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Ok, fair enough Terl, Damoose. I only wanted to put my opinion out too.
        
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#13862
by Citizen Weyrleader - 6/25/2004 2:01:10 PM
I would like to clarify my position, as it seems to be lost in the heat of discussion. I do not condone cheating. When rules are clear what a cheat is, then cheating should be punished to ultimate. If rules are not clear, then I think there is room for mercy and clarification of what took place, with the final judge, namely Stardock, making the decision if the action was a cheat.
But so far the only person who has put forth a reasonable position on what took place is Renegade. Loth, unfortunately, left with out much enlightment. Stardock has made statements that are difficult to reconcile with Renegade. In the extreme, Renegade either cheated and is now lying about what he did, or Stardock doesn't really know what happened other than something was done (seems to be a reasonable interpretation of the statement of Frogboy).
My position is not to judge Renegade on what he did, but to understand what was done so that, if it is decided by Stardock to be a cheat, then it can be fixed. Leaving a hole as big as what Renegade found is not good programing practice for any game, but especially if you make a public game with an added incentive for getting high scores.
As I said before, there are at least two fixes, and maybe three. 1. Don't allow mods with the same name of functions that are part of the basic game. 2. Imbed the mod and its characteristics in the save game so that any mod to a mod made during a game has no effect. 3. Don't allow mods at all. There are probably other good solutions to this problem that many can come up with.
Again, I am not sideing with Renegade, although I do not think him guilty of what he has been charged with. That is not to imply that he did not cheat, that has yet to really be determined by Stardock after they understand what has been done. I would like to see someone do some experiements an examin the binary save game files before and after the modified process as explained by Renegade. I looked at a saved game and an endgame save. Games saved during the game do not contain the same information that the endgame save contains. At least I could not find certain things that I would have thought to be common to both types of save files. But I did not spend a lot of time looking nor do I know the basic save file format, although it does not appear to be to difficult to figure out. But Stardock could perform these experiments and perhaps involve some of their trusted GalCiv players, such as Dream Warrior, or others to review what they did. A full report would be great, but I don't expect that we would see one. At a minimum, Dream Warrior, or others chosen by Stardock, could vouch for what was done and the results.
       
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| Now agree to disagree and lets see if we cannot solve that whole world peace thing. |
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Hear hear! For Honor and Justice!
Just to be on the record, IMNSHO, Renegade cheated. He knew he was getting around a flag set to detect an anamolous score, else he would have let the modification stand. In that respect, I think he must even know himself that what he was doing was wrong. Otherwise, I would imagine that he would be braging about it to the Meta, at least in hints.
What Renegade claimes doesn't add up with what Brad and the audit claim are the condeming edivence. I don't know how to reconsile this, except with Stardock releasing more information than they have to date. This also is the case with Lothmorg. Unfortunatly, Loth has declined to press his case. We may simply never know, and are forced to accept one of three conclusions. 1) Loth really did cheat, and knows that pressing his case is a lost cause. 2) Stardock unfairly persecuted one of our friends and drove him away. 3) There is some mistake on the part of the audit process that puts all of us at risk for being branded cheaters unfairly. None of these conclusions are particularly savory to any of us, so we continue to mourn, vent, rage and squabble for another alternative, or to accept whichever of the above three disturbs us least.
Which brings me to my point. You all have meant a lot to me these last few months. We have shared laughs through what has for me been some trying times. Please don't let this tear us apart.
   
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| I also find it refreshing that we can have real opinions and share them openly without fear of someone running away because they disagree. |
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May that always continue to be the case! 
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He is still using the editor to alter the files used by the game. The mod passes parameters to the game, change the mod, change the parameters. The binary files weren't changed but the other files that supported the gameplay were. 
