Cheating in VirtualBox

Discuss about Blockout II from Jean-Luc, post your feature requests etc.
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scblockout
Posts: 34
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2008 2:59 pm

Cheating in VirtualBox

Post by scblockout »

Some time ago I found a way to create fake scores using Virtual Box. I thought that it would be interesting to post that here.
This is the setup:
- Windows XP virtual machine
- Blockout II version 2.4
- Virtual Box guest clock slow down to 50%, with the following command (see Vbox manual section "Accelerate or slow down the guest clock"):

Code: Select all

VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" "VBoxInternal/TM/WarpDrivePercentage" 50
(should execute command when VM is off, it does nothing if it's already running)

See for example this fake score, I managed to "play" at 99 BPM in 3D Mania level 9:
http://www.blockout.net/blockout2/advst ... reid=41511

Is it actually possible to detect this kind of fake? What about a more subtle clock tuning?
jlp_38
Posts: 264
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2007 9:09 am

Re: Cheating in VirtualBox

Post by jlp_38 »

Hello,

Theoretically, if you run the game in a virtual environment that perfectly decreases the machine timing, it won't be possible to detect cheating. The only solution would be to do an online check while playing.
The score you registered has a good timing check but not perfect, so it is possible to detect it. However, without cheating, you might have a small error on the timing check due to unexpected CPU overload (for instance) while playing.
I'll try to improve this on the next release.
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