through social measures than through technology ones.
If I'm playing a mediocre game at home I may use a god-code or something
to get through it - that's between me, my PC and my conscience. But on
a public server with lots of other humans it's less likely to go by
without a comment. People also just naturally gravitate away from
cheaters (perhaps they don't know they're being cheated - but they do
know they're not having any fun) and find new servers.
All told I agree totally with you: any "big" attempts to stop cheating
have every possibility of screwing things up more than helping. It's
very similar to the crazy schemes for copy protection than have been
tried. They rarely do anything to prevent piracy but do succeed in
annoying a lot of legitimate players.
Jim Davis
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Campbell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 4:30 PM
To: CF-Community
Subject: Re: Half-Life 2 Source Code leaked
I still play Counterstrike, but I play only on servers that I'm familiar
with. I almost NEVER come in contact with cheaters anymore, and the
ones I do see in games get banned with alarming speed.
The distributed, homegrown nature of CS is what's made it so popular.
If Valve tries to supercede all this with a monolithic anti-cheating
device, it'll backfire.
I've played on servers where I've had an alarmingly good day and go
frag-happy (that, and I'm a camper, so I rack up kills in strings
usually) and get accused of cheating, but I've never been banned by a
human admin, since they can see what's happening and make a judgment
call.
- Jim
Jim Davis wrote:
>Exactly.
>
>Checking regularly isn't that big a deal- even if, for example, it was
>only done on a map change or death or in "suspicious" cases (20 frags
>from one player in a row). The checksum is a very small value (only a
>few hundred bytes at most) and could easily be slipped in. Since it's
>so small the server could easily track the progress of characters -
when
>a character is "alone" (far away from others) then the request for the
>check could be made.
>
>The problem here is that Valve wants the best of both worlds and I
doubt
>they'll get it: they want the most advanced and easy to use
modification
>engine ever AND the ability to stop cheaters. I doubt that you can
open
>up the guts of your app as much as they want to and stop all cheating.
>It'll be interesting to see them try. but I'm really skeptical.
>
>At the very least somebody will determine how to spoof the checksum or
>even lower, the checking software.
>
>Jim Davis
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Jim Campbell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 3:29 PM
>To: CF-Community
>Subject: Re: Half-Life 2 Source Code leaked
>
>But they'd have to check regularly, since it could be possible to have
>the Steam server validate your software's checksum or something and
then
>
>load a 'helper' to facilitate those 100% headshots.
>
>- Jim
>
>Jim Davis wrote:
>
>
>
>>I'm not sure if it's that smart. It would seem, if you want to
prevent
>>"hacked" copies of the source you could just check CRCs/digital
>>signatures on the binary files. This would work, at least, for the
>>Valve shipped maps and such.
>>
>>It's the Mod stuff that'll be harder than hell to track - some mods
are
>>themselves "cheats" that everybody has (low gravity, new weapons,
etc).
>>Even then however a simple CRC check would determine if everybody on
>>
>>
>the
>
>
>>map was playing the SAME mod files or if Dan, maybe had a little
>>something extra. ;^)
>>
>>All told I wouldn't expect it to be really all that intelligent
>>
>>
>however.
>
>
>>Jim Davis
>>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Jim Campbell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 3:03 PM
>>To: CF-Community
>>Subject: Re: Half-Life 2 Source Code leaked
>>
>>I wonder how Steam does it? I mean, if it's analyzing every packet
>>
>>
>that
>
>
>>comes through, it'll be a molasses-slow disaster. On top of that, if
>>they can figure out how to mask hacks in legitimate wrappers, it could
>>compromise Steam anyway.
>>
>>- Jim
>>
>>Smith, Matthew P -CONT(CSC) wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>Do you know if HL2 will hook into the new Steam system for online
>>>
>>>
>play?
>
>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>I thought Steam was supposed to block hacks and such...
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: Jim Campbell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>>Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 12:51 PM
>>>To: CF-Community
>>>Subject: Half-Life 2 Source Code leaked
>>>
>>>http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/02/1547218
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>><http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/02/1547218
>><http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/02/1547218
>>
>>
><http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/02/1547218
<http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/02/1547218&mode=nested&t
> &mode=nested&t
>
>
>>&mode=nested&t
>>id=126&tid=127&tid=156&tid=172&tid=186&threshold=-1%3e>
>>&mode=nested&tid=126&tid=127&tid=156&tid=172&tid=186&threshold=-1>
>>&mode=nested&tid=126&tid=127&tid=156&tid=172&tid=186&threshold=-1
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>Doesn't particularly mean someone will compile Half-Life 2 and
release
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
>>>it, since it's old code, but I guarantee it'll immediately contribute
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>to
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>cheat hacks for multiplayer. Oh, and the lovely, shattered dream of
>>>playing Half-Life multiplayer without [EMAIL PROTECTED] and aimbots.
>>>
>>>- Jim
>>>
>>>
>>>_____
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> _____
>>
>>[Todays
>>
>>
>>
> _____
>
>[Todays
>
_____
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