Rant on cheating!

[{HHx}b14ze]

Man, I hate sounding like the "glass-is-half-empty" kind of player!  With all the brains in the world,  if there is someone out there who is writing code to stop/prevent/catch cheaters,  there is more then likely 10 jerks with the same brain (minus any honorable conscience) out there who will circumvent it. 

This game is now 10 years old?  Still we have to deal with cheaters?  Maybe in the long run,  waiting until a game runs it's "profitable half-life" is a good idea!  Instead of having to deal with a mass or surge of cheating internet aggrivators,  we might only just see one on the server we like the best.

At any rate,  I feel as someone who plays Quake 2,  and other newer games like Battlefield 2,  we should have a bigger expectation of what is being done by the companies who make the games and the software we use to stop cheaters.   If they can make cutting edge graphic engines,  polys, pixels,  whatever.... they should at least be able to stop a no good stinkin' cheat.   Cutting edge to me,  would be a game WITHOUT HACKS.

Imagine what would happen if all gamers united and stopped buying, upgrading,  and downloading.  WTF??? NO MONEY!  WOW WE BETTER LISTEN!  Hmm.   I'm not holding my breath.  Most of them are probably too busy at thier jobs to even get to play thier product,  let alone any other games.   It's on to the the next cash-cow even before release.  Can we get real gamers in there please to test the games,  and not some clan who happens to know one of the programmers?

It would be nice if a truly great title was released that was cheat free.  Impossible to hack.  I would play it,  and make all the people that talk thier shit and hack because it is some kind of wierd adrenaline high,  go through quite a bit of keyboards and monitors. 

[console]

If they can make cutting edge graphic engines,  polys, pixels,  whatever.... they should at least be able to stop a no good stinkin' cheat.   Cutting edge to me,  would be a game WITHOUT HACKS.
[...]
It would be nice if a truly great title was released that was cheat free.  Impossible to hack.

I agree with the sentiment; however, what you're asking is theoretically impossible.

Ultimately the server's only "eyes" are the bits it sees from the client arriving at its local network socket.  If the bits the client is sending look legit, the server must accept them.

It is simply not possible to prove a client is legit, when all you've got to go on is the bits it's sending you across the network.

In a client-server situation, where the clients are hosted on remote, untrusted nodes, there is absolutely no such thing as "impossible to hack."



Regards,

quadz

[yodasmyBONG!]

i keep hearing people say that there are rampant cheaters on the servers, yet no one actually has the balls to name names.....grow some balls and talk about certain people....blacklisting them is a step in the right direction...

[{HHx}b14ze]

i keep hearing people say that there are rampant cheaters on the servers, yet no one actually has the balls to name names.....grow some balls and talk about certain people....blacklisting them is a step in the right direction...

Hmm.   I wasn't speaking of an individual or server in particular.  Just ranting. 

I know that the only way to make a game cheat free is to make client side uneditable.  Then how would we bind our keys or make mods?  This poses an interesting dillemma.  If only they made software that was 100% perfect to police!

As a long time gamer,  I know that cheating is a thorn in my side that will never be remedied.  With the geniuses that write code,  and develop software,  you would think that cheating prevention would be a reality. 

There has to be  a glimmer of hope for the people who are legit.  Do companies not care about us who have loyaly bought thier games and upgraded our machines to do so?  If not then perhaps we need to rethink about how much gaming cares about us.  I would assume not as much as we care about it but,  you all know what happens when we assume!  LOL

[console]

I know that the only way to make a game cheat free is to make client side uneditable.  Then how would we bind our keys or make mods?

Unfortunately, there's no way to do what you're suggesting.  It's impossible to make the client uneditable.  Hackers who understand programming can edit whatever they want, and there is simply no avoiding that.

Additionally, one doesn't even have to edit the client to make a cheat.

With the geniuses that write code,  and develop software,  you would think that cheating prevention would be a reality. 

There has to be  a glimmer of hope for the people who are legit.  Do companies not care about us

It's not that they don't care.  The best you can get client-side, when untrusted users have full access to the box, is security-through-obscurity.  Which can only delay hacks, not prevent them.


It works exactly like this:

Lets say you are going to play chess with someone over the phone.

You speak your moves to each other, and update the pieces on your boards.

You are easily able to enforce that every move the guy on the other phone tells you is a legal move for him to make.  (Quake already does the same.  This is the easy part.)

What you can't do, is know whether the guy on the other end of the phone has a supercomputer in his basement that is helping him out with the moves.  Or if he has a grandmaster sitting at the table whispering the moves to him.  All YOU can hear is the move he tells you over the phone.

That's precisely how it works with the quake server and clients.  The server can make sure every move the client tells it is legal, but the server CAN'T prove whether the client is having "help" making those moves.


Again, it's not that game programmers don't care, so much as they are up against a problem with no real solution.


Regards,

quadz

[adrenal1ne]

i wish you guys would ban titties, clearly with his amazing "moves" he cheats its obvious..i mean who else could keep with his 15% rail accuracy? he is just to good for this scene..i think a ban is in order.

[10zx]

I 2nd that.

[{HHx}b14ze]

Every  problem has a solution.  Has the A-team taught us nothing?

[console]

Every problem has a solution.

Unfortunately, it is NOT true in programming that every problem has a solution.  See, for example Godel's incompleteness theorems
Godel's incompleteness theorems, and the General Halting Problem.

Just run through this thought experiment in your mind:

Let's say you are playing chess with someone over e-mail.  The only information you have is them sending you an email of their next move.  How will you determine whether someone is helping them with their moves?

Please think about this problem, because it is EXACTLY the same as between q2 server and q2 client.


Regards,

quadz

[{HHx}b14ze]

Is hacking a problem with console gaming?  I don't hear too much about it,  but i don't game on  consoles online and never have. 

Lately I have been seriously debating buying a console.  It seems everyone on a console is on a level playing field,  don't deal with hacking or its not as prevelant,  and aren't forced to make video card/operating system upgrades to play the latest games.

At any rate,  I feel that multiplayer pc gaming is not going in a direction that i can see myself sticking with.  I've been doing it for 10+ years.  I feel that due to cheating,  and the big dent in my wallet,  the cons really do outweigh the pros.

Can you hook up a keyboard/mouse to a ps3/xbox360/wii? lol

If anyone does remedy this problem,  they do stand to make quite a bit of money.  They said we would never play games against eachother cross platform,  but I do believe this is becoming a reality now!

[ib.Dirty]

maybe there is some way to play q2 while it is on a secured server or trusted server. you could set up your config but not change any other options. lol I'm sure this is far feched but it would eliminate cheating almost 100% and since there is not much to quake maybe it could be possible. hehe   

[[BTF]Sigma]

Is hacking a problem with console gaming?  I don't hear too much about it,  but i don't game on  consoles online and never have.

To threadsurrect and answer this question, yes, there is console hacking out there. The thing is, it's quite devious. You have to connect your 360 to your PC and have it use your PC's internet connection to hook up to XBL. There are programs that let your PC modify the info coming from the 360 and going out to XBL. There weren't many games that could be modified but I know of it on HALO2 and COD3. People could fly warthogs around the map like they were fighter planes. COD3 had an aimbot.

[Th0m@s29]

I thought World Of Warcraft was ALMOST completely hack free.

[[BTF]Jehar]

August 03, 2009

Yay for more necrothreads.

[playboy]