I created an account and set the email address as 'webmaster@nytimes.com' No spam here!
-- What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Re:I hate cheaters!
by
misterhaan
·
· Score: 4, Informative
even better is to set up your computer to route requests that are trying to go to www.nytimes.com to the archive instead. the ip of archive.nytimes.com is 199.239.136.212
windows users can find a file named hosts (no extension) under system32/drivers/etc and add the following line to automatically go to archive.nytimes.com instead of www.nytimes.com:
199.239.136.212 www.nytimes.com
Re:MOD PARENT UP!!
by
zebs
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Do Cheaters Ever Prosper?
No-reg access to NYT... the answer must be a resounding yes then!
Wallhackers and the honesty of surveillance
by
ergo98
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I'm a fan of the game Urban Terror, a mod for Quake 3, and play online a fair bit (I usually run Visual Studio on one monitor, UT on the other: One good thing about being a rambo player in team survivor games is that I'm dead the majority of the time, and hence find it to actually be a remarkably productive time): While recently an anti-cheat tool, PunkBuster was added to Q3 (and it is constantly updated), there is still a serious issue of cheaters, the most common among them being wallhackers. What is a wallhacker? Well it's what was mentioned in the summary: Wire frame worlds, allowing cheating players to view other players whereever they are on the map, obviously giving a pretty clear advantage.
So what does this have to do with the honesty of surveillance? Well in team survivor when you die you can ghost other players as they move around the map, and it tends to be that wallhackers are discovered quite quickly--Their behaviour and actions in the game do not correlate with the information that they should be visually receiving (from what we can see ghosting them). Usually this quickly leads to cries of cheater and a vote to kick the offending player.
Re:Wallhackers and the honesty of surveillance
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
For some people, the fun is in the acomplishment of cheating itself (you know, essentially hacking the game).
For some people the fun is in "being evil" by cheating and causing others to have less fun.
For some people the fun is in the glory winning, even if it was not fair win (just as long as the others don't find out).
Re:Wallhackers and the honesty of surveillance
by
alexandre
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm not a gamer myself but when i do try out a game (in single player mode that is) i dont feel i have tried the game if i havent seen the cheats...
And i'd say that for me, if i wanted to cheat online, it would be for the fact that cheating is actually pushing the possible capabilities of the game to it's limit... Like being Neo eh?;-)
It's not a question of showing off, or being evil or even winning... it's the question of getting all the necessary powers to your character. It's the only way to really get into the games, having everything. The problem lies in the fact that it is there, always a possibility in your mind. And i've never liked to put barriers there;)
Oh well, i don't see how we'll be preventing that beside playing on remote X terminals ehehe (which requires huge bandwith:-)
(P.S. Just a point of view, i never actually tried an online cheat and usually play with friends on local LANs anyway so i'd get my head ripped off hehe:-)
Re:Wallhackers and the honesty of surveillance
by
Moloch666
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I normally stick to the same servers, usually the crowd on some are better than others. When I get familiar with the other players that are regulars I don't have to worry about playing exceptional. They can tell a cheater, they also have seen me play enough to know I have my good days and bad days.
The other day my favorite servers where full, so I went elsewhere. It was a clan operated server clan name was [CM] I believe. Sadly, people that are in a clan automatically think they are good, these people were not. Their movement was very predictable or nonexistent. Along with another player we were seriously killing these people and they outnumbered us 4:3. It wasn't long before we both were kicked. I immediately reconnected, just to see what the deal was (and make fun of them). They were convinced I was cheating, people act like it is hard to get head shots or something. The damn cheaters out there ruin the game for the good players.
Sorry for my rambling, I just get frustrated. When I come home from work, sometimes I just want to smoke some wacky tobaccy and shoot people in the head.
-- Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
Of course they do...
by
MosesJones
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
In terms of being "better" at the game than others, but part of the question should be is it cheating, or just another game.
Someone who buys or downloads a cheat that someone else made is a different deal, and clearly some of those people are pretty sad individuals who just want to say "ha ha fragged you", before never ever having sex with anyone.
However the person who creates the cheat, who engages in what can be described as espionage against the game developer is playing a different game of skill, that person is learning things, developing things and playing their own game with their own rules and "winning" by being able to cheat. The challenge here isn't to be better at Quake, but to be able to cheat the best at Quake, that in itself is a game.
How about an open game in which these developers play their cheats off against each other using the best players without cheats as the players in the game. That way you can find out who developed the best cheat.
-- An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Wireframes?
by
Student_Tech
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Wasn't there a driver several years ago for a video card that allowed somehting like this? (Ok found/. story here.)
Why modify the game where they might be able to detect it when you can just play with drivers to do the same thing (assuming the game is sending all that to the video card already)
I'm not sure about how the Xbox handles games (how much does it load on the hard disk?), but wouldn't consoles which run the software off of a non-rewritable medium (PS2/Gamecube) be ideal for online gaming since then the distributor can control what software is on everyone's machine?
--
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
Re:Consoles
by
Hakubi_Washu
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Possibly not... Many "modern" cheats don't change files on your disk(s) at all, because simple checksums can prevent this. Instead they modify values in your RAM directly, which is more nitty-gritty, but harder to prevent. And: This is possible on consoles too, as they have RAM as well (For the PlayStation there are a lot of "Modules" that are inserted into it's serial port, another way is to load a CD with "malicious" code before loading the game...)
Cheating IS fun....
by
Deth_Master
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I remember the good old days of Doom:
iddqd
idkroz
idkfa
That was fun. Load up on the berzerk pak, and god mode. Then run around smooshing imps.
I used to cheat on all my old single-player games, Descent, Duke Nukem, Shadow Warrior. But that was just me, not me vs some other real person, that doesn't like it when I'm invincible, and got the rocketlauncher with unlimited rockets.
Cheats on the internet probably shouldn't be allowed, it'll just piss people off.
-- find ~your -name '*base* | xargs chown:us
ESR has a good essay on game cheating
by
Dr.+Manhattan
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Others reprogram their video cards to hide the elaborate textured walls in a game. All that is left is a wire-frame outline, allowing a player to see through walls and track those hiding behind them.
If you can reprogram your video card then you wouldn't even HAVE to cheat.
You already are "The One"
What college is this?
by
Lord_Slepnir
·
· Score: 5, Funny
From the article: "When I play an online game, I can't be the best because there are some college kids out there spending 14 hours a day."
What college is this that you can play games 14 hours a day and still pass? Everyone I know that did that either failed out or is taking so few credits they might as well have dropped out. College kids, I fear not. 12-year olds who have nothing to do all summer long, I fear.
The University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Our number one complaint from kids: "Why is Kazaa so slow?" Number two: "Look, I am a professional gamer and I am getting lag to the game server in Fiji that we use. And it is your fault." I had a kid claim that he made $60000 one year. Is this possible?
-- Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Some Common-Sense Solutions
by
fuzzybunny
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Note, I'm not a really hard-core gamer or expert, so take this with a grain of salt, but...
Cheating in online games is always going to be a problem. You won't solve it, but can at least reduce it to the point where a server admin can deal with individual accusations.
-Only send each client information it really needs. -Use checksums on binaries and libraries and things. -Try to get more 'mature' gaming crowds together. I have noticed vast difference playing Battlefield 1942 at various times during the day, such as when it's mostly high school kids, or people with jobs who start playing after dinner, whatever. -Make it clear that cheating sucks and won't be tolerated--this can help catch the remaining people with aimbot screen overlays and things that automated means won't take care of.
Netrek used some anti-cheating mechanism, by embedding an RSA key in every "authorized" client, to which only a few developers known to the "RSA guy" and the Netrek community as a whole had access. Imperfect system, but it reduced use of bots to the point where it didn't really matter.
Also, one thing that a lot of people forget is that a lot of 'active' cheats (mainly bots in action games) fall into one of two categories:
a) Fully-automated -- these are predictable. b) Partially automated -- things like aimbots. Their "owners" probably suck otherwise. If they see you, they'll get off a clean shot, but you don't have to confront them directly to smash them.
I am usually sufficiently gratified when I crush someone I suspect strongly of cheating by knowing it's probably some whiny 13 year old staring at his screen in impotent frustration to not really care about the other 9 out of 10 times he's beat me, not by skill but through some technology he most likely didn't create.
Re:Some Common-Sense Solutions
by
SuperKendall
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I am usually sufficiently gratified when I crush someone I suspect strongly of cheating by knowing it's probably some whiny 13 year old staring at his screen in impotent frustration to not really care about the other 9 out of 10 times he's beat me, not by skill but through some technology he most likely didn't create
I feel the same way - when the Quake 3 demo first came out, I played online a bit. One day a player came along that was taking advantage of a serious speed enhancement... so I devoted the rest of my time to tracking and killing him. It didn't take long to find him as he'd wander all over at top speed... the funny thing was is that he was pretty predicable, even though very fast... so I was able to kill him before he got me about once for every three kills he got. I also taunted him, and I know I got to him as eventually he started only going after me!! Of course, knowing he was coming made it even easier to get kills as I could just slam rockets into a wall he was about to go past and throw him into a chasm, or other fun things... plus he was rather an idiot and probably killed himself as often as I did by trying to use rockets while running all over at top speed.
Anyway, it is fun to torment cheaters.
-- "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It can be, if the gamers in question are always logged on as root instead of setting up a user account with normal user access...
-- Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
Takes the fun out of it
by
mao+che+minh
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I never saw the point in cheating, it just lessens the experience. I remember there was this one team of guys that used to use cheats and/or exploits in Operation Flashpoint. I never understood the logic: if you are playing a game for fun and challenge, how do you feel rewarded if you achieve victory unfairly?
For example, CNN reported that Iraqi forces were using wallhacks, and they have been camping in spots located well outside of the battle map/field where US missles can't reach. Totally unfair.
World + Models should be rendered in 1 pass.
by
Otis_INF
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Now, the worlds in most FPS games are rendered first, then the models and other entities are rendered, using clipping/depth buffer info of the world. A lot of engines use 2 different render routines to do this: the world is mostly static and uses a different routine than the model renderer.
THe result is, that when you 'patch' the world renderer so that it f.e. renders wireframes instead of solid polys (in OpenGL based engines this is 'not that hard', you just change the value passed to glBegin()) the models still are rendered solid, plus because most renderers for models rely on the depthbuffer filled during the world rendering, the models close to corners are fully rendered, since the depthbuffer is empty. So you can easily 'see' the models close to corners. If you also 'patch' the model renderer for not doing world clipping, you will see ALL models rendered in your window.
This can't be done if the world + models use a single render routine, i.e.: model polygons and world polygons are packed together as THE set of polygons to render, then the single render routine will eat these single pack of polys to render. If you patch the routine for wireframing, you will see the models also wireframed, if you patch out the world clipping, you will get the complete world in your window, not what you want.
I think in future game engines there will be a merger between world + model polygon sets, because worlds are more and more modfyable in game by the player, which in the end requires that the modifyable parts are 'models' too. However games based on the current crop of quake * engines will keep on suffering from this.
--
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
I hate cheaters
by
diablobynight
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Especially in Counterstrike. I took down my counterstrike server because I spent half my time banning cheaters. The key thing I turned off was the ability to see anything after you died, I found players would ghost enimies and then relay this to their teamates sitting in the same room. It really pissed me off, because of an obvious reason, the dead shouldn't be able to talk to the living, (without a medium and a big seance).
I think cheating in one player games, like I did after I went through and beat Hitman 2 the first time, is fun. But people who cheat in online games, how do they even find it enjoyable. Have the fun of the game is the challenge, being able to cheat and win is stupid. Just develop your skills and get better.
All cheaters should have their IP and user name out on a CS ban list, that all CS servers will automatically view and then BAN those people.
-- Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
Re:Sometimes it's OK, sometimes not
by
Dr.+Manhattan
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Midwest US has a game called "Euchre"; the dealer has a slight statistical advantage. The deal is supposed to rotate with each hand, but sometimes players will work to "steal the deal" by skipping opponents and passing the deal on to their teammate. Considering it's usually played at parties with a lot of conversation and such, it can be easy for someone to forget that it's their turn to deal.
Generally the game is declared void if someone's caught after stealing the deal; but if you catch them before, you might continue with the game, wondering if you missed one before...
Two kinds of cheating
by
Pejorian
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Hey, I haven't seen anyone mentioning that there are two kinds of cheating. The Quake-style cheats that involve looking through walls or whatever are relatively harmless, mainly because most people can play Quake online for free, and unless someone is wagering on your performance, there's no cash rewards.
On-line game cheating in role-playing, especially subscription games is FAR more serious, because in some games, the currency or objects of power or weapons are worth real cash and can even be sold on e-bay (see the post with the e-bay link above) and it suddenly matters very much that some people are cheating.
-- - Murphy's Corollary: -
It is impossible to make things foolproof
because fools are so ingenious.
Cheating is a social problem--
by
Cerebus
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
--and therefore requires a social solution.
As long as code executes on fundamentally untrusted platforms and as long as code is imperfect, there is no way to prevent cheating or exploiting in a multiplayer game. That's just the way it is; more technology isn't going to change it a whit, especially for
If we approach the problem socially, however, solutions present themselves.
Many games provide unique identifiers for each installation, like Half-Life/CounterStrike. This is usually an anti-piracy measure-- but we could use it to control cheating. Banning by unique ID is part of the solution, but not everything. Consider a solution modeled on USENET killfiles--
I join a game, and the client downloads the UIDs of the other connected players. The client compares this list against my personal list of people I don't like to play against (cheaters-- or maybe just obnoxious twits) and notifies me if any are in the game. I can then make an informed decision about whether to play there or look elsewhere.
Clients could also collaborate; if a player joins who's on my 'shit list,' I could allow the client to notify the other players. Perhaps even an automated voting scheme could be enabled-- a player UID thats on enough people's shit lists could be automatically banned (assuming the server allows it).
Yes, there would be a market for new UIDs, much as there is a market for CD keys. However, if the client makes it easy enough to maintain the shit list, that in and of itself is only a temporary problem. As a side-effect, if an ID gets widespread my client plonks the whole lot of cheaters with one entry.
The emergent behaviour of such a system would force all the cheaters to play each other on cheater-friendly servers. At that point, who cares? 8) I see this as a win-win scenario; cheaters get to cheat, and the rest of us don't get bothered.
Some games are partway there. Tribes2 and some CS admin mods have voting mechanisms that kick/ban players; but this doesn't carry over between servers, whereas the above scheme would.
A third-party tool would help, but to be really effective it needs to be integrated into the game client so that all players are using it.
-- -- Cerebus
Why Be a Cheater ?
by
DJ+FirBee
·
· Score: 3, Funny
How to ruin a 14 year olds day. Or a 30 year old.
Why be a cheater when it's more fun to TeamKill instead ??
Seriously, killing guys all day with wireframe and grenade hacks does not piss the otherr players off as much as team killing.
You have to get really psychological with the other players. Do a couple of team kills and explain that you are a newbie (having a name like Player 6 helps). Sorry man !! didn't mean to kill you!! I did not know where you were when I threw the grenade and so on...
After a while they will figure it out and team kill you and get the same server enforced penaltys (less money for weapons and whatnot).
Then you go into chat and start saying "what's your problem man ? Just trying to have some fun and being a dick.." During this phase don't team kill (just GET team killed).
Finally the last phase is when people trust you again to really open up the team killing whoopass.
Designers of the new Star Wars game initially planned to let players communicate in strange languages that would be translated by other players' computers, he said. But the developers soon realized that cheats would find a way to break into the hidden dictionary, gaining the ability to speak the various languages and negotiate with aliens from other planets - a skill that would normally develop only over time.
Have the LucasArts people seen the new Star Wars movies? The only alien languages would be "Broken English with Asian accent," "Broken English with Jamaican accent," "Broken English with Italian accent"...
If you ask the cheaters...
by
bluyonder
·
· Score: 3, Funny
wouldn't they cheat and just lie?
What I do to users that cheat at my online games..
by
mustangdavis
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Now I know that everyone that administers an online game handles cheaters differently, but here is what we like to do... (depending on how "bad" they have been)
First, deactivate their account(s)
Allow the other players to pick appart their characters, so that the people that "lost" something from these cheaters can enjoy a little revenge...
Rename their characters in a very colorful, but interesting way... example: General Pink Fuzzy Bunny of Candyland
Post in the forums who was caught cheating, what they did, any appropriate amount of proof, and what penalties they suffered from for cheating
Then, finally, sit back and allow the player community to embarass the person that cheated
Now, don't get me wrong... we're not terrible people. When a player in our game finds a bug, we reward them for reporting it to the proper moderator and for not exploiting it (other than to verify that they did, in fact, find a bug).
We only do the above nasty things to people when they ruin the experience for the other players... and if they do it intentionally. We do our best to squash any time of bug or imperfection in game balance as soon as it is located, but no game is perfect... and there will always be people out there that are going to ruin games for an entire gaming community just for a laugh, so we allow the community to retain some sort of dignity by allowing them to have the last laugh....
It may not be the perfect answer, but most of the people playing my games seem to enjoy it...
Begin Ranting and Raving
My thought on cheating, especially with games, is simple: Why would you spend hours and hours playing a game that doesn't provide a challenge? If you cheat, it takes away the feeling of accomplishment that you have when you're done playing... whether you win or lose... since all you have done is proven that you don't have the skill to win; that you have to cheat in order to feel the "thrill of victory"... and that you are so selfish and self-centered that you don't take into account that there are other people playing against you, people that have invested their time and effort, that have just wasted their time so that you can prove that you suck so bad at a game that you have to cheat...
So again, what is the point of cheating?... to prove that you an untalented, selfish ass???
Proposed solution - Handle more on the server side
by
zapp
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I'm not all too familiar with the multiplayer gaming infrastructure, but I am a 4th year computer science student... so I think this makes sense.
How about The server keeps track of positions of all the clients, and does some vector math on calculating visibily before even transmitting coordinates to the clients? With the fast-as-hell CPU's we have out there now, I'm sure this could be pulled off with VERY little slowdown. This reduces network traffic by not sending everyone everyone else's position, but also... so what if player X does have a see through walls hack? If the server doesn't tell Player X where Player Y is, he still can't see him.
Any Thoughts?
Oh, and by the way... I knew a guy doing transparent wall hacks back before 3d accel cards were even invented, it's not news:)
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone have a log and pass for the NY Times site!?
Anyone care to add up these total sales?
...and the first NYtimes cheat code is... :)
UP-Down-Left-Right-Select-START!! (Correct Link!)
I'm a fan of the game Urban Terror, a mod for Quake 3, and play online a fair bit (I usually run Visual Studio on one monitor, UT on the other: One good thing about being a rambo player in team survivor games is that I'm dead the majority of the time, and hence find it to actually be a remarkably productive time): While recently an anti-cheat tool, PunkBuster was added to Q3 (and it is constantly updated), there is still a serious issue of cheaters, the most common among them being wallhackers. What is a wallhacker? Well it's what was mentioned in the summary: Wire frame worlds, allowing cheating players to view other players whereever they are on the map, obviously giving a pretty clear advantage.
So what does this have to do with the honesty of surveillance? Well in team survivor when you die you can ghost other players as they move around the map, and it tends to be that wallhackers are discovered quite quickly--Their behaviour and actions in the game do not correlate with the information that they should be visually receiving (from what we can see ghosting them). Usually this quickly leads to cries of cheater and a vote to kick the offending player.
In terms of being "better" at the game than others, but part of the question should be is it cheating, or just another game.
Someone who buys or downloads a cheat that someone else made is a different deal, and clearly some of those people are pretty sad individuals who just want to say "ha ha fragged you", before never ever having sex with anyone.
However the person who creates the cheat, who engages in what can be described as espionage against the game developer is playing a different game of skill, that person is learning things, developing things and playing their own game with their own rules and "winning" by being able to cheat. The challenge here isn't to be better at Quake, but to be able to cheat the best at Quake, that in itself is a game.
How about an open game in which these developers play their cheats off against each other using the best players without cheats as the players in the game. That way you can find out who developed the best cheat.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Wasn't there a driver several years ago for a video card that allowed somehting like this? (Ok found /. story here.)
Why modify the game where they might be able to detect it when you can just play with drivers to do the same thing (assuming the game is sending all that to the video card already)
I'm not sure about how the Xbox handles games (how much does it load on the hard disk?), but wouldn't consoles which run the software off of a non-rewritable medium (PS2/Gamecube) be ideal for online gaming since then the distributor can control what software is on everyone's machine?
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
- iddqd
- idkroz
- idkfa
That was fun. Load up on the berzerk pak, and god mode. Then run around smooshing imps. I used to cheat on all my old single-player games, Descent, Duke Nukem, Shadow Warrior. But that was just me, not me vs some other real person, that doesn't like it when I'm invincible, and got the rocketlauncher with unlimited rockets.Cheats on the internet probably shouldn't be allowed, it'll just piss people off.
find ~your -name '*base* | xargs chown
I'm working, in my copious spare time, on a cheat-resistant comm library. Someone is sure to beat me to it.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Others reprogram their video cards to hide the elaborate textured walls in a game. All that is left is a wire-frame outline, allowing a player to see through walls and track those hiding behind them.
If you can reprogram your video card then you wouldn't even HAVE to cheat.
You already are "The One"
What college is this that you can play games 14 hours a day and still pass? Everyone I know that did that either failed out or is taking so few credits they might as well have dropped out. College kids, I fear not. 12-year olds who have nothing to do all summer long, I fear.
Note, I'm not a really hard-core gamer or expert, so take this with a grain of salt, but...
Cheating in online games is always going to be a problem. You won't solve it, but can at least reduce it to the point where a server admin can deal with individual accusations.
-Only send each client information it really needs.
-Use checksums on binaries and libraries and things.
-Try to get more 'mature' gaming crowds together. I have noticed vast difference playing Battlefield 1942 at various times during the day, such as when it's mostly high school kids, or people with jobs who start playing after dinner, whatever.
-Make it clear that cheating sucks and won't be tolerated--this can help catch the remaining people with aimbot screen overlays and things that automated means won't take care of.
Netrek used some anti-cheating mechanism, by embedding an RSA key in every "authorized" client, to which only a few developers known to the "RSA guy" and the Netrek community as a whole had access. Imperfect system, but it reduced use of bots to the point where it didn't really matter.
Also, one thing that a lot of people forget is that a lot of 'active' cheats (mainly bots in action games) fall into one of two categories:
a) Fully-automated -- these are predictable.
b) Partially automated -- things like aimbots. Their "owners" probably suck otherwise. If they see you, they'll get off a clean shot, but you don't have to confront them directly to smash them.
I am usually sufficiently gratified when I crush someone I suspect strongly of cheating by knowing it's probably some whiny 13 year old staring at his screen in impotent frustration to not really care about the other 9 out of 10 times he's beat me, not by skill but through some technology he most likely didn't create.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
It can be, if the gamers in question are always logged on as root instead of setting up a user account with normal user access...
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
For example, CNN reported that Iraqi forces were using wallhacks, and they have been camping in spots located well outside of the battle map/field where US missles can't reach. Totally unfair.
Now, the worlds in most FPS games are rendered first, then the models and other entities are rendered, using clipping /depth buffer info of the world. A lot of engines use 2 different render routines to do this: the world is mostly static and uses a different routine than the model renderer.
THe result is, that when you 'patch' the world renderer so that it f.e. renders wireframes instead of solid polys (in OpenGL based engines this is 'not that hard', you just change the value passed to glBegin()) the models still are rendered solid, plus because most renderers for models rely on the depthbuffer filled during the world rendering, the models close to corners are fully rendered, since the depthbuffer is empty. So you can easily 'see' the models close to corners. If you also 'patch' the model renderer for not doing world clipping, you will see ALL models rendered in your window.
This can't be done if the world + models use a single render routine, i.e.: model polygons and world polygons are packed together as THE set of polygons to render, then the single render routine will eat these single pack of polys to render. If you patch the routine for wireframing, you will see the models also wireframed, if you patch out the world clipping, you will get the complete world in your window, not what you want.
I think in future game engines there will be a merger between world + model polygon sets, because worlds are more and more modfyable in game by the player, which in the end requires that the modifyable parts are 'models' too. However games based on the current crop of quake * engines will keep on suffering from this.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Those Nethack cheaters finally confessed!
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
Especially in Counterstrike. I took down my counterstrike server because I spent half my time banning cheaters. The key thing I turned off was the ability to see anything after you died, I found players would ghost enimies and then relay this to their teamates sitting in the same room. It really pissed me off, because of an obvious reason, the dead shouldn't be able to talk to the living, (without a medium and a big seance). I think cheating in one player games, like I did after I went through and beat Hitman 2 the first time, is fun. But people who cheat in online games, how do they even find it enjoyable. Have the fun of the game is the challenge, being able to cheat and win is stupid. Just develop your skills and get better. All cheaters should have their IP and user name out on a CS ban list, that all CS servers will automatically view and then BAN those people.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
Generally the game is declared void if someone's caught after stealing the deal; but if you catch them before, you might continue with the game, wondering if you missed one before...
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Hey, I haven't seen anyone mentioning that there are two kinds of cheating. The Quake-style cheats that involve looking through walls or whatever are relatively harmless, mainly because most people can play Quake online for free, and unless someone is wagering on your performance, there's no cash rewards.
On-line game cheating in role-playing, especially subscription games is FAR more serious, because in some games, the currency or objects of power or weapons are worth real cash and can even be sold on e-bay (see the post with the e-bay link above) and it suddenly matters very much that some people are cheating.
- Murphy's Corollary: - It is impossible to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
--and therefore requires a social solution.
As long as code executes on fundamentally untrusted platforms and as long as code is imperfect, there is no way to prevent cheating or exploiting in a multiplayer game. That's just the way it is; more technology isn't going to change it a whit, especially for
If we approach the problem socially, however, solutions present themselves.
Many games provide unique identifiers for each installation, like Half-Life/CounterStrike. This is usually an anti-piracy measure-- but we could use it to control cheating. Banning by unique ID is part of the solution, but not everything. Consider a solution modeled on USENET killfiles--
I join a game, and the client downloads the UIDs of the other connected players. The client compares this list against my personal list of people I don't like to play against (cheaters-- or maybe just obnoxious twits) and notifies me if any are in the game. I can then make an informed decision about whether to play there or look elsewhere.
Clients could also collaborate; if a player joins who's on my 'shit list,' I could allow the client to notify the other players. Perhaps even an automated voting scheme could be enabled-- a player UID thats on enough people's shit lists could be automatically banned (assuming the server allows it).
Yes, there would be a market for new UIDs, much as there is a market for CD keys. However, if the client makes it easy enough to maintain the shit list, that in and of itself is only a temporary problem. As a side-effect, if an ID gets widespread my client plonks the whole lot of cheaters with one entry.
The emergent behaviour of such a system would force all the cheaters to play each other on cheater-friendly servers. At that point, who cares? 8) I see this as a win-win scenario; cheaters get to cheat, and the rest of us don't get bothered.
Some games are partway there. Tribes2 and some CS admin mods have voting mechanisms that kick/ban players; but this doesn't carry over between servers, whereas the above scheme would.
A third-party tool would help, but to be really effective it needs to be integrated into the game client so that all players are using it.
-- Cerebus
How to ruin a 14 year olds day. Or a 30 year old.
...
.." During this phase don't team kill (just GET team killed).
....
Why be a cheater when it's more fun to TeamKill instead ??
Seriously, killing guys all day with wireframe and grenade hacks does not piss the otherr players off as much as team killing.
You have to get really psychological with the other players. Do a couple of team kills and explain that you are a newbie (having a name like Player 6 helps). Sorry man !! didn't mean to kill you!! I did not know where you were when I threw the grenade and so on
After a while they will figure it out and team kill you and get the same server enforced penaltys (less money for weapons and whatnot).
Then you go into chat and start saying "what's your problem man ? Just trying to have some fun and being a dick
Finally the last phase is when people trust you again to really open up the team killing whoopass.
This is so damn fun
Have the LucasArts people seen the new Star Wars movies? The only alien languages would be "Broken English with Asian accent," "Broken English with Jamaican accent," "Broken English with Italian accent"...
wouldn't they cheat and just lie?
I run several massively multiplayer, free, web based online games (WWII - War of Supremacy - war.coldfirestudios.com and Space - Glory Through Conquest - space.coldfirestudios.com to name a couple)
Now I know that everyone that administers an online game handles cheaters differently, but here is what we like to do
Now, don't get me wrong
We only do the above nasty things to people when they ruin the experience for the other players
It may not be the perfect answer, but most of the people playing my games seem to enjoy it
Begin Ranting and Raving
My thought on cheating, especially with games, is simple: Why would you spend hours and hours playing a game that doesn't provide a challenge? If you cheat, it takes away the feeling of accomplishment that you have when you're done playing
So again, what is the point of cheating?
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
I'm not all too familiar with the multiplayer gaming infrastructure, but I am a 4th year computer science student... so I think this makes sense.
:)
How about The server keeps track of positions of all the clients, and does some vector math on calculating visibily before even transmitting coordinates to the clients? With the fast-as-hell CPU's we have out there now, I'm sure this could be pulled off with VERY little slowdown. This reduces network traffic by not sending everyone everyone else's position, but also... so what if player X does have a see through walls hack? If the server doesn't tell Player X where Player Y is, he still can't see him.
Any Thoughts?
Oh, and by the way... I knew a guy doing transparent wall hacks back before 3d accel cards were even invented, it's not news
no comment