New ASUS Drivers Help Cheaters? 226
magicmat writes: "The guys over at Riva Station are reporting ASUS's nVdidia based video cards might have a new "special weapon" in gaming. Namely, drivers that allow you to see through walls, get brighter lighting or go to wire frame mode. Is it just me or does this sound like the smartest decision a card maker has ever done for their profits?" I always wanted to be able to reposition the camera... I mean, the driver should be able to do that, right? I guess it depends how much of the world the game is actually storing on the video card at any given point, but it seems like it should be possible. (Note that these drivers are not standard or officially released, while they are for the nVidia chipset, they are technically for ASUS cards. Sorry about the confusion.)
Re:It's actually ASUS not nVidia. (Score:2)
Replying to my own message here, something I forgot:
Email ASUS and complain here (marketing) [mailto], and here (tech support) [mailto].
(I had those email addresses in my story submission to Slashdot as well... oh well.)
Re:Wrong... big problem in Quake 3. (Score:1)
Running online gaming tournaments is not a hobby for me, it's my job. Maybe you should think before flaming someone who knows.
Re:Subjective cheating; it probably wouldn't work (Score:1)
Re:We need a technical solution (Score:1)
You call me a nerd.. look who's getting so worked up about one little piece of speculation about cheating in a game? You're the reason slashdot is almost not worth visiting any more. People like you.
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Re:We need a technical solution (Score:1)
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Re:It's a new form a gaming now. (Score:1)
I believe "how long does it take crackers to remove an undesired feature (like CD-in-drive requirements and server-authenticated CRCs) from a program" is the scientific definition of "zero time".
Also, how do you differentiate between CRCs which differ because of patches and those that differ because of hacks?
Re:A fake? (Score:1)
Rather than speculating, I've actually tried to contact ASUS for verification. No response so far (after about 4 hours). We shall see.
You're correct about the Half-Life shots, I apologise.
The fact that it's only screenshots of Quake 3 engine games really proves little, if anything at all. Can you point me to the *exact* console cvars which enable partially transparent walls? Or even wireframe *only* rendering?
Re: (Score:1)
Re:It's actually ASUS not nVidia. (Score:2)
Anything you can devise, they can break.
It's just that the good coders don't bother with consoles, closed cabinets == crap games.
not an issue -- 3d Rendering (Score:1)
Re:It's a new form a gaming now. (Score:1)
Re:We need a technical solution (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that most modern 3D shooters do something similar, so I don't really see it to be much of a problem for those fast-paced games. In slower-paced games where stealth is more important (Rainbow 6, etc), I imagine this might be more of a problem.
Re:Server-side checks? (Score:2)
-Steve Gibson
see-through (Score:1)
Re:Great.. (Score:1)
Re:We need a technical solution (Score:5)
There really is *no* way to trust a client. None. Anything that the client does can be watched, instruction by instruction, with a debugger. Any encryption it uses is performed in front of the determined hacker.
Any CRC of the binary, or the data files, is done by the EXE that the hacker has access to. They simply hardcode the values the server wants to get. Or if it's a changing algorithm, they keep the old files around to run the CRCs on, then use the hacked files to play.
It is provably impossible to write a program that can't be modified in this way. There are some anti-debugger tricks, but they'll probably increase general incompatibility and, they never stopped the pros anyways.
You either have to have a release schedule that beats the hackers, like updating the EXEs daily, so that they have to keep doing the work... or, you accept the fact that you can't tell if you're communicating with your certified client or a proxy.
It doesn't matter what platform it's on. As long as hardware is available, not encased in melted plastic, and development tools exist, hackers will be able to examine the game. It might be harder to disassemble Super Mario 64, or a Playstation 2 game, but it can be done, and if the stakes are high, *will* be done.
There is *nothing* that can be done to make this impossible. All that you can do is make the cheaters job harder by blocking the obvious things (like the Quake1 cheats - new player models, etc).
Anything the server does, short of sending the game out as high-res screen shots over the network at 60fps can be hacked. And even then, someone could write a proxy that would parse that pictures and auto-aim or something.
Cheaters and cheat protection will (as I think Carmack said) evolve until subtle cheaters are indistinguishable from the better players. Anything you can devise to stop cheaters, the cheaters can learn from and avoid.
Re:We need a technical solution (Score:1)
Repeat after me you example of poor slashdot moderation, YOU CANNOT TRUST THE CLIENT. Period.
I don't even want to get into your nice commentary on servers sending too much information to the client. Think of it this way, a lot of people who are a helluva lot smarter than you have been thinking about this a helluva lot longer than you.
Re:Great.. (Score:1)
pot, kettle, etc. (Score:1)
at least he didn't post it in the wrong story
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Performance considerations (Score:5)
Wireframe mode on the other hand would be much faster. It's really hard to play with, though (do r_showtris 1 in quake3 while cheats are enabled)
Much less annoying in Quake 3 is "r_shownormals 1", which only makes a little tick mark on each vertex, showing its normal vector. Something like this would probably be more valuable to cheaters.
TEMPEST (Score:1)
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Can't Be Done (Score:2)
Usually, a 3D video board, half of the memory is used for textures and half for graphics. The actual game geometry is stored in RAM. So, unless a hack is written for a specific game, knowing exactly how it handles the world geometry and where (and how) it stores the camera data, you cant change the camera angle. It should be done before the frame is computed. The driver just renders the data given to it (so it can mess with transparency or wireframe it) but you already got the scene there. No changing camera angles.
Re:We need a technical solution (Score:2)
It may be theoretically impossible to write a program that can't be indetectably modified, but from a practical perspective, you can make it damn near impossible, especially when it is dealing with interactive servers.
I don't want to belabor the details of some of the most dirty tricks that will give even NSA crackers a pause (deliberate race conditions in self modifying code, etc), but even non-programmers can understand it isn't that hard to bury half a dozen redundant checks in the game which at rare moments calculate and send disguised CRC verification stamps to the server. All it takes is for your uber-hacker to miss just one of these for the server to mark his unique game id as one held by a cheater. The server can even delay the penalty by many weeks, so as to obfusticate when the cheater was caught.
The real reason why cheating is so prevalent is that most companies don't bother to try. Hell, they don't even bother to use any real encryption on the game authentication id they give out.
Newsflash: 3Dfx releases see-thru-clothing 3D card (Score:5)
The technology coined "strip-o-way" allows the owner of a 3Dfx "ClearSpeed3D" card to analyze any graphic layer by layer. Similar to the upcoming movie "Hollow Man," a splashy special-effects remake of the popular movie "The Invisible Man," 3Dfx's technology will allow the user to see through-images.
In an late-afternoon press conference, 3Dfx Chairman, President and CEO Thisis Ajoke announced that, "Our technology is meant not just for the games people anymore. We have expanded our product line into a much larger market." Mr. Ajoke refused to comment what he meant by that comment, but, a source close the development effort said: "Think about it! What would you do if you could strip away, layer-by-layer, the clothes off any image of Gillian Anderson you find on the.. err.. I mean, you could possibly find out who shot Kennedy."
3Dfx is expected to release their new product before the Christmas buying season, but industry analysts already expect 3Dfx's stock to "go through the frik'in roof."
Some computer owners might have to upgrade their systems as the new video graphics technology is expected to take up 4 PCI and 1 AGP port, and require a minimum of 5 external power supplies to drive enough juice into the cards.
3Dfx is seperately negotiating with Intel to increase the mega-wattage it pumps through the system bus to make "all those dangly wires and power-strips" unnecessary.
Pricing has not been announced for the new product, but in light of Microsoft's recent announcement of becoming an Application Service Provider, 3Dfx is considering folling the software innovator's lead with their own ".accell" model. 3Dfx's engineers were unavailable for comment, as they were beating the crap out of their Marketing department at the time we called them up.
- Some hungry gremlins contributed to this story.
Re:Some thoughts (Score:1)
-Grimjack
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Re:Some thoughts (Score:1)
There are absolutely no parallels to hacking in cheating. No one cheats to see if they can do it. Sure, an actual hack is very cool, if you do it yourself and use it once or twice to see if it works. That's fine, and even then it's only you who's amused. As soon as you make yourself an obnoxious cheating moron you ruin the game for everyone. Except you're having fun. But of course that's the real reason isn't it?
Re:Performance considerations (Score:1)
Normally the closest wall is opaque and "paints over" the farther walls before you see the scene. So you are right: transparency has to be planned for specially so the closest surface is always painted last as a "discoloration" of what is "behind" it. This won't be accounted for.
However, who cares? Only a couple of layers of walls are involved, most gamers know the level well, and it just looks a little disturbed. Most importantly, you can see the enemy! 'Nuff said.
Switching subjects, what is disturbing me at the moment is that it appears the moderator of this article is advocating the release of these drivers so he can cheat. That would be a very selfish, short-sighted attitude if so. It doesn't take much effort to see how this destroys the whole community. Now I have to wonder if I should listen to moderator opinions about Napster or any other important issue.
Re:It's actually ASUS not nVidia. (Score:2)
Hah, people criticize Ryan at MacOS Rumors for not checking his stories... nice work, Taco ;^)
Just venting (grumble). If only this was a realistic picture of the situation...
Can it be toggled on and off? (Score:1)
wrong! (Score:1)
I don't believe it will work without constraints on the ordering (though there may be techniques to speed it up as one poster suggested).
Consider this cross-section view of 4 polygons, each at 33% alpha (and an opaque background).
viewer
Loc1 Loc2
A --------
B --------
C --- ---- D
background
Suppose C and D touch to make a continuous wall. Loc1 and Loc2 are places where we calculate a pixel value (Loc1 sees ABC, loc2 sees ABD).
Drawing order matters:
One correct drawing order of CDBA gets us
loc1 = (.66 * (.66 * (.66 * background +
loc2 = (.66 * (.66 * (.66 * background +
Note that if colorC=colorD (they should, since these make up a continuous wall), then the two locations compute the same color (correct).
Now, an incorrect drawing order: CBAD
loc1 is still the same as above. But loc2 is:
loc2 = (.66 * (.66 * (.66 * background +
loc1 and loc2 are different! Note that loc2 gets a 33% contribution of ColorD, while loc1 only gets a 14.4% contribution.
Depth sorting is necessary because the order of blit on alpha matters.
The poster who said that GL_ONE GL_ONE doesn't need sorting is correct... but my experience mapping for Quake 3 (where you can specify the blending mode for brushes) leads me to believe that colors max out VERY quickly unless your textures are as dark as night. Maybe this could be made to work.
Same with Real3D Starfighter (Score:2)
I've always had an advantage in Quake 3 because of a slight z-buffering problem with my video card (Real 3D Starfighter, 8MB AGP on a socket7 mobo, intel's initial graphics chipset). It allows me to see where people are through walls and floors without disrupting gameplay.
I've since switched to Unreal, where I don't have the problem (just a problem with OpenGL?). But people would always ask me why I still had that old thing in there :)
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This is Old News (Score:1)
To me, if the game itself allows it, it allows it. I'd hardly call that cheating.
Re:Games arent about the game (Score:1)
1) For a competitive game to be interesting, there has to be a chance of winning (or at least not coming last ;-). To take the chess analogy further, what would the point be of me playing Karpov at chess (if I got the chance) other than for fun?
2) Contra to US soda commercials et al, winning isn't the most important part in many activities/sports. Some people actually take part because they actually like the activity. Oh yes, it would be nice to be the winner, but it's (say) a 1 in 1000 chance and life's too short.
3)In the case of D&D etc - I don't play myself, but I would guess the reward is in developing friendship and understanding with your fellow players, rather than the alienation of always wanting to win.
Finally, perhaps you can answer a question. Why is winning so important? - and you can't use the words win/lose etc in your answer... and if you use "better" etc, please explain what you mean by that (just so you think b4 replying :).
Re:This is a FAKE! (Score:1)
I'm never going to post on Slashdot again, they talk about freedom of speech and all that, yet they only hear what they want to hear. Looks like I'm going to have to find a new news site. Oh well.
Who needs driver mods? (Score:1)
As an example, I recently tried playing Half-Life on NT but the underwater fog effects gave my 3D card problems. In my case the frame rate dropped to less than 1 frame per second which made the game unplayable.
Using gltrace (http://trant.sgi.com/opengl/toolkits/gltrace/) it took me about 5 minutes to create a version of OpenGL.dll with fogging disabled. Problem solved.
Re:We need a technical solution (Score:1)
I think this cannot fix the problem. If cheater wants to use some special driver (s)he will use it and there will be crack to remove that driver check.
Right way could be to send driver information string to server where it could be compared to blacklist of "cheater drivers". After identifying driver as blacklisted it's up to server what to do. It could mark mark points as cheated or disconnect after random period of time with text "cheater".
This wouldn't prevent cheaters to play and therefore there would be much less effort to crack executables or so. Making cheating public would cut the edge out off it and perhaps lesser people would do that.
_________________________
Re:We need a technical solution (Score:2)
Diablo II deals with cheating by not trusting the client all - according to Blizzard, in realm games all that's sent to the server is your mouse and keyboard actions. They can get away with this only because the game environment is extraordinarily more constrained than that of, say, an FPS.
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Re:Performance considerations (Score:1)
Wireframe is just as simple. Patch glPolygonMode() and off you go. Game cards are usually not very good at lines, but it's still playable, as Q3 shows. As the RivaStation article hints at, if you use stereo glasses, wireframe gives a pretty neat depth impression, so it's very usable.
If you patch the driver to return the correct settings it's undetectable for the application, we'd need certified drivers to check it. Not an easy thing to do and organize. What would you say if your brand new but as yet uncertified Radeon card was rejected by the Q3 server?
Dirk
Re:Performance considerations (Score:1)
A tool for learning about 3D graphics (Score:1)
Wireframe display on the Voodoo has been around for a while, and it lets you see what is really happening. I had a good look at Mario64 on UltraHLE on a PC/Voodoo, and my admiration for Nintendo increased when I saw how they did stuff, also I learned why some things that puzzled me had to happen as they did. (Our family owns an N64 btw, for me UltraHLE is just a curiosity.)
So one benefit of nVIDIA wireframe is that it might encourage a few more people to do 3D graphics. Another is that with hardware transform and lighting we can see whose drivers are culling more efficiently, the benefits of clever Z buffer algorithms and so on.
Re:Um, read the update on the site. (Score:1)
Great.. (Score:2)
Re:We need a technical solution (Score:1)
sup Jim?
Re: voxels (Score:1)
Re:Some thoughts (Coool I wrote that cheat!!) (Score:2)
Now that felt like an achievement.
Re:We need a technical solution (Score:1)
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Let's hear it! Yeah! (Score:1)
Cheating (Score:5)
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Re:Another form of security through obscurity? (Score:1)
Other transparent effects? (Score:4)
Well color me screwed.. (Score:1)
This does not bode well for the online gaming community, this is all fine and dandy if your playing single player. But if you go on, and rack up the kills because not everyone else can see through the walls. There has to be some way of preventing people from doing this.
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Re:Performance considerations (Score:2)
Re:Some thoughts (Score:3)
I occasionally cheat (on single-player modes) because, and I'm not ashamed anymore to admit it, I'm not good enough at most of the games out on the market.
I used to be able to keep up with the arcade stuff & early Doom-clones, but as each type of game has matured & there are people with lots of time to do nothing but practice, the companies have cranked up the base difficulty level to the point where it would take me months of constant playing to improve my skill level to the point where I could complete the game (I'm usually into RPGs & first-person-working-toward-a-goal-type games).
I'm busy working, I visit my family a lot, I like to get more than 2 hours sleep per night - I don't have the time or health to build up the skills necessary to complete the popular games (which are not necessarily useful to me in the rest of my life). So, in single-person modes, I cheat so that I can enjoy the game in about a week of a few hours/night.
On the other hand, I wouldn't cheat in any kind of multi-player mode, due to the ethical concerns. (Of course, that generally means that I just get my butt kicked, because I still have problems with the difficulty level...) I don't agree with your statement about cheating being a practical joke - I think people who cheat in multi-player mode just want to win in any manner possible.
Re:framerate could be SLOWER?! (Score:2)
It'll take video game graphics processing off of the graphics card and put it back on the main CPU, where it should be. Back in my day all of the graphics was rendered in the CPU before sending the data to the graphics card. This usually resulted in a respectable frame rate of 1-3 frames per second, not that fancy schmancy 100 FPS that all you kids think you need for a good time.
Since these disrespectable silicon valley hardware companies want to allow cheating with there cards, more and more graphics rendering will have to take place on the main processor. That's a step backwards.
To respond to UnknownSoldier's comment and a few other comments too, I have been using CAD systems since before CAD systems were made and you are wrong about rendering speeds. There are 2 different wireframe styles of rendering. The first is called 'wireframe' and it displays all edges in the entire FOV with no shading. It is always faster then fully shaded rendering. The second type of wireframe rendering is called 'line-clipping' and it is always slower then fully shaded rendering. This is because it is mathematically complicated to determine where to start and end lines. Line clipping looks like wireframe, except that you can't see wires behind other objects.
All that hogwash about graphics cards only using triangles is utter nonsense. Triangles and polygons are used for benchmarking purposes, but there are NO graphics cards that only use shaded triangles for 3D rendering.
We need a technical solution (Score:3)
Most (99%+) multiplayer gamers (first person shooters especially) really and truly respect the integrity of the game. If the integrity is destroyed for me, the game has lost all of its fun. I don't understand cheating, but the fact is that it can utterly ruin a game (Again, both Diablo and QW. Diablo never recovered, but the QW community seems to be making progress). The solutions to the Diablo and QW problems were both technical.
It's clear that video card drivers are bound to come out (just look at the long list of nVidia beta drivers that have been leaked). We can't count on ASUS reconsidering releasing these. I think the solution this time rests on the game designers, in the form of some kind of driver signing / certification, a la Microsoft. Don't have a certified driver? Can't play the game.
I don't know a lot about 3D, at all (I hope Carmack replies to this story). You'll see that the worst cheat in this driver is the "see through walls" and "wireframe" modes. If it's not too much of a performance hit, games may have to stop sending information to the video card about polygons that are not visible. I think this would probably kill performance though, as determining which objects block the view of which other objects is a primary function of hardware 3D.
I hope we can learn from our previous battles with cheating. Though I don't think this will do much in the long run, I hope that game companies show that they are not pleased with the decision of ASUS.
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Don't trust the client... (Score:2)
This would prevent cheating with these drivers. That, in combination with an RSA "blessed client" scheme, like that used with Netrek, you can drastically reduce the types of cheats that are possible.
This adds some complexity to software, of course. The server has to determine what information to give to the clients. That means it needs to do basic line-of-sight determination, for example. That can be tricky though. Just because the guy's toe is sticking around a doorway, it doesn't mean I can "see" him -- I might not notice him.
A simpler solution would be for the game developers to do more clipping on their own, rather than relying on the hardware. Of course, that could potentially slow things down significantly. It also doesn't deal with other kinds of cheats that involve modifying the client itself. (particularly a problem if the client's source is available, but even binary clients can be "tweaked") Not trusting the client is the most general solution.
Re:Games arent about the game (Score:3)
There seem to be two (at least) basic classes of mentality among gamers of all types.
I used to play D&D with a group. For some of us, the fun was in the adventure, the puzzles, the humorous occurences, the challenge to overcome setbacks, etc. For others, the fun was in "winning". These people would go to the local game stores, dump out the whole box of dice, and roll each one over and over until they found, or thought they had found, a high-roller. Etc.
Similarly with wargames. For some of us the fun lay in understanding history, testing strategies, recovering from mistakes and/or bad luck, etc. For others, the fun lay in winning. If the rules had a bug that allowed patently unrealistic operations - well, no problem if it led to a win! Etc.
I, for one, can comprehend the desire to win, but if the "win" is merely nominal and results from cheating or exploiting a loophole, then I absolutely cannot fathom how any satisfaction is obtained from acquiring it.
OTOH, I recognize that my notion of fun is surely equally unfathomable to parties in the other camp.
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A fake? (Score:4)
* Is there any confirmation of this outside of this guy's site? Does anyone here actually have said drivers?
* Go to ASUS's site, and read press releases by Mr. Tsang - he is much more articulate in them than he is in the press release on Riva Station (which, coincidentally, is NOWHERE on ASUS' site).
* The Wireframe screenshots were, also coincidentally, taken *both* in the Q3 engine, which happens to have a wireframe cvar you can use if cheats are enabled.
* This just screams 'page hit scam'.
Did I miss anything?
Re:Games arent about the game (Score:2)
Again, you illustrate my claim. I gave my answer in my original post, and you are as incapable of understanding it as I am of understanding your system of enjoying a game.
> "The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters." -Genghis Khan
OK, so GKh was of your camp. BFD. Did you hope to convert those of us in the other camp by citing him as an authority?
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Re:Games arent about the game (Score:2)
Yeah, sure.
>
Hahaha! I won! Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh!
Truly, incomprehensible.
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Re:A fake? (Score:2)
Okay, after doing a bit of research, it's not as easy as a cvar. However, with access to the maps, it would be fairly trivial to recompile them to have no visibility information (so the game will actually draw the things which you don't see - which does bring up an interesting point - how could that wireframe hack work at the driver level? the information to draw a Person You Can't See is never sent to the graphics card in the first place....? This is probably the most damming point =)).
From here [voodooextreme.com], setting r_showtris = 1 will show you all the polygon edges. For a screenshot, check out http://www.planetquake.com/lmctf/q3 preview.html [planetquake.com]. This would provide the wireframe effect.
For transparent textures, just add 50% alpha to all the textures in the game. I know this is easy with Q3.
So, Q3, being the emminently hackable game that it is, seems to be the only engine in site when it comes to demoing this 'driver hack'.
Re:Another form of security through obscurity? (Score:4)
Software basis? (Score:2)
Zoid's Comment (Score:3)
-Steve Gibson
Transparency without the tools (Score:2)
I've got a Geforce and noticed weird effects while playing Tribes with detonator 5.22; objects would become partially transparent at large distances and seemed to "segment", each segment updating on its own as I move, sides aliasing and all.
While being able to see through walls at a distance sometimes is a small advantage, the effect is overall distracting. I'd gladly give up seeing through walls if I could have proper rendering.
Maybe it's just me, but playing in wireframe so I can get a few more points simply isn't worth giving up my delicious graphics.
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Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
Re:We need a technical solution (Score:2)
Most fps game servers are dedicated servers anyway. They have to have something to burn those spare clock cycles on other than seti@home.
Since it would be pure mathametics, you wouldn't need a 3d card, textures, etc. to do this, and it
would only increase the network traffic slightly.
Imagine an object list --- The server would send a list of object indicies for the client to blit; the client actually stores the objects, but, since the display order of them is unknown, the player can't cheat by looking at the list with a debugger. I imagine OpenGL display lists would be ideal for this.
If this kills performance, it can be done only to dynamic objects, such as flags, players, mortars, etc.
As for the client cheating by using custom models and fullbright textures, they can either by CRCed, in which case it would be difficult, but not impossible, to crack, or they could be downloaded when connecting to a server. Quickly, of course.
Also, like X, OpenGL is network transparent. In the future, when broadband is universal, we may see game clients that render to the client remotely. Of course, it would be rather slow by today's standards, but with moore's law and games designed with this in mind, it could work wonderfully (hint hint: Texture objects and display lists)
Then again, if game designers insist on using D3D, they can't do this.
Re:Server-side checks? (Score:2)
-Steve Gibson
Violation of the DMCA! (Score:2)
framerate could be SLOWER?! (Score:2)
Back when I first got my Voodoo 1 there was some demos showing off the speed. The card was actually SLOWER in wire frame mode! It didn't make any sense.
BUT if a card doesn't have points and lines as primitives, but only triangles, then the geometry/lighting processing may be taking more time then the time saved from not texturing.
All though, I would think that with modern cpu's and graphics cards with geometry engine there shouldn't be any frame rate hit.
~
"Triangles are the 3d pixels of today's graphics"
- Anonymous
Re:Some thoughts (Score:2)
However, multiplayer games are different. Cheats *do* cause others not to enjoy the game in this instance, and the only explanation I can think of is the same as above: Defeating others even with underhanded methods is better than not defeating them at all.
They simply can't play. Have you *ever* seen a cheater skilled in combat not involving cheats?
Re:It's actually ASUS not nVidia. (Score:2)
But you have to be pretty fucking blind to think a console game can beat a PC game in depth or interactivity.
A lack of onboard storage (large flash ram or HD) cripples Consoles for anything but stateless games like Mortal Kombat or some pathetic RPG like Zelda where 'saving' the game loses everything about you expect for some basic numbers...
Unlike playing Deus Ex or System Shock 2 where you can revisit an old area and see the corpses, right where you left them and with the bullet holes in the right places, etc. If you can compare a console game to these in terms of depth, you're smoking crack...
Re:We need a technical solution (Score:2)
The biggest problem in Quake is aim bots. They can't be stopped by your scheme because they do shoot what the player can see. Only the most basic aim bots shoot anything near the player, most shoot only what's in a cone in front of the player, to disguise the fact that there's a bot.
In any distributed system you have to send *some* extra information, maybe instead of sending the other player's locations when they're seconds away, drop it to when they're close enough to be seen before the next update, usually 150ms or less, so that even if the user is cheating, they get less lead time.
But if you only send what the used can see, they need to get an update from the server when they turn their head... That's obviously broken.
Re:We need a technical solution (Score:2)
Re:Perhaps the only solution can be a social one. (Score:2)
The idea works if you never go outside of your group of friends, but it has problems when you go beyond that at all... And I do like the occasional sixteen player games which I can't get enough friends together to play.
But overall, yeah. If you know KillMaster is a cheater, just don't invite him to your games.
It's when you go to a global form of this that it's a problem... Do you let users register names so that only one person can have a certain name, or what. How do you block people, CD Keys?
Um, read the update on the site. (Score:2)
In other words: Is that a rocket coming at m--**BLAM**.
- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
Re:We need a technical solution (Score:2)
Some of the traps included writing in an off-by-one error in the program so it'd run out of memory and crash at some undefined point in the future, etc.
The problem with some of the ridiculously complex ideas (race conditions in self modifying code) are that they only work on one processor, and only one model of that. Things that worked in the 486 days won't fly now...
I remember a friend writing self modifying code that wrote *just* in front of the instruction fetch. Sometimes when he reached the end of the loop he'd patch the code *after* the instruction fetch so that next time the loop wouldn't even be tested for. This was automatic because his extra few cycles testing for this let that location be passed by the instruction fetch.
The code was very clever and incredibly fast. With good caching algorithms it was even faster because what he wrote to was guaranteed to be loaded into L2 from the instruction fetch, so it just required another read to copy it into the data L1 cache as well as the instruction L1 cache.
But, the coming of Pentiums broke the code. We looked at it and determined that it could be made to work but it'd have problems in the future, every new processor was changing the prefetch depth and the caching schemes...
Had that been used in a game, it wouldn't work anymore. In our litigious society, that's a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.
Even id Software's fairly basic CD Keys are open to a lot of problems. They're open to DNS problems... You specify the server by IP and connect but you can't get an IP from the master server's name and can't connect, etc..
If a bug existed in your protection schemes, think how hard it'd be to find if it could take a week before it triggered. That game'd be in Q&A forever.
And it's still no guarantee of stopping a hacker... in fact, the only thing it guarantees is to attract *more* hackers. And in today's script kiddy world, if one person cracks it, everyone can use it.
So, you're right in one sense. Writing for a specific CPU on a specific platform, you can write insanely complex code that is nearly impossible to break, especially when only developers know what the machine is doing and when hackers have to reverse engineer the hardware and the software at the same time. On the other hand, on a PC, or rather, on a million different PCs, you'll never manage any of the impossible tricks.
Re:We need a technical solution (Score:2)
Just a few points. You can't do anything with display lists except display static objects. Anything which is animated, or which is only partially displayed at a time (like the world) can't be put in a display list. Vertex arrays are alot faster anyway.
Also, server-side visibility determination would require tons of network bandwidth, and thus would also not work.
Finally, OpenGL may be networkable, but rendering over the network will never be possible. Yes, network bandwidth will increase, but at the same time so will the amount of geometry data that needs to be drawn every frame. Again, display lists won't work because they are not dynamic. However, an ever so slightly higher-lever protocol might work... but then that's what most games are right now.
Really, we 3D game developers aren't as dumb as you think. :) We've considered all of this already, and if there were an easy solution, we'd be using it.
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Re:We need a technical solution (Score:2)
-Largos.
Re:A fake? (Score:2)
1) the half life pic has nothing to do with the drivers, just a 'modeling program' he found (which, of course, he doesn't substantiate either).
2) Star Trek : Elite Force is a quake 3 engine game.
3) It's also possible he found a hacked driver, and is making up the whole ASUS connection to get hits.
*shrug*
but this whole thing looks like a pile of bullshit.
Lazy Cheaters (Score:2)
Too late! (Score:2)
Can't fix it on the server completely (Score:2)
Some thoughts (Score:3)
Apparently, performance is significantly slower, so that's at least one disadvantage of using this to cheat. I for one don't understand cheaters anyway - whats the point of playing a game if your just going to cheat? It stops getting fun really quick. I never play anyone I don't know anyway, partly because I'm not very good, but also because most of the fun of playing is social, i.e. get a bunch of guys together, drinks some beers, blow each other into mip-mapped chunks with a rail gun.
My driver experience: (Score:2)
Then again, neither are the 5.32 series Detonators from Reactor Critical [reactorcritical.com], but I use those
Happy fragging with fast drivers
Re:We need a technical solution (Score:2)
Every once in a while, send a relatively well-defined frame, and ask back for some information that depends on the (partial?) frame being rendered in a relatively sane way. If you get back an 'obviously wrong' answer, then start doing something insidiously nasty to the cheater -- or just mark his score 'cheat'.
I figure it's better to not let a player know as soon as you've detected a cheat -- because then it'll be easier for him to find and fix the counter-cheat.
The Fix and the Pun (Score:2)
Other 3D rendering thingies, those that communicate more directly to the hardware or come in more flavors, will be much trickier to deal with. As for open source drivers...
Well, on linux, God Mode will finally include omniscience.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Re:It's actually ASUS not nVidia. (Score:2)
Fix it on the server (Score:2)
You'd have to make the game server not send information to a client that a client shouldn't be able to see. Send a "disappear" message when it goes out of view and no more messages after that until it reappears.
Otherwise, you could cheat by having a hacked client anyway. Supermap or something.
Only problem is the crazy amount of processing this would require on the server. It wouldn't be quite as bad as the processing the client must do, but still, you'd have to calculate a view for every player, which would get pretty bad.
Just a silly suggestion from a non-game-writer.
--John Keiser
Re:Can't Be Done (Score:2)
Re:Some thoughts (Score:4)
As an expert on cheating (I downloaded the hack for SimCity 2000 that gave you $2,000,000,000 and I also told all my friends in the ninth grade that I slept with Sally Jenson even though all I could really do is go home and whack-off to porno), I will tell you what gives cheaters their kicks (besides said porno).
Have you ever played a practical joke on someone? Have you laughed your ass off when they step on that flaming bag of dog poo after you rang their doorbell and then snuck behind their bushes? It's the same damn thing. You got some guy who thinks he's a bad ass at whatever game, running around, killing everyone and never being able to be touched. You cheat, blow his ass out of the water, and then watch him try to figure out what happened. That's pretty hilarious when you get right down to it. The egos of people who play games is pretty funny itself when you think of it. So basically, you're lighting a bag of dog poo, ringing the doorbell, and sneaking behind the bushes.
Except he doesn't know who you are, how to stop you, nor can he come beat you up.
People don't cheat to win. People who cheat don't really care about winning. They care about the entertainment of the game, and sometimes the winners take the entertainment out of it. I would think that a community of geeks would get its kicks out of siccing it to the big bully, but I dunno.
And I was just kidding about the whole Sally Jenson thing. Really.
It's actually ASUS not nVidia. (Score:5)
I submitted this story about 8 hours ago with the *correct* facts, but it didn't get posted.
Anyway, ASUS are releasing a modification of Detonator 2 drivers (based on 5.32 I think) which will add features allowing you to switch to wireframe mode, partially-transparent-everything mode, and also add extra lighting to a scene.
This has nothing to do with nVidia bar the fact their drivers are being used as the base, and Slashdot are making them look bad by not checking facts before posted a story.
Obviously neither the person who posted the article to Slashdot, or CmdrTaco actually read the URL [rivastation.com] supplied in the article.
*sigh*
This is a pretty short sighted move by ASUS. Another company, Wicked3D, tried this a while ago and met with a lot of anger in the gaming community. I really hope this happens again, and ASUS decide not to release the drivers. Otherwise the online gaming world will either be based on trusting your opponent (not likely), or everybody cheating as much as possible, and so will begin a horrible downward spiral into out-cheating each other, rather than gaming.
Server-side checks? (Score:2)
Obviously, the client needs to have the same validation at its own end, but would this be unworkable?
Another form of security through obscurity? (Score:2)
So those who seek to powergame and "be the best" will have another tool which helps them to do so more easily. Those of us who play for our own enjoyment (isn't that the point of games?) will ignore them, and continue to enjoy the games. Will the two groups meet? Unhappily? Of course. They do so now even without this.
Now, the question really worth discussing here is, is it possible to create a multiplayer game where there's no advantage to be gained by examining memory, or intercepting the data stream? What would such a game be like, and would it still be able to attract a wide audience?
AR Schleicher (Jerrith)
ars@iag.net
Games arent about the game (Score:3)
Now I know that adults play games too-- but the whole idea of being able to "see through walls" seems pretty juvenile to me. Are games about fun or popularity of having the coolest shit (to the kids)?
Re:A fake? (Score:2)
Re:Some thoughts (Score:2)
Re:Can't Be Done (Score:2)
That is, Quake 3 Area, (and other games using the Quake 3 engine,) ARE the new games.
I don't think Unreal Tournament uses T&L, however, as it is basically the Unreal engine which came out way back in... 1997 I think? It's been tweaked and enhanced, but has the same basic capabilities.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Re:Games arent about the game (Score:5)
Thank you for illustrating my claim that members of the two camps cannot understand the others' motivations.
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Re:Now if those assholes would open them up! (Score:2)
not such a problem in Quake3 (Score:3)
A mod for Half-Life, Counter-Strike [counter-strike.net], which by far is played online by more people than Quake3, features rifles where wall penetration is a factor -- i.e. if you can see someone through a wall, you can probably shoot that player.
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