Against bots

[Vapulabe]

There is at least one way : Alliance crests...

[janiii]

There is at least one way : Alliance crests...

yep, crests

[denser]

like clan image on shield

[janiii]

captcha in l2j it is not a fake

[poltomb]

There is also another option. It may not be the best (requires you to go to a website with a browser), but it may be better than nothing (and you can have better captchas than the crest idea).

• The server generates an url, this url is stored in the DB and linked to the account because it will be needed in the future.
• This url is sent to the player as a chat or as a system message or both (at least chat is recommended)
• The player navigates to this url, and a captcha is presented.
• Player enters the answer to the captcha at the website. When the captcha is entered, the player's account is verified.
• If the player does not enter the captcha, any *NEW* mobs the player attacks do not give any exp, sp, or drops.
  (Current mobs that the player is attacking still give drops/exp)

This system, in my opinion, is better than many ideas because it does not ban false positives (player busy in a raid, player is afk, player is at a castle siege). Also, with this system, you don't need to keep track of who is out exping and who is afk. When a bot is presented with the url, then it will not be able to do what they were made for (farm).

[jurchiks]

you might turn off damage or make it miss all hits instead of exp and drops, it would be a little more effective (mobs would still hit you back of course)

[janiii]

Using crests for own images doesnt mean the images cannot be larger - as you see on my screenshot the image is 32x16, so in fact they can be larger.

...

For your system with external link the player has no possibility to open it in a browser directly, he would have to write it down and then write and open it manually, copying the address is also impossible afaik.

[RiZe]

...

That's great idea I think. I like the combination with the website because it's more complicated for L2 related bot to access the web and parse some captcha. At least for now. Even the implementation isn't so complicated for experienced admin

Edit: Yes, it's more complicated for player too but still better than some extra client modding and installing some tools etc

[janiii]

Edit: Yes, it's more complicated for player too but still better than some extra client modding and installing some tools etc

there is no client modding needed to show own images.. still the captcha in game is easier as typing some link in browser by hand. as player ir is enough annoying to do some captcha at all and doing it externally on browser, having game client minimized is really much more annoying than captcha in game.

[RiZe]

That's true but I'm wondering how is it possible to show the image sent to client. I'll send the captcha to the client by using AF AllyCrest, right? And now that's the point. How to use the image sent to the client in HTML?

[janiii]

That's true but I'm wondering how is it possible to show the image sent to client. I'll send the captcha to the client by using AF AllyCrest, right? And now that's the point. How to use the image sent to the client in HTML?

idea:
- convert common image (png, bmp, jpg, ...) to dds (DirectDraw Surface) - image has to have dimensions of power of 2 (2,4,8,16,32,64,...)
- send the dds as byte array to client through PledgeCrest packet - random id can be used (e.g. named imgId)
- in htm use <img src=\"Crest.crest_" + Config.SERVER_ID +"_" + imgId + "\" width=32 height=16> - use the image dimensions

as i already wrote, it works for me fine but yeah, i did not try it for much larger images or what is the limit size of such a custom image.

[denser]

larger image can be construct from several smaller - or as i wrote - we have LARGE enough images on PLEDGE SHIELD

[janiii]

tested and with PledgeCrest i can set images 128x128 and also 256x256 (did not test more ). should be really more than enough no critical error on client.

256x256

i know i dont have much fantasy to make nice test images :/

[RiZe]

Hm, I smell a lot of new possibilities with this stuff not only for some protection

[Vapulabe]

Hmmm.... what about some complex quest with a "treasure map" shown (not a mark on game map, only a simple map with very few info about where it is located)...

It could be interresting to have L2J "system calls" available in python and java quests which would send such a graphic from a PNG or jpeg image...