Hmm, I don't know how nethack achieved this, but one would need to be careful to make sure a player can't just deliberately crash the program in order to reverse a dooming, etc.

That wont keep me from making backups.

If someone is going to cheat, they are going to find a way to cheat. You can't stop them, you can only slow them down. I think it is better to focus on making the game better for the honest players than worrying about the cheaters.

At any rate, the above fear is not valid in Nethack. I find that you don't lose more than a turn or so at most, so I don't think the crash recovery system as implemented in nethack can be reliably abused. Although I have lost work in open office, even this is rare. Even then, I don't lose everything. The same can not be said of some of my ADOM characters... black screen of death- many hours lost. Some of those were good characters too.

-Brendan

I don't want to lose good characters to computer/game crashes because someone else might want to cheat. Playability to honest
players is a lot more important than blocking cheaters. What does it even matter if someone cheats? JADE is solo game, not MMORPG or any kind of competition. It's cheaters loss if he can't
enjoy excellent game as we do.

I agree completely, there should be some kind of backup for our characters... this is of great importance i believe. Thumbs up!

Recovery could surely be abused.

I'm almost tempted by this feature but I didn't vote because I feel that Jade should stop the Adom paranoia against players. It penalize only standard players, those that save scum will anyway have plenty backup and won't care.

So instead of a complicate backup, just a game that can be saved without to quit, if people want cheat they'll do it anyway so no reason to penalize other players because of an excessive paranoia. If you feel I'm rude, think again and don't forget that the Adom game has been rude with me by making me lost days of play just because of a paranoiac design. Yeah free game, I know, as is my play... sarcasm here!

IMO it's possible to make savescumming harder so that a so-called average person wouldn't bother to savescum. I don't know if it's worth it though since somebody could just create a convenient cheating program.

Info about characters could be stored on a file by creating an unique random "character code" with an accurate time signature. The game will check the file on loading a saved game file and refuses to load it if the time signature of the info file and the save file differs or if there's no character code for the char at all (char dead/not created). That way you couldn't scum for better results from a pool etc. or revive a dead PC. If you delete the original save file the game is lost since the game won't accept any old previously copied save file. The game will also refuse to load anything if the info file has been deleted but creates a new one when a character is created. The game would update the time signature at very short real-time intervals and on saving the game.

Tell me if you notice any flaws.

Then there would be a need for somekind of a wizard mode for beginners though.

EDIT: about that signature thing: players could just make copies of the info file... Bah :). However JADE could save the creation time of the information file on the executable and compare that time with the "created" time of the file... or something like that. That way copies of the file wouldn't do.

Time signature? It's not protected information, you can change that sort of thing easily. Setup a client server thing with limited accounts and save stored on the server then you could eventually do something otherwise forget it, it's just nuisance for very few or illusory effects. I start be bored with save strategy of adom when I stop made often save backup, that said all.

Wouldn't it be difficult to set the time to the very exact moment at which the save file was created? Anyway I think the method in the Nethack variant is better.

Absolutely everything should be done to make the gaming experience more pleasureable for honest gamers. If this means allowing a few loop holes for dishonest gamers to cheat with, it is a suitable exchange in my opinion. The current trend to punish honest gamers in an attempt to deter dishonest gamers is absolutely fucking backwards.

It is possible using a (hashed) time stamp can make save scumming a hard task for the regular player. However, on a local machine with a player who has sufficient know-how, changing the file's time stamp to coincide with the contained time stamp is a simple task.

Also, no comparison of this time stamp to anything on a remote server or any attempt to modify the executable is feasible. It should only be used as a pass/fail check similar to the anti-cheating flag currently in ADOM.