Mod to enable cash prizes.

[appleweed]

Hi all! I'm about complete with a mod that will enable cash prizes for the winner of DM-style games. The mod lets the server set an ante or entrance fee and the pot goes to the winner.

My goal is to allow people to create their own tournaments with cash prizes without having to use services like Ultimate Arena. In this way, people can select one of the many different DM games out there and host community-sponsored tournaments. But I'm looking for some feedback on this.. what do people think?

In my "real life", I design e-commerce systems. My mod enables (and requires) the use of PayPal for both players and server admins to transact the actual fees and prize winnings securely. I'm hoping to develop more game-specific commerce systems in the future and my UT2k3 mod is one of the first.

Currently, the mod requires several web pages to be hosted that enable secure transactions to PayPal. I plan to host these and a game server for people to try out. I will also release the pages for people to host on their own with their own UT servers.

I will post (semi-regular) updates on my site soon:
http://www.indigenoustech.com

I'd love to hear some feedback. Let me know what you like or dislike about this idea and what features you'd like to see. I'm all ears!

-Omar

 

[SoSilencer]

Although it could be a good idea this is an accident waiting to happen. This game is pretty good with cheat protection but nowhere near good enough for me to trust it with a single penny of my money.

A mod that sets up and records game stats for something like this (sending it to some webpage) may be good, but leave the money stuff to be done by a real human after manually reviewing the match statistics and verifying all the appropriate payments. That just isn't the kind of thing you want to do automatically.

 

[appleweed]

Although it could be a good idea this is an accident waiting to happen. This game is pretty good with cheat protection but nowhere near good enough for me to trust it with a single penny of my money.

A mod that sets up and records game stats for something like this (sending it to some webpage) may be good, but leave the money stuff to be done by a real human after manually reviewing the match statistics and verifying all the appropriate payments. That just isn't the kind of thing you want to do automatically.

I actually agree. But, a friendly game with people you know over a LAN-based game, for instance, is a possibility. I see this as no different as playing a round of golf against friends for money.

I have thought of a few cheat protection mechanisms, but I think some sort of 3rd party trusted agent or ratings system would have to be in order for any public, anonymous tournament play.

 

[RegularX]

AFAIK, nothing in the current Unreal http classes support SSL or the like - so I'm assuming you've implemented something?

 

[appleweed]

AFAIK, nothing in the current Unreal http classes support SSL or the like - so I'm assuming you've implemented something?

Yep!

I implemented a CHAP (challenge-response) login system with MD5 encryption. Also, the clients and server independently login to the commerce service. No private information is ever replicated between client and server.

I plan a future version with public-private keys and doing away with the web pages all together.

-Omar

 

[RegularX]

Interesting ... any chance we could see some of that on a wiki page?

 

[appleweed]

Interesting ... any chance we could see some of that on a wiki page?

Absolutely! I just have to get off my lazy ass and start the page. (I'm a pretty typical programmer... documentation comes last! )

I'm not a terribly experienced Wiki guy. Any place in particular you think I should create the page?

-Omar

 

[RegularX]

I'd just create a homepage for yourself ( like http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/appleweed ) and then a sub-page from there ( http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/appleweed/ProjectName ) with some stuff about the project.

You can attach that also the Mod Ideas list, and then if you write a basic tutorial on it, just put it off the root like wiki.beyondunreal.com/CreatingSecureTransactions ...

Mych and Wormy are better at sorting the wiki than me though

 

[appleweed]

I'd just create a homepage for yourself ( like http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/appleweed ) and then a sub-page from there ( http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/appleweed/ProjectName ) with some stuff about the project.

You can attach that also the Mod Ideas list, and then if you write a basic tutorial on it, just put it off the root like wiki.beyondunreal.com/CreatingSecureTransactions ...

Mych and Wormy are better at sorting the wiki than me though

Thanks, man! Much appreciated! I'll hopefully have this up this week.

 

[appleweed]

Just wanted to add that I got my wiki page up. You can see updates of my mod here:
http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/Appleweed