JoWie

Two updates for the fungal mage: The slayer reward is 120xp per kill. And sprinkling neem oil is only temporary. When you sprinkle the neem oil, its leaves disappear, but after a few seconds they will regrow and you can sprinkle the neem oil again.

Here's a missing slayer assignment for duradal

Try replacing "ElseIf" with "If" in the subroutine "btnTotal_Click"

Doesn't matter. Since Jagex's product is used in the US, they can be sued in a US court. Yes, but the ramifications for losing such a lawsuit are a lot less severe. They can not be fined or shut down. One thing that could happen though, is the seizure of their domain (.com, .org, .net, et cetera belongs to the US), this has happened before.

A few points: Runescape has the same rights as any other program ran under your user. Normally, java applets that are ran inside the browser are sandboxed and are very restricted. However java applications can be signed and request the user for more privileges (the "yes/no/always trust jagex" dialog you see the first time you load up runescape). You can then do everything other applications can by either executing another program or by using a Java Native Interface library. Software patents are illegal in the UK (and the rest of the EU) Personally I am against software like punkbuster and warden because of the privacy issues. I've played americas army years ago and punkbuster would take screenshots and send them to the server you are playing on. Some servers would even give a public link, which let everyone read in on your xfire conversations. Bot writers could simply supply a virtual machine image which has only the bare minimums to run runescape. This would allow the average user to circumvent such anti-cheat software.

Im a teenage adult (almost 19 ;)) and I say Jagex chooses money over upholding fair gameplay. I can state the reasons if you want but you should just read the first 2 pages of the Community Management Questions thread, young and old people recognize that Jagex is doing a pretty poor job at keeping the game fair and making sure that cheaters dont prosper. I am not saying they are doing things right, but to my opinion some people are going way to far. My comment was more directed to people acting like Jagex set the world on fire. When I said "teenage kids" I did not mean actual age, it was trying to describe behavior (by the way, I am only ~2 years older then you :lol:) Personally I would like to see more transparency and see them take more effort to cross the gap between them and the players.

I think it is a bit harsh to constantly say jagex only does everything for the money. A healthy, profitable business does not have to mean you throw away your core values. A lot of people in the company probably enjoy what they are doing, it could be really discouraging to constantly hear those negative statements from teenage kids.

Based on ^this^ analysis, then I qualify as a bot. :rolleyes: Seems legit, reported. Also, over the past 5 months i've been performing my own tests. 100% of people at bandits are bots, and this is true fact based on scientific statistical logic. What P-value did you use for your null-hypothesis test? :D

Here is a random event to illustrate some of the previous ideas: You get teleported away by a guard which instructs you to identify a pickpocketer using a magic orb (like a security camera). You are shown the pickpocketer from a front and side angle (randomized appearance). When you look through the orb you will see a random location in a town of runescape from a high angle viewpoint (a precompiled list of possible locations will have to be made, this list is only known to the server). Here you will see a bunch of NPC's facing random directions at random locations, one of them is the pickpocketer. The orb will show the location as a image generated by the server of a fixed size (probably a interlaced jpeg). The viewpoint has to be rotated and zoomed, the pickpocketer could initially be off-screen. When completely zoomed out, the camera can be rotated (the amount of rotation per button click is slightly randomized), otherwise a reset button has to be pressed. Clicking anywhere on the image will center on that location and zoom a step (new image is sent). When the maximum zoom is reached, a button can be pressed to confirm that you have identified the pickpocketer. When completely zoomed out, every X seconds the pickpocketer (and other npc's) will move and you will receive a new image. For added difficulty, random weather effects such as rain, leaves, snow, shadows could be added. When completely zoomed in, the pickpocketer is on screen and you press the confirm button you complete the random event. A random event such as this will be very hard to solve for computer programs. The only information presented are images. You will have to explore around to get the correct one. When an image is received, you only have one chance, clicking on the image will give you a new one based on your decision. Because the NPC's move when fully zoom out, any old images will be useless. Spending a lot of time computing is not possible because the ncp's keep moving every X seconds (when fully zoomed out) This will not be impossible to solve (a turing test that is 100% accurate is impossible in theory). But it will be significantly harder than current events, I think it will take quite a while for bots to solve this. It would probably take long enough that by the time it is solved with a low margin of error, multiple similar event would have been added. Creating such events is much easier then solving them.

The video stream is something that could be dynamically decreased or increased in quality and frame rate depending on the connection speed. Just wait for sending the next video frame until the last video frame has been fully received. If the frame rate is gets too low, apply more compression. If I knew more about video compression and streaming I would throw up a few tests, but I have no idea what parameters to set so that the test is meaningful. I did notice that you can get away with more compression in runescape than you could for real life imagery. Judging by some of the posts I see on this forum and the official forum I would say something is already seriously wrong. I have not seen any bots myself because I have just been dungeoneering (I last played over 5 years ago). Jagex has to ask themselves, at what point will the bots get so much out of hand that their sustainability will suffer. If the only viable solution (I am not saying it is) is to make the game unpleasant for users with incredibly low bandwith, they may have no choice.

There are 2 types of "clients" in this context: There is the "Windows Launcher" from http://www.runescape.com/kbase/guid/Downloads_and_Wallpapers. This is just a program that contains java (openjdk) and launches the runescape applet using internet explorer. Older versions of this launcher were nothing more than a different Graphical User Interface on top of internet explorer. The bonus of the newer version is that java does not have to be installed and users are not confused if the game will not launch because of an old java version. While naming the above "client", is technically valid, I would name it "launcher" to avoid confusion. And there is the actual runescape client program, the java code itself. It does not matter if you are using firefox, chrome, the launcher, etc, the same code is executed. This is what I ment by "client"

mm, what if you apply that video streaming idea only to random events. In effect this would turn random events into turing tests (captcha). It would not be mind numbing for players to perform, could be made harder than a bunch of garbled text and at the same time easier for players. The servers would also not be required to run a fell fledged runescape client, only what is necessary for the random events. It would also help to set up random events up in such a way they address hard problems in artificial intelligence (this idea is separate from the one above). A book on A.I. I have (Russel, S. & Norvig, P., 2003, Artificial Intelligence: A modern approach) lists the following task environment properties as being hard to solve: Partial observabe (instead of fully) "If an agent's sensors give it access to the complete state of the environment at each point in time, then we say the task environment is fully observable. [...] An environment might be partially observable because of noisy and inaccurate sensors or because parts of the state are simply missing. - For example, an automated taxi cannot see what other drivers are thinking" Stochastic (instead of deterministic) "If the next state of the environment is completely determined by the current state and the action executed by the agent, then we say the environment is deterministic; otherwise it is stochastic. [...] Taxi driving is clearly stochastic in this sense, because one can never predict the behavior of traffic exactly; moreover, one's tires blow out and one's engine seizes up without warning. [...]" Sequential (instead of episodic) "In an episodic task environment, the agent's experience is divided up into atomic episodes. Each episode consists of the agent perceiving and then performing a single action. Crucially, the next episode does not depend on the actions taken in the previous episodes [...] Chess and taxi driving are sequential: in both case short-term actions can have long-term consequences [...]" Dynamic (instead of static) "If the environment can change while an agent is deliberating, then we say the environment is dynamic for that agent; otherwise it is static. [...] Dynamic environments, are continuously asking the agent what it wants to do; if it hasn't decided yet, that counts as deciding to do nothing." Continuous (instead of discrete) "[...] For example, a discrete-state environment such as a chess game has a finite number of distinct states. [...] Taxi driving is a continuous-state and continuous-time problem: the speed and location of a taxi sweep through a range of continuous values and so smoothly over time. [...]" Simply put, if the are an infinite number of states, an environment is continuous Multi agent (instead of single agent) The way things are qualified as an "agent" might get complex (beyond the scope here). Obviously an environment is multi agent if multiple agents have to interact with each other (competitively or cooperatively). When done cooperatively, communication is often necessary (an "agent" is a player or a bot) (a "state" can be seen as a "snapshot" of the game in a certain point in time. Things on screen, location of yourself, items, monsters, other players, etc) An agent sensors if combined with the first idea would be "screen shots" or "video feed". If not combined with the first idea, the sensors would be any data currently coming from the runescape servers (monster id's, item id's, chat, whatever). Application to random events: A player would have to explore (look around, etc) in order to solve the random event. Sadly, while a lot of runescape is stochastic, the current random events (except for the fact that the occurrence itself is random) are mostly deterministic. Making random events more stochastic is a very good way to make botting random events more difficult While sequential may seem like easy to solve by computers (because of the vast memory), this can get very difficult if you also have to decide what to "remember". Combat in runescape could be an example of a dynamic environment. Do you fight or flee? do you turn on a prayer? if you take to long to decide you may end up dead. Making random events too "dynamic" could frustrate a lot of players, but could be beneficial in small quantities I do not think it would be easy to construct a random event that is "continuous" Players having to work together to solve a random event would be an obvious choice. I do not think this would be a wise thing to do however. You can not pick who you would do a random event with So maybe a good random event would be having to taxi around monsters on a busy highway for 5 minutes :D I find it odd that a lot of the random events "test" things that are not all that hard to solve by computers. Some of them just take a while to implement or take a while to gather enough data. If anything is not understandable, feel free to ask for a better explanation.

I've played runescape using remote access technology, and let me tell you, it sucks. Responsiveness decreases quite a bit, and Jagex already has a problem with responsivness(ever notice there is a slight delay between click and animation...this isn't caused only by client-server communication lag, but also because of the nature of how jagex programs their game (using the "tick" system)... I think a lot of people would quit if they implemented this, as I don't think the game would be very enjoyable. Honestly, I don't think bots are that huge of problem...What skills are overly botted in p2p in a way that effects they players? Pure ess mining is terrible, but most people just [bleep] with it because it's obvious that these are bots performing these tasks. Hunter is getting bad, and it being a competative skill, it does piss off legitimate players. Yew/Magic cuting is bad. What else? Either way, my solution is Jagex should focus on these skills. Banning bots that compete with legitimate players would 1. End these annoying threads. 2. Make more people happy. It would also send an underlying message to botters: Go ahead and bot, but don't bot something that pisses off our paying customers, because we will find you, and we will ban you. My cents I agree the responsiveness will decrease, but it is not comparable to remote desktoping to another computer that runs the game. I think that it is possible to get it to a level it would be enjoyable to play. This is also something that can be rolled out in stages. In the early stages it would be optional and they could be temporarily enforce it upon alleged bot users. OnLive manages to make it enjoyable with first person shooters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZJBFu-tExw For runescape it would be much easier to accomplish

The solution against bots that modify the client is to move more logic to the server instead of the client. The most extreme is making the client only able to view a video stream and send direct input events. This may seem far fetched but it is feasible. Runescape is a very good candidate for such a method. Because of the nature of the graphics in runescape, there are some very efficient compression algorithms that could be used. The volume of input events is very low when compared to for example a First Person Shooter. Also, input lag (time between clicking the mouse and seeing an action performed on screen) is much less important in this game than in a FPS. There are services which already provide this for FPS, racing games, etc. such as OnLive, StreamMyGame, gaikai. It may be possible for jagex to partner with such a company. There are a number of advantages and disadvantages: Advantages: No more bots that function through client modifications Very thin client, user hardware requirements are low. Can still be run from within a browser. It could even be implemented without java. It could be done with HTML 5 video and ecmascript Very easy to port to different operating systems, consoles, mobile phones. You could play runescape on an ipad or xbox. Disadvantages: Higher bandwith load for players Higher bandwith requirement for players Input lag Higher bandwith for servers Much higher resource load on servers (note that this does not have to affect world limits) OnLive recommends atleast 3 Mbit downstream for their services. I think this could be up to 4x as low in runescape. This would go a long way, but it does not prevent bots that work using OCR+OOR. Luckily, creating such a fully functioning OCR+OOR bots is a lot harder then the other type of bots. Making it harder for OCR+OOR bots could be done with more graphical randomization, random events (solving a random event will take a while for OCR+OOR bots), weather effects, night/day time, et cetera. At this point, the most powerful bot would use machine learning to automatically recognize objects. The bot operator would feed many screen shots (different locations, different camera positions, etc) to the application, and mark the objects the bot has to identify. After a while a bot would be sufficiently trained to recognize that object with a low margin of error. Random events would still be hard to learn, random events do not last very long and getting enough training data may take multiple occurrences of that event. Note that any cheat protection (such as punkbuster) that scans for executables or usage of certain api's will not be effective against OCR+OOR bots. The runescape client runs in ring 3. An OCR bot could run in ring -1 by virtualizing runescape + an complete operating system using for example VMware or VirtualBox.