Yea it would be cool but I think people would definitely abuse it. You would need like moderators watching it at all times.
I was just about to say that. I can't say there is a good way about it, but since you need to be online for the market to work anyway, you could keep the cars online too. But that means that if you have a online save, and you don't have internet access, you won't be able to play. I don't know if you want the career to be online-only but personally I don't mind as long as I can play the rest of the game or use an offline save. I've been trying to figure something out for about 10 minutes and I can't think of anything, everything requires you to tell the server, and even then you can hack it by telling a server you have x and y
hmmm, well, you could have the files go through a verifacation system or something, (no, it doesnt include any files) i was thinking more along the lines of, that when you seel a car in the used cars shop, the game checks some sort of hidden registry or log or something that lists who the car the file was last edited by, for example, lets say, id like to sell a gavril marshal that needs a realignment in the tires, when i tell the game that, it reads the file, and reads who it was last edited by, so if it was edited by, the game itself, then it connects to the used cars shop server or whatever, and adds the listing for the car, however, if it was edited by notepad (or whatever program youll have to use to edit vehicle torqe and such when making cars for beamng, or making personal car mods) then the game wont add the listing for vehicle, of course, if its an offical mod, or you have permission from the original creator of the vehicle (which, knowing gabester, he probably wouldnt give permission for releasing a mod for any of his vehicles) gives permission to that person to upload it (oh, and for even more security, have the online server check the file as well)(oh, and also, mabey make it so that only windows and beamng can edit the file that its reading from) and as for how they would give permission, well, scince the server would most likeley be online, just have some part of the listing site that you can type the name of whoever your giving permission to,(case sensitive? idk), and then the exact name of the vehicle zip(or whatever it is)(this part being case sensitive for sure) that there allowing the mod forand of course, if someone somehow still manages to get a manually changed vehicle that shouldnt be allowed to be listed, listed, then of course, a report vehicle button, as well as moderaters and admins being able to remove themso, what do you guys think?tl;dr:theres a verifacation system that checks a file to see if its valid or not, if it is, then it sends the listing info to the used cars shop server
It's not that easy. Any program ran by you will have the same permissions as your user, so if you can't write files, your program can't too. The best would probably be to use a custom file, that won't be easily read(completely unreadable by notepad), and including a sort of timestamp in it (windows keeps it own, so having this one and the windows one would mean you can check against it). The other thing that comes to mind is just using cheat engine to give yourself money, it's impossible to stop that if you got a save on the client, unless you keep making dynamic instances of the variable
hmmmm then have it be a custom file like you said (as for cheat engine, youd still have to figure out which value is the correct one, so it shouldnt be to much of a problem when the game is first realeased or whenever this feature is first added(if its added)) with Kamil_'s custom file change to the verifacation file system idea, what do you guys think about it now?
What if you bought a one of a kind car that wins a lot of races and feels special, then when your ready to part with your pride and joy to upgrade you list how much races it has won/loss the damage it has had and repaired, and the overall time you've spent with it. The buyer then feels that the car has history and pedigree and isn't some generic polygons that you will drive around a racetrack. (Kind of like what GRID did with buying used cars from the ebay store)
Ever used cheat engine? It takes about 5 minutes to find a "money" value Oh...GRID...I remember the ebay store. But this idea is a nice one too, you could see what the car did and what beating it took
Windows timestamps whenever a file is last edited, doesn't it? So what you could do is have the game log what time it starts, and apply any of the changes stored in a "temporary" folder to the main .truck files, and then dump the ones in the temp folder. It would also do this when the game is quit, with the check on startup being a failsafe in case the game crashed. Process: 1.) Game starts 2.) Game checks last timestamps to see if they match its last valid timestamp. (If a car is found to have an invalid timestamp, it is flagged as being inelligible for auction or use in campaign mode, sandbox mode remains unaffected) 3.) Game writes all files (if any) from temp folder to permanent .truck files, saves timestamp, clears temp folder, logs number and names of trucks 4.) game initiates a lockfile which prevents anything but the game from editing these files while it is running (unless one is left over from a gamecrash) 5.) Game finishes loading, is playable. 5b.) Autosaves/manual saves redo steps 1-3, autosaves during menu or intro cutscenes to prevent random stutter 6a, Game is shut down properly) Game writes temp files to trucks, saves timestamp, clears temp folder, logs number and names of trucks, and closes 6b, Game crashes out) Game does not timestamp or dump temp folder, these will be checked next time on startup All mods will be used exclusively sandbox mode, unless tagged by a dev for being balanced enough for career mode, and then will be downloadable from an ingame mod showroom, with a tag for use in career mode. Additionally, on starting a career save, the player could choose between accessing the community auction house, or using an ingame equivalent where the condition of a car is randomly generated, and algorithms determine it's price based on those variables. (with a random factor thrown on at the end so two pigeons genereated in the same state won't cost the same thing) and will cycle in and out after a while. This would be for "legit" players, or those w/o reliable internet, while the auction house would be more for people wanting to have fun. TL/DR Use timestamps to produce a fairly secure saving system that does not hinder mods.
"Edit" the last file to give it a new timestamp, change the new file to what you want. It will load the new file thinking its crashed. But, going all into detail about it, it should stop atleast a few people and they would have no idea what was wrong.
The timestamp is something created by Windows when a file is saved, based on the system's clock. Rightclick on any document and click properties. Not easy to change at all. (requires downloading a 3rd party program, some of which aren't safe, and others that don't really work right.) As for the timestamp the game keeps, this could be encrypted, as non-cheaters wouldn't have any reason to touch it, because mods would only be locked from use in anything with the economy (the auction house, online campaign mode scoreboards, money won). They would still be usable in sandbox and quick race modes, as well as campaigns that were started in "offline" mode (auction house is procedurally generated instead of referencing the BeamNG database, no online scoreboards) and multiplayer servers (provided they have a setting like "checklegalcars" disabled or soomething). The only people who would NEED to change it would be those with a genuine interest in cheating and ruining the "game" aspect of the game. Plus, with this, I hate to say it, DRM stopping the majority of cheaters, it would mean the devs and future moderators could hunt down the cheaters that do get through more quickly and effectively, most likely before they do any real damage to the economy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------EDIT------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another idea I had, and mentioned in my previous posts but didn't explain is Online/Offline campaigns. It would be an option selected when creating a new save. A player could only have one online campaign at a time, tied to their forum/BeamNG account, but an infinite number of "offline" ones. The online one would access global scoreboards and the auction house, as well as the entire fluctuating user economy. Instead of having a local money value, the user's "Wallet" would be tied to their account. (No sense in not throwing cloudsave in there too because if you're playing online mode, you have an internet connection.) The offline variant would instead have a procedurally generated auction house, and local scoreboards, in addition to accessing a local economy on the player's save instead of the global one. "Cheating" in any sense would be allowed for offline mode as it can't hurt the global economy, but modded cars would be locked out of online mode to prevent people form making a clone army of Ibshu Pigeons that go 3 googol km/h and selling them for 1 BeamBuck apiece. Online servers could have an official/unofficial option. Official servers (run by devs or moderators) would access your online campaign data and the races would have economy based winnings. Unofficial servers would most likely be run by users, and behave in a sandbox or quick race type mode. The person(s) running the server could choose whether or not they would allow modded cars or collisions in the configuration file. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------EDIT---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TL/DR It would be kind of like cheat codes in some games, where it just won't let you make any progress while using the selected cheat. The game would still be playable, but any modes that would relate to online progress (economy, online campaign/auction house) would have the car in question locked out. Additionally, there could be two time scoreboards per track, one composed solely of legitimate game cars, and one for all of the cars, legit and modded in.
you do realize that thats basicly the same thing i just said, just my version being more secure, by having the game itself write to a file, the last time it edited a certain car, and if the last time it edited a certain car is the same as what windows dectected it last being edited, then the game will send the listing info to the used cars shop server, and of course, having the server itself check the file (with permission from the owner of the comuter that's attempting to add a listing to the server)
So if this whole thing indeed gets implemented at some point, say we'll also be able to do engine-swaps in already deformed cars... (In theory that would be possible, since it would just place the new engine nodes where they would be if the car was new, even if the whole engine compartment was crushed, with the games logic that would still be possible, probably, since it would just connect the beams the same way...) So say I "buy" a used Grand Marshal that's slightly dented and want to drop a self-made engine in there that I originally designed for another car... Let's just say that unfortunately I need to edit some files to make it all work because in this case the node-names weren't the same... After editing said files, the time Windows detected the file last being edited, and the time the game detected it last being edited, wouldn't be the same anymore... How would that sort of situation be solved?
Well this would only be in career mode, where you don't make your own cars like that. You'd buy them, buy the parts, and let the game put them on for you.
Exactly. And you could still use it in career mode if when you started your save you had the game randomly generate a local economy for offline play instead of using the "real" economy. There shouldn't be a reason people aren't allowed to "cheat" in singleplayer, and it would still be usable in any of the "arcade" modes (quickrace and sandbox, for example). And another thing, modders could earn a special status, like invited, that allows modders to submit mods to the devs for balance testing and possibly earning the mod a tag in the game that allows it to be used in online career mode and the global economy. Also, I do remember gabester saying somewhere that nodenames aren't as important as they were in RoR.
Wouldn't it be easier to just manage the "Online Career Mode" cars by storing them on BeamNG's servers (if this mode is ever made, that is)? Since people won't play this mode when offline for obvious reasons , there is no point in storing the cars and their status on local computers. This way avoids any type of modification to the files and simplifies the protection needed for the actual files. It has been done in pretty much any Free-to-play game so that players would spend their parents' cash on having "the good stuff" and not just cheating to get it, except on BeamNG it would only simplify the used car dealership so that no player would get an insane amount of profit from exploiting it.
But you don't seem to realise how much that server would cost. A market type of thing, is just a few queries, a full online game, that handles over 5000 players at once is a HUGE thing to do. It would be better off making it an MMO than doing an online career.
Please, don't get wrong, I'm not saying there must be such game mode, I was just proposing a much simpler way to handle an used vehicle marketplace without complicated anti-modding features, even if such system is used only for this task, without any kind of multiplayer capabilites.
