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Doom 3 Beta Patch to Address Config File Cheating
Jason Shoulders writes "There's a discussion at Quake3World about an upcoming change in the first Doom 3 patch. Specifically, Id Software's Robert Duffy has updated his .plan file and mentions making 'r_skipNewAmbient, r_skipSpecular, r_skipBump, and r_shadows cheat protected'. This will force players to use features such as bump mapping and shadows. What settings gray the line between tweaking and cheating?"
Sorry, I don't play games like DOOM without cheating at least once. Consider it policy.
Doom 3 with all the special effects *on*? Darn. I'm going to need a new computer.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I don't see how this would be cheating in the single player experience. Cheating is when the company doesn't let me do what I want with property I purchase.
If they are talking about multi-player, whatever. The multi-player in doom3 sucks; they are leaving that up to modders.
I still don't see how it is bad? Are people hiding in shadows and other people aren't seeing those shadows? Wouldn't that make the ones hiding campers? I hate campers.
Chris
setting the defualt skin to be bright orange. and telling the game Force defualt models. People have done it before in the past with other games.
Okay, I'll definitely admit-- Cheats Bad.
I WOULD like to actually play the game sometime while my system is still at least relatively current. Any news on the Linux port yet?
Sig currently under construction. Mind the gap....
Simple: if everyone agrees to play by certain rules and you pretend to (but don't), you're cheating.
If everyone but you agrees to play by certain rules, and you still butt into the game, then you're an arsehole.
Simple as that. It's not "the game physics/programming/server allows me to so it's not cheating".
For example: if you get on a server where the players already on are playing "knife/melee only" AND they tell you so when you join. If you then go blow them to bits with a shotgun, you're just being a juvenile prick. If you don't want to play knife only, convince them to play the way you want. If the only way you can convince them is by being an arsehole, well then you really are one.
There could be implicit or unwritten rules - e.g. if you install a custom video driver that lets you see through walls AND the _default_ way people want to play is "no see through walls" then you're cheating.
There are so many ways of cheating that writing down the explicit rules against various cheats would make for a very thick and unwieldy rule book.
That said players themselves may quietly agree that certain nonexplicit rules can be broken/bent occasionally - after all playing a multiplayer game is a "people" thing. You are playing the game _with_ other people. If you want to be an arsehole/cheat you may find yourself playing alone.
Perhaps Hell is you playing alone for eternity - all the powers and toys you want but nobody around to play with you.
Oh yeah, I remember that game. The game I QUIT PLAYING BECAUSE THEY HAVEN'T RELEASED THE FUCKING LINUX BINARIES. It got boring. I was all fired up to put up a Linux dedicated server too. Too bad they dragged their feet.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
In Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, one can gain an advantage by turning off all foliage rendering. This means anyone hiding in long grass is easily spotted.
Some mods just turn foliage off for everybody. It's so boring that the problem of cheating in online games means the game has to run for the lowest common denominator.
It always seems like the developers get the flak for this too: yet what are they supposed to do? The whole situation is getting like that with cracks - the only way for developers to 'fix' things is by constant updates. Such a shame but I suppose that's the way of the world - a couple of idiots ruining everyone else's fun.
Making these options cheat protected in Multi-Player is the only way to make it fair. Especially the shadows, I've found it quite fun to be hiding in a shadow waiting for my roommate to grab the RL, only to be blown to bits by my other roommate running on a slow PC with shadows off because he just saw me sitting there, no problem. Also, IIRC, all of the lighting data is synched between the clients, so that everyone is seeing the same enviroment light wise. This is why they originally made the game peer to peer, and why it is only 4 player, because all that data takes up bandwidth. So it would be a waste to be sending all that and unifying the lights across clients if they could just turn them off. I think Doom 3 DM could have been fun, but they should have left the adreneline meter in, IMO. I've played standard, fast-paced DM to death. I was hoping the movement speed in Doom 3 DM would be a little slower, and to compensate there would be a lot of hiding and seeking in the shadows, but as it stands it is just a mindless fragfest, which isn't a bad thing, I just don't have fun with it anymore.
Reportedly the r_showtris, r_showLightCount, and r_showIntensity commands will also be inaccessible in multiplayer! Oh the humanity, the outrage, the primal struggle between innocent gamer and tyrranous developer!
Come off it. Cvars starting with "r_", mostly, concern renderer debugging. They're good for modders, and good for "oh neato wow" adventures in single player, but the very nature of the commands is to tell us more about a scene.
It wouldn't be fair if I was running around with bump-maps while someone else isn't. In most cases the difference between light levels is minimal, however this all depends on the bump maps. Some bump-maps can drastically reduce the amount of light visible on a surface, thereby giving the user with bump-maps enabled a handicap compared to the user with bump-maps disabled.
Most of the options for scripting commands and binding controls should all be disabled during multiplayer. Just like they should be disabled in counterstrike. You should not be able to zoom in, fire, jump and switch weapons with one key press. The "feature" of scriptability of commands and consoles in games has been one of the biggest problems with games lately.
If you ever go to Quakecon and watch the Quake 3 players, any of them that get into the higher ranked matches make their game look, well, like ass and worse then Quake 1. Why? Well, they do things to increase contrast, change view angles to unreasonable amounts to practicially see 360, and ensure no eye candy might distract them. It's absolute lunacy that they feel they can't compete without making the game practicially flash ENEMY IS HERE.
This isn't about trying to prevent people from making the game run better. It's to prevent people from playing a completly different looking game in competitions.
Wine can run doom 3, just without the interactive computer screens
Seen it with Counter Strike players as well. They play the game 640x480 (on insanely powerful hardware), with gamma and digital vibrance all the way up, huge FOVs, and turning off absolutely everything they can; i've even seen a few that turned off the map textures.
Lunacy. But still, as long as the client has to render the scene, there always be "cheats" like those to be used.
con_notifyTime cannot be changed in multiplayer.
com_showTics cannot be changed in multiplayer.
com_timestampPrints cannot be changed in multiplayer.
in_mouse cannot be changed in multiplayer.
m_showMouseRate cannot be changed in multiplayer.
g_kickAmplitude cannot be changed in multiplayer.
g_kickTime cannot be changed in multiplayer.
g_knockback cannot be changed in multiplayer.
g_skipParticles cannot be changed in multiplayer.
g_g_skipViewEffects cannot be changed in multiplayer.
image_preload cannot be changed in multiplayer.
r_displayRefresh cannot be changed in multiplayer.
r_finish cannot be changed in multiplayer.
r_hdr_gamma cannot be changed in multiplayer.
r_ignoreGLErrors cannot be changed in multiplayer.
r_lightScale cannot be changed in multiplayer.
r_lightAllBackFaces cannot be changed in multiplayer.
r_lightSourceRadius cannot be changed in multiplayer.
r_shadows cannot be changed in multiplayer.
r_skipAmbient cannot be changed in multiplayer.
r_skipBlendLights cannot be changed in multiplayer.
r_skipBump cannot be changed in multiplayer.
r_skipSpecular cannot be changed in multiplayer.
r_skipNewAmbient cannot be changed in multiplayer.
net_clientSmoothing cannot be changed in multiplayer.
s_force22kHz cannot be changed in multiplayer.
isnt that a little excesive
Nonsense. It adds functionality to the game that should have been there in the first place. I fail to see how turning off shadows so people can't hide ranks next to, for example, having a button mapped to toggle crouch so I don't have to hold down the fucking key to stay crouched, or having a crouch jump mapped to a key.
It's not a problem at all.
The "feature" of scriptability of commands and consoles in games has been one of the biggest problems with games lately.
I totally disagree. The ability to win a game via scripting merely points to a bad game (or bad opponent). I think it's silly to force players of any game to go through repetitive actions ad nauseam. This is especially true of level-grind MMORPGs. There is nothing wrong with having the high level view of the game that is allowed by scripting. Why reward only the fast twitchers when a strategic player can effectively plan a victory in advance to be executed by a single keystroke?
Hard core players have been doing this back in the Quake 1 era.
Remember how cool you thought that wavy effect was the first time you jumped in the water? I don't know any serious players that didn't turn that off. Most people also changed the fov settings just slightly, to get rid of the weapon model. Another tactic some DM players used was to increase the d_mipcap setting to lower the resolution of the map textures, to make player models stand out more.
Even id software guys used these tricks. American Mcgee used to play with the window reduced to about half its size, just so he could take in the whole view more easily without having to move his eyes around the screen.
It would've been a lot better if the person hosting the server could specify what effects are mandatory. At least that will level the playing field for everyone on that hosted session.
Uhh... I used to tweak the hell out of UT when I played it a lot.
:)
No fog. A zoom key. A locked INI because the game would reset my 150 degree FOV to 90 all the time. Now? UT2k4 doesn't have any of these abilities. FOV is an optional command enabled on the server. Fog is required "to make your framerate better". And the FOV has an engine-enforced limit of 100 now, locked INI or not.
And the moral of this story? I still suck. I used to get about 10-20 frags in a normal CTF game, and maybe over 100 in all-out insanity on ThornsV2. Now I get 10-20 frags in a normal CTF or ONS game, and I steer clear of Thorns.
Locking down graphics settings and views and such is all well and good.
However, if ID is relying on a shared library for their OpenGL implementation, then they're ultimately playing a losing game. There are a number of software projects that can swap out the OpenGL shared library at runtime and intercept all of the gl and wgl calls. With this functionality, you can make the graphics look however you want them to. Remove shadows, change fov, even change the viewpoint entirely.
Locking down graphics settings and views and such is all well and good.
However, if ID is relying on a shared library for their OpenGL implementation, then they're ultimately playing a losing game. There are a number of software projects that can swap out the OpenGL shared library at runtime and intercept all of the gl and wgl calls. With this functionality, you can make the graphics look however you want them to. Remove shadows, change fov, even change the viewpoint entirely!
Have you seen the Doom 3 Tournament this year ?
Locked cvars uh...
What was your point again ?
The D3 EULA provides a pretty clear description of what they consider to be cheating. I can't remember it word for word, but it was something along the lines of changing the game to provide the player with an advantage, i.e. moving beyond the normal limited speed, auto-targetting (aimbots), etc. Take a look.
-ReK
md5sum -c reality.md5
reality: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 of 1 computed checksum did NOT match
I like your post better with the bang at the end! Good call on the repost!
Well, it was because /. keeps losing my login, and that post accidentally went in as AC. I had to make a change for the database to accept a second post.
Tweaking competitively, especially in the quake engine games, has always been accepted.
Why?
Because those people that get higher FPS have an advantage then those that have a low FPS. Any slowdown in your game will give the other guy the advantage.
Tweaking allows the guy with the 1ghz pentium 3, GeForce TI 4200 computer, compete with the 3.2ghz Pentium 4 ATI 9800 Pro computer.
Player 2 can have a significant advantage over player 1 if you turn on all the pretty stuff.
But if you loosen the restirictions on the cvars both player 1 and player 2 would be able to play with acceptable frame rates and make the game more even.
It really easy to test, just go into your favorite multiplayer game and turn on 1600x1200 and turn everything you can to high. Watch how hard it becomes. The slowdown will affect everything. Then turn all graphic settings down and watch how much smoother it is.
Sure tweaking makes it uglier, but it makes the technical side to gaming more even.