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polarbear

client side only mods - an argument for it.

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This kind of falls under suggestions and town square related.

However, please allow client side modding, this allows something that in the future instead of the devs dealing with some simple visual thing it out sources it to an external modder.  This way the dev team can deal with more important things like fixing bugs etc... I'm sure plenty of us here who do programming or have ideas for visual client side only features, but don't want to bother the devs with them; we could do them and share them with others. I understand the concern with not wanting to deal with people trying to do macro'ing but as a start, just make it where you can't activate an item with a client side mod and that would solve the issue (in my opinion), and see where it goes. 

 

 

1 example of a mod I would create is adding a counter to stacks, so instead of opening up a window, it displays a number somewhere on the screen of a rock stack that I'm mining, or number of items in a tile. ( see my point, pointless for the dev team to implement, just a nice to have that I could throw together with a client mod in my free time...  etc...) 

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+1

I would enjoy client side modding for the visual aspects.

The current direction the game is taking in regards to UI and Graphics, such as wanting to move towards floating text and fatter, thicker styled UI is disappointing ..and the removal of the old UI is already bad enough - for me to properly mimic the previous UI, I need to shrink my scale and raise my text size and its still not good enough.

I'd love to see some visual mods that allow us to adapt the games visual style to suit as when the Dev team moves in a direct we don't like. 

 

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Im not a fan of mods.

 

They too often become necessities, turning into a clear advantage for people who use them over those who want to play vanilla. They decrease performance and stability. You become reliant on them; should the mod dev stop developing it, your gaming experience is diminished. They distract devs from focusing on areas they should improve. They introduce risk of exploits. Their existence introduces risk of installing malware.

 

-1

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19 minutes ago, Calan said:

Im not a fan of mods.

 

They too often become necessities, turning into a clear advantage for people who use them over those who want to play vanilla. They decrease performance and stability. You become reliant on them; should the mod dev stop developing it, your gaming experience is diminished. They distract devs from focusing on areas they should improve. They introduce risk of exploits. Their existence introduces risk of installing malware.

 

-1

1st: How does a client only style mod cause exploits? The point I reference it being client side only. No server interaction, therefore doesn't actually affect the game engine. The only possible exploits that exist would be some sort of cross site scripting (XSS), but even so, the devs have implemented really good sanitization methods for input, as it is. And Since the mods would never have the possibility of connecting to the server. It would only affect your machine, so kinda pointless. 

 

2nd: You know that the art team isn't re-writing all their code after every update right. Visual mods don't have to be re-coded all the time, unless there is a major change to the api-gateway or however it would connect to the client. And for java updates. iirc, they are using java 1.8, which is behind already of the latest LTS (1.8 still has support for awhile). which is java 11, and newest LTS, if other languages are anything to go by it will be delayed like C++20 or PHP8. but... anyhow java 17 will be new LTS, regardless... (large pointless off topic rant to say)... , they probably won't switch until 1.8 loses all long-term support. 

Edited by polarbear

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1 hour ago, polarbear said:

1st: How does a client only style mod cause exploits?

Examples of existing WU client side mods (which can't be detected by server owners):

You can disable rendering of trees and tree collisions.

You can display a server map within client:

atR7Siy.png

 

You can highlight anything you want, from mobs to items to players.

xyfuMjv.jpg

You can have a compass which never has to settle and is always on, even while moving.

You can change time of day and season of the year.

You can automate everything, from improving to mining to crafting.

You can have tooltips which show slopes, tree ages, field states without having any skill or tool activated.

 

Imagine allowing this in WO.

Totally not an advantage for people who speak JAVA and code some of those for themselves and not share with wider audience...

Server admins have no way to tell who is using mods and what mods are they.

 

Years ago there was a ban wave because people were using modified client in PvP (mini trees so they could see the enemy in deep forests), just another example of how client modding can give unfair advantage to those who know how to o it.

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52 minutes ago, Locath said:

You can automate everything, from improving to mining to crafting.

 

see below:

8 hours ago, polarbear said:

, just make it where you can't activate an item with a client side mod and that would solve the issue

 

52 minutes ago, Locath said:

You can change time of day and season of the year.

So, it's only client side. If I make it always daytime. how does it affect your gameplay. it doesn't.

 

 

52 minutes ago, Locath said:

You can have tooltips which show slopes, tree ages, field states without having any skill or tool activated.

You can do this already by examining a tile border, to get slope, and tree ages without a tool. Doesn't have an affect on skill gain. 

 

52 minutes ago, Locath said:

Server admins have no way to tell who is using mods and what mods are they.

Yes you can, here: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/how-to-get-list-of-all-files-folders-from-a-folder-in-java , only load mods in a "mods" folder. I can code this in any program to ping the server saying hey, there are files here, this client is using mods. (see proof below)

 

52 minutes ago, Locath said:

You can have a compass which never has to settle and is always on, even while moving.

Pretty sure that's a server side function. as it involves ql and enchants. no way the client is doing the calculations on that, as you can run this game on bubblegum

 

Simple solution to last, don't allow on PVP, only on PVE.

 

And to keep anyone from directly editing the client.jar file, every time a client loads a SHA256 Hash can be taken of file to see if it's legit. (many games do this already..., as it is computationally infeasible to find a collision with a SHA256 Hash) 

 

 

Edited by polarbear

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33 minutes ago, polarbear said:

I can code this in any program to ping the server saying hey, there are files here, this client is using mods. 

You can get a list of files called anything the user wants them to be called. Are you going to analyze every file every user has? in WU i am using about 20 mods. I can call those files "red_borsch.jar" and WO staff will have to analyze every single of the 4 thousand files which people will create just to mess with them, if clientside mods are allowed.

 

36 minutes ago, polarbear said:

So, it's only client side. If I make it always daytime. how does it affect your gameplay. it doesn't.

It does in PvP. Separating PvP and PvE and policing this just by rules is simply not doable.

 

36 minutes ago, polarbear said:

You can do this already by examining a tile border, to get slope, and tree ages without a tool. Doesn't have an affect on skill gain. 

Not without the skill and not to the extent a mod does it. 20 tiles away i can see that the tile is flat, grass is tall, tree is harvestable and has sprouts and it's overaged and i can see elevation above sea level on corners and slopes on borders and so on. All in one tooltip, without any skill.

 

38 minutes ago, polarbear said:

Pretty sure that's a server side function. as it involves ql and enchants. no way the client is doing the calculations on that, as you can run this game on bubblegum

I don't know where you got that from but here is one of the lists of clientside mods made by just one person, includes compass mod. There are multiple modders with really nice albeit "cheating" clientside mods in the same forums section:

 

 

Even if you read only the descriptions of public clientside mods and imagine applying those to WO and not see a problem with that, we must be playing 2 different games.

There are also mods which people made for them self and never released like auto moving + hunting mod (effectively a bot).

 

What you are proposing boils down to "ok, we'll let you mod the client but you have to promise that you won't do bad stuff".

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1 hour ago, Locath said:

Years ago there was a ban wave because people were using modified client in PvP (mini trees so they could see the enemy in deep forests), just another example of how client modding can give unfair advantage to those who know how to o it.

so, allowing client mods wouldn't change anything because people who know how to do those mods already can and wouldn't use a dev-approved loader? what's your point lol

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3 minutes ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

so, allowing client mods wouldn't change anything because people who know how to do those mods already can and wouldn't use a dev-approved loader? what's your point lol

If i understand this correctly, they weren't loading a mod, they edited the graphics.jar so were caught on checksum mismatch?

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1 hour ago, Locath said:

I don't know where you got that from but here is one of the lists of clientside mods made by just one person, includes compass mod. There are multiple modders with really nice albeit "cheating" clientside mods in the same forums section:

 

looked at github code of that mod, easy solution: don't allow certain methods like player position to be called from a mod. if (crtitical method called && it's in official client)

allow == true;  else{ false)...

Edited by polarbear

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@polarbear - I appreciate you'd like mods to be supported and disagree that the concerns I flagged are real and/or strong enough reasons against them. I think others have given really good examples to support the concern around exploits. It feels like you're taking disagreement with your suggestion personally and I don't really see debating whether it would allow exploits as being very constructive. I think the devs are in a better position to judge.


 

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The immense amount of work to develop a client side modding api, which would be the only way that this would be achievable with limits would be not worth it when it would inevitably lead to some advantages. If the ui needs improved lets improve it for everyone, if external tools are required maybe including them in the client would be good (in game skill timers plz).

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