http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4cgLL8JaVI That does it -- we need a bike to go with the Phoenix Armour.
I've been thinking... Why doesn't freyr just make settings in 1 app? At first I thought that you would need IAP twice for both games and stuff. That made a tiny bit of sense but still a tiny bit. But now... (since they share save files.) Im thinking this is totally unrelated to the segregation... Maybe they couldn't get a big enough server for the segregation... Interesting, they share savefiles. *hmmph* Ehh enough thinking for 2 minutes.
Heya Grey, didn't see you there ----------- I'm enclosing two links so you guys can see what I'm talking about when I say that there's pixellation/blurring in the Chinese version of the app. Pictures on the left are from the English version, while pictures on the right are from the Chinese version. View from behind - look at the grooves in the armour and the lighting in particular. Also pay attention to how some of the textured scratches on the armour are blurrier. View from the front -- again, pay attention to the grooves and the glowing parts of the armour, but also look at the texture on the Laser Cannon -- it's INCREDIBLY blurry for whatever reason.
I still don't get why they didn't just make a language settings. =.=" You see, there is NO segregation it appears to be a shock to most of us (me included.) Go to settings app. Then to location setttings (may be different on your ios I don't know) and see that star warfare isn't there. So we must just be doing something wrong...
They probably decided it would be easier to just create a near-identical application file from the ground up with all the text modified, rather than to write some extra code allowing you to change between the two languages within one app. That being said, I wouldn't have thought some extra text and graphics should've really made the app that much bigger... The other thing is that the Chinese version of the game has a completely separate GC leaderboard and achievements: at a glance, it looks like hacking is much less prevalent on that side than its English counterpart. For all we know, Freyr might be using the Chinese version to trial some non-gameplay implementations using a smaller sample of users before deciding whether to implement any hidden coding over on the English side... ---------- Hmm, I don't agree with you on there being "no segregation" based on what you observed from the "Location Services" thing -- recall that we've tried to play alongside several people in this thread (Arrow0x, Fro5tClown) and that we were NOT able to see them on the match lobby, despite being dead certain that we were online at the same time. See, what I believe is that it's not the Star Warfare app itself that's causing the segregation -- the app never had access to our location services to begin with. I believe it's probably the IP address we're logged in from (e.g. your wireless modem, or your 3G connection), because there should be some sort of geographic identifier in them. What I believe is that it's the servers being used by the game (which is a set of hardware and software separate and distinct from the game installed on our devices itself) that's segregating us based on the geographic location of our IP addresses. Now, the thing with this theory: this would imply that if one knew how to rig their IP address to appear to be from another country, you might be able to bypass the filter, if this is how the segregation is actually working. I don't know how to do that to an entire modem though, because I only know how to use proxy sites via web browsers...
If only it were that simple =.=" Your IP (internet protocol) address is assigned to you by your ISP (internet service provider), so using a router bought from Asia wouldn't quite cut it -- your ISP is essentially giving your computer an "address" for other computers to talk to. (Yeah, I actually looked on Google before posting the next chunk of text, most of what I'm finding seem to be proxy servers which operate via websites or through a browser rather than completely streaming all of your modem's outbound traffic through it) Surfing the web while masking your IP is easy enough, because you can simply access a website which acts as a proxy, or you can otherwise make your browser access the net a proxy server. Seeing how the iDevices seem to directly access your modem though, sounds more like you'd need to do something with your actual firewall or port settings to trick every external service you're accessing into thinking you're in another country, as opposed to doing it from a single browser... Sheinfell, you seem fairly well versed with IT -- do you know if any of this is accurate or possible? (No need to tell us how to do it if there are legal/ethical issues attached to it, I'm sorta going by a combination of logic, observation and blind guesswork here >.>)
IP-masking etc. Well, I work in IT for quite a few years now And I like being a Jack-of-all-Trades, knowing something of everything, instead of being specialised in a narrow field. You got it essentially right, undead. And no, per se there is nothing illegal (hhmm, maybe in restrictive countries) or unethical about it, as long as you do not use those techniques to shroud a computercrime. But then, if you want to do that, I better do not have to explain this to you For the record: Firewalls and Ports don't have anything to do with it. I am rather ill, so instead of explaining those I just tell you to go look it up on Wikipedia Your ISP gives you an IP-address from its range, and that IP is what "teh Internet" sees of you. Mostly the IP is assigned to your router/modem, and not to your machine. If you configured something like "all my gadgets get an address 192.168.2.X" in your router, then you already know what I am talking about. Your router acts as a proxy for all your devices, with your devices being in a private network behind the router (the IP range 192.168.X.X is called "private range" for that reason). These days, with simply not enough IP addresses available anymore for every device, it gets a bit more complicated: Similar to your router playing proxy for your devices, your ISP does the same with one of his "routers": Its gateways act as proxy for all the enduser devices that use the ISP. So it needs just a few IP addresses to serve thousands of customers. For finding out where you are located, the easiest way is to go by the registered location of the address (range) owner. E.g. for Google.com's IP you get "Mountain View, California" . If your IP address belongs to an ISP located in Singapore or in the Netherlands, it is quite likely that you are there as well. How for example location-based advertisement to your computer figures out where (more or less) exactly you are, I would have to read up first. Now, for IP masking: The best known masking service is most likely the TOR network, which routes you through several proxies to anonymise you as far as possible. There also are services that provide you with location-specific IPs, at least for the US: I know this because I once wanted to watch Syfy-Channel, and that one only works with an US IP. Masking directly in your router: Now, this could get a bit difficult. At least the standard consumer routers/modems we have here in Europe do not offer much in terms of fancy functionality. Stuff like TOR usually uses clients on your computer, and does not interface directly with your router. Your best bet is most likely to run the whole thing in software, with additional plugins that allow you to "hardwire" something like using TOR or a location-specific IP provider. But on that I would have to read up first as well; I am not a network engineer after all
For someone who's not a network engineer, you sure sound quite well-versed in this kind of stuff. Great to have an IT expert who knows bits of everything Yeah, I brought up the illegal/unethical point because anonymity can be quite a powerful tool, but I have zero interest in trying to invade anyone's privacy or otherwise commit some kind of computer crime: what interests me about all of this is that this may actually be a way for players in Asia to circumvent the geographical segregation and actually play with everyone else -- though that'd be an awful lot of trouble to go through for only one game :/ ...unless, of course, this doesn't apply only to this particular game. I've been wondering for a while whether this has to do with China's strict censorship laws, except from what I'm reading, they simply block channels that they don't like when they find them, as opposed to having everything blocked by default -- that doesn't sound like a terribly efficient approach to the internet...
this page is awesome. don't think I can do so much just to play with Americans though... still, thanks Sheinfell!
I'm still looking into it, but there might be a way to set it up so that only your iDevice is using a proxy, rather than your whole modem: turns out there are some interesting Settings options under wireless networks and something called "VPN Settings" or something or rather...
You see I get the point that they are using your IP address, but isn't that how the other apps do it to? And aren't they under the location settings? Are they doing it without permission or do they just need it or or...
I'm under the impression that "Location Settings" is usually a request to pinpoint your exact location using something similar to GPS signals. That allows an application to determine where you are globally to within a 10-20 metre diameter, which is MUCH more extreme than the sort of location an IP address would give away -- IP addresses can at most determine what suburb you're in (and they're usually a few suburbs off because your ISP can assign you IP addresses which are geographically registered to a few different areas). Any app that asks you for permission to use your location is probably asking whether you are comfortable with them triangulating and pinpointing a near-exact global position of where you are, which is why a lot of apps stress whether they keep personal information. I wouldn't be surprised if Location Settings actually uses your IP as a piece of information to help narrow down the area that needs to be scanned to pinpoint your location, but the IP address alone isn't enough to do it. What an IP address DOES give away, as Sheinfell said above, is the location of your service provider. That alone is plenty more than enough to determine what continent you're in, although I imagine you might even have trouble using an IP to determine what country someone is in when it comes to countries which share borders and are otherwise very close together (Europe and the various states of America come to mind) I'd also imagine that it would be somewhat illogical for an app to ask you whether it's allowed to access information about your IP address -- because to do so seems like it'd be the same as asking whether you're alright with the app accessing the internet, seeing how the IP address is a key piece of information needed for computers and networks to communicate. It makes more sense to ask that on a computer because people don't always want internet access, but it seems to be taken for granted that apps for smartphones and tablets were made for the internet.
http://whatismyipaddress.com/ Try that site for example -- everything it's telling you is based on what your current IP address is. Whether they're technically determining your "general location" or not is ultimately irrelevant, because Star Warfare isn't asking your device for permission to determine your location using its GPS capabilities (i.e. the "Location Services" function). Because it's using a piece of information that's freely available and necessary to connect to the internet (to play online), it wouldn't ever have to ask you for permission to use Location Services for the GPS function -- therefore, the "Location Services" function and permissions can't be related to the player segregation (which still seems to exist regardless of whether any of this is right or not, because as I've said before, none of us have ever been able to play with Fro5tClown or Arrow0x despite trying numerous times). Basically, don't get hung up on the idea that an application MUST appear in the "Location Services" tab in order to determine any information at all pertaining to where you might be on a national level -- as you saw with that website above, it can make some wild guesses as to where you are, and it can do that on Safari on your iDevice as well while location services is disabled for Safari.
