PlusCart (an inexpensive DIY WiFi multicart)

[+sramirez2008]

Would it be possible to add a virtual Patch for the homebrew games that included a patch? Might not be worth the effort, but just a thought.

[CapitanClassic]

@Al_Nafuur, once the number of High Score enabled PlusCart games approaches 255, how do you plan to modify how high scores are written to the server?

 

[+Al_Nafuur]

12 minutes ago, CapitanClassic said:

@Al_Nafuur, once the number of High Score enabled PlusCart games approaches 255, how do you plan to modify how high scores are written to the server?

 

The High Score Club was just a PoC ? and I never planned to modify more than 256 games...

So if this ever happens we have to find another byte, somewhere in the internet..?

 

How about reserving the last id ($ff) to indicate that the two bytes before the last byte define the game id?

then we would move the problem to the 65535th game..

 

[CapitanClassic]

10 minutes ago, Al_Nafuur said:

The High Score Club was just a PoC ? and I never planned to modify more than 256 games...

So if this ever happens we have to find another byte, somewhere in the internet..?

 

How about reserving the last id ($ff) to indicate that the two bytes before the last byte define the game id?

then we would move the problem to the 65535th game..

 

My thoughts were more along the line of determining if the scores on the HSC were made using the exact same game. This shouldn’t be much of an issue, since most (if not all), PlusCart enabled ROMS are version 1. Do the PAL/NTSC Ron’s have different game ids?

 

If a bug/update ever comes out for a game though, the high scores for one version of the game may not be applicable to the version 2, as the players aren’t playing the same version of the game.

 

I initially thought of using md5 checksum (16 bytes), but since the ROM has to hardcore that MD5 into the game and those bytes would alter the MD5 itself, that wouldn’t work.
 

From the example programs, it looks like the ROM is altered just to write the score and the gameID to some writebuffer, and those bytes are sent to the server. I didn’t see how the rom is altered to report the difficulty switches/game variation, but that must be in there somewhere. Could the PlusCart perform the MD5 calculation itself before sending the HSC up to the server, since it is loading the game ROM into RAM. Where is the documentation for PlusCart HSC support for developers? (didn’t see the link on the PlusCart site)
 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Couldn't the PlusCart calculate the md5? And then add that to the data send to the server?

[+Al_Nafuur]

29 minutes ago, CapitanClassic said:

My thoughts were more along the line of determining if the scores on the HSC were made using the exact same game. This shouldn’t be much of an issue, since most (if not all), PlusCart enabled ROMS are version 1. Do the PAL/NTSC Ron’s have different game ids?

 

If a bug/update ever comes out for a game though, the high scores for one version of the game may not be applicable to the version 2, as the players aren’t playing the same version of the game.

 

I initially thought of using md5 checksum (16 bytes), but since the ROM has to hardcore that MD5 into the game and those bytes would alter the MD5 itself, that wouldn’t work.

?

even for different versions of the same game we just use a new game id. As we noted earlier, we still have a few ids left over.

 

35 minutes ago, CapitanClassic said:

 

From the example programs, it looks like the ROM is altered just to write the score and the gameID to some writebuffer, and those bytes are sent to the server. I didn’t see how the rom is altered to report the difficulty switches/game variation, but that must be in there somewhere.

 

Some games don't use the difficulty switches, and some games don't have variations. But if there are variations and difficulties (for the first player) they should be defined in the HSC API and send by the ROM. However some of my early HSC transformations don't apply to this.

 

 

40 minutes ago, CapitanClassic said:

Could the PlusCart perform the MD5 calculation itself before sending the HSC up to the server, since it is loading the game ROM into RAM. 

MD5? why should we waste electricity, if we can use id's?

 

43 minutes ago, CapitanClassic said:

 Where is the documentation for PlusCart HSC support for developers? (didn’t see the link on the PlusCart site)

I should have named it the PlusROM HSC, because PlusROMs are not specifically bound to the PlusCart, they can be played on any internet enabled devices or emulator that implements the PlusROM standard.

 

The PlusROM standard is designed to give the developer the freedom to build and maintain its ROM and the related internet backend on its own. He don't needs an account or to register somewhere to setup a PlusROM and a releated internet backend.

 

And that's what I did with when I started the PlusROM HSC, I setup a backend and compiled a ROM (or two) that communicated with this backend. And setup a website that showed what these ROMs had sent..

 

But then @Thomas Jentzsch, @Dionoid and @Omegamatrix step in and started to modify ROMs for the HSC, and it is now a sort of a community project. Everyone is welcome to take part, but if you want to "use" other peoples backend, you have to get in touch with them (and ask for a id and tell what data you want to send )

 

 

 

 

[+Al_Nafuur]

8 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Couldn't the PlusCart calculate the md5? And then add that to the data send to the server?

md5? why should we waste electricity, if we can use id's?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

2 minutes ago, Al_Nafuur said:

md5? why should we waste electricity, if we can use id's?

Because you do not want me to hack myself on top of each and every high score.  

[+Al_Nafuur]

26 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Because you do not want me to hack myself on top of each and every high score.  

how can a md5 sum prevent you from doing this?
?

[+Karl G]

Just now, Al_Nafuur said:

how can a md5 sum prevent you from doing this?
?

Maybe because you could prevent a hacked ROM from passing itself off as an official ROM?

[+Al_Nafuur]

5 minutes ago, Karl G said:

Maybe because you could prevent a hacked ROM from passing itself off as an official ROM?

You don't need a hacked ROM. You just have to sniff the network traffic to see whats been sent. And if you are really clever you just look at the code (it's all open source!) and then you know what the network request should look like, then you just have to compute the md5 sum of the ROM you want to imitate and send the request you want..

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

OK, but that requires much more technical understanding than just hacking a ROM for infinite lives or invincibility.

[+Al_Nafuur]

 

Just now, Thomas Jentzsch said:

OK, but that requires much more technical understanding than just hacking a ROM for infinite lives or invincibility.

for some of us this is easier than using Photoshop

?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Some of us.  

 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Thomas Jentzsch

[+Al_Nafuur]

16 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Some of us.  

 

And just like us, every cheater is going to use the tech he is most familiar with, or every kind of tech is attracting it's own kind of cheater ?.

 

Anyhow if they really know what they are doing, it will be hard to sort them out.

 

But if the network requests are as bad as this:

 

We can ban them from the PlusROM HSC ?

 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Al_Nafuur

[CapitanClassic]

3 hours ago, Al_Nafuur said:

md5? why should we waste electricity, if we can use id's?

It probably is overkill at this point.

Could the PlusCart eventually be used as a way to legitimately verify a high score on a game? I think this is could be a nice feature. The nicest feature so far is the automatic HS tracking with dates/times (I did see someone offer to help beautify the webpage results). With the PlusCart automaticity tracking your HS progress, you can get interesting statistics about your own progress.

 

The source code is all open source, and unfortunately with the PlusCart in the possession of player/hacker (so you cannot keep private secrets on it), could a HC be verified for a particular game. How do those old MtgClients/Roll20 clients do it to ensure everyone is using the same random number generator when they draw their cards/roll their dice.

 

 

[+Al_Nafuur]

md5 sums strings (or strings from any kind of hash function) send by the client, will not help us to trust this client.

 

11 minutes ago, CapitanClassic said:

Could the PlusCart eventually be used as a way to legitimately verify a high score on a game? I think this is could be a nice feature. The nicest feature so far is the automatic HS tracking with dates/times (I did see someone offer to help beautify the webpage results). With the PlusCart automaticity tracking your HS progress, you can get interesting statistics about your own progress.

PlusROM functions are not only supported by the PlusCart, so every hardware or emulator would have to implement this security feature.

 

12 minutes ago, CapitanClassic said:

The source code is all open source, and unfortunately with the PlusCart in the possession of player/hacker (so you cannot keep private secrets on it), could a HC be verified for a particular game.

No.

 

We might implement some more functions into the protocol. Like time keys and sending intermediate results from the HC ROM and storing them in the DB, so we would have more data to check when a score is suspicious or debated. But It would be more effort for us to implement these checks into the games (more free ROM space is needed).

 

All we can do is making it more difficult to cheat, but we can't make it impossible (like it's always been before).

 

In the end, each side has to ask itself: Is the effort worth the gain?

 

[+Al_Nafuur]

22 hours ago, sramirez2008 said:

Would it be possible to add a virtual Patch for the homebrew games that included a patch? Might not be worth the effort, but just a thought.

cool idea. ?

 

Does anyone know a website/list where I can find all patches (at least for the games we have at the HSC) and the scores needed ?

[+sramirez2008]

For the hombres patches, I believe they are only available within their individual AA threads, or if someone has an actual patch. I recall seeing a scan of the L.E.M. patch in one of the threads. I’ll try to locate it. 

[CapitanClassic]

2 hours ago, Al_Nafuur said:

cool idea. ?

 

Does anyone know a website/list where I can find all patches (at least for the games we have at the HSC) and the scores needed ?

https://www.atariage.com/2600/archives/activision_patches.html
 

The link goes to 404 for the high quality scans though. Also on the ZPH show at least one of the scores is incorrect, it shows the Intellivision score necessary for patch.

[+Al_Nafuur]

1 minute ago, CapitanClassic said:

https://www.atariage.com/2600/archives/activision_patches.html
 

The link goes to 404 for the high quality scans though. Also on the ZPH show at least one of the scores is incorrect, it shows the Intellivision score necessary for patch.

Yes I had found them already and just finished a first test version for the HSC:
https://highscore.firmaplus.de/index2.php?game_id=2&game_variant=Standard

 

If you click a User, you can see all his (best) scores and Activision Patches.

[CapitanClassic]

6 minutes ago, Al_Nafuur said:

Yes I had found them already and just finished a first test version for the HSC:
https://highscore.firmaplus.de/index2.php?game_id=2&game_variant=Standard

 

If you click a User, you can see all his (best) scores and Activision Patches.

ArenaFoot’s large homebrew spreadsheet also has a sheet devoted to patch scores.

https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=EBF48A1964E7EEB5!214&ithint=file%2cxlsx&authkey=!ANBrJ6_VZzVCms0

 

[+Al_Nafuur]

On 12/8/2020 at 2:38 PM, Andrew Davie said:

How's the print quality, and the accuracy/fit?

they are very good (for a 3D print DIY shell I would say they are awesome)

 

but we have some issues with the pins, the new ones are all way to small.  Mike is reprinting them all tonight..

 

I only have a few pins from our first print that fit perfect, but no (bigger) spare pins to ship. So shipping will be delayed one more day. ? 

 

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

8 hours ago, CapitanClassic said:

The link goes to 404 for the high quality scans though. Also on the ZPH show at least one of the scores is incorrect, it shows the Intellivision score necessary for patch.

I can't remember which one on the AA list is the Intellivision score either at the moment but I have a list of the correct patch scores on my ZPH listing page, just click on the 'Homebrew, Imagic, & Activision Patch Challenges' dropdown. I also have 26 "high quality" PNG transparent versions of the patches for all the games I've played on the show, I've attached them here (35MB).

 

- James

Activision Patches.zip

[Arenafoot]

9 hours ago, sramirez2008 said:

For the hombres patches, I believe they are only available within their individual AA threads, or if someone has an actual patch. I recall seeing a scan of the L.E.M. patch in one of the threads. I’ll try to locate it. 

my upcoming "Checklist" book......