/agdg/ - Amateur Game Development General

>>18476

>is there any way to get data locally stored without much cheating going around

Absolutely not. If you have ANYTHING depend on the user, assume they can supply whatever values they want (such as how D3's AH was abused

AWS EC2 microinstance is free for first year, though it's really really low end

Only thing I can think of is verification on the opposing client the information isn't bogus and even that can easily be falsely reported to get the other person thrown out

Depends how much it matters, for instance, online versus it's a nightmare scenario, but if it's a game like Payday in the way it's set-up you don't need to care about cheating. Cheaters gonna cheat, just don't play with them if that's not your thing.

Mind you, cheating was rampant in Payday 2, I personally cheated but only in the skillpoints, allowing me to easily switch between classes after what was required (opposed to being stuck being able to play one role and that's that unless you respec constantly). Playing mostly with a single friend, it actually improved my gaming experience.

Without any infrastructure you're stuck with peer-to-peer matchmaking and direct IP joining, which again isn't that bad if it's a coop game, people adapt to that if the game is good, but effectively the worst thing available for online versus, and you'll need to get your game on Steam or something to avoid hosting files yourself. Well, if you get it on Steam, you can use them as the matchmaking service, which would be a severe improvement.

>>18476

Is your game online-only? If so you can store things server-side or if for some reason you really want to store data on their machine you can encrypt it.

>>18480

Well, I guess I should give some more info. I'm developing this game in UE4, and I planned to have a server-client type online, and it's online versus. Thing is, I intended for the community to hold the responsibility for hosting servers, since, well, infrastructure. Getting the game in Steam will take quite a while.

>>18503

It's online only, yes. How could I do such a thing on UE4?

Bump. I could use some more intel on this issue.

>>18516

>>18628

>I have no experience with netcode

>Please tell me in detail how to design a game that is reliant on solid netcode

Where do you people come from?

This is an issue that plagues any online game. If you are going to run a standard client-source module, you need to have skill with protecting memory and observing intrusions. Or you could run something like PunkBuster, I guess.

But since you don't, I would very strongly recommend a web-based model, where the browser can act like a dumb terminal, meaning it's only for input/output. (Or some kind of client, like OnLive.)

But yeah. Publish to web, serve as webpage. You aren't going to be able to do this.

"Help, I'm not a plumber but I need to replumb my whole house without risk of any leaks! How do I do this?" (This is how this sounds to us.)

>>18640

I wasn't asking for concrete and detailed shit, I was just asking if there is an alternate way to deal with storing data with near to none infrastructure. There's no need to get cocky to tell me that there's no way to store data locally without lots of cheating happening. Thanks.

>>18640

You seem to know some things about netcode. How did you learn? I will eventually need netcode for my game (long time off for now) and I'm willing to invest a lot of time into learning.

Storing the data serverside doesn't magically make your game secure, you can't trust anything the client tells you.

If you just trust the client, and store what it sends you then it's no different to storing things locally.

OP here. I've advanced quite a bit in my game since I created this thread, and there is some infrastructure that I can use for free. Steam offers some, as >>18480 said. Through that, I could implement a server list. I only needed to copy and paste some lines in an .ini file. But using Steam to store item ownership is a different level. I haven't seen anything similar on the documentation.