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From now on, I will no longer be making any more AlphaMAME builds for the forseeable future. Of course this means that there also be no more blocking of (new) AlphaMAME inps.

If there is enough interest, I could produce a regular version containing various playbackability fixes. At least Mr. Corlett can't hack that.

Barry, I think TG needs to be informed of this situation with 0.63 and later versions of alphamame.

Did you have a 0.62 version that wouldn't have this playbackability issue?

I think this also is drastic given it's fine for most games.

It sounds like alphamame is still 100% fine as long as a game is tested for playbackability by a few people prior to allowing it to be used for TG record submissions for that particular game.

Also, this isn't alphamame specific right? it applies to all mame versions of 0.63 and later?

...perhaps that explains that thread we had a month ago about Great 1000 Miles Rally game...and playbackability. Some seem to be able to successfully play back the inps for that game and it's clones...while others can't.

This is lame. It just goes to show what a few people intent on doing harm can do. I have seen too much garbage like this on the net. I could expand further or maybe mahlemiut wants to first.

mahlemiut wrote:From now on, I will no longer be making any more AlphaMAME builds for the forseeable future. Of course this means that there also be no more blocking of (new) AlphaMAME inps.

If there is enough interest, I could produce a regular version containing various playbackability fixes. At least Mr. Corlett can't hack that.

Well this ^%&^%$ blows goats I can't believe someone %#$@!$ hacked it... well this ruins my %^%$^ night! [grumbles] thank you for everything you've done with this Barry... at the very least I am VERY thankful for everything you've done with this.


Kelly

LN2 wrote:Barry, I think TG needs to be informed of this situation with 0.63 and later versions of alphamame.

Did you have a 0.62 version that wouldn't have this playbackability issue?

I think this also is drastic given it's fine for most games.

It sounds like alphamame is still 100% fine as long as a game is tested for playbackability by a few people prior to allowing it to be used for TG record submissions for that particular game.

Also, this isn't alphamame specific right? it applies to all mame versions of 0.63 and later?

...perhaps that explains that thread we had a month ago about Great 1000 Miles Rally game...and playbackability. Some seem to be able to successfully play back the inps for that game and it's clones...while others can't.

This has nothing to do with the playbackability issues. This is due to Neill "it's not 100% secure, so what's the point in security" Corlett.

well, we all knew this could and most likely would happen sooner or later. thank-you to Barry for his work on AlphaMAME--and to the would-be cheaters at MARP, there are still other ways of finding you... although we've certainly been slowed down now.

i think it's important to remember that the only reason Mr. Corlett became involved, aside from raging inrospective anger at a total failure to find a use for his penis for anything beyond self-fellatio, is because a few immature members of MARP felt they needed to get back at the community in general.

this is a rather poor sample of sportsmanship indeed. all we wanted to do was stop some of the stupidity and bickering that has taken place at MARP over the last 4 years, but as usual, the stupidity and one-upmanship that pervades the WWW wins out.

yeah, he already got himself a bit of a bad reputation by creating that crc32 hacked kindom grand prix hack which has greatly reduced the chance of the *real* english kingdom grand prix ever being found as people reportedly put the hack on their boards and sold them for inflated prices ..

why is it there are so many hackers on PCs that just want to screw up and spoil everyone's fun? They hack up all the commercial games so people can cheat. They hack up anything they want so people can cheat etc...and of course there are plenty around that will cheat given the opportunity for some reason. It's sad.

It's also not right.

Sorry Barry...that does really suck.

I think alphamame is still fine...cuz it does show if people are pausing or playing a game at a slower than allowed speed which even with regular mame was something the inp file doesn't contain data for.

If you think it's very easy to take a regular inp and apply whatever this guy hacked up to generate an alphamame inp instead then let me know. I'll have to let TG know that.

Was tg's old 0.35 and 0.37 versions of tgmame evert hacked up like alphamame was? If not, perhaps Mark L or whoever coded that had something in there that made it quite hack-proof that you could add to alphamame.

Who the hell is Neill Corlett??? I wonder why there is so many hackers out there who want crack the Alphamame and cheat their favorite games. Oh well! Thanks Barry for making Alphamame happen in Marp. Hopefully, you will be back with stronger encryption Alphamame, soon.

I guess that we'll have to go back to M35tg3 or just plain old regular mame.

NotMan!

naw m35tg3 was hacked a long time ago, it's basically back to the way before blocking, nothing is secure and trust will be in the believers eyes. At first we (the editors) thought he was not really informed when he annouced he had the assembly listing, but a few days later he made another page saying he had some more time to waste providing a full encoder from regular mame to alphamame inps. I put my approval on alphamame cause i couldn't hack it but could hack m35tg3, but i figured i had more than enough time than an asshole who wants to ruin the security to try to hack it, but i was wrong.

The good thing about this is that he was public about it. Cause really if it can be hacked it was going to be hacked potentially giving a limited few the ability to cheat with out anyone knowing.

I always did have some reserved doubts about a 'secure' MAME. Every time I see an amazing score uploaded with Alphamame I don't think, ah it was recorded with Alphamame so it must be genuine (although it probably is), in the back of my mind it's hmm I wonder if he's hacked Alphamame and played at 50% speed or some other form of cheating.

In fact it doesn't look like the hacker meant anything malicious, he produced a 'converter' and sent it to Barry to make a point and to prove to the more naive members of MARP that Alphamame is not foolproof, indeed Barry has never claimed it to be.

The hacker's mentality is often to find holes in security and then to inform the coder of those holes so that they can be worked on and this appears to be what has happened here.

Gaz

This is a sad day.

Thanks Barry for all your hard work.

Q.T.Quazar wrote: think it's important to remember that the only reason Mr. Corlett became involved, aside from raging inrospective anger at a total failure to find a use for his penis for anything beyond self-fellatio, is because a few immature members of MARP felt they needed to get back at the community in general.

Who are you talking about?

I hate to give up Alphamame, is there nothing we can do?

The hacker's mentality is often to find holes in security and then to inform the coder of those holes so that they can be worked on and this appears to be what has happened here.

I strongly disagree. I was in another irc channel when this hacker was complaining that one of his friends was asked to record in alphamame. This greatly upset said hacker. He was talking about releasing his mame to alphamame inp converter. I made the mistake of inviting haxordude to marp to see if he could suggest any ways to make alphamame secure. I also thought maybe people could talk some sense into him. He came to marp with two friends and they acted in a very insulting matter. His attitude is that of "dude if i can haxors it and it isn't 100% secure then there should be no security at all." It is funny that he thinks this way. No one in the business world thinks this way. If any programmmer tried to argue this with their boss, they would quickly find themself without a job. When other forms of encryption were mentioned he just vowed to keep hacking away. He has some bitter vendetta against marp and way too much free time. It is truly pathetic.

I still think there should be some form of alphamame. It will still slow some of the cheaters down, despite this k3wld00ds converter. It is truly impossible to stop all people from cheating. Still one must try to do what they can to make it a bit harder for the cheaters out there.

I finally I want to thank BR for his work on alphamame. In addition to the security features, it allows many games to be recorded properly with sound. This is a great feature of alphamame and I encourage people to keep using it.

You can submit your best inp V. I don't play more. I have my inp and submit it about 21:00. Not early for wuzel request.

I still think use of a mame that has features like disabling pausing and recording the game speed in the inp while you are recording is a good feature to have.

Ok fine...those that seriously want to cheat can...and always have been able to cuz of hackers like this Corbett guy.

However, I'm sure there were many more cases of people "cheating" by just pausing their game or having other CPU tasks running so the game runs at a slow speed. This really helps for anything that's timed...

I'm guessing most that did that wouldn't do that next step of converting regular mame inps to alphamame inps.

...so alphamame still provides an extra level that I think still reduces the amount of cheating.

I know for macmame inps I get to confirm for MARP or for Twin Galaxies, that is my biggest concern...not a big-time cheater...but someone that just might have paused the game during play or isn't playing it quite at 95+%(TG requirement). There is no real valid way to know this for macmame at this time.

I was thinking of making a build though that adds the features alphamame has without the encryption(since serious cheaters will hack it up anyway)....but has different inp format so most playing it can't pause and must play at 90+% for MARP or 95+% for TG.

That still means something!

Just my $0.02.