I’m going to roll with ‘99%’ for safety’s sake 
It could have been any dev I guess and I would have taken it as authoritative but it’s usually James or Luca that posts about the tech stuff ofc.
EDIT: I fully give up some of these release notes threads approach 1000 posts. Take it with a grain of salt I guess.
The auth change lets them associate api calls with an account. Previously some apis were just public so any new ip could abuse them. With auth they can ban accounts and a new purchase would be required if they are abusing things. I have never been banned.
For clarity xaldafax and havok must be refering to other mod makers being blocked or punished, as neither have happened to me.
I think in fairness we should consider when that channel was created and understand the reasons this was done. Especially since it was done in EA and not created in Production. Overall, though, I think it does create mixed messages as well.
Unfortunately, I think the lack of time on the Developers side keep them focused on other things and doesn’t give them the time to really look at this area in the game. It comes down to that and the philosophy. Just like some people in the forums feel there is no issue here, I wouldn’t doubt the Devs have both sides of the conversation as well.
At the end of the day, if people knew that those hacking the game can get a whole host of data that gives them a clear advantage over those players they probably wouldn’t be happy. Then with the developers continuing to not just shut that down really speaks bad for the game. Not to mention those players that just enable the behavior even more than the developers. Maybe a nice steam review of Dev and player sanctioned cheating is needed on the forums to address the issue. Give the new players a warning about the powers some people have and that it is only a few not everyone.
I don’t like that there are people that can read a meteor before it lands to decide if they want to attack it or not. I don’t like that someone can walk through chunks and see the resource distribution without barely needing to mine. If they can read those things, I wouldn’t doubt them being able to read beacon expiration timers, inventory of people, or a whole host of other things.
When 1 person does that, then others feel they need to do it and they will. Those actions then cause problems with the players that refuse to play the game like that and instead want to play it the way it is delivered.
I don’t see how any of that “helps the game” in any way in our current state. In the middle of EA with some basic “reading of files” it might have made some sense. The actions have now moved into memory reading and who knows what else and do affect game play so maybe it is time to evaluate the real need of having it until we have a proper API layer.
I get that “websites” can be used by everyone, but that isn’t always the case. Ultimately, the specific points are not usually the focus of those of us that don’t agree with the hacking and outside data gathering player mindset.
There are many more mods and things people have done now that they are aware of the technology layer to do this. The cat is out of the bag and people have leveraged it for their own good in EA and now in Production. That is basically the same thing @Havok40k was talking about in his posts.
Even things like websites are not always available to people. It comes down to how some people choose to play the game. Unfortunately there are some players that will push the line because of their lack of character to get the most advantage. That is what many of us are talking about.
Basically they are they type of people that see a truck wreck that was carrying money. The money flew all over the place. Some people would help the driver, others would return the money. Still others would keep the money themselves and take advantage of the situation. We have people in the game that are fine doing whatever they can to “win” over other people that just want to play the game they have.
Trying to mix P2W and Hack2Win won’t help solve the conversation on whether hacking is helpful or not and should be stopped at least in how I look at the problem.
A person like Jiivita or Omni who (in the game and uses game tools and features) mines out a whole mountain to try to figure out resource distribution deserves to decide what information they share or not. A person that uses another outside program to read resource distribution in minutes or easily target where diamonds are doesn’t really deserve to be respected on any level in the game.
They are different things and people don’t need to try to bring in all the other scenarios to try to “justify” the lack of character and integrity of a person that wants to take short cuts like this in the game play. People can disagree and play how they want. But, there are a decent amount of players in this game that refuse to allow the game to be ruined because people can’t play fair.
I don’t think anybody was championing dev sactioned cheating, xray or any such thing. 
They’ve probably kept the line a bit fuzzy so they can decide on a case by case basis if they should take action against a mod, because in my opinion there are advantages to some level of user modification. People can customize their game a bit to fit their needs better. It’s nice that we have access to the game configuration files for the forge animation speed for example way before the skip button was introduced.
Or aggregating data that’s presented in the game in an automated manner, it is just the means to cut down on manual work, it could be done manually as well. I don’t count this as cheating, cheating should be discouraged.
Honestly, I don’t want to get into any specifics. For me this isn’t a “specific” point by point discussion. Instead it is about the philosophy of how people choose to play the game and where they draw their line around stuff like cheating, taking advantages of things, and what they see is “fair” game play.
It is very simple - does a person play the game within the realms of the game or not.
Some of the “mods” and web pages are helpful but I’d prefer them being in the game or using a correct API layer. Other “mods” and way of obtaining data are completely crossing and hurt the game hugely because of the perception they set and the level of unfairness they create.
It saddens me that so many in this community are willing to justify those actions and worse actually “enable” it. To me it just seems a simple answer - NO don’t play that way.
(edit: I want to clarify why I feel this mindset is bad - because is sets a precedent for others to do it and who knows how worse it can get. I respect people on their technical skill level to do some of these things but wish they wouldn’t help enable others who might make these even worse.)
Meh. If the game was fair then there wouldn’t be huge plot bonuses for people that happened to find the game in an early phase and leverage that extra land mass for passive income.
This game isn’t ‘fair’. Whether you paid a lot early on, you have excessive time to play the game and exploit exo first come first serve resource allocation, or whether you are smart enough to dissect certain parts of the program to make it more user friendly.
The moral high ground argument you’re making is deeply flawed.
I think we all would prefer that, but the dev resources to make that happen just aren’t there. At least not soon.
First off I never tried to link one level of advantage to another. Trying to justify one set of actions and choices of players versus other decisions by Devs and players is even more flawed.
Fairness is a relative term and everyone here knows that and it makes no sense to try to deflect the general comments I am making here. The “what about” mindset of argument is a waste of time.
We all should be mature and adult enough here to be able to tell the difference and understand each individual context on what is appropriate and what probably isn’t really appropriate.
Xal, can you just, not?
It’s not hacking. Everyone had access to it. You are being super disingenuous about the facts.
It was a responsible effort done by passionate players to add a needed feature the devs didn’t have time to add at the moment.
We are mature and adult in here. Not sure why you think otherwise. My post was a broad generalization of everyone can make an argument for something on fairness. I’m not deflecting the actions of anyone. If they consider it valuable to their time and entertainment and the devs don’t stop it, then more power to them. Whether I agree is irrelevant. It’s their time and money.
The ones championing these styles of game play are the ones using the technology or teaching others how to do it. Each person is 100% responsible for their own actions, but a person could be responsible enough to make the choice to not go down the path because they have the foresight to easily see the end result.
It is not a far step between reading memory for a shop stand, to the reading of memory for meteor, beacon, inventory, or who knows what else.
I’ve had some extensive conversations about this but it isn’t worth trying to explain. In any event, they and all of us can see the advantage of some user modification and really does fall into a case by case basis. Unfortunately the current situation is way out of control and the lack of Dev time and focus continues to allow it to get worse.
I do agree some things are nice and automated data aggregation can be helpful. I’m just like everyone in wanting some of that stuff… I certainly have the technical skill set to read memory or all the other tech stuff with my 30 years in IT but don’t do it. It is up to each person to decide where they draw that line and each person should be held accountable to their own actions.
I get that some things are available and I think the conversation about that should be different than the areas that are not available to everyone. I just don’t see or understand why people would justify or enable or support those that are truly doing things that give them a direct advantage and not available to all.
I haven’t seen any tutorials about memory reading on the forums or discord, maybe I’m just not on the right channels.
Also, what would you read about a meteor? The mobs are rng, drops are rng. Inventories probably aren’t sent to clients, beacon expiry timers are most likely just 1 bit to either smoke or not smoke. They’ve already done a good job hiding most of the things they can, I wouldn’t want them to use the next month to develop more counter measures if the cheaters are not a huge problem atm. Give me titans first please.
edit: To be fair maybe all of them above memory reading stuff is possible, could think of a couple ways to use memory reading for meteors or the forge, it does make a couple assumptions about how the game is programmed though as does all of this speculation about what’s everyone doing with all the data and memory they’re collecting and manipulating.
Where am I being super disingenuous with the facts? What facts have I outlined? Please explain.
I have not mentioned one person or tried to give VERY specific details on a topic or anything. Please do not link “my conversation and words” with other posts and stuff.
I have not intentionally mentioned people because I want this as a general conversation and not specifics. Going into specifics doesn’t help.
Of course I get at some level this is what is happening. I am not trying to demonize anyone because I get the view of trying to help the community. I have even said that I respect the approach on some level. I respect the technical level just like I would expect some level of respect for the financial amount I was able to spend in my effort to buy the Oortian account to help the community and game.
It is very easy, though, for a good reason to do something to turn into a bad situation afterward. Memory reading has moved past simple data and is not affecting game play and it is not available to everyone. We also are not in EA any more but actual Release so the context has changed greatly.
We all might be mature enough to handle it and try to balance that tight rope, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be someone that comes in (or already has I would be) that uses things in a worse way. Personally I feel that because of meteor and beacon (rumor) reading.
I won’t demonize anyone because I respect the intent they had and the technical skill set to do it. I really do. I am just against the “results” at this point enough that I won’t do it and am asking people to draw a bit harder line for what “is good” and “is bad”… even though that is all subjective…
Took a quick look at the new data on the test server.
@willcrutchley you’d probably be interested in this too. Managed to figure out a bit more of how the high level payload data works because of the small frames. (See number of records in frame, record length, API ID).
//== request frame
82 // FIN: true - opcode: 2
B4 // mask: true - payload len: 52
FC 41 29 7B // masking key (rest of data has unmask already applied)
02 00 // number of records in frame
08 00 // record length
4E // API ID
30 26 // item code
00 00 // ???
30 26 // item code again?
00 // null terminator
// Other records in frame
26 00 // record length
38 FE BB 2D 07 00 FF FF FF 00 00 00 00 E6 7A 94
3E 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 C0 40 00
//== response frame
82 // FIN: true - opcode: 2
7E // mask: false - payload len: 126
00 C3 // payload length: 195
05 00 // number of records in frame
37 00 // record length
4E // API ID
30 26 // item code
00 00 // spacer?
01 00 // probably sub-record count? (number of prices for this item)
43 40 // ???
00 00 // probably patrons?
10 // settlement name length
03 // guild name length
57 65 20 64 69 64 20 69 74 20 61 67 61 69 6E 21 // settlement
52 41 54 //guild
64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 // quantity (need to verify length but makes sense this would need to be longer than just 1 stack like the shop records)
64 2B CB 95 00 00 00 00 // price
93 FF BC FF D5 41 // most if not all of this is the location. probably the same bit-packed location data as the shop records.
00 // null terminator
// Other records in the frame
06 00 // record length
21 E7 09 2D 07 00
17 00 // record length
0A 00 10 00 80 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 01 00 80 01 00
39 00 // record length
06 32 14 7A 04 01 75 DD C8 C4 35 FE 87 42 9A DA
7D C4 36 77 1B 40 1C 05 C5 02 60 3F E0 F1 9B BF
04 0A 0D E8 6F 3F 8C 4A B0 3E 3B 00 00 01 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00
2A 00 // record length
06 2F 14 7A 03 01 87 C6 C8 C4 35 FE 81 42 30 46
84 C4 45 D8 96 3F 1C 05 E3 E9 2A 40 BB 24 5A BF
04 0A D9 5A 0E 3F 56 3F 55 3F
Literally nobody is hurt by providing useful services to support the economy. It’s a win/win/win/win. Back when Simoyd started making the scanner client, he was very clear that all that would have to happen is for ANYONE from the Boundless team to ask him to stop and he would immediately stop. Same goes for me and the new Boundless Commerce site. Not once has anyone from Boundless asked us to stop.
This was brilliant btw. People flagged it because it’s too true.
Let’s just let this thread die. Boundless Commerce is on its way regardless of what anyone says. If a member of the Boundless team would like to ask me and Simoyd to not proceed then we will immediately stop, no questions asked.
It took 1 person to derail the entire thread into a cesspool.
These kinds of people need to learn to identify when they need to just stop.
I agree with Dhusk here.
If James wanted boundlesstrade.net shut down, he would probably have just sent @Simoyd a message telling him that he is doing something undesirable. And simoyd would have pulled the plug, I’m pretty confident that he’s a white hat at least in this context. Or hypothetically James could have banned simoyd, though I can’t imagine he’d do that without talking to him first. James might also have posted in forums setting some rules for APIs - what is allowed and what isn’t.
Since none of these happened, and I’m pretty confident that James knows about BT, I would guess that WS knows about and tolerates BT.
Feel free to chime in @james if I’m speaking on your behalf incorrectly here!