Wall hacks and other cheaters

[wicked_lord]

The client is open source, there will be cheaters. 99.9% of the people who play now are friends with each other, and have been playing for umphteen years. If a cheater walked in they'd call him out pretty quick.

Like Bruce and Enoch? They were caught red handed. I wouldn't doubt it one bit in more people cheated and other's know but don't care.

[Phenom]

I stole it from Spike Then R00k made his own in a different way.

I know exactly who made this video.

[OMacKnight]

Who needs wallhacks when you can have so much coffee and practice that you instantly snap onto targets and get accused of cheating?

[R00k]

...
so yeah, nothing that can really be done without a whole bucketload of false positives. its not really worth trying unless you actually suspect someone specifically, in which case you can just go and watch the demo... so long as the server actually recorded one.

what was that old server VCR code stuff?

[Baker]

I stole it from Spike Then R00k made his own in a different way.

[Phenom]

Wall hacks in modern Quake aren't even possible.

Hasn't been possible for almost 10 years.

Common knowledge amongst anyone who plays on servers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf94PbE-b9I

A little more context to go along with this YouTube Video.

For those who are unaware the video is demonstrating some noobie player showing 3 things.

1. A Pak2 or "cheat" that places those huge bars on other players, so you can see someone before they even come running around a corner.

2. A Invisible wall hack so you can see players through walls.

3. The Server Side Security System Made by Baker (or SSSSMB as I like to call it) which ONLY sends out enemy ordinates (Enemy XYZ, rotation) IF the enemy player model is visible to you and nullifies all wall-hacks in general. NO PEEKING FOR YOU!

The video is poor quality unfortunately and the creator should take a video encoding class and get a better PC, and more sleep.... life?

[R00k]

The client is open source, there will be cheaters. 99.9% of the people who play now are friends with each other, and have been playing for umphteen years. If a cheater walked in they'd call him out pretty quick.

[Baker]

Wall hacks in modern Quake aren't even possible.

Hasn't been possible for almost 10 years.

Common knowledge amongst anyone who plays on servers.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf94PbE-b9I[/ame]

[Spike]

anti cheat mechanisms are either:
a) purely serverside and thus unable to really do much without a whole load of false positives (the anti-wallhack stuff is in this boat, and applies to ALL players regardless).
b) exploits bugs in the client to make sure there arn't various known dlls or whatever in the quake directory (evil evil evil evil evil. see quake2.). can trivially be worked around if you know what you're looking for. breaks compatibility with any client that has actually fixed any of those exploits that its exploiting.
c) contains a gpl-violating clientside module that severely limits compatibility to a single client, causing the entire ecosystem to stagnate - see proquake's old anti-cheat. all variants I've seen of this have been trivial to bypass.

while option a is viable, it is severely limited in what it can do.
options b and c are futile and/or counter productive.

remember that quake is an old game now. there are people who have been practising this game for _years_.
those people generally have better aims than aimbots (at least with the RL), so false positives are kinda impossible to avoid.

tournaments need demos to be recorded, so that someone can actually review them for weird stuff if someone suspects a player of cheating. all modern qw servers can record mvds, but its a shame about nq servers.
there's not really any other way to do it.


the other part of the problem is that an abundance of practise feels about the same as someone cheating too.
for instance, you can often spot a cheater by how they're briliant at aiming with the lightning gun, but terrible at everything else - like RL and map control.
the lightning gun is only part of the game, so these cheaters will generally still get killed often enough.

so yeah, nothing that can really be done without a whole bucketload of false positives. its not really worth trying unless you actually suspect someone specifically, in which case you can just go and watch the demo... so long as the server actually recorded one.

[Gem]

There really aren't any cheats / cheaters that I have seen in a long while ..

I think that mostly all the servers are anti-wall patched, so nothing would work to see through walls-a popular cheat I've heard existed in the past

The other cheat is using a bot, which can quickly be spotted by admins

A lot of times, newer players make noises, like using a hook or falling off a step or something, which makes an 'oomph' sound, so an experienced player can either fire at a corner you will come around or calculate your walking time to another opening and time their fire there

In an ideal situation, you have to play as silently as possible and catch your opponents off-guard, thats one of the winning strategies of quake hehe

[vanilla]

lol I remember the wall hack where it puts a X on your body. Is that what you mean?

[Sgt-PieFace]

So I may be wrong about this, because I don't know a whole lot about programming, but it seems that since Quake is such an old game, the core engine behind it would be hard to automatically regulate.

Some newer games I play like CoD: WaW and ETQW use punk buster (gr. f*ck punk buster) which is DRM/Anti-Cheat all in one. Its a third party program that monitors each players client to check for piracy and cheating. The client constantly reports to punk buster, and if something is fishy, it will boot you.

Punk buster is just one example of this, and some games have a system like that built in. I think it would be hard to implement a third party program and make it work with Quake. I also think its a bad idea even if it WAS possible because punk buster is generally know as a P.O.S. Most games that use it don't force you to install it, and most servers don't require you to have it.

The problem with any automated anti-cheat system is that it won't always work, and it will boot people that aren't cheating in error sometimes. (This is why nobody uses punk buster).

I know a number of servers that are listed on this website have anti-wall hack systems. I think its best to use and improve server side measures.

Active admins/mods would be the best way to spot and deal with cheats.

These are just my opinions of course =)

[Davers]

Wall hacks and other cheats, you know who they are,
And you know they exist.. Why do some people pretend they don't exist.?

And people talk about tournaments, how are you going to regulate it
so its entirely fair?

Quake3 used Monkey mod anti cheat.

I think its time for some servers to automate things better,
get with the times. There will always be cheaters, because thats all they know
how to do, is cheat. I remember an old server that would remove health from you if you stood too long in one place (anti-camp server) great idea..

camping is different from cheating ofcourse, i am just talking about a very strict server.