would be in the World of Goo client itself I'm afraid.

[quote author=davidc link=topic=1105.msg7691#msg7691 date=1230059486]
The best way to fix this for the official leaderboard would be in the World of Goo client itself I'm afraid.


...rooooooooon!?! kyyyyyyyle?!!

[quote author=davidc link=topic=1105.msg7691#msg7691 date=1230059486]I can't really force this on people. As the simplest example, load a level with 100 balls in it, complete it, then never run GooTool again - it has no opportunity to remove the extra balls.
I'm not sure if it's desirable, but you could disable internet access in the updated profile; you copy all the data including profiles anyway. That wouldn't prevent users from re-enabling it, of course, but it would at least prevent unintended disruption of the leaderboard.

This would probably make more sense if you didn't include the official levels in the copied game. If you would replace all the islands entirely (so there are only custom levels available) then people would be inclined to use the offical game to play official levels and appear on the leaderboard, and use the modded version (launched through Gootool) to play custom levels.

Note that it's not just about custom levels; Goo-mods can affect regular levels too. If I try out a cool anti-gravity mod (perfectly legitimate, in my opinion) I might be able to achieve scores impossible in the official game; however, since profile data persists, my profile will forever be tainted with these bogus scores. It might be preferable to keep these scores out of the official leaderboards.

If you do want to include official levels (that would be a requirement to test the aforementioned hypothetical anti-gravity mod on some real levels) maybe GooTool could rename them, so they have a different id? (Just add a prefix or something to the level id.) This would ensure that scores aren't misinterpreted as obtained in the official game (so this wouldn't ruin the leaderboard even if people use crazy mods on official levels).

Disabling internet access wouldn't really work because they can turn it on again within the game. Also bear in mind that the game played through GooTool uses the same pers2.dat file as normal so removing the main game levels wouldn't help. And you can also run the custom World of Goo directly, not just through "Save and Launch"

I was toying for a while with preventing goomods from overriding "Drained" balls to prevent messing around with the wogc towers. But you quickly get into a whole load of things that shouldn't be overridden if online is enabled, but should if the user wants to play around. Plus there's nothing stopping them editing these files by hand anyway.

wogeditor already prevents users editing the game levels, gootool could do the same but again this would only apply to distributed goomod files, it wouldn't prevent anyone making changes themselves.

If I were 2dboy I'd loop through all the loaded resource files for a level, feed them all into md5, and submit the final md5 with the score. Then only official releases would (easily) register.

I think that would be the only way to reliably protect the leaderboards from mods, though it still wouldn't stop people doing http posts by hand or whatever.

Ah, I forgot the profile isn't copied. But still, renaming official levels seems like a good idea, even if it doesn't solve the total-balls-collected problem.

Note that I'm not talking about preventing cheaters from being able to submit bogus scores; that's just impossible. I'm just saying that right now it's way too easy to for an honest user to accidentally mess up his profile, and once an invalid high score is in the profile, it's impossible to get it out (at least for casual users).

Yeah but it becomes hard to decide where to draw the line.

For example, there are mods that modify Drained ball images.

So I could say, you can modify the Drained image but not the xml files. But what happens if one of those adds a graphic part but doesn't change the physics of the ball (take a look at XmasProduct for exactly that; I chose to not override the main ball in this case).

Numerous examples abound.

Now I think you're suggesting that when I build the custom World of Goo, I rename all the levels so none of the originals are left. That's a pretty hairy prospect, they're referenced in all sorts of places, chapter xml, and even I suspect in parts of the code. I could look into this but I suspect it might be opening a whole new set of headaches.

I'll have a think about it anyway.

Sure, I understand if you have other plans that have a higher priority to you. I was just thinking aloud, and I do agree that this problem would have been better solved in the client. Still, you've been more prolific than Ron & Kyle over the past month, so it was worth a shot to bring the issue to your attention. ;)

[quote author=davidc link=topic=1105.msg7706#msg7706 date=1230067415]
Disabling internet access wouldn't really work because they can turn it on again within the game.


comodo firewall, deny access :)