What is the purpose of anti-cheat in Single Player?

While I think that multi-player is extremely cool, my lifestyle is single-player oriented.

I also have as much fun modding Freelancer as I do exploring the game.

So I was surprised when CF 1.8 began to overwrite my mods every time I launched the game! I can work around it by blocking Freelancer.exe in my firewall, but Crossfire's behavior seems unnecessarily invasive.

I can understand why it is important for everyone to use the same .INI files in multi-player, but I cannot think of a good reason to do it in Single Player mode.

Would you please turn off the anti-cheat in Single Player?

Thanks!

Otherwise, CF 1.8 is the best thing that has happened since Freelancer itself. I cannot think of enough good things to say about it.

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Originally posted by Lone_Renegade
I think the anti cheat cannot be dissociated from SP without removing it from MP

Why would that be? The launcher has two different buttons, which means that the code has two different branches. Just turn off the anti-cheat functions in the Single-Player branch.

Unless I missed it the first couple of times that I played 1.8, I believe that the launcher CHANGED in the past week to ADD anti-cheat to Single Player. If I am correct about that, then turning it "off" should be just as easy as turning it "on" was.

I'm not saying that I know anything about the code... I don't. I am just curious why you said what you did.

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Originally posted by SWAT_OP-R8R
u are right - you dont know anything about the code and the way it does work
it can not and will not get deactivated
either you play the mod as its meant to be or you play something else

OK, no need to be touchy about it. Reasonable question, reasonable answer.

I can work around the launcher... I really asked about it because other people have asked ME about it since I have been raving so much about how excellent Crossfire 1.8 is.

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Originally posted by NucNuc
[SIZE=3]Hey Bullwinkle ![/SIZE]

Easy solution to your problem: just turn off your internet connection ...

That would work, but then I wouldn't have access to email, web, this forum, or, dare I mention... real work! I just blocked the launcher with my firewall and it is good to go.

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I'm doing quite the same as you: "adjusting " some bits and pieces ... ( .ini files, some .cmp files ). I think you could call it "CHEATING", ...

I don't think it is cheating at all. I beat the game in vanilla mode years ago. From then on, it is only modding. It is fun to make my own mods, and doing it along with Crossfire is the best of both worlds.

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One more tip : ... make a back up

Obviously!

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Originally posted by Michael
Edit: seems you replyed yourself heh

One reply to Swat_OP and one to NucNuc.

You guys can read, can't you?!

Just kidding... but lighten up, ok?

As for my original question, I don't understand why you guys think that "modding" is "cheating", especially when you make mods. How does that make sense?

But, obviously, it's your mod and you can do whatever you want with it.

I'm just glad that you made Crossfire, because it is a beauty.

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Originally posted by Michael
Most CF's machine is made to be safe against...steals.

"Steals"? What is that? Sorry... I am not understanding what you mean there.

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no need to make issues on the forums about it...

Wow... maybe we have a language barrier or something, because you were one of three who made an issue out of nothing, aren't you?

I only came here to rave about how good Crossfire is, help out some other newbies, and ask a reasonable question (to which nobody has given me a more thoughtful answer than "we don't want to"). And that answer is "good enough" for me, which is what I tried to say to Swat_Op.

I see that this is a very international forum and that English is probably a second language for most of the people here. So, if I misinterpreted your enthusiasm as antagonism, then I apologize. No disrespect intended.

I am just here for the game, Man. Peace!

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Originally posted by Corynthos
... prevent anyone to use any CF content in their mods & then call them ''their own''. (We had such an incident just recently)

Oh, like copy protection? OK, I can understand the desire for that, because there must be thousands of man-hours of work in Crossfire!

Freelancer is designed to be "open" so I am not sure how you can achieve the goal, but I can at least understand the desire for it.

And it simply is not possible to copy protect a .INI file (because the Windows API assumes plain text format). I only asked the question because Crossfire began to overwrite my .INI files a few days ago, and it surprised me.

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make 2 copies of Vanilla FL on your HDD and install CF on one of them. Then use the clean copy to do your own creative work.

Oh, I have plenty of copies. That's not a problem! The point is to make mods that work WITH Crossfire. And I am not talking about anything huge... I might tweak the handling of a ship to improve the autopilot, or experiment with different weapon combinations. Or put big guns and shields on a Dagger, just because I like the looks of it.

In multi-player, everybody has to have the same environment. In single player, it does not matter, so why does Crossfire care whether I edit a .INI file?

That is all I was trying to ask.

Anyway, as I said, I have an adequate work-around -- for myself. But other folks have asked me for some of my little tweaks, and Crossfire 1.8 recently began "breaking" them. So it is really more of an issue for less-experienced players who want to play Crossfire in Single Player mode, and want to make minor adjustments of their own.

Here is another way of saying it: Half of the fun of playing (seven-year-old) Freelancer is in modding it. CF 1.8 spoils a little bit of my fun, and I am just trying to understand how Swat or Crossfire benefits from that.

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Originally posted by Michael
those are just patches made by OP to fix bugs in the multiplayer server. The patches autoinstall when starting the launcher, so when you get in the game you have the latest version ...

The main anti-cheat program is on the server, what you get with the launcher is just a needed patch to fix some bugs that are happening on the server, that provokes crashes, kicks, items dissapear, etc. It's just an update to the latest version.

I repeated myself a bit, but hope you get the point, what you said as 'anticheat' for singleplayer, it's not made for that goal

Thank you, Michael and Corynthos, for explaining this better. "Clarification" is a good thing, and it sometimes requires a small amount of "repetition", so thank you for clarifying.

If I understand this correctly, we have several unrelated factors that add up to "unintended behavior" on the client side:

• One of your goals is copy protection (understandable).
• The launcher has an auto-updater (good).
• The launcher assumes that IT always has the most current files (bad).
• Most of you focus on Multi-Player (MP), so you do not completely understand the way that a dedicated Single Player (SP)plays the game. Your code that is good for MP is not so good for SP. That's OK if you want it that way... I am merely reporting unintended behavior.
• Many of you seem to assume that multi-player is "better". I understand why you might think that -- humans will always be smarter than AIs... at least during this century. However, I can tell you that there are many of us who think that multi-player is not nearly as much fun as a good game against AIs (NPCs). To completely explain that would require another thread, but I/we have good reasons for preferring single-player. (And we are not stupid, lazy, or inexperienced! ) In the end, it is just a matter of personal preference, in the same way that some people prefer Juni's Outfit #1 while others prefer Outfit #2.
• Your attempts at copy protection are probably doomed to fail from the start. Many development teams have tried, for many years, to enforce digital copy protection, and NOBODY HAS EVER FIGURED OUT A GOOD WAY TO DO IT. We all hate DRM, right? It's the same kind of thing... the attempt to copy-protect your data causes more trouble than it cures.

This set of circumstances explains another question that has been bothering me (which I did not ask): "Why do the infocard .DLLs not work correctly in Crossfire?". Am I correct in thinking that the DLLs are buggy for the same set of reasons -- an attempt to enforce copy protection?

If that is what is happening, then I can understand how and why things are the way that they are. My suggestion is that you are attempting the impossible, and the attempt causes trouble. But, please, do what you want to do.

I can only report that a change in the past week causes a small amount of trouble for me and some of my friends. I hope that you can, in the future, find a less troublesome way of achieving your goals.

I believe that you all have answered my question, so thank you for your patience, perseverance, and (minor) repetition.

As I have said several times, [SIZE=3]Crossfire 1.8 is the best thing that has happened to Freelancer since Freelancer itself.[/SIZE]

And, in my opinion, Freelancer is the best space simulation game ever made, so that is saying a lot. You deserve to be proud of your work. Thank you. I hope that you all get high-paying jobs at game development companies, if that is what you want!