Best Password System

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slobu
Posts: 13
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 1:00 pm

Best Password System

Post by slobu »

Pending write support for files in ZGE, what is a good password system for keeping game info? My Google searches didn't turn up much on the subject.

The criteria seems to be:
1. Minimal length (users hate to enter long passwords)
2. Some obfuscation (so users don't hack their characters)
3. Maximum info storage (HP, MP, AC, Items, Level, Class, Etc..)

Symbolic compression is a good start but I hope there is some more info on this subject. Anyone have any leads?

UPDATE: Further musings.
UPDATE: Interesting links.

http://tasvideos.org/PasswordGenerators.html
Password generators for various NES games. I remember Metroids passwords being a tad too long. Simons Quest seems to be acceptable at 16 characters to input.

Further musings:
If I use 0-9, A-Z, a-z and "-" and "+" I can get 64 different values per character.

If I use 0-9 and A-Z discounting easily confused letters "O", "B", "I" and "S" I can get 32 values. Hmmmn..
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Kjell
Posts: 1883
Joined: Sat Feb 23, 2008 11:15 pm

Post by Kjell »

Hi slobu,

It all depends on how many variables you want / need to store. One of the things I could suggest is to make the "reverse" methods of individual variables dependant on others. For example, you could multiply the lives variable with 2, and subtract the stage variable with that value. This creates a more irregular "invalid password" range pattern.

A "easy" way to iterate through the string is to repeat the length of the password, each step divide by 10 ( or 100 when you want to use a 0-z range), chip off the variable data using frac and floor the value.

Good luck,
K
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