In getting things rolling here at ThirdPlaceGames, I've been thinking about High Scores. Yes, the good old high score list. What better way to start spreading that social gaming goodness then providing for players to lord it over their peers? A simple high score script, and you are done, right?
Unfortunately, things are never as simple as that. It is ridiculously simple to reverse engineer a flash SWF file. From there, it would be quite simple to submit illegitimate scores to the, naive, high score script.
There are tools to help with this (and other related problems), but, really, there should be a simpler way. I don't think there is, but I keep hoping!
One thing in my favour is that there is no money involved here. May the gods help you if you are working with money and flash! Way to many people willing to take as long as it takes to crack your system if there are dollars at the end of it. No, I'm simply trying to make it hard enough that most people won't be bothered to circumvent whatever I put into place.
Doing a quick search, I find this interesting post, which outlines some possible solutions. The problem now is - how long will it take me to implement something like this? I don't really want to spend hours and hours on this. So, in the end, I'm going to go for a simpler solution. At least, till I start seeing that people are hacking it!
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