3 ms·

Hmm...I don't think you would need that much of a performance drop. If the data was received encrypted, you could have a relatively small decryption key sent w

Hmm...I don't think you would need that much of a performance drop. If the data was received encrypted, you could have a relatively small decryption key sent when necessary, thus solving the "prefetch from server" problem. If the model files were broken up into chunks and xored with each other in various ways, and saved in a redundant manner, I could imagine that there is a setup in which there are a combinatorially large number of possible ways to fetch a set of blocks which reconstruct a given model, and if you prefetch a few red-herrings as well, it would be infeasible to determine which model you are loading based just on the commands the sever sent you on which blocks to load. Then, when the time comes, they send a very short command which tells you which blocks to use and how to reconstruct the model. Hmm... but now I'm thinking about it, I think you'd need a large overhead in both directions to make it difficult to just match the patterns of which blocks you used.

jiggy2011 15y ago
Most 3d models in games are are loaded whole rather than in chunks (this allows them to be smaller and rendered more efficiently), there may also be 3 or more seperate models with different levels of detail. Some of these models can be very detailed in recent games and preloading allot of them as red herrings would eat graphics memory and kill the performance. Online games always walk a tightrope between performance and security. The currently popular model seems to be to optimise the game for performance but use a second program to verify that the client code has not been modified. Of course you then have to make sure the anti-cheat is not modified itself. I have to say though that cheating is not a big apparent problem in most online games that I have played. Most cheating problems are in older games that have not been updated in some time.

jiggy2011 15y ago

Most 3d models in games are are loaded whole rather than in chunks (this allows them to be smaller and rendered more efficiently), there may also be 3 or more seperate models with different levels of detail. Some of these models can be very detailed in recent games and preloading allot of them as red herrings would eat graphics memory and kill the performance. Online games always walk a tightrope between performance and security. The currently popular model seems to be to optimise the game for performance but use a second program to verify that the client code has not been modified. Of course you then have to make sure the anti-cheat is not modified itself. I have to say though that cheating is not a big apparent problem in most online games that I have played. Most cheating problems are in older games that have not been updated in some time.