Radios anyone?

[nitefyre]

What range of frequencies there are, how much range a transmitter has, et cetera.
And could you add it to the wiki, maybe?

Some of your questions have already been in answered, in the wikipedia, if you haven't bothered to look.

Such as, the range of a medium transmitter is 1-2 towns, though I'd like to know a more precise value. I mean, I wouldn't want to build, for instance, a radio in Krif Hills North that I wanted to be heard in Drojf, and have the signal be just short.

Anyways, the value 1-2 locations seems very small. I would've expected something more of the likes of 1-2 Regional areas (i.e. all of Seatown area, and some of the neighboring Djorf Hills area, for instance)

I'm sure there's enough frequencies that the likelihood of getting intercepted without other data would be rare, unless you use a very obvious number.

[Chris Johnson]

The actual range of the Medium radio transmitter is equivalent to the distance an unencumbered person on a basic path can travel in 5 days. This is about 1 to 2 towns distance on average. This range is straight line distance so it may well cover locations not diretcly connected to each other by paths

I think I mentioned elsewhere that there are plans for different models which would have increased ranges (and possibly shorter range ones like a walkie-talkie ) but we'd like to see how this model works first .

Theoretically you could get large regional coverage by chaining stations
to rebroadcast messages with the existing models if you wanted to .

[creepyguyinblack]

Precisely, and provide new employment to people as operators.
Another question, with reception, it just shows that there is a signal being broadcast, no specification of where, who or which transmitter?

[Chris Johnson]

You just hear a radio message on a particular frequency- No particular identification of who is talking (even gender is obscured - maybe voice is not a sexual dimorphic feature in Cantr) or where they are talking from and all signal strength is uniform whilst in range

Radio authentification is really something which will have to be developed in-game .

I suppose we could develop RDF features at a later date to identify position of transmitters

[nitefyre]

Well, as Nick asked, how many frequencies are there total?

And, do you have to speak into a device or is everything picked up in a room? If it is a device, can other people in the room see it being used, and the message broadcasted by others? Also, does everyone in the one receiving room hear it? (granted all necessary machinery was there) Or only the 'operator'?

PS: Apologize, just saw you answer these Qs in the other topic

CJ said:

Code: Select all

The radio transmitter has a "use radio" button by it

When you use this you can enter a message and set the frequency that you want it broadcast on . The message is then broadcast. Every one in the same location sees you speaking , Everyone in the same location as a radio reciever within range and set to listen to the chosen frequency , hears the same message . The speaker is not identified , the message is along the lines of 'you hear a radio message "Mary had a little Lamb ..."'

Anything spoken in the same location as the radio transmitter will not be broadcast

EDIT: There are 201 unique frequencies and the range of the medium transmitter is 50 units, enough to broadcast a distance of about 1 or 2 towns away.

[Savanik]

Signal authentication will be easy! All we have to do is start using PGP public-private key encryption in our radio messages, and nobody will be able to forge messages at all!

Sav

[Agar]

Signal authentication will be easy! All we have to do is start using PGP public-private key encryption in our radio messages, and nobody will be able to forge messages at all!

Sav

Has a good idea who's going to be running cantr's secret police ...

[nitefyre]

What are you on about, Sav?

PGP?

[ornithopter]

Pretty Good Privacy. It's a program that makes RSA (read: unbreakable*) encryption easy to use.

*RSA encryption can be broken with an amount of effort and time far exceeding the worth of almost any possible encoded information or with quantum computers**

**which do not currently exist***

***except maybe as top secret military technology****

****this is unlikely

[Sho]

I feel it should probably be some sort of rules breach to use it in Cantr, though; no character could realistically use RSA in a world without high-speed computing technology.
It runs into a question that has been posed before: Do characters have all the abstract knowledge (knowledge of systems of government, knowledge of calculus, "common sense" with regard to technology, knowledge of modern cryptographic techniques) of their players?

[Jos Elkink]

Don't use PGP, just make up your own encryption code - better with CR, and more fun ...

Nr. of frequencies: 200, if I'm not mistaken.

The sender speaks into the radio; others in the room can hear it; what others say, in the room, is not picked up, only what is explicitly said into the radio; receiver side everybody in the room hears it, just as a sound coming from the radio.

I think Chris said the same, though

[Savanik]

PGP is a public-private encryption scheme. You can find more details on it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_cryptography - for a simplified version, scroll down to 'A Postal Analogy'. Very well written.

I'm working on a radio message protocol which will be able to bounce messages all across the continent, even limited by the 1-2 city range. It's going to use public-private keys to sign radio messages - that's the only way currently possible to avoid spoofers. As I currently understand the radio system, there is no authentication built into the system. At all. You can't even distinguish voices. Therefore, we'll have to come up with our own system for verification.

It is perfectly possible to make a PGP implementation that can be done without computers - literally, by hand. UNfortunately, if we WERE to use something like that, anyone who knows how PGP works could make a computer program that could decrypt our messages in about 2 seconds.

To whit, we'd have to do it with longer keys to prevent OOC cheaters. Just think of it as an analogy for the shorter version.

Sav

[formerly known as hf]

remember that you're broadcasting a spoken sentence in Cantr

Encryption would work with written notes - and 'codes' have been used in Cantr for that.

try getting a read-out of text whilst encrypted - see if you can actually read it out loud...

I don't think it'd be natural to hear a character's voice list:
"vgyGHsyu YTH hgasdm KAFdwsh KHdsmii"?

There are more imaginative ways of coding a radio transmission - which are more fun, and don't necessarily use a RL design...

[Savanik]

I don't think it'd be natural to hear a character's voice list:
"vgyGHsyu YTH hgasdm KAFdwsh KHdsmii"?

You could transmit something like that with Morse Code quite easily. Just because it's a radio tower that can transmit voices doesn't mean we have to only use voice messages.

Sav

[Jos Elkink]

I totally agree with hallucinatingfarmer, though - it's simply more fun to invent your own code, using human language ... "The tree is surprisingly green today" = "Attack Siom, NOW!"