The Realm of Order and Propriety

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Gerbil
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The Realm of Order and Propriety

Post by Gerbil »

I was just on with a (supposedly) "official" developer (I believe he actually is). He was running a mod client that could stop shots directed at him (yes-I DO know how this works) and bragging about it while he used it in a game with about 18 players.

Worse, he was discussing various hacks and HOW to implement them with another player/programmer while he turned his hack on repeatedly during the game and commented frequently about how he was a developer and all.

Does anyone else see what is wrong with this picture?

Did you know I ran the first "public" hacked client/cheat? It was totally by accident. I felt badly and shortly after people started playing around. Then we got tons of cheaters all the time.

Now we have wannabe cheaters becoming developers so they can hack more.

Does this bother anyone besides me?
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Post by Spaceman Spiff »

Umm.... it bothers me. I say we ban 'em all.... developers or not. ;)
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Post by Merry »

I hope I'm not a developer! Or not?!?!?
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Post by JeffM »

PM me with who it was and I'll tell you if it was a developer or not.
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Subtle cheaters

Post by blastard »

I have noticed an increase in individuals who use very clever means to cheat, so as to be vitually undetectible. I noticed one fella moved just a little faster than the rest of us and your bullet had to go directly down his turret to kill him.

I called him on it and he came after me with a SW flag.......but it did not show him as having the flag. After further protest he kicked ME off of the server!!! Whatever happend to the simple days of bzflag where people had fun competing on fair terms?

Blastard/wag
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Post by widowmaker »

I agree with that. Some people really have really turned this game inside out.
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Conduct, and outlook

Post by The Purple Panzer »

(Please pardon any offense to anyone, I'm consuming my third
beer, and I normally don't drink much. Just acute stress! I'm responding to a cheat thread, but I'm not sure from this composition page that this won't appear as a new topic.)

It seems that every human activity has the same generic group of personalities and issues; I've seen this sort of thing (taking advantage of, or trying to acquire in order to take advantage of, insider knowledge) many times before, in many contexts.

As annoying as it is, I put it down to human nature. If you have kids (or when you have them) you begin to see this all played out again: they obey the rules, then work around the rules to take advantage, then an excessive state in which everyone is doing this, then some final realization that the rules really were a good idea in the first place. As a friend of mine says, civilization starts over with each new generation.

Some of these people will tire of meaningless cheat victories, and go back to doing it right. Some won't, but I expect they'll get bored quickly. When I'm in a game and a cheater shows up, I just exit, usually without comment, perhaps with a quick goodbye to the other legit players. If I think to convey any message, it's that I think the gathering of honest players is to be celebrated, and the mundane presence of cheaters should be treated as an expected and tiresome occurrence.

If there is anything of importance I want to say, it's this: don't let these people bother you. Don't let them sap any enjoyment of the game, either directly (if they kill you), or indirectly (if they call into question the prospects for an open source game). If that happens (to the original poster, or anyone else reading this), that is if disillusionment/uninvolvement results, then the world loses something.

Maybe some would argue for for a BZFlag variant, one that might try to channel these energies: a game in which you get to write algorithms for shot tracking of the enemy, etc. I could imagine an API for this, along with a library of techniques people have tried (perhaps you'd have to publish in order to use). It would become a game of people coding against each other - this could be fascinating. The problem is, it'd require people to take this very seriously; in reality, you'd end up with one or two people doing it. Everyone else would copy their work, and we'd be back to where we started, everybody using pretty much the same client, just one level (or many levels) of complexity further along. This would probably repeat, until the complexity to entry-level participants would be so high as to discourage any further progress along this line. So why start?

Another alternative might be to give the client some configuration control over his tank, to say trade of increased speed against shot range. Teams could then be put together with various specialties. It would be fun, and might be worth exploring, but I doubt the gain would offset the increased learning curve. It would benefit those who play a lot, at the expense of those just starting out. One thing I love about the game is that it's easy to learn, and you play with the some limitations as the best players. So I think this is a bad idea too.

So I don't think there's any defensible reason to want to hack the client code for personal advantage, and a few minutes of thought or play by anyone will probably lead them to the same conclusions.
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Post by Rebel Chikorita »

i agree wif Purple Panzer :)
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Post by sn0w_m0nkey »

Gerbil i feel your pain.

i've been playing alot on alive.hashmark myself under various names. the MAIN reason is that i have caught 2 cheaters so far. one was your typical blatant flying tank or "air" jump type of cheat. the other i noticed last year, and is much harder to catch unless either someone points out, or its caught with the eye. its the subtle cheater, one who does things like turn their tank in the middle of a jump to control direction or avoid being shot. i believe stibnite himself observed this happen when the person was battling me on a pyramid and noticed him doing it then.

cheaters are out there, they tend to get caught if not sooner, it'll happen later. its bad bad karma for them. if its a developer, they deserve equal treatment in an out right ban....there is no excuse for this behavior excpet lack of good judgement regardless the persons bz status.

sm
p.s can somebody send a snowstorm to my state??
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Post by julesthejackal »

Hi again everyone :D

It is so true that these low-life cheaters, hackers, or whatever they call themselves have just about ruined this great game.

I really cant understand why people have to cheat to win...this game if for FUN. I believe one thing that could stop people from using cheats are by getting rid of the "-negative" score factor. (i.e. when you get killed your score is minused by one)
Maybe if the true developers of this game can have a server option where points dont get taken away from you score when you get killed might help (I really don't know but its a thought)

Now that I'm playing "CUBE" more than "BZFlag" I find that this feature that cube has where everyones score is always positive, I dont notice as many cheaters there as in BZFlag. I also believe that always having a positive score helps with players egos since a score of 2 is better than a score of -22 in one persons mind. It really pisses me off when ever I check my logs and see that someone was on my server cheating.

I feel if something isn't done soon about these cheaters and cheat issues, this great game will end in a slow death. The cheaters are the cancer of this game and it must be taken out.
Of coarse there will always be cheaters, but when you can download cheat clients from the internet so easily with bzflag.......need I say anymore?

I have also noticed that many regular players that were playing this game from a year ago are also gone. Maybe they got board with the game or just grew out of it. Maybe they had enough of these cheaters also? Why dont we start a new game called "BZCheat" and all these losers can go and play there. Hell I even put up a server for them so they can stay off legit servers!

That just about says it ( I had to let out some steam after reading my log)

I will still play this great game on my little free time that I have but not as much as before and I will keep these 3 servers up until they are no longer popular. So if im not on bzflag on my free time....you might find me at "CUBE".

Take care all

Jules The Jackal :D
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Post by JeffM »

Cube also has many more advanced Anit-cheat mechanisms. The binary version that everyone plays is not compatable with the source version. And it does a server side game state.

the basic version of cube is not a very deep game, so that makes sense that it would have a high turn over rate.
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Why bother?

Post by learner »

I can't imagine any of the developers presently contributing to the project (I can count them on one hand) that would actually bother with a cheat client. There's simply just little to no incentive, motivation, or reward. It's not like it's an intellectual challenge to make a cheat client, there's nothing impressive about it to say the least. Now if someone worked out the networking so that a 256kbps upload pipe could maintain 32 players with a sub 200ms ping on a non-local subnet -- I'd be impressed. Heck, even 16 players.

Now poking around on one of the developer servers with a test client is another topic altogether. One player's cheat is another developer's bug. If they were on one of the public servers, however, this is certainly not the case since 1.7g is pretty much closed and done with from a developer's perspective.

I'd bet more likely it's someone who's bragging for the sake of attention. Panzer's words are well put. He'll eventually get bored and move on. Take his words and actions with a grain of salt. If ever in doubt, talk to the developers in #bzflag on irc.freenode.net via IRC. Only some of them bite.

Cheers!
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Post by zdog »

well gerbil that is what u get playing bzflag nowdays, u get some bad with the good. it is not like back then when everyone respect each other and play fair. Besides people who cheat are people who got no talent. And i have to disagree, i dont think (keyword I) that is a developers, the game developers are all pretty cool ppl, at least i remember them that way, and i seriously doubt they will cheat and test and discuss cheats with other clients. Maybe to test a cheat under a fake callsign, but i seriously doubt a developer will go around brag about he cheating and tell everyone he is a developer.

bark bark
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p.s. hope to play against you sometime again gerbil.
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JeffM
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Post by JeffM »

this topic is over a year old, please don't dredge up old topics.
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Post by zdog »

sorry, i didnt notice about it. im sorry again

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like i say be4 out of partice and a little slow
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Post by toaster »

Hey, not nice to beat up on the newb for posting. The original post was June 2003, so it's not over a year old. And you (PatLabor) posted to it in November. ??
-toaster
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Post by JeffM »

not beating up, just informing that's all, it is still old, anything usualy over 2-4 weeks old is a dead issue. He knows now, it's all good.
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Post by creeperz »

hey, i only posted after 3 months of a topic being inactive once :-P
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