3 months over 7years of NS (and more because we're talking about HL, so CS is even older than that and works the same). 3Months is nothing !! It's been years since the cheats are released. And you tell that you detected only 2 cheaters... but that's the problem... The fact you dont see them or recognize them from the skilled player, doesn't mean they don't exist..
And moreover, yeah, cheats cost a lot at the beggining because of VAC ! It's why on VAC games, cheats are sold 50$.. each one.
The VAC solutions isn't so much a good idea because :
For the first 3months, cheaters aren't banned (so in game we have cheaters...) And after cheaters are banned but the workings cheats are released VAC-PROOF, so even more cheater come after that.
The fact that there isn't a lot of cheaters on CS, is because all dead people go spectate for a long time.. so it's easy to recognize cheaters and to ban them. but that's not the situation on NS.
<!--quoteo(post=1745686:date=Jan 4 2010, 03:05 PM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 4 2010, 03:05 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1745686"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->3Months is nothing !!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> 3 months times a couple dozen would be more accurate. Again, refer to previous post. VAC team isn't exactly asleep during that time either, you know.
<!--quoteo(post=1745686:date=Jan 4 2010, 03:05 PM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 4 2010, 03:05 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1745686"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The fact you dont see them or recognize them from the skilled player, doesn't mean they don't exist..<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Actually it does unless you have solid proof otherwise. Burden of proof.
Although, if you really can't recognise them from skilled players... They might as well not exist. Who cares?
<!--quoteo(post=1745686:date=Jan 4 2010, 03:05 PM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 4 2010, 03:05 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1745686"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->And moreover, yeah, cheats cost a lot at the beggining because of VAC ! It's why on VAC games, cheats are sold 50$.. each one.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> More like 300$. Spending cash is a good deterrent to pretty much any activity, you understand.
<!--quoteo(post=1745686:date=Jan 4 2010, 03:05 PM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 4 2010, 03:05 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1745686"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The VAC solutions isn't so much a good idea because...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> All of this has been addressed before.
One of the biggest solutions I've been touting for years is server side client command screening. It essentially takes in the client data that is being uploaded to it, and essentially run's it through a few algorithms to see if the data being sent back is correct, and also, if the player is moving too fast, aiming suspiciously, etc. There are a variety of ways to implement a system like this, but I have yet to see a developer implement one. The only draw back is that there is an overhead on the server's cycles.
3 months over 7years of NS (and more because we're talking about HL, so CS is even older than that and works the same). 3Months is nothing !! It's been years since the cheats are released. And you tell that you detected only 2 cheaters... but that's the problem... The fact you dont see them or recognize them from the skilled player, doesn't mean they don't exist..
And moreover, yeah, cheats cost a lot at the beggining because of VAC ! It's why on VAC games, cheats are sold 50$.. each one.
The VAC solutions isn't so much a good idea because :
For the first 3months, cheaters aren't banned (so in game we have cheaters...) And after cheaters are banned but the workings cheats are released VAC-PROOF, so even more cheater come after that.
The fact that there isn't a lot of cheaters on CS, is because all dead people go spectate for a long time.. so it's easy to recognize cheaters and to ban them. but that's not the situation on NS.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> VAC is primarily a human run system. If a cheat is prevalent they will ban instantly for it, if a cheat is in growing stages they will wait a while to catch those who it was distributed to instead of only catching the distributor.
Dead players spectate in NS too.
[edit] No one in their right mind buys cheats for a Valve game. Any cheat big enough to be commercial will probably get your account banned instantly.
And how do you think they can detect the cheat, even if they get it themselve ? it's not that easy.
if the cheat reproduce exactly an human behavior, they can't detect it, that's all. if it's a modification of the local client rendering (like whallhack) they can't always detect it. It depend of how the cheat modify the client side, but I won't enter in the details here.
It's like the BOTS problem on the mmorpg. There is NOT any efficient client side protection to get rid of them. (gameguard is just a joke, with updates each week, and it can do nothing against it. And it's probably more effective than VAC by far.)
<!--quoteo(post=1745867:date=Jan 6 2010, 11:53 AM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 6 2010, 11:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1745867"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->And how do you think they can detect the cheat, even if they get it themselve ?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> You might as well be asking how do hadron colliders work.
<!--quoteo(post=1745867:date=Jan 6 2010, 11:53 AM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 6 2010, 11:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1745867"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->if the cheat reproduce exactly an human behavior, they can't detect it, that's all.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> No cheat can reproduce human behaviour exactly, as can no system predict human behaviour exactly. It's the battle of sophistication, and thus a major deterrent to cheat producers.
One thing you're omitting here is: cheat-hunting isn't done just in-game. A large chunk of VAC's work is spent hunting down sites that do distribute cheats, getting to their general code, and - of course - shutting down such sites and prosecuting their owners and clients.
<!--quoteo(post=1745867:date=Jan 6 2010, 11:53 AM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 6 2010, 11:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1745867"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->if it's a modification of the local client rendering (like whallhack) they can't always detect it<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> VAC can't detect it at all. Texture integrity is up to server owners to enforce (if that is being circumvented, that's where you'll run into VAC for real). Of course, this only applies to Source games.
<!--quoteo(post=1745867:date=Jan 6 2010, 11:53 AM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 6 2010, 11:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1745867"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It's like the BOTS problem on the mmorpg. There is NOT any efficient client side protection to get rid of them.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Actually Blizzard have built an outright monster to get rid of those. And, it works.
Blizzard is only banning them by Game masters. They can prosecute Golds sellers because it's chinese people playing and not respecting the license agreement.
But they can't do nothing against cheat industry, they just commercialize some kind of program... they can't be blamed for that. the use is prohibited, not the production/commercialisation of theses cheats.
The only reason why Blizzard have less problem with Goldsellers and bots, is because chinese can't have access to the game anymore for months. Due to a political and money issue beetween blizzard and the chineses , nothing to do with cheats btw. (and it's also why people from Wow were 12 000 000 and suddently fall to 5 000 000.)
<!--quoteo(post=1745872:date=Jan 6 2010, 12:30 PM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 6 2010, 12:30 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1745872"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Blizzard is only banning them by Game masters.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warden_%28software%29" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warden_%28software%29</a>
I don't know anything about Gold Sellers (seriously? really?), but they do have a robust anti-cheat in place.
Also... I believe this forum is about Natural Selection. More to the point: NS2 will use VAC, and we could do a whole lot worse than that.
<!--quoteo(post=1746254:date=Jan 8 2010, 01:55 PM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 8 2010, 01:55 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1746254"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->How can i post a demo to show how modern cheaters are?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> They're not too hard to find on YouTube, I've seen what they do personally. It'd be incredibly amusing and even admirable if some ######s didn't then set out to just troll random servers.
Like I said, any anti-cheating system can be bypassed. The only choice to be made here is: which one leads to better player experience overall: least cheaters, least performance loss, least intrusion, least cost to developer? VAC is one of the most effective systems there is, has no performance hit, has no residence, and is free.
<!--quoteo(post=1746254:date=Jan 8 2010, 10:55 AM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 8 2010, 10:55 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1746254"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->How can i post a demo to show how modern cheaters are ? (16mo)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> If you referred to a recorded NS demo, zip it and find some FTP for it. After the zipping it should be way smaller size than it is unpacked. The demo itself is played by "viewdemo <demoname>" command in your console, assuming that you've got the demo file on your ns folder.
If you weren't referring to that, I've got no clue what you're trying to do right now.
<!--quoteo(post=1746254:date=Jan 8 2010, 05:55 AM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 8 2010, 05:55 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1746254"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->How can i post a demo to show how modern cheaters are ? (16mo)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You don't even know how to make demos and yet you think you are qualified to identify cheaters?
World of Warcraft implements one of the most expensive and effective clientside anti-cheat protection schemes on the market. The Warden anti-cheat system essentially runs world of warcraft inside of Warden's own managed environment, kind of like a VM, and establishes a lot of complicated techniques to obfuscate memory addresses and thumbprint-able patterns. Because of this, World of Warcraft is one of the most complicated games to cheat in, but even given Warden's immense budget, attention to detail and complexity, someone (I think it was called the Glide bot?) realized that if Warden is running WoW in a VM, why not just run Warden in a VM! And essentially made a complicated managed environment just for warden, which also encapsulates WoW. So in the end even the most complicated and well thought out systems aren't cheat proof.
You can't beat clientside cheating, the VAC system is very well thought out, Valve employs complicated heuristic methods to known cheat-demos (see: idiot cheaters who get caught and demos sent in) to amounts of data to help identify patterns, and also just plain look for the popular cheat themselves and decompile it and take a look at what it's taking advantage of. They wait for it to grow, prepare a good and reliable catch for this known cheat, then snag a huge net of ###### at once.
You will get burned if you cheat stupidly enough on VAC, and I think that's the best kind of system there is. Because of this, smart/clever cheaters will limit themselves to much more subtle cheats like ESP, which we can't do much about.
The best we can hope for is that the clientside cannot stress or modify any serverside memory/code enough to modify or ruin the experience for other players (see: crashing a server through unhandled packet types/data not normally sent via client but pushed out through a hook program).
<!--quoteo(post=1746427:date=Jan 9 2010, 10:28 AM:name=Opprobrious)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Opprobrious @ Jan 9 2010, 10:28 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1746427"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You don't even know how to make demos and yet you think you are qualified to identify cheaters?
LOL<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
?
If I asked how to POST a demo, it's because i've MADE one. I asked how to post it on the forum.
<!--quoteo(post=1746439:date=Jan 9 2010, 12:27 PM:name=Mido)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Mido @ Jan 9 2010, 12:27 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1746439"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->World of Warcraft implements one of the most expensive and effective clientside anti-cheat protection schemes on the market. The Warden anti-cheat system essentially runs world of warcraft inside of Warden's own managed environment, kind of like a VM, and establishes a lot of complicated techniques to obfuscate memory addresses and thumbprint-able patterns. Because of this, World of Warcraft is one of the most complicated games to cheat in, but even given Warden's immense budget, attention to detail and complexity, someone (I think it was called the Glide bot?) realized that if Warden is running WoW in a VM, why not just run Warden in a VM! And essentially made a complicated managed environment just for warden, which also encapsulates WoW. So in the end even the most complicated and well thought out systems aren't cheat proof.
You can't beat clientside cheating, the VAC system is very well thought out, Valve employs complicated heuristic methods to known cheat-demos (see: idiot cheaters who get caught and demos sent in) to amounts of data to help identify patterns, and also just plain look for the popular cheat themselves and decompile it and take a look at what it's taking advantage of. They wait for it to grow, prepare a good and reliable catch for this known cheat, then snag a huge net of ###### at once.
You will get burned if you cheat stupidly enough on VAC, and I think that's the best kind of system there is. Because of this, smart/clever cheaters will limit themselves to much more subtle cheats like ESP, which we can't do much about.
The best we can hope for is that the clientside cannot stress or modify any serverside memory/code enough to modify or ruin the experience for other players (see: crashing a server through unhandled packet types/data not normally sent via client but pushed out through a hook program).
:P That's how I see things anyway.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's a very interesting post. That's why one of the solution (for example, to counter Wallhack), is that the server check the client side position, and determine wich player he can see or not. If he can't see others players, the server just don't communicate the others players position. (So even if he wall hack, he won't be able to see other people he's not supposed to see, because his even his CLIENT don't know it.)
To avoid cheat, when developping the game, you have to consider that no client can be trusted. Rechecking the client sent position and determine wether or not he can be here (relatively to his last known position). In order to avoid speedhack.
<!--quoteo(post=1746458:date=Jan 9 2010, 04:43 PM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 9 2010, 04:43 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1746458"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If he can't see others players, the server just don't communicate the others players position.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Which will inevitably lead to players literally popping out of nowhere for the client due to prediction errors, which are inevitable regardless of connection quality.
<!--quoteo(post=1746458:date=Jan 9 2010, 04:43 PM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 9 2010, 04:43 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1746458"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Rechecking the client sent position and determine wether or not he can be here (relatively to his last known position). In order to avoid speedhack.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Which will inevitably false-flag clients who are warping around due to connection/prediction errors (which is also what speedhackers actually exploit, as restricting player position is indeed what servers usually do).
Its money generating thats all.. waiting months to ban more people so they buy another copy....
You could instant ban them, then there wont be much cheaters.... if they get instant banned 2-3 times... who would buy another copy to get instant banned again ?
Yeah I don't know what else there is to say, the thread right now is pretty much Tgaud convinced that developers are complete idiots with no clue what they are doing.
Let me put it this way: The thread seems like a rather irrelevant rambling before some demos are published. Once the demos are out, there's at least some basis for the discussion instead of yes-no-yes level of argumentation.
<!--quoteo(post=1746492:date=Jan 9 2010, 08:40 PM:name=Seker)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Seker @ Jan 9 2010, 08:40 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1746492"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You could instant ban them, then there wont be much cheaters.... if they get instant banned 2-3 times... who would buy another copy to get instant banned again?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> The money you could possibly make off any cheaters is completely incomparable to the amount of customers you'd lose if you let hackers run loose.
Instantly banning people leads to them instantly bypassing your system, and hiring a thousand people just for the purpose of combating that is just not an option. It may be for Blizzard, but not a small company like Valve.
<!--quoteo(post=1746560:date=Jan 10 2010, 01:48 AM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 10 2010, 01:48 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1746560"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Well not really, being a developper myself. My point is more like "NS1 anti cheat is a fail, let's try to make it better in NS2"<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Any ideas on how to accomplish that then? Developing a proprietary system is certainly not an option for UW.
Nevermind that we haven't quite established why exactly NS1 anti-cheat is "fail".
<!--quoteo(post=1746634:date=Jan 10 2010, 12:37 PM:name=Draco_2k)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Draco_2k @ Jan 10 2010, 12:37 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1746634"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Nevermind that we haven't quite established why exactly NS1 anti-cheat is "fail".<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well my guess is because it's running on a engine that is by now over 10 years old... But i don't really understand this thread, in my NS times i never had the feeling of too many cheaters running around.
<!--fonto:Verdana--><span style="font-family:Verdana"><!--/fonto--><!--coloro:#4169E1--><span style="color:#4169E1"><!--/coloro-->NS2 Can't rely on VAC2 alone, it just won't work in the long run.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--fontc--></span><!--/fontc-->
<!--quoteo(post=1746693:date=Jan 10 2010, 01:28 PM:name=Dreamion)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Dreamion @ Jan 10 2010, 01:28 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1746693"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><!--fonto:Verdana--><span style="font-family:Verdana"><!--/fonto--><!--coloro:#4169E1--><span style="color:#4169E1"><!--/coloro-->NS2 Can't rely on VAC2 alone, it just won't work in the long run.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--fontc--></span><!--/fontc--><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> says the guy with 1 post and 0 information to back that up. This thread seriously needs to just die now; created by a butthurt OP and perpetuated by a handful (one) of individuals who understands little about how cheating or VAC works or its relevancy to NS/2. or do I need to post in blue to back that statement up?
Folks, this is a fine discussion to have; but <!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro-->keep it civil or I'll close the thread<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->. Thanks.
The only anti-cheat that will be effective is dedicated servers with an admin staff that can ban users based on their unchangeable account ID or CD-key. Along with a Vote-Kick system for players to use to police their own game.
VAC and VAC2 use signature based detection (not heuristic detection) so they're only effective as the amount of time put into them. This is why big MW2 hacks are detected and banned every 2-3 weeks and NS1 hacks are never detected. In order for VAC to detect the hack they have to get their hands on a copy and analyze what it does in memory... then formulate a detection string to push out to the clients. This is pretty much exactly how most anti-virus works. The downside is that it takes a bit of effort to do this, so older games are generally not as well protected by VAC.
Heuristic-based detection like the LUA script mentioned earlier are good to have running in the background for the site admins to use as a tool to detect hacking. But shouldn't be a primary line of defense as they can generate a lot of false positives.
Finally, having a system that allows for players to police themselves in the absence of an admin is the last line of defense. A Vote-Kick system handles this nicely but must be tweaked so that it requires a vast majority of players to vote in order to keep it from being abused.
Comments
3 months over 7years of NS (and more because we're talking about HL, so CS is even older than that and works the same).
3Months is nothing !!
It's been years since the cheats are released.
And you tell that you detected only 2 cheaters... but that's the problem...
The fact you dont see them or recognize them from the skilled player, doesn't mean they don't exist..
And moreover, yeah, cheats cost a lot at the beggining because of VAC !
It's why on VAC games, cheats are sold 50$.. each one.
The VAC solutions isn't so much a good idea because :
For the first 3months, cheaters aren't banned (so in game we have cheaters...)
And after cheaters are banned but the workings cheats are released VAC-PROOF, so even more cheater come after that.
The fact that there isn't a lot of cheaters on CS, is because all dead people go spectate for a long time.. so it's easy to recognize cheaters and to ban them.
but that's not the situation on NS.
3 months times a couple dozen would be more accurate. Again, refer to previous post. VAC team isn't exactly asleep during that time either, you know.
<!--quoteo(post=1745686:date=Jan 4 2010, 03:05 PM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 4 2010, 03:05 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1745686"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The fact you dont see them or recognize them from the skilled player, doesn't mean they don't exist..<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually it does unless you have solid proof otherwise. Burden of proof.
Although, if you really can't recognise them from skilled players... They might as well not exist. Who cares?
<!--quoteo(post=1745686:date=Jan 4 2010, 03:05 PM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 4 2010, 03:05 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1745686"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->And moreover, yeah, cheats cost a lot at the beggining because of VAC !
It's why on VAC games, cheats are sold 50$.. each one.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
More like 300$. Spending cash is a good deterrent to pretty much any activity, you understand.
<!--quoteo(post=1745686:date=Jan 4 2010, 03:05 PM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 4 2010, 03:05 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1745686"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The VAC solutions isn't so much a good idea because...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
All of this has been addressed before.
The only draw back is that there is an overhead on the server's cycles.
3 months over 7years of NS (and more because we're talking about HL, so CS is even older than that and works the same).
3Months is nothing !!
It's been years since the cheats are released.
And you tell that you detected only 2 cheaters... but that's the problem...
The fact you dont see them or recognize them from the skilled player, doesn't mean they don't exist..
And moreover, yeah, cheats cost a lot at the beggining because of VAC !
It's why on VAC games, cheats are sold 50$.. each one.
The VAC solutions isn't so much a good idea because :
For the first 3months, cheaters aren't banned (so in game we have cheaters...)
And after cheaters are banned but the workings cheats are released VAC-PROOF, so even more cheater come after that.
The fact that there isn't a lot of cheaters on CS, is because all dead people go spectate for a long time.. so it's easy to recognize cheaters and to ban them.
but that's not the situation on NS.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
VAC is primarily a human run system. If a cheat is prevalent they will ban instantly for it, if a cheat is in growing stages they will wait a while to catch those who it was distributed to instead of only catching the distributor.
Dead players spectate in NS too.
[edit] No one in their right mind buys cheats for a Valve game. Any cheat big enough to be commercial will probably get your account banned instantly.
it's not that easy.
if the cheat reproduce exactly an human behavior, they can't detect it, that's all.
if it's a modification of the local client rendering (like whallhack) they can't always detect it.
It depend of how the cheat modify the client side, but I won't enter in the details here.
It's like the BOTS problem on the mmorpg. There is NOT any efficient client side protection to get rid of them.
(gameguard is just a joke, with updates each week, and it can do nothing against it. And it's probably more effective than VAC by far.)
You might as well be asking how do hadron colliders work.
<!--quoteo(post=1745867:date=Jan 6 2010, 11:53 AM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 6 2010, 11:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1745867"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->if the cheat reproduce exactly an human behavior, they can't detect it, that's all.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No cheat can reproduce human behaviour exactly, as can no system predict human behaviour exactly. It's the battle of sophistication, and thus a major deterrent to cheat producers.
One thing you're omitting here is: cheat-hunting isn't done just in-game. A large chunk of VAC's work is spent hunting down sites that do distribute cheats, getting to their general code, and - of course - shutting down such sites and prosecuting their owners and clients.
<!--quoteo(post=1745867:date=Jan 6 2010, 11:53 AM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 6 2010, 11:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1745867"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->if it's a modification of the local client rendering (like whallhack) they can't always detect it<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
VAC can't detect it at all. Texture integrity is up to server owners to enforce (if that is being circumvented, that's where you'll run into VAC for real). Of course, this only applies to Source games.
<!--quoteo(post=1745867:date=Jan 6 2010, 11:53 AM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 6 2010, 11:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1745867"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It's like the BOTS problem on the mmorpg. There is NOT any efficient client side protection to get rid of them.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually Blizzard have built an outright monster to get rid of those. And, it works.
They can prosecute Golds sellers because it's chinese people playing and not respecting the license agreement.
But they can't do nothing against cheat industry, they just commercialize some kind of program... they can't be blamed for that.
the use is prohibited, not the production/commercialisation of theses cheats.
The only reason why Blizzard have less problem with Goldsellers and bots, is because chinese can't have access to the game anymore for months.
Due to a political and money issue beetween blizzard and the chineses , nothing to do with cheats btw.
(and it's also why people from Wow were 12 000 000 and suddently fall to 5 000 000.)
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warden_%28software%29" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warden_%28software%29</a>
I don't know anything about Gold Sellers (seriously? really?), but they do have a robust anti-cheat in place.
Also... I believe this forum is about Natural Selection. More to the point: NS2 will use VAC, and we could do a whole lot worse than that.
(16mo)
They're not too hard to find on YouTube, I've seen what they do personally. It'd be incredibly amusing and even admirable if some ######s didn't then set out to just troll random servers.
Like I said, any anti-cheating system can be bypassed. The only choice to be made here is: which one leads to better player experience overall: least cheaters, least performance loss, least intrusion, least cost to developer? VAC is one of the most effective systems there is, has no performance hit, has no residence, and is free.
(16mo)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you referred to a recorded NS demo, zip it and find some FTP for it. After the zipping it should be way smaller size than it is unpacked. The demo itself is played by "viewdemo <demoname>" command in your console, assuming that you've got the demo file on your ns folder.
If you weren't referring to that, I've got no clue what you're trying to do right now.
(16mo)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You don't even know how to make demos and yet you think you are qualified to identify cheaters?
LOL
You can't beat clientside cheating, the VAC system is very well thought out, Valve employs complicated heuristic methods to known cheat-demos (see: idiot cheaters who get caught and demos sent in) to amounts of data to help identify patterns, and also just plain look for the popular cheat themselves and decompile it and take a look at what it's taking advantage of. They wait for it to grow, prepare a good and reliable catch for this known cheat, then snag a huge net of ###### at once.
You will get burned if you cheat stupidly enough on VAC, and I think that's the best kind of system there is. Because of this, smart/clever cheaters will limit themselves to much more subtle cheats like ESP, which we can't do much about.
The best we can hope for is that the clientside cannot stress or modify any serverside memory/code enough to modify or ruin the experience for other players (see: crashing a server through unhandled packet types/data not normally sent via client but pushed out through a hook program).
:P That's how I see things anyway.
LOL<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
?
If I asked how to POST a demo, it's because i've MADE one.
I asked how to post it on the forum.
LOL => retard..
You can't beat clientside cheating, the VAC system is very well thought out, Valve employs complicated heuristic methods to known cheat-demos (see: idiot cheaters who get caught and demos sent in) to amounts of data to help identify patterns, and also just plain look for the popular cheat themselves and decompile it and take a look at what it's taking advantage of. They wait for it to grow, prepare a good and reliable catch for this known cheat, then snag a huge net of ###### at once.
You will get burned if you cheat stupidly enough on VAC, and I think that's the best kind of system there is. Because of this, smart/clever cheaters will limit themselves to much more subtle cheats like ESP, which we can't do much about.
The best we can hope for is that the clientside cannot stress or modify any serverside memory/code enough to modify or ruin the experience for other players (see: crashing a server through unhandled packet types/data not normally sent via client but pushed out through a hook program).
:P That's how I see things anyway.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's a very interesting post.
That's why one of the solution (for example, to counter Wallhack), is that the server check the client side position, and determine wich player he can see or not.
If he can't see others players, the server just don't communicate the others players position.
(So even if he wall hack, he won't be able to see other people he's not supposed to see, because his even his CLIENT don't know it.)
To avoid cheat, when developping the game, you have to consider that no client can be trusted. Rechecking the client sent position and determine wether or not he can be here (relatively to his last known position). In order to avoid speedhack.
Which will inevitably lead to players literally popping out of nowhere for the client due to prediction errors, which are inevitable regardless of connection quality.
<!--quoteo(post=1746458:date=Jan 9 2010, 04:43 PM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 9 2010, 04:43 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1746458"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Rechecking the client sent position and determine wether or not he can be here (relatively to his last known position). In order to avoid speedhack.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Which will inevitably false-flag clients who are warping around due to connection/prediction errors (which is also what speedhackers actually exploit, as restricting player position is indeed what servers usually do).
Shockingly, making anti-cheat systems is hard.
You could instant ban them, then there wont be much cheaters.... if they get instant banned 2-3 times... who would buy another copy to get instant banned again ?
Money makes the world go round
Thanks.
The money you could possibly make off any cheaters is completely incomparable to the amount of customers you'd lose if you let hackers run loose.
Instantly banning people leads to them instantly bypassing your system, and hiring a thousand people just for the purpose of combating that is just not an option. It may be for Blizzard, but not a small company like Valve.
<!--quoteo(post=1746560:date=Jan 10 2010, 01:48 AM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 10 2010, 01:48 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1746560"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Well not really, being a developper myself. My point is more like "NS1 anti cheat is a fail, let's try to make it better in NS2"<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Any ideas on how to accomplish that then? Developing a proprietary system is certainly not an option for UW.
Nevermind that we haven't quite established why exactly NS1 anti-cheat is "fail".
Well my guess is because it's running on a engine that is by now over 10 years old...
But i don't really understand this thread, in my NS times i never had the feeling of too many cheaters running around.
says the guy with 1 post and 0 information to back that up. This thread seriously needs to just die now; created by a butthurt OP and perpetuated by a handful (one) of individuals who understands little about how cheating or VAC works or its relevancy to NS/2. or do I need to post in blue to back that statement up?
VAC and VAC2 use signature based detection (not heuristic detection) so they're only effective as the amount of time put into them. This is why big MW2 hacks are detected and banned every 2-3 weeks and NS1 hacks are never detected. In order for VAC to detect the hack they have to get their hands on a copy and analyze what it does in memory... then formulate a detection string to push out to the clients. This is pretty much exactly how most anti-virus works. The downside is that it takes a bit of effort to do this, so older games are generally not as well protected by VAC.
Heuristic-based detection like the LUA script mentioned earlier are good to have running in the background for the site admins to use as a tool to detect hacking. But shouldn't be a primary line of defense as they can generate a lot of false positives.
Finally, having a system that allows for players to police themselves in the absence of an admin is the last line of defense. A Vote-Kick system handles this nicely but must be tweaked so that it requires a vast majority of players to vote in order to keep it from being abused.