comments | Links and Cheating | typewriting

Comment by Branko Collin

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 12:19:31 -0800

Am I correct in assuming that the maximum score is 80? (Based on the assumption that every sub-round takes 10x3 seconds plus a transition period of approx. 10 seconds.)

Comment by Scott Reynen

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 15:41:14 -0800

Each set should be 35 seconds. 3 seconds for each photo, and a five second delay at the end to see the answer. Each round is 5 mintes, so 5*60=300 and 300/35 = 8.57. I believe it's possible to get up to 90 points, but that may require reloading in the middle of a round. I'm not sure. I havne't seen anyone get a score higher than 70 since I made the most recent round of fixes.

Comment by Mary

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 18:48:44 -0800

Some of the pictures I cannot tell what the heck it is, so it would be helpful to be able to click it and see a bigger image. Also, it seems like the game gets stuck on the same set of images over and over, whether I guessed it correctly or not. Is that a bug, or is it supposed to do that?

Comment by Scott Reynen

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 19:46:17 -0800

Mary, I'll work on bigger images for those who want them. The game shouldn't show the same set of images twice in a row ever. If you can tell me what browser and operating system you're using, I'll try to track down that problem. Meanwhile, I suggest reloading the page when that happens.

Comment by ElectronoMo

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 01:09:02 -0800

Aww, thanks for the link in your entry! This game is addictive. It's a wonderful de-stressor at the end of the day

Comment by oluckboy

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 17:24:35 -0800

would it be possible to encrypt the answer in the source? Then just use the same alg. and salt on the typed response? That way even if you could view the source you would have to decrypt it first and the burden of encrypting the response vs. the answer would still be a client burden.

Comment by Scott Reynen

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 17:41:02 -0800

oluckboy, I can encrypt it to test guesses, but then I can't show the answer at the end of a photo set without decrypting it.

My choices are 1) make the answer available to both cheaters and anyone who can't guess the answer, or 2) make it available to neither. For now, I choose #1. When I play, I find I can still win without cheating (other than knowing all the tags), so I'm not sure there even are any cheaters to deal with.

Comment by Matt

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:13:12 -0800

I just discovered another cheat - two machines side-by-side (one a Mac running Camino, the other XP+Firefox), the Windows machine was consistently ahead of the Mac so it was easy to 'cheat' on the Mac...
Not sure what caused this - faster CPU on the Windows box? They're both hanging off the same wireless link so it shouldn't be network latency...

Comment by Branko Collin

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 08:47:09 -0800

I have both seen scored of 100+ (after you posted this entry) and twice the same puzzle in a row. The latter seemed to coincide with other problems, such as the timer not counting down correctly.

Comment by Scott Reynen

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 08:48:16 -0800

Matt, each photo set starts for you when you load it, so you could just as easily do the same thing on one computer by opening two windows several seconds apart from one another. But again, doing so doesn't give you a significant advantage, and it's less fun than actually playing, so I'm not too concerned.

Comment by Scott Reynen

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 09:35:44 -0800

Thanks for the note, Branko. I'll look into those problems.

Comment by EyeDye

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:19:41 -0800

If you use a name that is already in use strange things start to happen. Maybe you could make it so if someone uses a name that is already in use, a few random numbers are added.

Comment by Branko Collin

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 21:53:00 -0800

Here are two (more?) ways to cheat:

1) Open two game windows, with two different players. Once you've guessed the tag, fill it in in window one, then switch to window two and reload. Window 2 will get the next picture, which you now have plenty of time to guess. Switch back to window one and wait till you can fill out the new tag.

2) Guess right, wait till the fifth photo has loaded, then reload. This one will get you a higher than maximum score. It helps to have a short username for this one, because you need to type it again for every guess.

Both tested using Firefox 1.5 on Mac OS X.

Comment by Scott Reynen

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 22:48:40 -0800

Branko, your #2 doesn't work. The game will ignore all but the first score for each photo set, so it is impossible to get more than 10 points per photo set.

I keep watching games, but I still don't see anyone getting more than 80 points per round. I'm going to start recording the final scores to make sure I'm not missing something.

Comment by Branko Collin

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 12:32:03 -0800

Scott, it doesn't work because you just fixed it. :-)

(Perhaps I explained it incorrectly, but it is the same idea you discussed in "Better Timing". By reloading you could get a new set of images. That did not always work, but it worked often enough so that you could score higher than 90.)

Comment by Scott Reynen

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 12:34:33 -0800

Branko, yeah, I thought you meant the same photo set, but you meant a new photo set, which is what I just fixed. Thanks for letting me know.

Comment by Branko Collin

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 13:00:57 -0800

Actually, it seems you did not fix it; I just scored 100 points using this method. Back to the drawing board. :-)

Comment by Branko Collin

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 13:01:50 -0800

Oh, and somebody called testr is continously scoring two to three hundred points.

Comment by Scott Reynen

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 14:19:20 -0800

Branko, see. I think it's fixed now (until someone figures out a new way to cheat).

Comment by Kent Brewster

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 21:23:48 -0800

I'm seeing some repeat tags, like bowl, twin, spoon, and bread. Other than that ... wow, this is pretty darn cool.

If you have a moment, come check out Flickrball, which is another game based on looking at pictures and guessing tags.

Comment by Scott Reynen

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 22:23:08 -0800

Thanks Kent, I've increased the minimum span between repeats. I played Flickrball before, and it's fun, but I'd rather the start and end tags were random.

Comment by Sebastian Hanula

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 11:49:21 -0800

some code like this, placed in url bar will give auto guessing :)
javascript:document.getElementById('guess').value = answer;guess();

you need to think about some encoding.

Comment by Scott Reynen

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 14:40:29 -0800

Sebastian, that's what I meant when I wrote "It's pretty trivial to add JavaScript to the page." I also wrote "Luckily the game is more fun than the cheating," and I haven't seen any reason to doubt this since writing that. I still don't think preventing a few random cheaters is worth making the game less fun for everyone.

Encoding wouldn't help at all. The only way to completely prevent cheating is to never send the answer to the browser at all, and that would make the game incredibly slow.

Comment by Sebastian Hanula

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:46:44 -0800

Scott, you're right of course.
But some discovering cheats could be more fun over all.
Good code/job anyway.