Rare find: ProQuake 3.10 Source

[Baker]

ProQuake 3.10 was the first cheat-free ProQuake where the anti-cheat code was part of the ProQuake binaries.

Although I imagine you could obtain this source code by emailing the ProQuake author, the source for ProQuake 3.10 was never really obtainable via the internet because I think the author wanted to obtain an exemption from having to release the source in an effort to stop the rampant cheating caused by the source release.

So, unlike ProQuake 3.20 thru 3.50, this version of ProQuake has the security measures in the source code/binary instead of the security module.

http://chris.ruvolo.net/proquake/3.10/

But as the story goes, John Carmack refused to make an exemption from the GPL for ProQuake's cheat-free efforts and as a result in ProQuake 3.20 the security measures were separated into a security module, thereby excluding the source code for the security module from the GPL so it would not have to be released.

The ProQuake 3.10 source code has never been available on the internet for download, probably in part to frustrate those looking to crack it and probably in part to frustrate the author of that other engine that was based on ProQuake but refused to release his source and got his site shut down (which some derided as a cheater-Quake because of some of the features).

/The security in ProQuake 3.20 forward, while good, is beatable via a few different methods including some opengl32.dll cheat so it really isn't a great deal more cheat-free than other servers.

[Canadian*Sniper]

neet

[Lerster]

I agree with CS.

When i finish taking lessons in C. I may look into this, in attempt to make a closed source, counterpart of qsecurity.dll essentially a replacement. That will crc check every single thing, exceptions of maps.

An unless someone wants to waste 400thousand hours, modifying maps....

I think it'd be near implausible to get around the cheat security then.

But by the time, this occurs quake will likely be dead. But we'll see.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz i'm drunk as a skunk as usual. Nite nite.

[mithril]

hmm interesting. It seems to me that a good cheat-free module should be able to be secure and open-source at the same time. When I get some time I'll look into how the nettrek project did this...I was always under the impression that they released the source to their cheat-free module, but then at release-time, they would generate an encryption key pair, put one key on the server and the other key in the security module which was released as closed source, so that in order to crack it you'd have to reverse engineer the security module to get the key out of it, which was meant to be hard. But I'm not 100% clear on the details right now.

[Baker]

Some of the more hardcore enthusiasts (Rook, for example) have had this source for a long time and know how it works.

I posted this for curiosity mostly, especially since "cheat-free" is effectively broken so it isn't like someone could examine it and break cheat-free as it has been done.