[MUD-Dev] Display Cheats [Was Re: MMO Launch issues...]

[Thomas Tomiczek]

From: Owen Matt

> Surely this can be prevented by shrewd graphics programming ? If a
> monster/enemy/object is supposed to be too dark to see completely,
> then those unseen parts of the monster/enemy/object simply aren't
> drawn, or are textured in pure black. Then no amount of
> brightness/contrast fiddling or texture replacement (a trick used
> throughout the years on many online FPS), would reveal things that
> simply aren't there.

I suggest you go over to lists like GdAlgorythm for this.

The problem is - your card is so much faster today than the CPU that
mfinding out which parts ARE visible in the CPU is just not
feasible.  Instead you basically throw everything in the view cone
(called the Frsutrum) at the card and let the Z-Buffer sort out what
is realy visible or not.

This sounds like a hugh waste, BUT - (a) the card is much faster
than the Cpu, and we talk of MUCH faster here.  (b) the stuff you
would need to trest is very hard to come by, mathematically. It
boils down to nearly simulating the card in the CPU.

No, this type of exploit is something you have to live with - the
tendency is going to way of less tests in the CPU.

As a sample, I just write a small terrain renderer myself (my main
profession is db work, bear with me). Every object I can POSSIBLY
see has a bounding sphere, and I just test whether the sphere is
potentially visible in any part (in the cone that actually makes up
the view). If it is, I put it into a list of objects to be drawn -
from here on my renderer takes over, and it has it's own ideas about
in what order to render things (Graphics card programming demands
this), so I totally rely on the card to filter out things that
should have been hidden.

BTW - I think it was ASUS that had a feature like "half visible
walls" in their driver once.

Long story short: you can not handle this reasonably on the CPU.

Thomas Tomiczek
THONA Software & Consulting Ltd.
(Microsoft MVP C#/.NET)
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