botting

You need a "human verification check" (or at least I think that's what it's called). You would have seen them around the web before, usually when you sign up for something.

It's a script that displays an image that only a human can read. The human then types in the code displayed on the image, and if it's correct, they are allowed to the next page. How you could implement it on a gaming site I'm not entirely sure, but would suggest you force your users to verify themselves whenever they log on, for example.

Hope this helps

I agree! Make it a random bunch of letters or a really weird word. Destort it 5 or 6 ways, put things behind it and over top of it. But you need to start with 40+ and stop at about 100 to 200. That should ensure only humans can sign up.

yeah but i'm more concerned about them gathering resources, so if they are playing and say move 50 squares i'd want them to have to type in a verification code, but not normal text because with macro you can use mouse positioning so that every verification check they can copy and paste. Botting is quite common and i want to be able to fully stop it on my site

You use php to generate a jpg image with some distorted text.
The text that is in jpg comes from a mysql database entry, then the person has to type in the number they see, and then submit it. The submittal form is then used to check against the same database entry. Simple.

So you don't have to reinvent the wheel, an already written script