Id Software and Activision Wolfenstein Source 146
An enthusiastic Anonymous Coward writes: "Id Software and Activision released the
sources of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Single-player and multiplayer included. Unbelievable! Another great surprise from Id Software!" Update: 04/14 15:19 GMT by T : Note: don't get your hopes up -- these are the sources for the game code, not the engine.
Re:Here come the hacked, never-miss multiplayers (Score:4, Interesting)
Clear enough for correct people - and if think different, maybe the whole GPL/Open Source concept is flawed...
Re:Here come the hacked, never-miss multiplayers (Score:5, Interesting)
Last time I checked, about 50% of the 1.3 servers in GSArcade claimed to have PB on and running. And the other thing that I've noticed from playing it is the first 2 or so minutes of playing are typically a bit choppy due to the security tests, so it's not very intrusive.
Re:Here come the hacked, never-miss multiplayers (Score:2, Interesting)
It always frustates me how naive people who should rightfully know better are when it comes to cheat prevention. It's great to see an anti-cheat client actually work and kick the occasional cheater off of a server, but it often gives an irrational sense of hope.
Anti-cheat clients are a losing battle by definition. There is no way they can possibly be successful. The more effective one is, the more effort people will put forth to break it.
As long as the client must be trusted on computers that players own (and may therefore hack accordingly), cheating will always be possible.
The software scans key dll and other files in the RCTW folders and other factors to try to determine if any modification has been made to those files, and if so, the client is flagged as a cheater, and typically kicked from the server.
There are dozens of ways around this on any modern OS that has basic process debugging functions. Without even getting creative:
Are there ways to write anti-cheat clients to counter all of these? Probably. But then you open up yet another round of the clever game developers vs. all clever hackers in the world. With each release, the anti-cheat client has to be more clever, more complex, more intertwined, which is only going to make it easier to defeat since there will be so many more points of attack.
If you want to play games without cheating, play on computers that are owned by a trusted third party (like a lan gaming place). Or play with players you trust. Trusting an anti-cheat client on an untrusted computer in front of an untrusted player is hopeless.
Re:Here come the hacked, never-miss multiplayers (Score:4, Interesting)
Meant to include this in the parent post.
A less hopeless attempt at cheat prevention would be to integrate a "web of trust" system into gaming communities.
This is all doable through cryptography, but I'll explain the protocol without the implementation details:
Players take a vow to play cheat free. They get their friends to confirm that they play cheat free. Friends confirm other friends. The web develops. This relationship is published to a well known repository and linked to other webs of trust submitted by other groups based on common participants.
Alice and Bob have never met before, but they can be pretty sure that niether is cheating because Alice trusts Frank, who trusts Trent, who trusts Eve, who trusts Andrew, who trusts Bob. This many levels of displacement is probaby enough to cover the population of the United States.
When you join a server to play, the server checks your position in the web of trust to that of others on the web, and tells you their trustworthiness. By playing against people who are trusted by people you trust you can play with higher confidence. You could set policies to only allow players who meet a certain trust level.
Someone who is actually confirmed to be cheating could damage the trustworthiness of a huge set of players, and would motivate the participants to quickly distance themselves from the cheater or be classified as cheaters themselves.
A lot of the attacks against this model are based on the implementation, but it sounds more promising to me than pursuing ridiculous anti-cheat clients.
Re:engine code vs. game code (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Here come the hacked, never-miss multiplayers (Score:2, Interesting)
- Program a standalone program to probe your frame buffer, recognise graphic patterns in the image. Automatically move the crosshair to that position using system calls.
- more shit here
The point of all this is that you don't understand the point. I ca think of litterally a million ways of cheating, and punkbuster is not about preventing cheating.
Have you ever heard of antivirus software? Their goal isn't to patch holes in buggy software written by microsoft. Their goal is to detect known exploits, and disable them. With punkbuster, signatures of exploits (mainly aim bots) can be detected, even if they have NOTHING TO DO WITH THE
Everyone knows that anti-cheating is an uphill batter. But did you notice that AV software providers make assloads of money?
Untill game developers start encrypting every packet made by the client, before it is sent off to the network, and on the OS level, the video memory can be locked out, even by the root user, aim bots will exist. and people will use them. Things like PB are the only thing we have to slow this abuse.
If you want to play with non-cheaters, you had better be playing in a league. I can personally guarantee you that most popular public servers has a few people every now and then running aim bots. This applies to CS,Quake3,Wolf, and other popular FPS games.
Re:true, however... (Score:2, Interesting)
or www.planetquake.com
i'm just complaining 'bout RIAA, because it'd be nice if you could legally download old NiN or other tracks after the cd's have left the marketplace. what sort of fan wants to spend $30 to replace that old scratched up cd because now it needs to be special ordered in.
ID has a good idea and it'd be nice to see other industries/companies following their lead.