Dynamic Signatures now illegal... or are they?

Apparently, according to the rules, automatically updating dynamic signatures are now illegal! See this quote from http://forum.tip.it/viewtopic.php?t=625379:

Jagex pulled on over on us, probably causing some idiot pures to riot, again..Read below

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* If must not encourage rule-breaking or endanger users.

 

 

 

* It must not contain adverts or links to websites which encourage rule-breaking or endanger users.

 

 

 

* It must not automatically request pages/content from our website or otherwise make excessively bandwidth intensive requests from our servers (each page/content request should only be in direct response to a user request each time).

 

 

 

* It must not bypass the normal navigation of our website. The software should initially only point at the front page of http://www.runescape.com, and should require the user to navigate through the website normally to reach the game worlds. The software must not contain direct links to our "Select a world" page, or to our game world pages, or to the RuneScape applet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* It must not hide or encourage the hiding of any of the adverts on our website. To avoid encouraging users to hide the advert above the game the pane displaying pages from our website must default to at least 630 pixels high (if viewed on a screen with a resolution higher than 800x600), and it must not be possible to resize it to less height than that. i.e. the page must be displayed in such a way that both the game and advert are fully visible at the same time.

 

 

 

* It must not attempt to make it easier to enter a busy RuneScape world than it would be for users not using the software. It must not allow worlds marked as 'FULL' on the world select page to be selected. It must not contain any features to make it easier to enter or monitor busy worlds.

 

 

 

* If the software has its own integrated chat feature, separate from the RuneScape chat, it should make it very clear to users that this chat is not part of RuneScape and is not official, endorsed or moderated by Jagex in any way. Furthermore, this chat should still be moderated (just not by us), and the moderators should not allow chat which infringes our rules of conduct. To avoid confusion with the official RuneScape chat, moderators of the external chat should not be indicated with a silver or gold crown. If the chat is IRC based, then the software should only allow access to IRC channels which conform with the above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, you cannot use stat lookups anymore like Dynamic sigs, tip.it's calcs, etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We recently made some slight changes to rule 7. This has been done for a very specific reason to solve a particular (very bad) problem which occurred. (more info on that in my 2nd post below)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We've been careful to make the minimal change to solve just the problem that occurred, and to make sure the change doesn't impact further than necessary. Some people seem to think this rule change will have big impact, but it shouldn't really, and hopefully in a few days time that will be clear. We are already working with other people to make sure we aren't accidentally disallowing things we didn't mean to. It's only really a couple of very specific problems we are trying to avoid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's not a lot to add here in terms of clarification of the rule because the rule is already written as clearly as we can manage. (if there were further things we thought we could say to make it clearer we'd put them in the rule itself). So all I can do is suggest you carefully read the rule. It should make sense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Important: Please note that the 'no advertising' rule applies to these forums as always. Threads which advertise or discuss third party websites or software will therefore be removed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few people are asking why we didn't post about this on the front page, or post a sticky sooner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The reason is very simple. Before we made a big public announcement about it we wanted to contact the relevant fansites directly (which we have done), and give them a chance to respond.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And no we haven't been banning people related to this change. Of course not - that would be silly given we only just made it and nobody has had a chance to react yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've also noticed lots of people ranting about us disallowing things, which in fact the rule doesn't even mention or cover. For example people saying "But I really wanted that screenshot feature". Um the rule doesn't even mention screenshots!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please read the rule carefully, before complaining, and check what you are complaining about is REALLY disallowed, because in over half of the posts I'm seeing people aren't even reading the rule, and are complaining about something we haven't even prevented.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The main thing we're trying to do is make it clear we don't like badly written tools which load pages/content off our website over and over again, and make it slower for everyone else. Tools that do that will need to be changed. At one point over HALF of the page hits on our website were coming from such automated lookups rather than real people. e.g. <1% of the people were using 50% of the bandwidth! So you can surely see why we would object to that. In most cases the function actually desired is still possible, the software just needs to be changed slightly to not waste resources so badly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most calculators aren't affected at all as they only do one lookup per user request. Some dynamic sig generators which hit our site over and over again are affected, but can easily be changed to only recalculate the sig in response to the sig owner pressing a button, (rather than doing it repeatedly every minute whether they need to or not).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know conspiracy theories can be fun, but not everybody has sinister motives!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jagex, nice one

I have highlighted the important parts in bold... now notice:

* It must not automatically request pages/content from our website or otherwise make excessively bandwidth intensive requests from our servers (each page/content request should only be in direct response to a user request each time).

Automatically. As in, the user not doing anything to cause something to happen. Well, when we load a page that has some html in it like this

to embed our signature... we technically ARE making a user, not an automated request for it. We clicked the link to view the page, did we not? We wanted the image to appear. It's actually not very different than going to a page to update your signature.

Let's look at this part:

Most calculators aren't affected at all as they only do one lookup per user request. Some dynamic sig generators which hit our site over and over again are affected, but can easily be changed to only recalculate the sig in response to the sig owner pressing a button, (rather than doing it repeatedly every minute whether they need to or not).

First sentence, true. But look at the rest. Signatures DO NOT automatically update themselves every minute "whether they need it or not". They update when the user MAKES A REQUEST for that. I.E., accessing a page with it embedded in there, or the image itself.

Currently, the way my (and most dyanamic sigs) work is by a file. Let's call this file "signature.php". When we access signature.php, it loads runescape.com/highscores/playername (yes, I know that's not the real URL) and then reads your stats from the contents of the file it's loaded. Then it takes that data, and writes it on to an image, then sets the content type of the file to image/png or image/gif (usually). As you can see, when we access signature.php, it performs all the actions I just listed. Sure, it did them automatically, but if we hadn't visited that page in the first place, those actions would not have been performed. Technically if that dynamic sig is embedded in another webpage, for example a thread here on the Tip.It forums, the image will load and perform the above actions... BUT you STILL made a request for that page, along with that page's content, including any externally-linked data.

Did Andrew not word his response properly and does he mean something different than we think? Or does he mean what we think he does, and dynamic signatures are now illegal...? Either way, I'll comply with the rule if it needs be. And I hope the other sites will as well.

Thoughts?

Thoughts?

Bah, what do I care.

But really, I wouldn't try and find a way around the rule, or look for a loophole in the way that they typed it out. Jagex are known for banning people who try.

Just make an original sig (with a picture of your guy or something with like paint or photoshop) and draw your top stats in it or something. All those dynamic sigs were really unoriginal, anyway.

Example:

Edit: ZOMG FIRST!!!!11111111111111

My tought? You got it wrong! :D

Yes the dynamic sigs do update themselfves every few minutes, and even if they updated the way you said ( which makes non sense), every time the picture is viewed, it would still generate TONS and TONS of requests to the servers of Jagex ( that same image can be viewed more than 10 times second, on average, in these forums).

Sigs that are made once and only update at your requests are still allowed for they dont eat more bandwith than yourself simply reading the highscores.

And trying to find a way around such a little restriction :roll: Do you really want to make the game cost more to run and have Jagex up membership to 6$? No? then just sit and play by the rules.

Edit: ZOMG SECOND!!!!11111111111111

As AOE states, Dynamic sigs are banned. But static stat signatures are allowed. You will just have to routinely update them yourself.

the guy who owns draynor.net is redoing the dynamic sigs to make them manually updated. So they will be legal again before too long.

Guess I'll do mine later today.

Well one of the only reason I would use those is for self updating features. I won't remeber to change it after each level. I don't blame Jagex though.

Isn't there the exact same discussion going on in another thread?

I don't see why people just don't take it upon themselves to make their own signatures. And if they don't want to, can't or are too lazy to, go request one. It's not that hard.

And does it matter if it does change every level? Update it when you want. You shouldn't care what other people think of your player that much anyways... seems like all people want is attention from their stats.

 

Thoughts?

Jagex are stupid?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bah, what do I care.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But really, I wouldn't try and find a way around the rule, or look for a loophole in the way that they typed it out. Jagex are known for banning people who try.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just make an original sig (with a picture of your guy or something with like paint or photoshop) and draw your top stats in it or something. All those dynamic sigs were really unoriginal, anyway.

 

 

 

Example:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: ZOMG FIRST!!!!11111111111111

You have the best sig ideas!

Thank you!

So should we all get rid of out stat sigs ?

Good thing I changed my thing to a nifty picture changing-thingy!

LMAO @ Bloodveld's fake sig

All jagex is doing is ruining the game further, i could care less about SS though i just want my bookmarked w2 back

Edit: WTH they did ruin sigs... thats it jagex you've officially lost it...

i completely agree with the problems they have..

Now i think it was stupid to have auto updates when lvls don't change all that much`

So should we all get rid of out stat sigs ?

Yeah, probably. They constantly ping the server and take up bandwidth (according to Barihawk).

meh, those sigs were quite old and unoriginal like blood said. shouldn't use them, but theyll be fixed and changed for open use in no time.

Thanks for the sig!

Yay thanks

Homemade sigs are the coolest

Looks like Bloodveld just started a new trend :lol:

Zomg!! my sig still woks! I wonder why! :-k :anxious: :-w :P

All jagex is doing is ruining the game further, i could care less about SS though i just want my bookmarked w2 back

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: WTH they did ruin sigs... thats it jagex you've officially lost it...

How are they ruining the game? Even with bookmarks, you are breaking the rules that have been there for years.

And sigs. Those sigs cost them a lot of money. Deal with it.

so world switchers are now totally illegal?

And I can't bookmark W2?

And I can't have automatic stat sigs?

Bad Jagex, bad!

jagex is really pissing me off with its bs lately

Oh...I can't view my own stats when I'm not playing the game anymore...that's sad... :boohoo:

Bloodveld's sigs own 8-)