Internet cheating in games

Post #5,934 by ben_tilly 8/20/01 12:40:55 AM Reply	Internet cheating in games Here is an article I ran across on what the basic cheating strategies are, and what can be done about it. [link\|http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20000724/pritchard_pfv.htm\|The Scoop on Internet Cheating and How You Can Combat It] I thought some out there might find it interesting. Cheers, Ben
Post #6,016 by Yendor 8/21/01 12:46:14 AM Reply	Interesting read... ...if a bit long. /me needs a longer attention span for interesting, yet completely useless, information like this. -YendorMike "The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by the skeptics or the cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need people who dream of things that never were." - John F. Kennedy
Post #6,022 by pwhysall 8/21/01 3:12:59 AM Reply	The CS Community is striking back against cheats www.punkbuster.com -- Peter Shill For Hire
Post #6,109 by tseliot 8/21/01 3:02:44 PM Reply	You in a clan, Petah? (Or you, Thane?) We're tentatively recruiting... our domain name, website, punkbuster registration, and cool stuff won't roll out until September, but were billing ourselves as the "kings of team tactics". We're going to eventually have our own team training map, in addition to pages on how to win as a team, which is sorely lacking on all the cowboy-clan pages we see around. Who needs another "clan page" consisting of links to counter-server and a bunch of screen shots? Not us. Here's a quickie [link\|http://home.pacbell.net/ts_eliot/cs/Leapfrog.htm\|sample] of what we're planning. If you're interested. That's her, officer! That's the woman that programmed me for evil!
Post #6,152 by inthane-chan 8/21/01 5:32:19 PM Reply	Nope. Probably won't, either - I just don't have the time. I've played a bit here at Microsoft, they have internal servers which are well-populated, and tend to be a lot more civilized than your average internet server. I've only seen the word "fag" once, and it actually was in the form of it's original intention. I don't know if I'd do very well in a clan environment - I'm prone to buying a flashbang, an HE, a DEagle, and full body armor, then charging the enemy and taking about 4 of them in a blaze of glory before getting nailed. "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Post #6,248 by pwhysall 8/22/01 8:18:40 AM Reply	Ackshully I've been playing an awful lot of Rocket Arena just lately. It's a mod for Quake III Arena which basically puts you in a smallish map with your opponent, gives you both full armour and weapons, and lets you fight it out one on one. People wait to fight in a winner-stays-on system (although there are team variations too, as well as the Red Rover variation - when you die, you join the opposing team. The winner is the one left on his own). I've noticed that the crowd who play this game are substantially more friendly and helpful than the CS audience. Reasoning below... I think CS has attracted a primarily young (say, 12-13) audience because of a couple of factors. Firstly, CS doesn't need a particularly powerful machine, mainly because it's based on the Quake 1 (yep, not Q2, despite what you may have heard) engine. You can get going perfectly well with a 300MHz PC with a shonky old Voodoo 3 graphics card and 64MB of RAM. The kind of PC people like us are likely to hand down to the young uns, basically. Secondly, CS is easy to cheat at. There are aimbots (which shoot for you), wall hacks (which let you see through walls - some weapons in CS can penetrate walls so this is very effective), spiky models (so that you can see people coming round corners), brightly coloured models for that neon enemy effect, speed hacks so you can run fast, etc etc. Cheating is lame, and only sad fuckers do it. Unfortunately there are a lot of sad 13 to 18-year-old boys. (After that age they tend to discover varying combinations of drink, drugs, sex, work and music). So why doesn't the above apply to Rocket Arena? Well, it needs a monstah PC to run properly - I have a 256MB PIII800 with a 32MB TNT2Ultra (64MB Geforce 2 GTS Ultra in the works), scads of disk space (say 500MB for your full installation of Q3A, 90MB for the RA patch and, oh, a couple of gigs for a phat MP3 collection) and a broadband connection. The aforementioned 64MB 300MHz box is not going to do you much good. The maps have huge, rich textures, lots of detail. Sound in Q3A is particularly good - I've mentioned the doppler sound effects before, but RA adds something that all games should have - an MP3 jukebox, so you can frag to your favourite tunes. All this sucks up CPU cycles. Secondly, the Quake III engine is hardened against cheating of all kinds. Models are locked, maps are locked, there's security in the OpenGL pathway (CS wallhacks work by subverting opengl32.dll) and that pretty much covers it. With cheating gone, and the playing field absolutely level, there's only one thing left to use. Skill. If you're crap at first person shooters, RA is the game that finds you out. These things mean that RA seems to attract a crowd of people that is older (working, can afford monstah PC), has no interest in cheating, and would rather develop and show off their skills in a friendly way. That's not to say it doesn't get serious - I was involved in a gripping Clan Arena game last night where each side traded rounds (it's best of 9 rounds) and there wasn't much chitchat at all - but the venom, immaturity, and "let's see whose game I can ruin tonight" attitude that you find on public CS servers just isn't there. -- Peter Shill^WRail Mastah For Hire
Post #6,337 by tseliot 8/22/01 2:08:19 PM Reply	Heh. That's part of our response :) My PFY and I quickly realized two things: 1) we two come out on top of any free-for-all game when no-one is hacking; and 2) when we work together properly we even beat the hackers. The reality is that, for the most part, the people hacking are B-quality shooters even with the hacks (or maybe because of the hacks--we're debating that fine point ;). When we work in trained squads, the hackers are pretty much no contest--it's a question of superior tactics over superior intel in the case of wallhacking, and over superior tech in the case of autoaim. Plus there's punkbuster. :D Personally, I haven't seen a lot of 12 and 13-year-old players in CS. Maybe we frequent different servers (and I can bet at different times), but the range on all our games seems to be from about 19 to 30-ish. I don't think I'll be moving to RA any time soon--I just don't have as much fun one-on-one as in a team environment. To each his own. :) That's her, officer! That's the woman that programmed me for evil!
Post #6,340 by pwhysall 8/22/01 2:20:36 PM Reply	CS Handles If you're looking for me (I play on UK servers mostly) keep an eye out for EthicsGradient or MunkeeShines (the latter is my clan nick). -- Peter Shill For Hire
Post #6,378 by tseliot 8/22/01 7:23:35 PM Reply	Will do. Checked over your clan site. Cool. I'm: [ A- ] FuManChu Others on our team: [ A- ] PectusWarrior [ A- ] ConKuestador [ A- ] Miyamoto Musashi [ A- ] Spunkrat (he's in AUS, now, so we'll probably both never see him :) That's her, officer! That's the woman that programmed me for evil!
Post #6,380 by inthane-chan 8/22/01 7:45:55 PM Reply	I'm (of course...) [OZ]InThane the [OZ] comes from my ISP - oz.net "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Post #6,242 by pwhysall 8/22/01 8:00:52 AM Reply	www.mwg.org.uk -- Peter Shill For Hire
Post #6,360 by GBert 8/22/01 3:56:22 PM Reply	Very interesting subject, thanks! I'm not particularly interested in on-line games in the strict sense, but these considerations would apply to any communal activity with a game-theoretic color on the net, including internet voting and auctions Giovanni.

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