I would actually prefer everyone being able to watch the inps.(posted 9537 days ago)This is getting a little extreme, like I'm trying to defend some super important secrets. All I'm trying to do is make EASY cheating somewhat harder. How hard is it to cheat on the normal release of mame35 or higher? It's just too easy to cheat.
The rules of the game should be enforced by the software, and I figured the way to do it was simply encrypt the inps, plug the major security hole, and axe the pause. The only time I used pause was to check I had enough hard drive space to record a game of Dig Dug.
I don't think there is a 100% solution to this problem. Why do care about this so much? Well, the Guinness Book of World Records published some bogus scores (not many mind you). This drove me crazy for over 10 years. I thought "There must be some way to have totally authentic high scores".
Then INPs came along and I thought "Great! There's no way to cheat now". Sadly that's not the case, especially after version 35.
I think the current TG MAME 35 version 2 stops most of the cheating. I'm sure it's still possible to decrypt the inps. I think most of the scores are true high scores. Certainly I can get the scores on the real arcade machines I've posted here, and they were published in the August 1999 issue of Tips and Tricks magazine. (This was from the first Funspot tournament in New Hampshire)
So Ben Jos, Chad and Chris: This is what I would like to do:
Make a TG/MARP version of MAME with open source, crafted in such a way so that everyone can playback the inps, and cheating is next to impossible. One thing possibly is everyone has 2 keys, a playback key and a record key. Your playback key is public knowledge, and only the player has knowledge of his record key.
Could such a scenario work?
Mark