* Serpent [2003-08-17 14:50]: > Just a note about Vac. I was testing it and a few other cheat catchers like > HLGuard and Cheating Death. The latest HLGuard on a 32 player server raises > the latencies to unplayable amounts. The Vac server also seems to add an > additional 30-40ms when the server is full. Now it is a great addition to > have but with that amount of latency increase it just wasn't worth having > enabled. So it is back to the old Spectaing and trying to catch them the > hard way.
K... I've been holding off on saying this because I thought maybe someone else would think of it. The idea is fairly simple: Third Party. What that means is why not use another client (be it on another box that centrally monitors all your servers, or yet another server process (which I would not recommend as it really defeats the point)). What this gives you is esentially more cpu to do some of the detection phsyics that were simply too expensive before. This all btw was hinted at almost two years ago (if not more), when I suggested to the list/valve about using hltv (it had been just introduced). Shows how long it's been floating around my head. I can see a few things that would need to be added / changed in the server, but the good news is nothing should require valve to change the engine. There are really a few ways to do this. Possible Engine / Hook / Interfaces: - Metamod plugin sends selective data to another process to be analysed. - Dedicated HL Client connected to the server as a spectator. - Dedicated HLTV Client connected to the server. [Metamod Plugin] A server side plugin thingy (metamod, as adminmod-type would be impossible). The difference between this and existing anti-cheats like CS Guard, is my way would emulate a hybrid client connected to the server. Ie, tell the other end player x is shooting at cords (x,y,z), but don't calculate anything else. Versus do the calculations, keep state, likelyhood, etc. The plugin would send that data to _another_ box, to be processed. The second cpu - or like I mentioned above, could be on the same server - would take care of the grunt work. [Dedicated HL Client] One _could_ use an existing HL installed client, and modify OGC/Joolz/whatever (why reinvent the wheel? .. heh), to detect cheating _behaviour_. It would be ideal to use existing cheats as a base because they already have the hooks'n such in place. Since it is very unlikely valve will implement any kind of real hashing (last two years are proof of that heh), this should be safe. [Dedicated HLTV Client] Almost like an HL Client, except the server I believe will send us more info if we connect as an HLTV Client/Server vs. a normal client. Examples are all player locations instead of immediate only. The possibilities are really endless. One could even extend the whole third party process to include cpu hog tasks like adminmod, statsme, map voting, etc. Just an idea. Sorry about the long post. Feedback welcome. _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux
