Tilt to Live 2: Redonkulous

[Kamikaze28]

(05-17-2013 11:43 PM)oneadamleft Wrote:  With Tilt to Live 1, the scores got so high that I always wondered if there was some exploit we just never found, or if they were hacked. But without any proof, it was like what's the point thinking about it? All my competition took place on my friends leaderboard anyway. Maybe savvy hackers hack because they have no friends.

Drawing from games like Diablo III, one can deduce a very fundamental principle in this matter:

"Never trust the client."

The implementation of this principle (in the case of D3) is to have a very dumb client and do all the critical stuff on the server - which as we know requires a constant and low-latency internet connection and really tight server-maintenance which sounds like a really terrible idea for a casual arcade-style mobile game from a 2-man studio.
A weaker implementation would be to not allow the client to upload the calculated score but instead make it upload a record of a game and let a dedicated server simulate the game and calculate the score. This server would also have to check whether the records abide by the games rules and discard them if they don't. From a programming, debugging and maintaining standpoint this is a whole different bag of nightmares.