Witness Systems

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Urban Dead players are often called on to produce evidence of events in the game, either of perceived criminal acts, memorable occasions or just really funny events. Rather than using image programs such as MS Paint or Adobe Photoshop to process a copy of the game screen taken by the PrtSc button on their keyboard, many choose to use one of the easier witness systems to take and store their images.

The various witness systems work by taking a copy of the page code and then storing it to their database for later access. With the addition of certain add-ons, the witness systems act as a capture process, editing system, and online storage repository all-in-one. The ease of use combined with these benefits makes the systems extremely popular to the majority of the metagaming population.

Witness systems are basically a metagame attempt to implement the suggestion of a Cell Phone Camera, and that's not a bad way to think of their functioning.

Pros of Witness Systems

  • Fast to use
  • Simple to use
  • Easy to share with other players
  • Automatic hosting of records
  • All three witness systems are accepted as evidence by the Zerg Liste, Resensitized's PK List and Brainstock's Rogues Gallery.

Cons of Witness Systems

  • Dependence on the host server being up
  • Lack of ability to delete unwanted/incriminating records
  • Lack of editing ability due to entire page being recorded, the record can be used against you for certain purposes

Systems

In chronological order:

Iwitness

Iwitness is the original witness system, on which all others were based. Hosted at urbandead.info it was designed by former UD Wiki sysop Seb Wiers back in 2007. Users may choose to make their records 'public' or 'private' at the time of creation, public records can be found by anyone if the database is working or they use logic to work out the url of the record, private records are appended with a random number string and not stored in the database making it nigh impossible to find if you are not the creator or you lose the url. Iwitness has offered other benefits at various times in its existence such as user accounts and a searchable records database, unfortunately the use of these features, as well as the operation of the system itself is plagued by frequent breakages and downtime.

Examples of Iwitness records:

Dumbwitness

Dumbwitness was made to be a quick and ugly fix during one of Iwitness' periods of downtime, it has continued to operate due to a loyal group of users continuing to use and promote it. The URL is based off the current epoch time and a random number, making it almost equal to the private record of the other two systems in terms of security. Dumbwitness offers no public record feature. The system is currently experimenting with a profile capture option in addition to the normal game screen capture offered by all the witness systems. Dumbwitness is compatible with iPhones and the iPod Touch.

Example of a Dumbwitness record:

UDWitness

UDWitness was created by Haliphax to act as an alternative to Iwitness. This system also has a searchable database of records and options to make records public or private, and to create a shortened URL via the bit.ly service API.

Examples of UDWitness records:

Verifiability

The biggest problem with the witness systems are their perceived credibility or lack thereof. The capture of all the data leads some players to think they are impossible to fake or doctor; this is not the case. In some circumstances, this is an advantage- a knowledgeable and careful user can edit out information (like the location) that is best kept secret. On the other hand, such alterations tend to draw attention to themselves, and may cause people to doubt ALL of the information shown.
These systems aren't getting any sort of confirmation from the game itself. They merely copy the data retained by your browser at the time of submission. That data can be changed via various methods, meaning what is submitted may not match what was sent to the player by UD's server. This means that just like "print screen" images, they can never be considered an infallible record.

Bookmarklets

In the interests of ease-of-use, these bookmarklets can be used to create records on each of the respective systems and are identical to those found on their websites.

Iwitness

PUBLIC

javascript:d=new%20Date();void(wW=window.open(%22%22,d));void(wW.document.write(%22<HTML><BODY><FORM%20NAME='wF'%20ACTION='http://iwitness.urbandead.info/wSubPA.php'%20METHOD='POST'><INPUT%20NAME='wP'%20VALUE='PUBLIC'><INPUT%20NAME='wC'%20VALUE='%22+prompt(%22enter%20Iwitness%20comment%20-%20may%20be%20blank%22)+%22'><INPUT%20NAME='wT'%20VALUE='%22+window.document.lastModified+%22'><INPUT%20NAME='wZ'%20VALUE='%22+d.getTimezoneOffset()+%22'><INPUT%20NAME='wV'%20VALUE='23'><TEXTAREA%20NAME='wS'>%22+document.body.innerHTML+%22</TEXTAREA>%22));u=window.location.href.indexOf(%22ead.com/map.c%22);if(12<u&&u<18)wW.document.wF.submit()

PRIVATE

javascript:d=new%20Date();void(wW=window.open(%22%22,d));void(wW.document.write(%22<HTML><BODY><FORM%20NAME='wF'%20ACTION='http://iwitness.urbandead.info/wSubPA.php'%20METHOD='POST'><INPUT%20NAME='wP'%20VALUE='PRIVATE'><INPUT%20NAME='wC'%20VALUE='%22+prompt(%22enter%20Iwitness%20comment%20-%20may%20be%20blank%22)+%22'><INPUT%20NAME='wT'%20VALUE='%22+window.document.lastModified+%22'><INPUT%20NAME='wZ'%20VALUE='%22+d.getTimezoneOffset()+%22'><INPUT%20NAME='wV'%20VALUE='23'><TEXTAREA%20NAME='wS'>%22+document.body.innerHTML+%22</TEXTAREA>%22));u=window.location.href.indexOf(%22ead.com/map.c%22);if(12<u&&u<18)wW.document.wF.submit()

Dumbwitness

javascript:d=new%20Date();void(wW=window.open(%22%22,d));void(wW.document.write(%22<HTML><BODY><FORM%20NAME='wF'%20ACTION='http://iamscott.net/cgi-bin/dumbwit.pl'%20METHOD='POST'><INPUT%20NAME='wP'%20VALUE='PRIVATE'><INPUT%20NAME='wC'%20VALUE='%22+prompt(%22enter%20Iwitness%20comment%20-%20may%20be%20blank%22)+%22'><INPUT%20NAME='wT'%20VALUE='%22+window.document.lastModified+%22'><INPUT%20NAME='wZ'%20VALUE='%22+d.getTimezoneOffset()+%22'><INPUT%20NAME='wV'%20VALUE='23'><TEXTAREA%20NAME='wS'>%22+document.body.innerHTML+%22</TEXTAREA>%22));u=window.location.href.indexOf(%22ead.com/map.c%22);if(12<u&&u<18)wW.document.wF.submit()

UDWitness

Records can be designated public or private by a popup box during creation.

javascript:d=new%20Date();c=confirm('Private?')?1:0;void(wW=window.open(,d));void(wW.document.write(%22<HTML><BODY><FORM%20NAME='wF'%20ACTION='http://udwitness.oddnetwork.org/submit.php'%20METHOD='POST'><input%20name='private'%20type='hidden'%20value='%22+c+%22'%20/><TEXTAREA%20NAME='screenshot'>%22+document.body.innerHTML+%22</TEXTAREA>%22));u=window.location.href.indexOf(%22ead.com/map.c%22);if(12<u&&u<18)wW.document.wF.submit()

External Links

  • UDeLorean - A Greasemonkey script that automatically saves a certain number of game screen page views, allowing witnesses to be taken of past events
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