Ron wrote on Fri, 12 August 2016 13:06

platon79 wrote on Thu, 11 August 2016 13:39

I have now tried to PM Ron about the status of the m-file sanitizer/scrubber. Hopefully he will reply soon.

Yes, I have a StarsKnowledgeCleaner.exe file that can sanitize individual .m files or a folder of .m files.

Xyligun said "I've made more tests and it seems that situation is much better with that hidden knowledge in jrc4 than in jrc3. In jrc3 it works exactly like I described earlier and puts all that hidden knowledge into CA m file. In jrc4 it still puts this knowledge block, but it zeroed it the same way as cleaner. So, the only available hidden info in jrc4 is info about traders and wormholes."

But since only traders and wormhole info is in the .m files for Jrc4 games, is this utility still needed?

Well, it's clearly needed if we're to have "no hacking allowed" games, as (as NH and others have correctly noted) there's no other way to enforce it. Certainly, games without info-hacking banned seem plausible given this new data, but I for one have little interest in playing them.

Would it be possible to publically release the sanitiser? Given that a data-extractor utility is about to be released, it would seem there's little remaining benefit in security-through-obscurity. While playing hosts of private games would still be able to cheat, that can no longer be averted.