BZe/1.5

[Psychedelic Rhino]

Ok. . .maybe a quick bit of BZ community history. . . or at least a bit of history from my perspective.

I think it was two main reasons the flock shunned BZE.

First it was 'out of their hands' for the most part. During BZE development a democratic approach was introduced. Many polls were taken about how and what might be tweaked, changed, or otherwise improved. Spock was just one vote. If you have learned anything of spock over these last two or three years, you certainly must have learned he doesn't tolerate having one vote.

Second, BZE is, and was, for all practical purposes unhackable. A data point of evidence is the flock would have hacked it and gloated if they had discovered a way to do so. Spock and Spork dipped in very briefly and disappeared. IMHO, they found they were going to have to rely on skill, and it soured the experience for them. There was no way spock was going to allow himself to be seen as an average to poor player.

They said this and that was 'different from 1.4'. . . that they didn't like the changes from the 'pure BZ'. We've seen that hyperbole exposed many times over with their playing of BZ1.5 and its changes, as well as the changes he incorporated to his 1.4 installer. His removal of 911 server from his servers.dat over the years should make it clear his confidence in a fair comparison in the two games is non-existent.

As well, spock being banned from the 911 1.4 session probably played a part in his bitterness. And that is probably the largest bit of anecdotal evidence of his hypocrisy. Spock played on the 911 server for several years till his antics reached a crescendo and he was finally excluded. Firbir had incredible patience. Magnitudes more patience I would have had if I had run the server. So spock had little choice but to start his own server, claiming banning would end. Again, if you knew the history, you'd know the banning began almost immediately, and for extremely immature "reasons". . . posting to another forum, playing BZE, discussing BZE in his lobby, etc.

All ancient history for those that played BZ from around 2004. So now BZ1.5 is basically crippled, stuck at hovering around 4 to 10 in the lobby at any particular time. A handful of kids willing to stomach the fanatic hunger for control.

[Sporkinator]

Second, BZE is, and was, for all practical purposes unhackable.

Battlezone 1.5 got the exact same protection, and a hacker known as "TanadrineStudios" hacked it. BZ 1.5 being hacked is therefore equivalent to BzE being hacked. Therefore, indirectly, BzE has been hacked. Your argument is invalid.

BzE was a failure due to unnecessarily changing the game. The cost of many units were increased for no reason, etc. I'm not going to discuss it all here, if you want to know, you can read old threads on http://www.battlezone1.org.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

Battlezone 1.5 got the exact same protection, and a hacker known as "TanadrineStudios" hacked it. BZ 1.5 being hacked is therefore equivalent to BzE being hacked. Therefore, indirectly, BzE has been hacked.

Your argument is invalid.

Spork suggests some kind of fictitious large community of anonymous hackers.

. . .ya gotta love the kid.

[HitchcockGreen]

Second, BZE is, and was, for all practical purposes unhackable.

Battlezone 1.5 got the exact same protection, and a hacker known as "TanadrineStudios" hacked it. BZ 1.5 being hacked is therefore equivalent to BzE being hacked. Therefore, indirectly, BzE has been hacked. Your argument is invalid.

BzE was a failure due to unnecessarily changing the game. The cost of many units were increased for no reason, etc. I'm not going to discuss it all here, if you want to know, you can read old threads on http://www.battlezone1.org.

BZ 1.5 was hackable because there was an ongoing discussion on how to do it.
BzE uses different encryption keys for it's assets, so no, hacking 1.5 doesn't mean BzE is hacked.
Also; your logic is fundamentally flawed.

BzE is different because that's what some people wanted. In the end it wasn't a democratic process in which all opinions were to be solicited and incorporated. Nothing gets done that way.
But that's ok, because there was and still is 1.4, TRO, and 1.5 to play.
That BzE is considered "virus ridden" or "hacked" or whathaveyou by the BZ1.org group nearly a decade later speaks volumes of BzE's 'failure.'

If what you claim were truly the case, there'd be an equal number of discussions ongoing or archived about the failure of the 1.8 "patch."

[Zax]

For any bz2 players reading this thread: I was labeled "BZ2 Player" as my forum 'personal message' the same way some guys are labeled griefer here. This was considered a bad thing, a star of david for me. Heh, those were fun days you had with roboto!

[Psychedelic Rhino]

IMHO 1.8 was a, "Ya know what would be cool?" mindset, with almost no concern for balance or game-play. I still have 1.8 on a CD somewhere.

[HitchcockGreen]

IMHO 1.8 was a, "Ya know what would be cool?" mindset, with almost no concern for balance or game-play. I still have 1.8 on a CD somewhere.

I have a copy too, just for the sake of archiving. I remember playing it a couple of times way back when but, yeah...

For any bz2 players reading this thread: I was labeled "BZ2 Player" as my forum 'personal message' the same way some guys are labeled griefer here. This was considered a bad thing, a star of david for me. Heh, those were fun days you had with roboto!

Griefer. Hadn't seen that one. Been a "Dummy" and a "Hacker" and made the "Wall of Shame" so there you go.

[Sporkinator]

BZ 1.5 was hackable because there was an ongoing discussion on how to do it.
BzE uses different encryption keys for it's assets, so no, hacking 1.5 doesn't mean BzE is hacked.

Like you would know. There is no such discussion. In a hidden section, we told Ken how 1.4 was hacked and he fixed it all for 1.5, using what I heard is Tug's code, the same code you have in your BzExperimentation sandbox.

Encrypted assets? Very funny. Encryption on the ZFS which can be totally bypassed with Ken's MakeZFS must be really secure! Besides, any amount of encryption won't stop hackers because the assets have to be decrypted at some point just for the game to load them. In addition, Tanadrine probably didn't even need the assets, it's possible that he hacked the game itself and bypassed the entire protection, and then just changed anything he wanted to right in memory. I don't know what he did or how he did it, but that's a good thing. Like I said, BzE and 1.5 have the same protection. BzE has indirectly been hacked. The only reason BzE hasn't been hacked directly is because it doesn't even have players, much less anybody with any computer knowledge above "script kiddie".

[HitchcockGreen]

heh Thought script kiddie was more your bag, Spork.
But I guess you've graduated from those days, eh?

As for 'hidden sections' I guess all we have is your word, right Spork? Can't say I think that carries much value.

And if you can't say how the game was hacked at all with any certainty, you can't say that you know BzE was even indirectly hacked.

But let's just cut off the food supply for this troll, shall we? He's only here for one reason and it's painfully obvious.

[Zax]

IMHO 1.8 was a, "Ya know what would be cool?" mindset, with almost no concern for balance or game-play. I still have 1.8 on a CD somewhere.

I have a copy too, just for the sake of archiving. I remember playing it a couple of times way back when but, yeah...

For any bz2 players reading this thread: I was labeled "BZ2 Player" as my forum 'personal message' the same way some guys are labeled griefer here. This was considered a bad thing, a star of david for me. Heh, those were fun days you had with roboto!

Griefer. Hadn't seen that one. Been a "Dummy" and a "Hacker" and made the "Wall of Shame" so there you go.

Did you archive a copy of biohazard bzone or battlesoliders?

That would be epic if you did. He disappeared off the face of the map (though showed up to make one (1) post in bzc before leaving forever) taking it all with him.

[HitchcockGreen]

Did you archive a copy of biohazard bzone or battlesoliders?

Biohazard I think I had a copy of - not sure if I still do. Lots of my original collection was lost in a hard drive crash about 8 years ago. I'd have to double check. Battlesoldiers; pretty sure i don't have that one.

[Zax]

Uhg. I'm pretty sure I have it on a HD but it was probably stripped for parts. Shame, really, was one of the first original, awesome mods there was. Fury Factory or some such thing that crashed the game sporadically, the American Outpost which was incorrectly textured but spawned flash beam pilots, airborne armada, and that really weird single player mission I didn't understand. Good stuff.

Ah, and who could forget the Cthonian armada, where all those prop buildings were made to fire shoot.

Or my favorite: Attack. You know the one- cost 100 scrap, played alarms as it was being built, etc.

[Apollo]

Actually Spork, how would you know, BzE has more protection than 1.5 and it was coded differently.
I don't count Kens zfs tool auto ungarbling the assets as a hack. I've made many changes since then and a data build is required for the next round of security changes.

I don't consider anything unhackable, if a man made it, another man can break it. Nothing is 100% secure, it's just a matter of how hard it is to break the security.

In 1.5 Tanadrine changes memory for the weapon and vehicle odf, you was supposed to check that stuff and report to Ken SPORK, you had an EPIC FAIL! (as you like to so colorfully say it or was it the cake was a lie?)

Personally i wouldn't be concerned with 1.5 security with open assets, you need to lock it down and allow mod switching so people create new assets without overridding the original assets.

Also cost changes came from both Spock and I while we talked about what changes to try out. As far as changes go, i think the 1.5 APC changes ruined strat.

[Apollo]

For any bz2 players reading this thread: I was labeled "BZ2 Player" as my forum 'personal message' the same way some guys are labeled griefer here. This was considered a bad thing, a star of david for me. Heh, those were fun days you had with roboto!

What happen to the roboto book that was supposed to be released? I must have missed it or you never got around to it.
Come to think of it, GBD released some funny stuff, i never did get a chance to read it all.

[Apollo]

Yes the little dictator has to label his subjects.