Cheat codes detected

What version are you running? I had that happen when I updated a couple of months ago.

Did you update in the middle of the game? That has caused problems from time to time.

I am using 1.5x3

No I did not update during the game.

I haven't even been to Stardock central since installing the last update, which was before I started the current game.

- Livonya

my computer couldn't handle any more ships

If you don't mind me asking, how many ships was this and what processor/video do you have?

As far as the cheat codes, I'm hopeful that it gets resolved quickly. From your history it should be obvious to all that there is no reason to suspect any cheating even though the score is indeed high. It's most likely that your game is subject to having gone where no man has gone before, who knows what kind of bug or overflow condition could have occured.

Do you have the endgamesave still? I'll see if Cari can spare the time to check it out, so have it handy if you do have it.

Cari says first start a new game with the exact same settings and race, then exit and see if your debug shows a cheat flag was issued.

Kryo -

Thanks for the feedback.

Okay, I will start a new game when I get home with the same settings and see what happens.

I will also re-run the end game, as I still have it and will check the debug file to see what it says. I don't normally look at the debug file, but it sounds like maybe there is some info there that might tell me something useful.

The only strange thing that happened in the game is that my computer couldn't handle all the ships. I had over 17,400 ships and over 18 trillion people. I got to a point where if I made even one more ship the game would crash. And when I went to end the game I couldn't invade the last enemy planet without causing the game to crash. To get around this I had to turn off every single setting from the options menu and I had to set the video performance to the lowest possible setting. I did all of that from within the game from the options screen.

This game was a real pain in the butt. It takes 20 minutes to load the game and 10 seconds to move a single ship one square.

The last year of the game all I did was set research to 100% and hit "end turn", as producing more ships would break the game. It took 3 hours to get through the last year and all I was doing was hitting "end turn."

Anyway, I will check all of that when I get home.

My next goal is to log a game over 1,000,000 points which I am positive I can do, but I don't want to try for it if my game is automatically going to be tagged as a cheat.

- Livonya

PS: Just for those curious. Here are some stats from the end game.

17,400+ ships
18 trillion people
936 planets
1,000,000+ BC in taxes each week

Wow... I think my rig would explode zeros and ones all over the room if I tried to run a game like this.

Had the same thing on my last 1.5x3 game - no reason for it, nothing in the debug.err either.

Score was 683K (only had about 1000 ships in total, and no military SBs anywhere - so it shouldn't be related to that). Other numbers were about the same as yours.

I think I got one of the racial abilities so high during the course of the game that it tripped some sort of flag - most likely would be miniaturisation because I had about 8 Hyperion Shrinkers by the end.

I agree that a million points would be possible now if using a military SB array and thousands of tiny ships - I just can't be bothered with the slowdowns that creates.

I got an unjustified cheat flag on one of my games, too. It was DA 1.50X, and I was told by others that *all* the games of that particular release were thus flagged ... which is a bummer.    So there it sits in my Metaverse list, coutning as a game played, I guess, but zero points counted. I figure it is just "tough luck" for us, otherwise people who *really* cheated could claim innocence to get unjustified scores counted. Oh well, I still enjoyed playing that particular game, and that's what really counts.   

Wow, I didn't realize that my score wouldn't be counted.

I thought there would just be that annoying cheat flag listed.

I guess that is it for me, I am done with GalCiv II.

I was only playing to see what sort of scores I could get, and if my scores aren't going to be counted then I might as well stop playing.

Oh, well. On to something else I guess.

I won't be paying money for another GalCiv game or update.

- Livonya

Well, if you can provide the info Cari needs, it might be reversible, or at least explainable so you can avoid it in the future.

That's the problem with playing only for score. If that's truly your only motivation then this result was inevitable anyway. Whether it was an undeserved cheat flag or just eventual boredom the result would be the same.

The question is that if this is your attitude, how will the next game be any different? You'll play for the score for awhile until boredom or some other minor disappointment causes you to give up on that as well. I guess there will always be an endless succession of next games to look forward to, but I doubt you’ll really find one with a fraction of the longevity of this game.

I feel that the score is important, but it’s by no means the only thing. I look at the game as starting in chaos with AI’s indiscriminately colonizing all over the place building their planets up in whatever haphazard way that appeals to the AI mentality. I gradually spread over the galaxy taking over planets and building them up the proper way until at the end the galaxy is perfectly ordered and a reflection of my personality. If you want to call this anal or OCD then fine, but everyone needs to have some reason to play this game other than score. If there were no score or metaverse I would play the game less than I do now, but I would still play the game.

Please don’t take this negatively, if anything I’m trying to give you a dose of reality to try and motivate you to stick around. Maybe it would be good to take a break for a bit, maybe even check out SEV (although I’ve heard that AI is *really* stupid). If do you find that perfect game please come back and tell us about it. If you don’t then perhaps you can come back to the game refreshed and find something to play for besides *just* the score. Also please don’t feel like once you’ve said something like your last post that you’re obligated to follow through on the threat. No one will think the less of you if you don’t, nor will they think any less if you do follow through but later return.

Finally, please do as Kryo suggested and provide the information for Cari to look at, if not for yourself then for the rest of us.

Thanks,
Mumble

Mumble -

While I understand what you are saying, that point of view doesn't work for me.

What I find enjoyable about a game like this in the long term is trying to see what I can do within a frame of rules.

That to me is the game within the game.

You might not think that is a valid or a productive way to approach a game, and I respect that, but my approach is sometimes different.

I am curious what I can achieve within a set of rules. That is what is holding my attention at this point.

I will follow through and I will give all the info that I can, and maybe it will be reversed, though I don't really care about that so much.

My complaint is that I no longer know the set of rules. I have no idea what I did wrong, if I did anything wrong at all. And quite frankly I don't think I did anything wrong.

When the rules of a game are broken then the game is no longer fun.

I enjoy playing games as I enjoy learning, and improving my skills.

GalCiv II is a great game. I enjoyed my time with it. Most of my games I only play to the end of the 2nd year, as the challenge is over at that point. On a few of my games I decide to play to the end in order to see what I can achieve.

Stardock set up the framework and rules of the Metaverse and so I sometimes enjoy playing in that framework to see what I can do. But in my opinion that framework is now broken.

It annoys me that the game doesn't prevent me from cheating or warn me, but rather it waits until I have spent my precious time and then simply says, "Cheat flag detected" with no explanation.

I don't even get an explanation? That spoils the fun and challenge for me.

I will do what Kryo says, as I am curious what happened.

The Stardock people are very user friendly and I appreciate that, and I am not trying to insult them or the game, but I don't see the point in finishing my games if the scores may or may not count depending on some arbitrary set of rules that I don't understand or have access to.

- Livonya

Livonya,

There are only a few things that will set off a cheater flag, the most obvious being editing the data files used by the game, or editing a save game.  Winning in 12 weeks or less will also trip the cheater flag.  If you start the game with the cheat command line parameter and use a cheat key, that will also set the cheater flag. 

It's possible that you have found a bug or that your data was not updated correctly the last time you updated, but I do suspect that it's data related.

 

 

Livonya,

I understand your motivation. Mine is not that dissimilar, in that after I have winning the game down, I really enjoy taking it apart to see just how far I can push it, up to and including pushing it so far that I basically break it. I too want to see what I can do with the fixed set of rules. The scores and the metaverse represent a convenient way to see how well I have done in taking the game apart compared to others. I understand how frustrating it is to spend all that time and not have it count, but they are trying to make sure the rules really are the same for everyone. You and Mag managed to push the game far enough that you hit an exception that wasn't planned for....They want to fix it. Assuming they can, the framework should be back in place going forward. Frankly, I hope my current game doesn't break it as well.

It would be nice if on load or save, the cheat flag was checked for, so you would be forewarned that something was wrong with the save game. I suspect that they never expected to have so many issues with false flags as we have had since game release.

I would urge you to submit the stuff they need, take a breather and come back after they hopefully have a fix to the framework to see if you can get more enjoyment out of it.

You are good competition and a very good player. I would hate to see you go.

Edit: I do believe the cheat flagged games are still counted on the AltMeta. It might be worth keeping that in mind...

Purge, you are absolutely right.

The thing that is frustrating here is that no advance warning is given. If I started a game and I was told that the cheat flag was activated then I would stop and start over. Or if I was told when I opened a save game, I would stop and start over.

Clearly I don't want the cheat flag activated.

These games simply represent too much time to have to wait until the very end to find out if something is going to flip the cheat flag.

I imagine the vast majority of people that got the cheat flag got it on accident or on error.

In any event, I don't need a break. I am not stressed or angry. I just don't see how I can justify starting another month long game that may or may not produce a cheat flag.

I think the game should prevent cheating or warn me if something is gone wrong, rather than punishing me at the end of my month long game.

It isn't like we are playing for money here. No one really has anything to gain from cheating, so I don't understand why this system is used.

If I had to choose between having my cheat flag removed, and a patch that would allow the player to know in advance that the cheat flag was triggered then I would choose the patch.

My game is over. That time is gone. I can live with that.

What I can't live with is the idea of starting a new game with the knowledge that it might happen again. That is just too much to ask of any player. That simply isn't fun.

- Livonya

Hello Livonya, I had never played a Metaverse game. I never liked the one-dimensionality of it; the 'you have to play this way, and this way only, if you want to post a respectable score' aspect of it. Still don't. But in the spirit of camaraderie, I bit the bullet and started my first meta game, and if I may say so, I played brilliantly. It was perhaps the most perfect game I have ever played, and quite surprising to me, as I was playing completely outside of my normal style. When the game was finished, however, it wouldn't post to the meta. No cheat flag, it just wouldn't post. Was I upset? You bet I was. Many hours wasted. It turns out that it was a problem with updating during that game-the two versions didn't get along well. Nothing to do about it though.

That put me off for awhile, but I decided that I had to try again. I started another meta game, and again, it played out beautifully. A game and a score that I would be proud to post. But...just as I was in the 'mopping up' phase of the game, the messages started popping up on the forums about the cheat flags. OMFG, it's happened again.

I only use these examples to let you know that I understand and sympathize. I can be incredibly frustrating to do everything right(as far as you can tell) and still have the rug pulled out from under your feet. But I'm still here, and perhaps in time, I'll give the meta another go.

There are other things that to me, are just or even more upsetting than these two games. I play (primarily) as a Terran trader, and the nerfing of trades has just killed me. There are a few other issues, which I won't get into now, but the bottom line is - I'm still here. I truly believe that the people at Stardock are working as hard as they can to try and make this game as good as it possibly can be, and I have faith that soon, they will have it balanced and polished up.

Might there be a way to update this? Frogboy and Kryo can beat the game in 8 turns, with no cheats. This is only possible in a tiny galaxy, so perhaps an exception for the tiny galaxy? I would like to give this a shot myself, and if successful, be able to post it.

I think this is a very good idea. When the game first came out, there was no way to know whether or not you had 'tripped a flag' until the game had finished. Cari, thankfully, added a check to the setup portion of the game, which saved, I'm sure, countless cases of the type of frustration mentioned in this post. Perhaps it is time now to check, as you mentioned, every load. It wouldn't, by itself, stop the event, but it would allow a player to stop/save the game at the very point where it did happen, so that perhaps the root cause can be found.

I see your point and can share your frustration, the time investment in these games can be immense and it's difficult to make the investment with a cloud like this hanging over your head. This is also a little bit different explanation than how I originally interperted your statement that "I was only playing to see what sort of scores I could get".

The point I'm making is that most folks I know are supportive of your concern and frustration and those same set of folks would prefer to not see you leave the game.

I still view the most likely scenario to be the one proposed by Magnumaniac which essentially boils down to doing something in the game beyond what was envisioned or tested for by the developers. As Mag suggested, I doubt anyone ever checked out what happens when you have 8 Hyperion Shrinkers. In my current DL v1.4 game I have over 14,000 ships and I'm currently building 300 ships a turn. If my game lasts another year, which is likely, I'll have close to 30,000 ships before I'm done. I guess I'll see if this causes an issue for me as well.

In any case no one can fault the developers for failing to check out what happens at these extremes. As you mentioned, the error condition could perhaps have been handled more gracefully but that's another issue.

There certainly have been those that have done things like edit huge bonuses into their raceconfig files and I am glad that Stardock has made the effort to stop that kind of activity. Activity like that would kill the metaverse for certain. Yes the detection code may not be perfect and may not gracefully warn of impending disaster, but all in all I prefer what is there versus nothing at all. However, ask me again if I lose a game I spent 6 weeks on because 30,000 ships is just too many.

In any case it would be my preference to see you stick around some more.

Livonya, during one update I started a couple of Meta games and I got a message right away, before the game even initially loaded, that cheat flags were detected. It happened to be a problem with the update, so that I had to delete raceconfig files. But it did tell me before the game started that there were cheat codes detected. It sounds like you didn't get that notice, but that's the kind of notice that should absolutely pop up as soon as a cheat code is detected, and should, frankly, pop up every time such a saved game is loaded! Certainly not just at the end when you're trying to post!

For someone like you (and the very few who are totally honest and yet get these flags), I would hope Stardock would do something to get back to what is fair. That is, if you've just finished a massive game with a great score (and I consider you a genius for your scores, BTW), you should be given your due. If it's an error with the software, as it mightily appears to be, then Stardock must do something positive about it. Otherwise, the Metaverse loses a great deal of credibility.

Your game was scored; you're just upset that it won't be posted to the metaverse. It sounds to me like you were only playing so that other people could see your highscores.

You know you didn't cheat, and you know what your score actually was. So who cares?

On some levels I agree with you. But I didn't invent the Metaverse. I didn't ask for a system to rank the players.

Originally I was playing off line and not posting.

But then I was curious about the Metaverse and curious how people were doing, so I started posting.

Curiosity drove me. I set a goal to get over 400,000. Then I wanted to get over 500,000 then I realized I could probably get closer to 1,000,000 so I that is what I was trying for.

And yes, you are correct, I know what I did and it doesn't really matter.

That is rational and true.

I also realize that this is just a game and the scores are completely meaningless and posting on the Metaverse has no real impact on my life one way or another.

But I have to admit I was disappointed when the game was flagged as a cheat. Maybe that is selfish or too grounded in ego, but again I didn't invent the Metaverse.

The Metaverse was there and I was told these were the rules to how it works.

Stardock invited me to use the Metaverse, so I don't think it is really fair to blame the situation on my ego.

As I said in my last post I would prefer a fix so that this won't happen to any other player rather than a fix for my particular situation.

I think it is in Stardock's interest to remedy this problem on a global level rather than to fix my particular complaint regarding my one game.

I don't really expect them to change the status of my game, it never even occured to me that was possible.

I just think it would be in the interest of all Metaverse players if this sort of thing was prevented from happening in the future.

- Livonya

I know that I am still quite a noob; but I sure can not think of *any* way to win in as little as 8 turns even with cheating!


From the Desk of Sugien CSK
_____/}
@###{ ]::::::Cyber Striker Knight::::::>
`````\}

I can. Think small map, two races, alliances, diplomacy and preset relationships...

Actually in DA, it might be possible to do it in less. Two races and spore ships...

Kryo / CariElf -

Okay, I started a new game with the exact same specs and I didn't get a cheat flag when I ended the game. You can see that in my profile.

The stupid thing on my part was I did it twice and the second time I did it I didn't realize that the game would revert to the main account, so the second game that was posted at 0 turns was actually posted to my main account.

So, yes, laughter is in order. I managed to post a defeat game to my account and actually lowered my over all score.

That was really dumb on my part, but I still see the humor in it, luckily.

So it didn't have anything to do with start of the game.

I then re-ended the end game for my "cheat flagged game" to see what the debug would say.

I can't find anything in there that says anything about cheat, but I am not sure what to look for.

I will post that debug in a seperate thread. It seems crazy to clog up this current thread with such silly information.

I will call that thread "Debug for Kryo/CariELF". I figured you could just deleat that thread once you are done with it.

If you would like me to e-mail you my save game I will gladly do that.

And again, I never ever thought there was any chance that you folks would change the status of my game. I merely want to know what happened and try to make sure it doesn't happen again. I just can't bare to start another game knowning that I will merely earn another "cheat flag detected" badge.

- Livonya