[MUD-Dev] Re: Trusting the Client (Re: Laws of Online World D esign)

[J C Lawrence <claw#under,engr.sgi.com>]

On Wed, 14 Oct 1998 15:38:21 -0500 
Wilburn, E J<WilburnE#kochind,com> wrote:

> The only real problem I can forsee would be the user hacking the
> client to respond to triggers much quicker than they would be able
> to manually.  In most cases this presents no problem but it all
> depends on your implentation and wether or not your game includes
> any time sensitive listening procs.  Most clients build in some
> form of Macros which is esentially the same thing (with or without
> the trigger ability).

Given that I actively support and encourage free user programming on
the server, this is hardly a problem.  Any automation or
intelligence you can implement as a client-side function can be done
as server-side soft-code with the advantage of guaranteed response
time (which is not present for a client) as well as an environment
specifically crafted to support such operations.  

Given that world, automated clients are generally at a potential
disadvantage (for the first time) as verus straight telnet users.

-- 
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw#null,net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder#ibm,net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw#under,engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...