Guild Wars Q&A
The Tech of Guild Wars is a PC.IGN Q&A, asking ArenaNet programmer and co-founder Jeff Strain about the streaming technology used by this online RPG. There's also a new screenshot from the game on the official website.
-
Jeff Y
replyA nice way to deal with hacks.
Jeff Strain: While no game is hack-proof, our goal is to provide you a very secure game environment. We accomplish this by developing a game structure that is hard to break and easy to fix. The foundation of our secure gaming environment is our client asset model.
With Guild Wars, all the file assets placed on your computer are assets that are not directly associated with the logic of the game. Hence they are considered "dumb" assets. They include art assets, music files and the like. All of the files related to the logical systems of the game - the "intelligent" assets -- are held only on our secure servers. Limiting access to the intelligent assets of the game makes it more difficult for the game to be corrupted. Most games are designed first as a single-player experience, and the source files are stored on the gamer's computer. Therefore the files have a greater inherent vulnerability to hacking. The design of Guild Wars as an online-only game allows us to maintain our source code in the most secure manner possible, on our servers.
