Epic Cracking Down On UT2K4 Cheaters Already

Posted by simoniker on Friday March 19, 2004 @12:23PM from the banished-from-the-kingdom dept.

qasimodo writes "Gamespot.com is reporting that Epic has banned the first cheater from Unreal Tournament 2004. You can read the thread explaining this on the official Atari forums for the game. DrSin, one of Epic's programmers started the thread as a warning to fellow users, and so far everybody seems to be happy. I agree with that, we need to stop the cheaters before they ruin every game out there. But the question remains: How can they stop them completely? Surely, script kiddies will just stop and go somewhere else, but how about the guys who write all the tools? They won't stop so easily." Elsewhere, nerdb0t points to an ACM Queue editorial on the subject of cheating in online games, arguing: "Perhaps game developers don't realize they're enabling roving gangs of sociopaths who are effectively destroying the virtual world the developers have worked so hard to create."

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Are you insane? by mnemonic_ · 2004-03-20 00:41 · Score: 0, Troll

Hmm let's see... A 1024x768 or 1280x960 image, 24bit, 40 or 60 times a second. Losslessly compressed, let's say. What would that create, maybe a couple megabytes of data sent per user per second?! Multiply that by 20 users... and now it's at least a couple dozen megabytes per second. How many servers have this much bandwidth at their disposal? How many clients do?

And then the server's processing load... not only does it have to handle the typical non-graphics duties of a game server, but now it must render the game from around 20 different viewpoints... at 1024x768, 24bit, 60 times a second. Ok, unless the quality settings are set incredibly low, no video card and CPU combination will be able to render that many pixels at a decent framerate (unless you consider sub-single-digit, "decent"). With cluter computing it might be possible (30 AthlonFX-53 workstations, though there are better ways to use that much processing power), but not with anything powering a game server today.

Please... having all the frames pre-rendered by the server is completely impractical, bordering on ridiculous. I can't believe anybody could take such a solution to cheating seriously.