Languages "Cheat"

[pjrake]

I'm using the languages dropdown (which is pretty awesome), but one of my players found a "cheat": they drag the text from a player (or NPC) speaking a language they do not understand and dragging it to the chatbox, then it shows what they said.

My players said they would not do that during gameplay, but just wanted to bring it here if anyone else noticed it, or is it something I'm doing wrong?

PJ

[Trenloe]

I'm using the languages dropdown (which is pretty awesome), but one of my players found a "cheat": they drag the text from a player (or NPC) speaking a language they do not understand and dragging it to the chatbox, then it shows what they said.

My players said they would not do that during gameplay, but just wanted to bring it here if anyone else noticed it, or is it something I'm doing wrong?

That's a known issue. You should see in the chat window if a player does this, so you'll know if they're doing it.

It has been mentioned in other systems where this language code is used that the code could be amended to completely randomise characters before the font is changed. Then even if the player did the "cheat" they'd just see gobbledygook.

[Ikael]

Yes this is known issue and one another more dirty way for players to cheat is to right click on "non-understandable" text and select "copy to clipboard". Then he can paste it anywhere as plain text without GM knowing about it (I might not have said that out loud ) Personally I would like to see feature in FG engine where I could disable the draggable text feature, because has caused more trouble than help to me. But more likely I am going to implement sentence to gibberish tool

[Trenloe]

Yes this is known issue and one another more dirty way for players to cheat is to right click on "non-understandable" text and select "copy to clipboard". Then he can paste it anywhere as plain text without GM knowing about it (I might not have said that out loud ) Personally I would like to see feature in FG engine where I could disable the draggable text feature, because has caused more trouble than help to me. But more likely I am going to implement sentence to gibberish tool

I've quickly thrown an extension that has a test function: TestStringManipulation.stringToGibberish(<string to translate>) put together. This is in the attached extension String Library.

Attachment 4241

Attachment 4242

I've also coded using this in the attached 3.5e Language Extension to see the results - I know this is in the Savage Worlds forum, but you can see the code in there how it works. I also had to change the translated fontmsg.text value to be "textstring" otherwise the translation will be gibberish as well!

The function simply creates a string of the same length of the original, makes random characters 0-9, a-z, A-Z, and randomly places a space (approximately every 1 in 10 characters). This could easily be developed further to randomly determine the string length, put caps at the beginning of words, take a period into account in the original text, etc..

So, this stops the issue of a player copying the language text to view the translation - they will just see gibberish.

Using this with the language extension I see one issue - if you keep saying the same word the translation will be different each time. So, for example, there is no way that players will learn to recognise when someone is saying "hello" - even when they've heard it 100 times in the same language before...

[Valarian]

I think Tarostar did a variant for Crimson Exodus which got around the cheat. Not sure how often he's on the board.

[bennis1980]

Ikael,

Why didn't you tell us about this cheat before now!!! THAT'S cheating!

And we all know you use the "/cheat" or "/explode" command before roll damage rolls, especially d4 blowpipes. You know what I'm talking about.

And don't you dare use that "/kill_off_bennis's_character" script I just know you are developing after I've just blown the whistle on you!!!

Man....

[Ikael]

Ikael,

Why didn't you tell us about this cheat before now!!! THAT'S cheating!

And we all know you use the "/cheat" or "/explode" command before roll damage rolls, especially d4 blowpipes. You know what I'm talking about.

And don't you dare use that "/kill_off_bennis's_character" script I just know you are developing after I've just blown the whistle on you!!!

Man....

Oh blast, I got busted!

[Ikael]

I've quickly thrown an extension that has a test function: TestStringManipulation.stringToGibberish(<string to translate>) put together. This is in the attached extension String Library.

Thanks Trenloe for the nice function! I know this comes quite late, but now I managed to get myself checking this out and it works very nicely. Player's cheating prevented in the upcomming version

[phantomwhale]

I've quickly thrown an extension that has a test function: TestStringManipulation.stringToGibberish(<string to translate>) put together. This is in the attached extension String Library.

Using this with the language extension I see one issue - if you keep saying the same word the translation will be different each time. So, for example, there is no way that players will learn to recognise when someone is saying "hello" - even when they've heard it 100 times in the same language before...

I wonder if you couldn't improve this by hashing the words of the string in a repeatable manner, such that you still get gibberish, but retaining the consistency of said gibberish, so words always translate to the same gibberish.

In any case, a great idea, and one Ikael seems to have picked up for SavageWorlds already.

[Trenloe]

Updated extension for 3.5e, PFRPG, 4E and Castles & Crusades using random text scrambling with randomseed based off the word being scrambled so the scrambling should be the same each time.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...G-3-0-rulesets