Re: [hlcoders] 1000+ are nice?
Why not release an entirely new HL on a new engine that is maybe half-compatible with older mods, release SDK, allow mod authors to do a total conversion, or allow those just starting to get working on a newer engine? HL will go out (if it isnt already) if there isnt an engine update. People now have faster and better hardware and gpu's than years ago, and they like games that use the hardware. -- Just my insight from surveying around various discussions.. -- kevin I have a vague theory about this, wildly speculative, but who cares? Valve can effectively replace the entire engine, piece-by-piece. That way, the game code is mature and stable, the renderer can be updated to current tech, all while (and this is the important bit) *maintaining compatibility with mods* HL's single-player rasied the bar for all FPS games, but the mods are what really made it. Allowing those mods to grow *with* the engine increases the longevity enormously. HL2 and TF2 could just be content add-ons, effectively mods. I could be completely and utterly wrong. Then again, I could be right :) - Original Message - From: Sebastian Steinlechner [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 7:48 PM Subject: Re: [hlcoders] 1000+ are nice? yeah i guess they are, but by the time CZ comes out Unreal2 with its 5000+ tri models and 100,000 wpolys (that's on a geforce2 even) will be out too... Actually, you can't tell me there are really 100,000 polys on the screen. But it looks like. I guess the biggest thing why the HL engine is outdated is the fact that it does not support LOD. Take Serious Sam as an example. There you can define that e.g. stairs automagically reduce their poly count when you move away from them. You don't really notice it, and it saves a lot of polygons. Same with models. Though you can implement a simple lod for player models in HL (just as HolyWars did, IIRC). And HL still supports full software rendering. You can image that eats a hell lot of cpu time. Even if you are in hardware mode. I might be wrong with that, but that's how I see it. cya, TheTinySteini ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] liblist.gam and the hazard course
The CS guys never had the training map produced and released, so that map was never there, but from my experiences (those more experienced feel free to prove me wrong) you need to do some client-side changes for that main menu if you have a multiplayer mod and want the hazard course button there. I have noticed before that the New Game and Hazard Course buttons are disable if the mod is set to multiplayer, but as you said, singleplayer mods have them available.. shouldnt be too hard to trace where its turning on/off the buttons.. sorry I cant be of more help -- Kevin At 19:15 2/24/2002 +, you wrote: mod cs and yes just noticed that the training camp button was disabled wasnt last time i looked that might have been cs1.1 tho :/ soz dpac. - Original Message - From: Kuja [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2002 6:38 PM Subject: RE: [hlcoders] liblist.gam and the hazard course Is that retail cs or mod cs, anyway. I changed my liblist.gam, it now appears as such: game Digital Paintball url_info www.digitalpaintball.net url_dl version Beta 1 size 35282944 svonly 0 type multiplayer_only cldll 1 hlversion 1108 nomodels 1 nohimodel 1 mpentity info_paintball gamedll dlls\pb.dll gamedll_linux dlls/pb_i386.so trainmap harzad4 but the hazard course button is still disabled. any ideas? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Deepak Manglani Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2002 1:12 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [hlcoders] liblist.gam and the hazard course CS has a training course and multiplayer only, here's their liblist.gam: game Counter-Strike url_info www.counter-strike.net url_dl version 1.3 size 18400 svonly 0 type multiplayer_only cldll 1 hlversion 1108 nomodels 1 nohimodel 1 mpentity info_player_start gamedll dlls\mp.dll gamedll_linux dlls/cs_i386.so trainmap tr_1 dpac. - Original Message - From: Kuja [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2002 5:42 PM Subject: [hlcoders] liblist.gam and the hazard course I have a multiplayer mod, and I decided I want a hazard course. The course is well underway, but it seems that I can t get it to show up in the menu unless I set type to single in the liblist.gam. However, I do not want people starting new games, since it is a multiplayer mod. Is there some hidden setting I am missing? Jeff 'Kuja' Katz www.digitalpaintball.net ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] ogc required to play??
3dsmax does have a hardware lock AND a serial code. But, thanks to the hard working crackers out there, we have both the hardware lock crack, and a serial key generator. And, btw, hardware locks arent all that hard to crack if the cracker in question has, say, an electronics engineering degree. Also it wouldnt be hard to crack a program with a hardware lock.. considering it has been done over and over to 3dsmax and other applications like Microstation. Its a good idea but it has to be taken into consideration that the production costs for this and implimentation all rely on valve and sierra. And considering how quickly that a hardware lock could be cracked, it isnt very feasible from my view. -- leming At 21:15 1/6/2002 +, you wrote: yes it is :) r3.1 had a dongle thingy on the serial port (I think anyway, telling from the diagrams in the help of how to install this small blue bit of plastic). It was called sential or something. - Original Message - From: Andrew Foss [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2002 8:16 PM Subject: Re: [hlcoders] ogc required to play?? 3dsmax has a dongle didnt it? It worked well there! Is that supposed to be sarcastic? one of my friends had a cracked copy of 3ds max that required no dongle. My suggestion is, is that HL passes a token to the dongle, the dongle spits out another token, based on the algorithm used, plus the CDkey. that prevents the crackers from having a chance, because the token has to be authed at sierra's side. That opens the ability for the codelets to work. The codelets then check for cheating.so here's how it goes: 1: user buys game, installs it 2: user plugs in dongle 3: User runs RegisterMachine, inserting CDkey into dongle and game executable ---now the fun begins--- 4: machine begins connection to server, sends wonID to Won. 5: Won recieves ID, sends a random token. 6: HL passes token to Dongle, dongle crunches numbers for a couple miliseconds 7: dongle spits authtoken back out. 8: on the WON side, it is decoded to: WonID, Token Answer 9: Won compares token with the list of token answers if it doesn't match, Won disallows client connect. 10: if it matches, codelets are sent to machine to be run for anticheat detection. Of course, this is all well and good, but it can't be implemented until TF2 of HL2, whichever is first... Valve? Any comments? ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] ogc required to play??
Just to expand a little on the idea, have it where something computer-independent (processor serial or similar) that every computer has, but is unique, have that be sent to WON in their auth sequence, and have WON reject authorization of that computer using any other WONID but the one they registered with to begin with. Have a timeout of the registration be maybe a month or two when WON would allow them to use another WONID... just a thought -- leming At 11:31 1/6/2002 +1100, you wrote: Ahh, perhaps another good addition to this version would be tieing down WONID's to clients. How you could do this, I don't know. Hrmm, how do people (cheaters) change WONID's at the moment? Surely its not by guessing a new (valid) code alone is it? Value adding the WONID to make it expensive to give up (as other posters have mentioned) is a good idea. Perhaps you can let game servers only allow people in above a certain WONID rank (or within a band). Then you could exclude new users/cheaters reusing id's Nicolai Haehnle wrote: Am Samstag, 5. Januar 2002 14:43 schrieben Sie: You don't need to detect a cheat every time, only once and they are gone :) This is where we have the advantage. You assume that someone only has 1 or 2 WONids. That's not true for many cheaters, they have hundreds of WONids... http://www.bowboard.f2s.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?s=3c36fdcf2c26;act=ST ; f=1;t=278 You can also ban by IP address, but this will only be effective on static IP cable modems and static IP xDSL connections. Many cheaters will have dynamic IP broadband connections or dynamic 56K dial-up connections. You may have to ban the same cheater hundreds of times to keep them off of the server. Banning by IP is definitely not an option, because cheater detection requires you to be able to ban a cheater forever. WON IDs are also a bad idea because of what you mentioned. Apart from that you risk banning innocent people by both those methods. Anyway, another possible to the solution of the banning problem is to use a third-party authentication server based on e-mail addresses. Which may of course be more hassle for the users than it's worth because cheaters can just register new email-addresses (just like they can just create a new HL key using a key generator). However, when you couple this authentication with a global ranking scheme, it may be worth it as a community effort. The notorious cheaters will always have to recreate their accounts, so that they will never be able to reach the top of the global ranking ladder. cu, Prefect ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders -- Alfred Reynolds [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] ogc required to play??
My thought was that the unique id per computer would not be generated but rather be something burned in their hardware (and a piece of hardware that everyone has) such as their processor serial. But a bios switch (default set off) controlls whether or not the processor serial is available to apps.. feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. In response to Andrew, a usb dongle wouldnt be feasible for one big reason.. not that the hardware can be hacked, but that the hardware might not work for everyone. USB doesnt work with NT4, and I once used NT4 to play HL, and I have talked to quite a few others that use it still. Also controlling software would have to be multi-platform (meaning windows, linux, etc compatible) for those that use Wine to play to be able to go with it. Also, another flaw is the design and production costs of it. Many pieces of software use a parallel port key which looks and is no bigger than a gender changer, but the software that requires the key will not run without it in, and if it is removed, the application will cease functioning. Again, production costs are more than Sierra is probably wanting to put into a game that has hair turning gray. -- leming At 12:35 1/6/2002 +1100, you wrote: The problem is how do you generate the unique id, and how do you force a client to stick to one ID... They could just hack the HL binary to report any ID they want... Or alter something about their machine to make the new id (the GID in windows can be generated from random numbers alone...). ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] ogc required to play??
An idea might be that the half-life game itself (valve guy stuff) would do more of a security check on the mod being loaded. The game is provided the location of the .dll (or .so) to load, so why not do something like a CRC on the mod, compare it do a crc of the actual distributed file by the mod authors, and if it matches, let it load. If there is something in the way like admin mod (or a hack), it wont load the game, or the client will report to the server that there is something in the way of the mod being loaded, and the server can then decide what to do. Of course I myself could make a list of the flaws of this idea, but its just a base of something that could be improved upon. Throw out some suggestions people, I know there are more people than myself that want to see cheating gone, or atleast controlled. -- leming At 02:33 1/5/2002 +0100, you wrote: Am Samstag, 5. Januar 2002 02:22 schrieben Sie: Wallhack cheats wouldn't be possible if stuff on the other side of the wall isnt sent to the client :P -av Which would immediately lead to problems if a lagged player walks around corners because entities don't appear immediately. You can see this effect on the TFC map well when you enter the flag room from the lower level of your base, even if your ping isn't too high. Normally, this doesn't happen because the PVS extends a bit around corners, but it looks like this particular place in well has good visblocking ;) cu, Prefect ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] ogc required to play??
Executable code downloaded and run is a spawning pool for viruses, but good idea nonetheless. Maybe have my original idea of a checksum being used on the client dll that was loaded by the game client-side, and compare it to a checksum that the server the player is playing on had. If the checksums dont match, the client is intervening with the loading of the proper mod, and/or the server has things messed up. Also an idea would be to not only stop at checking the client dll being loaded, but to also do a check on the memory that the mod was loaded into. This would prevent client-side hacks from changing around the executable memory to do what they wanted to do. A little extra temporary overhead, but the process can be run low-profile on the system, thus consuming less processing power, leaving more for the game rendering etc etc (I wouldn't want to suggest something that would leave the kids losing 3 fps to check if they are cheating...) -- leming At 13:49 1/5/2002 +1100, you wrote: hopefully Valve have some better ideas ;) The client should be treated as untrusted and the server trusted (if the server is untrusted also then you are screwed :) So you just need to implement some checking on the client. My idea would be to have executable code be downloaded from the server to the client to be run (ala PB), this make a hackers life hard. However, it can lead to vunerabilities in the client if the server does go bad :( Other models can use Valve (WON,Sierra,etc) as a trusted third party for the codelets, but it means more infrastructure for them... ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] ogc required to play??
The idea is out there.. if anything is to be done, the main part of it has to be done server side. Anyone can break their client side software, but to break something server-side, the admin of the server (or account) is the one responsible, and if he isnt responsible, well, there are laws (in the US atleast) that will put those people off of computers for a good duration of time. But as far as any implimentation goes towards any methods used to stop things like ogc, it is my personal belief that Valve themselves are going to have to take a serious approach to stopping cheating. PunkBuster guys had a good idea, but there again was external client side software. Any decent programmer can not only program, but rip apart programs. Its all a big vicious loop of making a program work the way you want it to. And if the anti-cheat is all server side, the players cant do a whole lot in the way of breaking it, unless there are flaws in the server-side patch. -- leming At 23:04 1/3/2002 +, you wrote: reply below.. - Original Message - From: Nicolai Haehnle [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2002 3:31 PM Subject: Re: [hlcoders] ogc required to play?? Am Mittwoch, 2. Januar 2002 22:56 schrieben Sie: Then the hook only need to listen on the network and it will get the key... It won't do any good to get hold of the public key. That's the beauty of the public key system. You need both the private key and the public key to decrypt the message. The private key is never sent over the network. Actually, that's no problem. Remember you're man in the middle? There's a tool (ettercap) that can automatically log all SSH sessions on a switched (!) networked from an intruding PC. All that's required is that you're listening in the initial phase, so that you can replace the keys used. This is obviously the case for a cheater proxy. Now you're all forgetting another problem with the HL protocol. Protocols like ssh, https, etc... are stream-oriented which is crucial for the common advanced encryption algorithms. Because the internal state of the algorithm changes with the data, it cannot be applied to a packet-oriented protocol like HL's - packets can be dropped or delivered out of order, which would obviously mess up the algorithm. Game Programming Gems has a nice little section on network protocols and gives a few ideas of how to deal with the out of order problem, as well as getting around all but the most hardcore of packet sniffers by adding some random data to the end of your network packets tomake it a varible lenght and other handy stuff. ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] Logitech mouse third button in HL (update)
I'm with tom in that it can get more confusing trying to remember what you had a button (or key) bound to when you have more keys to deal with. Considering that hundreds, probably thousands of people get along without custom binding every peripheral in their possession to control a game, I think I'm safe in saying that you don't need to bind anything extra than the defaults. If it isn't working at all for you, say screw it and just play the game. Its about the game, not a contest to see who can have the most insane binds. Also to add onto what Tom said, if you set a button on your mouse to a function that isn't used in the game by default, you can just bind to that function instead of the button itself. I bound my mouse4 to F12, and it works as my comm button for roger wilco. A whole lot easier than trying to hit F12 while playing the game, I'll tell ya that much =) If you can't get it working by now, get someone on your computer who can get it working, or it would probably be best to just leave it as it is. -- leming At 15:31 12/25/2001 +, you wrote: in the logitech setup, bind mouse4 to shift, and then in hl bind shift to whatever u want mouse 4 to be and it should work. IMHO the 4th button is useless though cos its hard to concentrate on 4 buttons let alone 3 whist shooting - Original Message - From: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Nathan Taylor To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]HLCoders Sent: Tuesday, December 25, 2001 2:26 PM Subject: Re: [hlcoders] Logitech mouse third button in HL (update) type bind mouse3 and see what shows up in console, also try bind mouse5 - Original Message - From: Cortex Sent: Tuesday, December 25, 2001 9:10 AM To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [hlcoders] Logitech mouse third button in HL (update) I don't get these messages at the console... - Original Message - From: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Nathan Taylor To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]HLCoders Sent: Tuesday, December 25, 2001 1:50 PM Subject: Re: [hlcoders] Logitech mouse third button in HL (update) umm yea u can. assuming that they are unbound start hl in -dev mode and when u click your mouse buttons other than mouse1 and mouse2 you will see it print in the up left corner mouse3 unbound mouse4 unbound mouse5 unbound etc (I have 5 buttons) -Lakario - Original Message - From: Cortex Sent: Tuesday, December 25, 2001 7:48 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [hlcoders] Logitech mouse third button in HL (update) OK ;) So, I can't use 4 buttons in HL but 3 :( There isn't any forth button field in Logitech Mouseware :( Thanks all :) - Original Message - From: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]leming To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 24, 2001 4:51 AM Subject: Re: [hlcoders] Logitech mouse third button in HL (update) I presume that the logitech mice work similarly to the MS mice. I have the optical explorer from ms, and in order for me (and you most likely) to be able to use side buttons and the middle wheel button, those buttons CAN NOT be set to perform another function in windows. In your mouseware software, in the screen where you set the function for the buttons, I believe it is a drop down list, and there should be something like Middle Button or Button 3 or similar. You need that selected for HL to recognize it as mouse3. This is so for my MS mouse, as my back side button is set for nothing, thus it is mouse4, but my front side button is a double click (NOT mouse5) and will not behave or be recognized as mouse5. As everyone has said before me, but possibly not as clearly, the middle button CAN NOT BE SET TO PASTE OR ANY OTHER FUNCTION PROVIDED BY THE MOUSEWARE SOFTWARE. You must put the setting on to None, Middle Button or another similar option. Once the actual OS is seeing it as a true middle button, it would only be common sense that applications within that OS would also see it as the middle button (other than the drivers controlling the mouse itself, of course). -- leming At 15:47 12/23/2001 -0800, you wrote: As long as MouseWare supports 4-button mice, this should work. --- Cortex mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks However I'll reexplain my problem, because I'm not sure everybody has understood :( My english is not very good :( So, I want to use the third (wheel button) and the forth (side) button in HL. In mouseWare (lastest version), I can set a function to the two buttons. If I set them Third button, HL works fine with them but they have the same action ;( So, I wanted to set a Forth button to the side button, so as to have two different actions for the two buttons. Is this possible ? I hope you'll understand ;) If not, I'll re-reexplain :) Cortex HL Albator coder mapper http://www.hlalbator.fr.st/www.hlalbator.fr.st
