One of the major reasons I don't play World of Warcraft or Doom 3 is because of their respective, intrustive methods for catching cheaters.

Before anyone gets the wrong idea let me make two points crystal:

First, if it's not obvious already, I believe in the depth of a game before almost anything else. Depth is utterly shattered by cheating, and while I believe that scripting is a reasonable level of customization (this is not a scripting discussion, I'm speaking in terms of my opinion and belief), real cheating such as speedhacking, esp (wall hacks), aimbots or the more insidious toggles, and even white walls and spikes are all terrible elements of gameplay. Speaking purely in terms of game design, they subtract more fun from the collective experience than they add, which makes them a negative gameplay element.

Second, VAC does not stop cheating. While most of the complaints are simply due to a lack of skill on the part of the "victim" of an aimbot or what have you, there are a few actual instances of cheating still left. Several players still aimbot without any repercussion from Valve's system.



The point I want to make most in this thread is that it is not a game designer's job to arbitrate cheating in that game.

Take baseball for instance. The designers of baseball way back when it was first implemented would have set out to create a series of rules. Breaking these rules constitutes bad sportsmanship, but more interested parties (namely the referees) are the ones to actually enforce the rules and mitigate cheating.

It is arrogant to think that an algorithm can replace the watchful eye of a referee. It won't work, because whatever system you devise will be broken. In the off chance you do develop an uncrackable code (an oxymoron of course) it will necessarily be so invasive as to drive players (such as myself) away from the game.

It is the responsibility of a given server administrator to administrate their server as they see fit.

If they want to let cheaters run rampant, that's their decision.

If they want to skillban all but the most incompetent players, that's their decision.

If they want to force a subset of the community onto aliens when there are 4 marines and 7 aliens playing, that's their decision.

If they want to reserve slots for the most intelligent and skilled players, that's their decision.

And if they want to get rid of cheaters, which any reasonable admin must at some level desire to do, that's their decision.


I have little to no preconceptions about UWE's design strategy for catching cheaters, but I implore you to consider the points made above before spending precious development hours building a system that will necessarily be either impotently flawed, or intrusive, and overbearing.

I recall reading the original Unreal Tournament had very little cheats. If my memory serves me right, the combination of a difficult-to-hack engine and a single good 3rd party anti-cheat program worked wonders there. HL1 on the other hand is really vulnerable with all the dll based stuff.

Your post makes me curious, what manner of cheat detection can be found in World of Warcraft or Doom 3 that would be so severe as to drive away a non-cheater? My only concern could be CPU usage, but I doubt that's the issue you speak of.

I *SOMEWHAT* agree with your views, Radix, however... you have to look at it from the developer's POV:

Developer DOESN'T create Anti-Cheat system, or creates a very very basic one...

• Hacks and Bots start to pop up immediately, they aren't detectable without close supervision.
• Admins start banning users of bots and hacks.
• Players go into Wolf-crying frenzy.
• Admins cannot keep up with requests to ban/monitor server.
• Only choice: Hire/entrust more admins.
• Server closes.

Developer DOES create a substantial, or implement existing Anti-Cheat method...

• Players feel safe that others are not cheating
• Few Hacks and Bots pop up over time.
• Few Admins spot this, hand over server logs, I.P Addresses, etc. to Anti-Cheat community.
• Updates and Game-wide bans are made.
• Server stays open.

... So, we have a situation where many low-budget and independent (some of the best) servers will be forced to password or close the server completely, if UWE decide to 'let the admins deal' with cheating. So you can clearly see that a few weeks to months and updates regularly in regards to anti-cheat is a far better option for the players... the cash flow... and the general opinion of the game.

Imagine a website like "Gametrailers.com" or "IGN" reviewing a MULTIPLAYER ONLY video game and concluding that although the game in concept and closed session is very fun and innovative, when playing with the general public it becomes a nightmarish festival of cheating and crying wolf so the game is impossible to enjoy. Sales wouldn't rocket from that kind of review

Google "The Warden".






You should define what you mean by hacks and bots. I'll assume you mean aimbot and esp primarily. Both of these are possible with VAC, which is considered to be a fairly extensive anti-cheat system by many. Also, close supervision isn't really required, since a simple demo can be taken of cheating, emailed to a good admin, and scanned or viewed for cheats. It doesn't take that much effort, and can be done while eating lunch. The ban can then be added with a single command line. It's fairly painless.



Even with VAC players are still in a constant witch hunt for the people they can't beat. bad administrators will always be bad administrators, and they will modify their servers in stupid ways to appease dumb people who can't accept that their ways of playing a game don't always work, and might sometimes need to be modified. Trying to argue that this will change with a slick algorithm is ludicrous.



Maybe they shouldn't run a server if they don't have 15 minutes to ban a cheater.



I'm an admin on plenty of servers, you don't need to hire anyone - people do it for free. Adding more admins also grows your community, especially if they have a knack for politics or marketing.



A server would not be likely to close due to the reasons you've mentioned.

I believe your vision of the negative aspects of admin-based cheat mitigation are flawed.



That's nice. Their feelings have nothing to do with reality except in the most developer-intensive and player-intrusive systems, and even then the system can easily fail.



Nope. Unless you implement something like Blizzard did with reading its players' open documents, you're not going to achieve this. Even if you did, NS2 will not be an account-based game, at least not nearly to the extent that World of Warcraft is, and as such, the cheat mitigation will be much less effective, if a little more profitable.

Wow that's another great point. Putting this much power in the developers' hands creates an antitrust problem, and even though I don't think UWE would abuse it, they could easily be tempted to ban players for the silliest reasons, because it would make them money. This would at the very least be a constant background noise to their decision making.

Also, UWE does not have the manpower to even manufacture a massively multiplayer game at this point, let alone to run a project like The Warden effectively, especially when there's money involved.



You're saying that admins will respect Demo Detectives? Without naming names, there are a fair subset of administrators even now who see DD as a group of hackers, and selectively agree with them only when it fits their bias.



These goals would be better accomplished, and with far less effort to UWE, by letting administrators do their jobs, rather than trying to automate extraneous functionality instead of just making a great game.




Your premises are flawed, and result in faulty conclusions. With that said, please understand that I respect that you even have specific premises (it's more than most people are willing to bother with), and I appreciate your post.

doubleh!
...

Hmm, I'll use this accidental post to state: Without any kind of cheat prevention, the "aimbot" and "wallhack" or "brightmodels" could be the least of your worries.
Hackers are very smart, and usually pretty malicious.

You failed to even acknowledge the point I was making, so you are therefore obviously just baiting an argument.
I don't know if you think you are extraordinarily intelligent or just ignorant, but the vast majority of people aren't incredibly bright... those are the ones we need to protect.

I will leave it at: the rewards of making a decent anti-cheating system glaringly out-weigh the risks when you are running a serious BUSINESS.

Google is tiresome, and you sent me on a mean hunt. I had no need to learn about a Anthony Trollope novel...
I should've skipped the Google suggestion and go straight to Wikipedia.

So, I still am wondering. Warden sounds like a pretty ideal system to me. Only people doing unjust activities would suffer from a program that scans other active programs. I don't think there's a need for such an extensive program in NS2, but there's no reason for a fair player to fear it. Except maybe an abnormally suspicious person. Oh no, they know I'm running AIM! Certainly they're going to copy my buddy list and find a way to make a profit off it! (lol)

VAC's security is incredibly weak. But a server without VAC is more like an invitation to hackers. The banning of cheaters is quite a pleasure (knowing the extremes to which they can destroy an experience), so I favor the most optimal security that can be developed.

Your point was that you believe that some form of automatic hacking detection system is a better idea for the business than letting administrators handle their own servers. I disagreed with the point, and you failed to retort any of my arguments.

And no, I don't think I'm just ignorant.





Sorry? I would have had to go on the same mean hunt myself to answer your question.

The reason the Warden is problematic is that if you have any information (like email addresses, a title of a novel, a masters thesis that is highly descriptive of a new technology) in your document filenames, it will be read and sent to blizzard. I don't know what else it does, but that alone is enough to make me shy away from it. Also the fact that Blizzard didn't tell its players it was using any system of that nature, which perhaps is the greater problem with its implementation than even what it does, putting it (in my mind) in the same category as spyware, but far more insidious, as well as expensive.



EDIT: You both seems to be somewhat enraptured in the concept of "ban the bad cheaters!" and while I agree with you in principle, I don't think you've thought it through in practice - it really isn't as simple as "let's put as much anti-hack in the game as possible". Maybe I'm drawing a faulty conclusion, if I am, help me understand your point of view better.

Not sure who you're quoting... i wrote:


Not everybody in the world has an abundance of free time, and what little free time people have, I'm sure it'd be best spent not babysitting servers.
And the people who do have an abundance of free time are either the hackers themselves, or kids who wouldn't be adequate at governing a server properly.
Everything in the world gets automated. Spotting bad apples, reading post-codes on mail, painting cars. Why?.. Not because humans are incapable... but because it saves time, and effort.

Time is money.
Some bad apples still sneak through, some post-codes are illegible, some cheaters do avoid detection... but these can swiftly be dealt with by a few individuals after the automation has done it's job.

There ARE different ways of going about it.

• Let the players govern themselves.
• Let cheaters play happily (and crash servers and other malicious deeds).
• Let Administrators be warned that having a server constitutes a full-time baby-sitting job.
• Tell people if they can't handle cheaters/hackers, don't play (fascist?)

But you know what they say: The most simple explanation is usually the correct one. (from a customer's POV)
And with so many other games using Anti-Cheating detection, I don't think some angry individual who doesn't work in the industry (and obviously has far too much on his computer to hide from any kind of file-modifying-monitoring-algorithm) has hit the holy-grail of multiplayer cheating prevention

Obviously cheating isn't desirable in a game. It takes away credibility from players who really are good at a game, since cheating exists as an excuse for player performance. At the same time, those who are otherwise horrible get away with fraud because their cheating isn't detected or is considered normal. At the extremes of the spectrum, cheating blatantly and unfairly disrupts normal gameplay. It isn't really about the responsibility of server owners to administrate their servers properly. It is about the integrity of the entire game and its image as seen by game players (both competitive and casual).

Having said that, ideally it would be possible to create an engine and game that can't be significantly hacked. Does UWE have the time, personnel, and resources to do this? Nope, I really doubt it. (But let's see how this new engine turns out...) Maybe if NS2 is really successful, perhaps there will be enough resources to consider enhancing anti-cheat.

In the mean time, why not set up something like an official Demo Detective division within UWE? If a certain number of players in-game vote to investigate a particular player's account, then the account is flagged and servers record demos of that player's actions. The demos get reviewed by a UWE-appointed volunteer professional player (or 2 out of a team of volunteers) and a decision made to ban the account / suspend the account / request second opinion / do nothing. All decisions would have a global impact on all NS2 servers. Thereafter, if banned/suspended, the player in question will be given a chance to appeal the decision with the risk of being banned in some more severe way (hardware ban?) if the appeal is found to be unwarranted by an appeals committee.

I'd think that, as a temporary solution, administrative vigilance coupled with a UWE endorsed demo detective unit would discourage most cheaters. Sure, there could be a few false negatives - for this there should be a good appeals committee who should really take interest in genuine appeals.

Perhaps I'm wrong then. You seem to speak with some degree of authority, so why don't you explain the exact specifications of the "simple and elegant" system you are defending, so that I can better understand your point of view, and perhaps modify my own?

Hmm, no, I agree with killkrazy. If you don't have any form of anti-cheat system in place, it *will* encourage cheaters. Some may even reason that it's fair to cheat, since the developers put no system in place to combat it and thus preventing 'cheating' wasn't part of their intentions. And if there are a few people cheating, and nothing is done to combat it (except unreliable bans by admins), it'll only encourage others to cheat, or quit the game. Something is better than nothing. If you rely only on a human element (admins), you're always going to come up short.

I highly doubt UWE can officially support a system like that. As a developer and a company they've got quite a bit more of responsibility on banhammering than a non-profit 3rd party group. Something like Demo Detectives Banlist plugin is the best I can think of.

I think the demo viewing removes only a part of the problem though. It easily catches all the newbies using aimbot and ect, but it's a real pain to see whether a smart and experienced player is getting and unfair advantage. For example in Starcraft Euro scene has been hurt bad by the hacking. A few months ago quite a few very skilled players got banned from the most leagues when a new detection method was introduced. Some of them had even performed well on LAN tournaments. At that point a lot of people get a little paranoid and it hurts the whole game. So, I wouldn't rely completely on demo viewing either, no matter how good the viewers are.

I'd say its good to give anti-cheat some though while designing the game, but I don't think its worth focusing the dev time. I guess the optimal situation would be to have a engine that isn't completely a walk in the park to hack and yet it should give 3rd party anti-cheat programs some room to work. Most likely it's quite difficult to get both on the same engine, since anti-cheats seem to hook the engine the same way as hacks do.

best anti cheat mechanism is definatly admins. What we need is a good culture of admins for all servers. Maybe some sort of admin code of practice or something.

However i agree in part with kill crazy, we need some sort of dev anti cheat system just to send the message that cheating isnt acceptable. It doesnt need to be fancy, or even very effective but if theres no anti cheat mechanisim then it may send the wrong message.

I think you both have reasonable positions.

That said, I'd rather the devs work on other things than their own anti-cheat monitor. I've played a lot of NS, even before VAC was enabled for it, and I've only seen a few cheaters. I've always felt the problem was blown out of proportion. If it came down to matchmaking system vs. anti-cheat monitor, I'd take the matchmaking system hands down.

Anti-cheat software only works for as long as the people who code hacks can't circumvent it. VAC worked for a short time, then was pretty much completely ineffectual afterwards. Maybe if you kept updating your anti-hack.

IMO demos are still good, but I would improve from the hl demos which showed everything on delay and didn't show things like motion tracking. Many of in the clan scene probably remember a certain sketchy demo from a certain top CAL clan. For example in this demo he is clearly shown shooting through walls at targets before turning corners but we can't see if he had motion tracking. In addition based on my own recorded demos it would show me shooting ahead of the target or behind the target (something along those lines) because of recording lag. In addition this is recorded by a spector using a laggy recording of a players view which is already on deley. Preferable I would like something along the lines of Battle Recorder from battlefield which replays the round bases off the servers point of view giving the least biased viewing and accesable after everyround. In addition that would be cool period for a game like NS to watch matches over from every angle.

The problem with admins is there is too many smug admins period who can't tell the difference between skill and hacks. A couple of good playes I know are now banned from every remaining server except one or two from supposedly hacking, and these arn't even the top players. One admin even posted a video of him supposedly hacking and he was playing so poorly that the title of the video should have been 'lets laugh at this nub' but instead they banned him because the servers are all run by 10 year old little kids.
Retarded admins is largly responsible for death of NS. Wow is sadly the number one death of NS but #2 IMO is admins.



So I would suggestion a combination of anti cheat programs and a strong accurate server side recording program.

it would be really hard to do client side detection, there are just too many ways to do it... and it would require so much research and or intrusive activity to maintain and keep active... I agree that ultimately the best way is to have servers populated by cognizant and mature players and admins who will lay down the law and discourage any cheating. Aimbots and see through walls are always a possiblity, but movement can be pretty well covered and if the game is more advanced than aim and shooting (which thankfully NS is, especially with the aliens and their non-standard movement) it is harder to cheat. Because NS is so non-traditional, cheats won't have the simplicity... so hopefully they won't be as big a deal as they would be in a CS type game where its all aim and shoot. etc... wow that went on

In the long run either way wont matter. Just be happy if they finish the game in a reasonable amount of time.

I always roll my eyes when I read a thread like this. There are so few cheaters out there. Most people confuse good players for cheaters. A few e-buddies and myself had most of the pubbers in NS thinking we cheated and I get accused of cheating on a daily basis in COD4. I always envision the people who think I'm cheating as the same ones who make these kind of doom-and-gloom anti-cheating threads.

When someone is actually cheating it's so obvious that it doesn't even need to be said. I just leave the server and join a different one and that doesn't bother me because it's such a rare occurrence. To put it in perspective, I think I saw 4 or 5 cheaters in NS and in COD4 I've seen 2 so far.

You act like this is a bad thing. The best anti-cheat HL1 ever had was "cheating death" which was able to use half-life to perform client side file scans to check for common cheats. After one of Valves patches the scanning ability was removed which crippled cheating death and it never really recovered to its full potential. Either way client side file scanning is still a valid option IMHO.


On a side note: With application virtualization becoming a workable reality, perhaps the future of anti cheating is virtualizing core game files where their state can't be changed.

well i wouldn't roll your eyes too much because there was hackers in the winning clan of one CAL season. I know this because I know one of the members of the clan. I don't recall if anyone of the winning members used hacks, but they knowing tried to cover up and deny one of their members used it who was caught and banned.

But still agreeing that most people accused of cheating arn't and that's a problem too.

I don't really think that's a problem... the problem is devoting lots of time towards an anti-cheat system that will eventually get cracked anyway. Let the server admins ban who they want to ban, they pay for the server after all, but I can't say I see the point in devoting a lot of time towards a complex anti-cheat system.

No anti-cheat system can ever be 100% effective, but if you can implement a system that just knocks out the easy cheats and cuts cheater numbers by say 2/3, isn't that worth doing? Its a tradeoff really between effectiveness and intrusiveness, as well as developer time. But while the ideal position on a complex sliding scale like that can be impossible to nail down precisely, its extremely rare for the endpoints of the scale (no cheat-prevention at all) to be a good choice.

People being able to play ns except on only 2 of the remaining servers because admins are immature. Yes I do believe that is a huge problem. Admin power is almost always abused since the dawn of video games.

My invitation to killkrazy is open to anyone else. If you want to pin down exactly what it is you are defending when you say "anti cheat", feel free to do so.

Or we could continue to discuss ephemeral conjecture for the entertainment value of arguing over the internet.

"Arguing over the internet is pointless, so I win at this internet argument" isn't really sound logic.

I don't remember trying to defend anything, really...
I rebutted your original post with some good reasons why spending time on Anti-Cheat modules is worth the money in the view of the developer.

Bar from glancing comments about how hackers and cheaters can and will ruin the fun for everybody who plays the game, I only pointed out the obvious reasons why any multiplayer devoted-game developer would spend a reasonable amount of time implementing it.

There are so many forms and ways of cheating... or just griefing (with third party tools/hooks, not to be confused with being a jerk) that probably you or I don't even know of them all, and if given the opportunity, the filthy mother-licker hackers will develop even more nasty and fun-spoiling programs.

NS isn't a tactical shooter , either... you cannot compare the possibilities of it's hacks/cheats to that of CS/TF/WoW

+ I love Locallyunscene... i think I remember other funny posts like that from some of Domining's Topics

Since I've been called out I may as well think and post about this some more. I still don't think UWE needs to work on their own anti-cheat mechanisms beyond writing their code smartly so it's not dead easy. Not that it will stop hackers, just that it's not that important.

Killkrazy, I challenge you to find an FPS that's been ruined by hackers. I'll also accept RTS's, but sales/reputation must have suffered substantially for me to consider a game ruined.

Radix, I agree that anti-cheat software is a something that UWE should avoid so they can spend the money on other things, but how would you make the job easier for admins? Even good servers are not admin'ed 24-7 and the few times I have seen cheaters they've cleaned out servers quickly. How would you, or how would you expect the devs to, assuage the fears of members like killkrazy who has a rather common view of cheating? Would you leave it completely up to admin groups that share ban lists{was looking for this topic, but couldn't find it} or maybe have UWE give them an endorsement of some type?

The presence of anti-cheat devices certainly isn't going to stop hacking from those that intend to do so. But we don't want some immature fools to think they can just casually download some hacks and get away with it. Hacking hasn't been a serious problem in NS. But a popular game will attract more fools, and NS at the peak of its popularity might have had more problems if there was no VAC to say "Hackers unwanted".

There is no need for something advance to be developed, as long as there is something. An example can be my neighborhood itself. Most houses are without a modern security system. Instead all entrances to all houses has a silver sticker that warns criminals of the "neighborhood watch" program. There's no neighborhood watch. There's no security. I only know people in one of the houses around my house. That's not going to stop a genuine criminal from doing what they intend to. But the foolish people with influential minds that got there by influence will go away the same way they came.

*Makes a note to visit Colorado with burglers' tools*

I wouldn't endorse security theater, but I can see how even something is better than nothing. I just think the work/cost ratio is not reasonable.

Has there been a single succesful anti-cheat program created by the game developers? The only dev created A-C program I know is VAC and it's not a very good one when it comes to detecting.

I accept and fail your challenge, Locallyunscene.
Only because, however, I cannot recall ever playing a multiplayer game that neglected to think of it's players by not adopting some form of cheat deterrence.
And this is one of my strongest cases for UWE doing some AC work, whether they adopt something like Punkbuster or develop their own. I am not saying "everyone else does this, so be a sheep and follow" that's a fool's errand... but with good reasons following another's lead is perfectly acceptable

League play should stick to their own strict rules, but general community needs some kind of protection too

It'd be nice if all blood effects were server side. A demo would carry a lot more weight if you knew a person was hitting 100% of the time according to the server, and not just your PC trying to understand the server trying to understand the person you're demo'ing.

Pretty sure it was client side in all HL and HL2 mods, am I wrong?

You're right it's client side, but that is so you can get any response at all back before your attack has made the round trip to the server and back (say a second or so for transatlantic combat).

If you've got a full second latency you've got bigger problems than server side vs client side prediction. Even with HL1's client side display, you start noticing performance drop around 1/10 of a second latency, and anything over about 4/10s is completely unplayable.

Luckily, you can usually get a transatlantic connection in the 120 millisecond range without too much difficulty.

Most of the anti-cheat programs have been developed by some 3rd party. CoD 4 and HL1 are the only games where the devs have developed the software that I know of. My knowledge of the new shooters is quite bad, so think you could mention some good examples of games where the actual dev team has adressed cheating notably?

CoD 4 uses PunkBuster.

I think its somewhat integrated to the game. To be honest I'm not sure how the thing exactly works, but I've understood that the PB is included in the game install. That's something I've only heard from a friend though.

So what exactly is this thread about??

Should the programmers put in there own anti cheat code right??

About the only way you can make the system 100% cheat proof on the client side is if you make it so you have to download the game every time you join a server. The only other way is if it does a huge file check every time you do so. Which can take a good 10 mins. And the download the game option is ok for people who doesn't have a 56k modem.

I will only think that the programmer would make it so that it would be difficult to cheat on it. Cause making it imposable would be silly.

But 100% is neither the intention, nor possible. People can find ridiculous workarounds. The intention is >0.01%. The question being to put in anti cheat or not. So any strength of security would be "yes".

I have often wondered if an open source anti cheating system similar to PB (but open source) would succeed better. I realize that the current concept behind anti-cheating is to hide what/how the program detects cheats. However, what if this info was common knowledge and the whole of the development/gamming community could contribute to the code base. Would it then be possible to develop better methods of cheat detection?

Just a random thought...

My 2cents: The better written a game is, and the harder it is to cheat, ultimately the less common it will be, and therefore the less of an issue it will be. There is a VERY small active cheating community in HL based games these days vs the total size of it as an entity. VAC is not a good anticheat, but it's a strong deterrent for the casual cheater who just wants to DL some hack and bug people. Other deterrents are beneficial as well. Voog's TF2 servers automatically detect speedhackers by monitoring the data they are sending to the server and turns off damage they inflict as well as making them die in one hit (as well as recording a demo of them). Most hacks are relatively easy to catch algorithmically... the more on board the upper powers that be are in terms of actually making that catch, the smaller and less threatening the cheating community will be.

I'm pretty sure it's all but impossible to kill cheating completely for any game, but if it's kept obscure it's still a benefit to the playing community.

If you make anti-cheat systems open source, you have the benefit of alot of people being able to contribute very fast and easily... but you have the downfall of hackers knowing exactly how to counter the counter measure

PunkBuster would piss me off. Horrible software never use it.

A rebuttal is not the same as a repeated presentation of a viewpoint. You have repeatedly asserted that some form of anti-cheat would be a good choice for UWE in their new implementation, but have never explained what you mean by "anti-cheat". How would it function? What would its boundaries be? How far are you willing to go to delve into a customer's personal data to protect what he is paying for?

A rebuttal indicates a response. Re-hashing what you said previously without paying any attention to the counterpoints that create problems for you is not a rebuttal- it's the definition of insanity.






How about a soft matchmaking suite that would promote the right kinds of players instead of just keeping out the wrong ones?

I just don't think you can expect an algorithm to protect itself enough. You need real human beings with common sense in order to have a great server. It doesn't take that much effort to ban a cheater most of the time, especially when the cheater isn't very good at what he's doing. The rest of the time the algorithm would not be intelligent enough not to be broken, unless it were arguably more invasive than The Warden, which, in my mind, makes my point of view that much stronger.

VAC does stop cheating.

I've only read the first three posts and decided reading the rest was futile.



From what I recall from UT1, it didn't have a third party anti-cheat program. It was all either inside the engine or implemented with UScript.

Anyways...
My thoughts on the thread topic...

Of course we all know there is no uncrackable code, and thinking about an anti-cheating algorithm that can't be worked around is a hopeless waste of time.
The point of creating anti-cheat programs/algorithms isn't to create an unbreakable anti-cheat system, the point of creating them is to simply prevent cheating as much as possible in your game.
It sort of works like anti-virus programs and such.
Eventually there is going to be a virus that comes along that doesn't get caught by ANY anti-virus programs. In that situation, the various anti-virus developers work on a 'patch', in most cases called a Virus Definition, to their anti-virus software that will allow their program to catch the virus.

In the case of an anti-cheat program, it will initially be developed to stop a certain amount of possible cheats. From that point on it will simply be reworked/updated to account for the newer types of cheating that people create to get around the programs initial algorithms.


As for VAC... I agree... its should be rewritten. However, you say there are still a few botters out there in games with VAC protection. My guess is that there are more than just botters but I believe VAC has gotten -MOST- of the cheating out of the game. Stopping most of the cheating is the ultimate goal because if our goal is to stop all types of cheating then our goal would be unobtainable.

As for anti-cheat technology in the new engine, I believe they stated that they could implement a variety of programs including VAC and punkbuster.
They stop a reasonable amount of cheats. The rest of the cheating can be easily handled by a decent server admin or group of server admins.

Cheaters were caught in the intercontinental finals of ANSL vs ENSL, which are leagues similar to CAL, albiet ENSL has actual activity these days. The server was VAC secured, and the administration knows how to detect cheating at least as well as Demo Detectives.

You are mistaken. At the very best, it causes cheaters to re-buy a game every few months, and that doesn't even always work.




Fair enough, but you did miss a fair number of points, most important, the fact that no one has been able to come up with a way to implement an anti-cheat system without delving extremely deeply into the customer's computer just to protect the game that he paid for.

You're making a class mistake with the anti-virus analogy though, I think. An anti-virus prevents automated algorithms from penetrating a system's infrastructure.

A firewall would be a better corollary, but how would you propose to create a firewall (or any other) system that would prevent aimbot or wallhack without checking and enforcing every file on the client's machine. It's definitely possible, but my argument throughout this post is that it would be prohibitively taxing to the client (in terms of play time) and also way too much work for the development team to concern themselves with.

A better idea is to create slick tools like I mentioned in :this thread: that allow server admins to easily and conveniently filter who they want to be on their server.