Oh, a couple of my members have complained too that in Breakout, after the ball gets so fast, it starts to skip tiles making it impossible to win. I know you didn't do the flash code for the games, but I just thought I'd let you know. ;)

Hi all,

I installed this hack but when i played a game it goes from http://www.url.com/forum/proarcade.php to http://www.url.com/proarcade.php.

I searched this whole thread for a solution but couldn't find it. :(

What do i have to change ?

Regards Michel

I need a little help please :)

Part of the hack replaces this code in showthread.php:

I don't see this code anywhere. It is probably because I'm still on 2.2.2. Where should I place the replacement code?

One of my users got 1,701,203 in Tetris! They must have been playing for ages!

Craig

All these games can be easily hacked by memory editing. I don't know how to fix this, just pointing it out.

Got a quick question for ya Futureal... How exactly is the time for the games recorded? I'm guessing it pulls the time from the server since it seems to be about 2 hours off from the message board. Does it keep a record of the time from the server and record that, or would all the times change if the server time changed?

As far as I know, any Flash movie can be edited in this manner. Flash security is very, very limited. There are ongoing discussions and "challenges" on FlashKit (www.flashkit.com) regarding security.

The only thing I can think of that word be worth doing to prevent cheating is recording a user's "time of entry" onto the game page and then his/her "time of entry" onto the score page. Using the scoreboard editor, an adiministrator could easily see when a user is fooling the system -- e.g. a score of 1+ million in Tetris requires, what, 30 minutes of playing?

Really though, there is no foolproof method here. Anybody who knows how to hexedit can probably find a way to beat the system, but I am not too worried about it. I watch for things like new accounts immediately getting the highest score, and users having played once or twice and getting the highest score.

As always, I am open to suggestions on this matter if anybody has them. Security is a big issue here, but unfortunately Flash/PHP interaction is inherently insecure. :(

edit: This also addresses PlurPlanet's problem/question. I think that after reading this stuff, I may work on implementing my idea above. It would add yet another table and a few extra queries but it sounds like it would be worth it. In general terms, here is how this would work:

• When a user goes to a "Play" page, an entry is recorded in the security table showing the user's ID, the game's ID, and the current server time.
• When a user goes to a "Game Over" page, the security table is checked for the user's most recent open entry for that game, and the entry is "closed" by updating the record with the gameover time.
• Each time a user goes to a "Play" page, the database checks to see if there is an "open" entry for that user and game; if there is, it is replaced, otherwise a new one is created

This would add 2-3 queries to the play page (the DELETE would not always occur) and 2 queries to the gameover page, as well as a fifth table to the arcade. The advantage is that it is completely server-side, so a user will not be able to fool it. The disadvantage is that a clever user could still fool the system if he/she knows how it works. However, it should make it a lot easier to spot.

The time is (right now) pulled off of the server and stored in the database in server time. I have not yet added the code to adjust for user's timezones, although that will be rather easy to do.

Also, see my previous post for discussion of your other problem. Thanks.

See if you can find the line:

And add it right above that.

This sounds like a bug that has already been fixed. Make sure you download the latest version of the zipfile from the first message and replace your proarcade.php and proarcadeadmin.php with the ones from the file.

Ok, so that means that if a user made a high score at say 3:37 pm, then the server time changed, the time they got their high score would remain 3:37 pm, right? Just curious about that because the user we think might be cheating made a couple of scores that were too close together to be right, but it seems it could be possible since I know the server time has changed a couple of times, thus the times he made those scores could be off.

As it stands right now, changing the server time would not affect old scores, it would only affect new scores. Like:

- Server time is 1 PM
- User plays game at 1:30 and its recorded as 1:30
- Server time goes back an hour
- User plays game again and its recorded as 12:35

Now in the database, it looks like the second game finished before the first game.

Once I add the code to compensate for a user's time zone, it will take the stored time as the server time, and then calculate the viewing user's GMT offset with that.

ok.. i have a question

first af all thanx for this great MOD, and sorry for my english...

well, i want to restrict, b/c some new registred members play game before posting (to say "hi everybody.. what a beautifull forum with nice people.... lol )) incredible ...

so i make some modifications in proarcade.php:

if
(
(
($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] != 2) and
($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] != 5) and
($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] != 6) and
($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] != 7) and
($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] != 8)

) and
(
($bbuserinfo[posts] < 5)
)
)
{
show_nopermission();
}

break;

so registred user need a minimum of 5 posts before playing...

my question is.. there is a way.. for posts by day? or creating a new thread? something to help peple to not forget there are in a forum?

well i hope u understand my mind.. thanx in advance

I did the code the way you suggest Futureal. I'm not sure if that is still part of my current problems or not though.

The only games that work for me are Snake and Space Invaders. Any idea why the others wouldn't work?

Also, the Champions does not display. I tried the method mentioned earlier about putting it in postbits, but that doesn't seem to work either. If I put it in postbits shouldn't I also need a template called champions_postbits or something? (Don't laugh, I am a newbie :) )

Thanks for any help.

You could do things like that, but they would require additional queries. To get a user's posts in a day you would have to select from the post table where the userid is the user's and the date is today's date. For threads you'd have to check threadid to see if it was started by a particular userid on a particular day, and so on.

Basically, you would just have to add any conditional information to the code just as you added your post check above. You may want to display a message to the user as well, such as "You must post at least XX times each day to use the Arcade."

If a few games are working but others aren't, in means there is a problem in the Game Configuration. Check to make sure that the filenames (*.swf) are correct, the game names are unique/correct, and that the games are active.

The Champ System should work "as is" with no modifications, assuming that your user's titles are being displayed in postbit (which is the vB default). Once again, make sure that the Champ System is enabled in the General Options and enabled for each game that you'd like to see it on.

Checked all of the above multiple times, and it is correct. I tried just running the flash to see if it was the hack or the actual game too. The working titles (Snake and Space Invaders) work, but even if I go directly to the others they don't work. Maybe I uploaded in ASCII when it should be binary or vice versa? I checked permissions to and they working and non-working have the same permissions.

This may be the problem. I have a couple of User Title hacks, one allowing users to change titles if they have made a donation for example. Maybe the conflict is there?

i don't know if this an old or new bug ...but basicly i have a website for vietnamese and one of my member has this nick " be' P" ...and the program just give error. I look through the script and notice you didn't add in addslashes for username. I did some tweakin and now it's perfect now. I don't know if you already did or going to fix that bug or not, but i just want to let u know :bandit:

ENJOY

I uploaded the game files again and they work now! Don't know if it matters, but I uploaded in binary this time.

I am begging you, please make the arkanoid game able to disable music :)

I installed this hack, and there is a problem we are having...

On our board, we have custom user groups for group accounts...the people in the group aco++++s are getting a message that they cannot view the games becuase they do not have permission...

how do I set their permissions to on?

in the proarcade.php file you will see something like this

($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] != 2) and
($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] != 5) and
($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] != 6) and
($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] != 7) and
($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] != 8)

you need to find out what is ypur newgroup's # and add the stastement to it... if you look back in this thread you will see others including me had the same problem in the passed...its a very easy fix...

good luck

well like audionuts said before..

surely u create some usergroup... or rename the old one

check the usergrouID of the concerned members...
CP > UserGroups > Modify

now mouse over on "edit" (the usergroup u want), u will see a the bottom of ur page something like:
"http://www.yoursite.com/xxx/xxx..../usergroup.php?s=xxxxxxx
xxxxxedit&usergroupid= Y
were Y is the "level" of ur usergroup

now go and edit proarcade.php:

u should find by default this:
if
(
(
($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] != 2) and
($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] != 5) and
($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] != 6) and
($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] != 7) and

just insert a new line or midify the number...

like i done 10 posts upper... or like the copy of audionuts

so be careful, check if you did'nt give the right to play for non registred... lol

and sorry for this terrific english...

Hey Futureal...the hack works nicely. :)

I do have one comment though..i followed the instructions to a "T" and one of the things I have found was that the original instructions need to be updated with a few things.

One: Make sure that the manual instructions include the allgames.sql query that needs to be run.
Two: Make sure that the original changes to online.php in the manual instructions include the following fix from this post: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...235#post294235 This will fix the online issue in 2.2.7. ;)
Three: The top scoreboard apparently only shows 3 entries. My question is, I have the following scores let's say in Snake. 24,8,7,2,1. Now logic would stand to reason that the TOP scoreboard would reveal 24,8, and 7 as the top scores. However..this is not the case. 24 and 1 are scores I achieved, while 7 and 2 are ones another member have achieved.

What it is showing is 24, 8, and 1 My guess here is that only one user per high score will be shown...is that correct? Sort of a personal best pitted against the other members?

Still no effect :(

Thanks for the info. It's true that I have not updated the Beta 1 instructions too much since I am working on the next release. I will be sure to take care of that stuff.

As for the Top Score Board, it is designed to display each user's single BEST score for each game. So basically, we're ranking the users based on their best scores. This is in place since some users may play a game many times and fill the scoreboard with their scores; it seems more useful to be able to see only the single best score for each user.

What is your forum URL set to in the General Options of the vBulletin Admin Control Panel?

FEATURE REQUEST:

1. Make it so that the champion text that is displayed in the postbit actually links to the games :) (pending proper permissions)
2. Front Arcade page scoreboard link displaying highscorers of all games in one mini-board style
3. Let's get some more games rolling through this!

Agreed! All my members have taken over me in my high scores! :(

This works on 2.2.8 so far btw. :)

Just a quick update: I am still working on this but it's been a busy weekend and I am in the process of moving one of my web sites to a new server. I will keep everybody posted on the status of Beta 2 and hopefully we'll see it very soon!

great! take your time bud :) we will be here wating...and playing in the arcade :)

Yea, one of my goals is to not release anything publicly until it is ready. I think I let Beta 1 out of the door a little bit too soon. I want to make sure that all of my desired features are on board before it gets out this time. :)

hey futureal, update on my problem with my scores not saving..

I formatted my HD last night and reinstalled everything and now it works. (no, I didn't do this simply for this hack) Oh well. Now I guess I'll never know for sure what the bug was caused by :)

When I try to play a game, it goes into the place where it should (and it just has a white box (where the game would be)? Does anyone know what I could have done wrong? I did everything write in my mind.

\ \ - Speedy - / /

Maybe you should either....

a) Upload the Game Files

Ahead of Me?

then....

b) Change the games path from /games/ to games/

Thank You So Much!!! That did the trick!!!

from

/games/

to

games/

\ \ - Speedy - / /

is there a way to pause the game? or maybe add a function to do that. It will be a good feature :)

By the way, how to play the snake game? Mouse and keyboard have no effect at all :(

how do you reset the score?

Some of the games have pause built in. For example, hitting 'P' in Pacman will pause the game.

Not sure why Snake does not work for you. The keyboard works fine for me... anybody else have problems?