Prevent cheat in a Time Based System

mmzbr

Hey guys,

I'm working on events in my game based on realtime device. Example: 7pm = game scenario is night, 7am = game scenario is day using rule if Attribute game.Clock.Hour = X then ...

But I want to introduce some events triggering by the time, like 8:20pm do something, but ppl can cheat just adjusting their devices for this time.

There's a way to prevent that by using some sort of formula or rule?

Thanks in advance.

simo103

I would imagine you could save the Time at various intervals in your game and compare them to the present Clock time to make sure they were further along in time. Might stop most Time jugglers from bothering to do it if you pop-up an alert indicating 'Please check the device clock as we have detected an issue' or something like that. If you save a few then it will give you a number to compare.

viking

Good question. I was wondering the same. Especially handy if you have energy regenerating over time in a freemium game. Most freemium games can be cheated by changing the time settings on your phone, unless you create a server based game where the server checks your location against the local time to make sure changing the clock does not work. Don't know if there are any other options...

mmzbr

Yeah, I think isn't possible to prevent cheat in an offline app like that. That's a shame, will break my game experience in like 60-70% =/

Thanks for reply.

mmzbr

@simo103 good idea

zombots

@mmzbr how did you detect if it is am or pm with the time?

GLGAMES

that cheat works in most time based games even by other developers but there's one thing there do to prevent this. As some of the time during updates or connection to internet the app will sync the time on the device to a internet based world clock or something. Then it will detect that the user has changed the time offline and will have some warning or penalties.

BluSpyder

@mmzbr I'd like to know how you detect am and pm on device as well. And doing that I didn't know GameSalad games were able to incorporate device settings, like time changing detection with the am pm.

Anyways, couldn't you have the user set their time of day at the beginning of the game. And then from then on have that attribute constantly ticking as the game runs? That way the time changed on the device couldn't alter the game's time? I guess that wouldn't work if the user closed the game from multitasking though, because it wouldn't run the time in the back. But as long as it ran in the background the game time still runs though, I think.. Just spewing thoughts here. I'm in the same dilemma sort of.

MotherHoose

@Wingnology … computer clocks are 24 hour clocks
12Noon is 12 … 12Midnight is 0

the hours from 0 through 11 are AM … and the hours from 12 through 23 are PM

MH