After finding some evidence that someone knew exactly where to dig a vertical shaft down to diamond, I am wondering if it would be possible to shield ores from sight until the player has a line-of-sight. Since X-ray and similar tools are client-side mods, we can't, as admins, stop their use, as it merely changes the graphics they see, not how they move. Can a lead shield be made to block the x-rays? Possible options, as I see them: 1. Make a general anti-cheat system based on a checksum or validation hook that might exist in MC 2. Somehow disguise blocks that can't be seen (EG, no/insufficient light directly on them) as raw stone. This wouldn't work for diamonds adjacent to lava, but it would cover a lot of ores. (Actually, that sounds rather awesome. Until you light up an area, you can't tell what you're digging through, ore-wise. Dirt and gravel are unaffected.) 3. Jamming: Make raw stone look like diamond ore (somehow)? 4. Line-of-sight requirement. Would this be computationally intensive? Is any of this possible? #2 seems promising, but it really depends on how the x-ray works. Can blocks be edited to misidentify if there's not enough light?
Id like to see something like this because on a war server it is really easy to find a secret base with one of those texture packs
request a plugin that does this: 1) keeps track of all of the ore locatons 2) changes them to stone 3) turns them visible when someone is able to see them even the xray mod not texture pack) would be able to get around this, how ever this would take some time to develop, use a bit of memmory/hdd, and would be a pain in the ass to figure out when a player can see an ore block
If it is mainly a resource thing, you could check out my DropBonus plugin and with the changes that have been requested you could change all your visible resource types to drop random things with a given percentage Then, even if they are looking right at a diamond block they may only have a 1% chance of it dropping a diamond. that would freak a few folks out that they hit the diamonds but only get cobbles lol.
I'm much more inclined to use the new 'toughblocks' plugin and just set diamond to have a ridiculous 'toughness', wearing out the tools and increasing the effort to get the diamond. That should also put social pressure on the cheater. --- merged: Mar 2, 2011 1:18 AM --- New post, because I have an idea: Since the behavior we're looking to limit is targeted shaft digging, could we make it so that diamonds always have lava around them? I think it would be fitting if someone saw diamond, dug straight down, and fell into lava with no way up. I think this, as a simple countermeasure, would be much more effective and easily coded, as awesome as a plugin where you need a minimum light level to identify what you're actually mining.
The best way to do this would probably be to actually modify the data that the server sends to the client (not a plugin, an actual change to the MC/CB code). If you only send them blocks that are from X blocks below them to the sky, they shouldn't be able to use XRay. Although this does have a few issues when dealing with holes. You could instead figure out which blocks were in a player's line of sight and send them those, but that's computationally intensive. What this boils down to is that if you handle this with a plugin, it'll either put a ridiculous amount of strain on the server, or it'll be ineffective (while possibly crippling your legitimate players) and if you handle it with an actual mod to the server, it will either pose some issues, or it'll put a ridiculous amount of strain on the server. The most effective way of preventing this I can think of is to force your users to use some kind of modified client that proves that it's not using anything it shouldn't be (Or that sends what it is using to the server to be checked). And even then, that can be bypassed.
