Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

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constatinus
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Joined: 27 Sep 2015, 23:00

Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by constatinus »

Is it possible? I did it via changing i *think* system.lua gadget but my status in lobbies (with unmodified BA) becomes unsynced. Any way to turn this off natively so that i dont become unsynced?
gajop
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by gajop »

Maybe. Best to ask BA devs about it (in that subforum)
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Forboding Angel
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by Forboding Angel »

That's like asking if you can hide your username from an authentication prompt.

BA gets it from infolog btw.
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Jools
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by Jools »

Forboding Angel wrote:That's like asking if you can hide your username from an authentication prompt.
Excellent question. How can I hide my username from an authentication prompt?
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nixtux
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by nixtux »

@forbs I think what he is trying to say is up until now the information in each user infolog has not been available to everyone too see, but that's gone now that system.lua is here.

But the only reason I can think of not wanting this information is there is a chance players will use this information to there advantage to lag out players with slow cpu.

@constatinus what is your reason for wanting this information kept secret?
gajop
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by gajop »

Why should other players know your system info? I've only seen this kind of information shared in the Spring ecosystem and it's a bit odd.

Devs on the other hand could use this info for a number of ways (userid authentication/calculation, stats, etc.)
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Forboding Angel
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by Forboding Angel »

It's mostly used for troubleshooting.
constatinus
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by constatinus »

Forbs - i checked the infolog, found some info but it isnt identical to the one found in BA. Upon changing it infolog will regenerate.
nixtux - wouldn't be such a problem without my friend. private stuff

Can gadgets be turned off *softly*-not by force (ex. not by removing them) - like a inner feature in them? A system info should be asked/opticional.
tzaeru
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Joined: 28 Oct 2007, 02:23

Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by tzaeru »

I can throw a quick look into if it can be optionally turned off from sharing info for other players, but release might take some weeks, a major update in works.
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Jools
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by Jools »

constatinus wrote: Can gadgets be turned off *softly*-not by force (ex. not by removing them) - like a inner feature in them? A system info should be asked/opticional.
Gadgets can be coded in such a way but it's not anything automatic. I agree that the system info should be asked and opt-in maybe, but it's not going tpo happen in our eco-system.
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Forboding Angel
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by Forboding Angel »

Plus, there really isn't a point unless you're trying to hide the fact that you told everyone you're on a 1080ti and "why is this game running so shit" except they can just look and see that you're on an intel HD.

System specs are one of the first lines of problem solving in spring games. Having that info readily available helps everyone and hurts literally no one.

It has been in current BA for how long(year(s)) and it's never been a point of contention. Why all of a sudden make a mountain of crap out of nothing?

"Ohhhhhh shit! He's in munich and he has a core i7. All I need to track him is to talk to every store that sold a core i7 since ever and I can totally know his address." Come on. Really?
tzaeru
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by tzaeru »

Right now, it's pretty trivial to spoof the info. All you need to do is to delete/modify infolog.txt after the game has updated it but before it has loaded gadgets. So.. It's doable to a dedicated abuser, but not doable to non-tech people.

Personally I'd be fine with there being a setting toggle to stop the information from being sent to every player in the game with you. It could be left undocumented and just hang around in some obscure config file. Very few players would ever turn it off if it was on by default.
Forboding Angel wrote:System specs are one of the first lines of problem solving in spring games.
Right, and the info would still be in infolog.txt.
Forboding Angel wrote:It has been in current BA for how long(year(s))
A year, looking at the repo history.
Forboding Angel wrote:Why all of a sudden make a mountain of crap out of nothing?
No need to be that hostile. There's no "mountain of crap" here.
Forboding Angel wrote:Ohhhhhh shit! He's in munich and he has a core i7. All I need to track him is to talk to every store that sold a core i7 since ever and I can totally know his address. Come on. Really?
Well, in principle - I mean, this is getting to ideals, but anyway - I think the sharing of *any* information should be possible to be opted out of if it's possible to run the service you want to use without that information.
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very_bad_soldier
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by very_bad_soldier »

Please make it optional. I did not like that it was shoved down everyone's throat by adding it as a gadget without an option to disable it. If someone needs this information to help someone then the info can be sent by a single click, no need to enable it for everyone by default.
dansan
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by dansan »

I think it'd be better to opt-out, because engine devs can use statistics about hardware for development decisions.
(I'm in the process of setting up a service that will collect this data anonymized for that purpose.)
gajop
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by gajop »

Let's not confuse sending stats to devs from sharing it with all players. Games sending system statistics and analytics to developers is something a lot of game studios do and it helps them make development and business decisions. It can be very useful.

That said, to remain in the spirit of open source/free environment I would even make that opt-out. Sharing detailed info with other players should probably be opt-in, while sharing simple signals such as CPU use/latency can be just enabled by default imo.
dansan
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by dansan »

I'm confused. Are we talking about the Platform lua table (see viewtopic.php?f=73&t=36288#p582657) or what BA sends to each player in system_info.lua?

BA sends this for example:

Code: Select all

CPU:  Intel i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz
CPU cores:  4 / 8
RAM:  32727MB
GPU:   GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
GPU VRAM:   11264MB
1732x1150:24bit @59Hz (windowed)
OS:  Windows

CPU cores:  6 / 12
GPU:   GeForce GTX 770
GPU VRAM:   2048MB
2560x1420:24bit @59Hz (windowed)
OS:  Linux

CPU cores:  1 / 4
GPU:   Intel Graphics 550
1440x786:32bit @60Hz (windowed)
OS:   Darwin 16.6.0 Darwin Kernel Version 16.6.0: Fri Apr 14 16:21:16 PDT 2017; root:xnu-3789.60.24~6/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
Can OP please share what data exactly is problematic?
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Forboding Angel
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by Forboding Angel »

They are bitching about what ba sends.

Please, pray enlighten us as to why this data is teh evils.
sprunk
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by sprunk »

If someone needs this information to help someone then the info can be sent by a single click
Not that simple. New people generally leave if they crash, which doesn't leave much opportunity to ask them to submit their info to help future people with same hardware.
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Jonny5isalivetm
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Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by Jonny5isalivetm »

I might be the only one who lieks cpu purvin well and senna ofc :D
tzaeru
Posts: 283
Joined: 28 Oct 2007, 02:23

Re: Hiding system info/specifications from spring/Balanced Annihilation

Post by tzaeru »

Forboding Angel wrote:They are bitching about what ba sends.

Please, pray enlighten us as to why this data is teh evils.
I've no idea why you're so hostile here or why you think it's appropriate to act like that.

I'm sure things can be discussed of without peppering comments with ad hominems.
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