#1 escapex source includes tom7.esp player file

[Russell Jones]

So I finally decided to check out and compile the latest CVS source to see if anything significant changed from the April 2007 version, and maybe do some tweaking of my own. That worked without a hitch...in fact, you could say it worked too well. For upon loading the game, the first menu that came up provided the choice "Tom 7 (2187)".

Now for all I know you could just be pointing out that there are 3 letters in "Tom" and that you therefore like the 7th power of 3, but that sounds like a pretty poor choice of file to include in source. For one, it immediately spoils entire solutions to levels such as EWR, Botkoban 2 and 3, pieguy's revenge 1, Super Plumber Friends, and almost all of the older (<1800) levels. Furthermore, the file contains an accurate player sequence number, so anyone who downloads CVS can start rating levels under the guise of Tom (to make their own levels look good or other people's look bad, say, which they can already accomplish with sockpuppets, but this way doesn't set of any alarms by adding garbage accounts to the database). They can also delete any Tom 7 level in the game's history and send it to the graveyard (fortunately it's just the sequence number, not the admin password, so this privilege doesn't extend to other levels), which I believe is the most egregious misuse available with this pseudo-privilege-escalation exploit.

You could say that since only people who are interested in the CVS and hacking will gain access to that file, it's an incentive of sorts to get involved with the project. But I still think a safer player file is the way to go.

[Tom 7]

Probably won't fix: I know it's checked in; this is the main way that I share solutions across the several computers I use(d) for development. (In fact I redesigned the player file format to be more amenable to revision control for this reason.) For now I'm relying on the good will of people who find their way to the source code to not impersonate me. If they did I'd have to do some cleanup after them, which would be a pain but not impossible. (It's pretty hard to actually ruin anything on the server because even deletions are just moves to the graveyard.) I hope it doesn't tempt you to spelunk for spoilers; from time to time people send me their player files to debug some issue and I admit some temptation, but I haven't peeked yet. :)