PC Gamer cover story on Doom3

[Randell]

With regards to CS cheating and teamwork, it depends on the server you play on. I only play on a few CS servers that are run by clans that ban cheaters at the drop of a hat and are heavily into voice-comm teamwork.

oh yeah thats how I prefer to play. Somehow the good ol days when our GSP hosted a private voice channel for us, so our Roger Wilco IP was permanent, which meant people always used it and you could always find them and have fun, have gone

Still we have a community server with classic maps and a lot of people who use that server are in clans and use voice coms and try to play well. Plus I meet them in RL for drinks every so often, so it just adds to knowing your playing with decent people who arent kids and cheaters.

 

[OpenGL guy]

With regards to CS cheating and teamwork, it depends on the server you play on. I only play on a few CS servers that are run by clans that ban cheaters at the drop of a hat and are heavily into voice-comm teamwork.

I stopped playing CS for about 9 months due to cheaters and DAOC. Then I went back to CS and promptly got banned at a bunch of public servers for cheating... The whole cheating thing in CS has ruined it for everyone: Anyone who is good must be cheating (I think the same way myself sometimes.)

 

[DemoCoder]

My suggestion is to make friends with some regulars and play only with those guys. If Q3 and UT were as popular as CS, you'd see massive cheating as well. CS is further hampered by the fact that it is based on a very old, well known engine, and source for Q1 is even available, which means writing cheats by now has been perfected.

If CS was ported to the Q3 or UT engine, and all of a sudden you had 10,000 UT/Q3 CS servers, the race would be on to create a cheat.


It is up to us, the players, to remind developers that if they make a game whose sole or major focus is online play, they better design it to be cheat-resistant. Wallhacks can certainly be neutralized. It's aimbots that are the difficulty. Getting rid "insta-kills" (headshots and one-shot kill weapons) will certainly take the bite out of aimbots. Most good players are close to aimbot skill anyway.

Wallhacks, IMHO, are the major problem.

 

[OpenGL guy]

Wallhacks, IMHO, are the major problem.

If you are talking about OpenGL wrappers that force on destination blending and disable Z buffering, then I think I have a possible solution:
- render all players first
- draw several passes of all white polygons
- draw rest of scene

The all white polygons are to mess up the hacks I mentioned above. You render them with a Z value of 1 so you would only obliterate the player models you rendered earlier if depth testing were disabled.

Of course, then people would modify their wrappers to filter out these polygons, but it's an idea.

 

[demalion]

While we're off topic, any chance of someone PMing one of these good CS servers you're talking about?

 

[Humus]

Wallhacks, IMHO, are the major problem.

If you are talking about OpenGL wrappers that force on destination blending and disable Z buffering, then I think I have a possible solution:
- render all players first
- draw several passes of all white polygons
- draw rest of scene

The all white polygons are to mess up the hacks I mentioned above. You render them with a Z value of 1 so you would only obliterate the player models you rendered earlier if depth testing were disabled.

Of course, then people would modify their wrappers to filter out these polygons, but it's an idea.

A better solution is to do like in UT. The engine doesn't even try to draw invisible player and the overdraw is very low. So even if you modify the renderer you'd still not gain a whole lot. I was playing around with the OpenGL renderer once and actually tried this, the gain was very small. I wonder if this is still true for UT2003.

 

[flf]

For a good community of gamers and servers that do not tolerate cheating, poor sportsmanship, or excessive foul language:

http://www.cofr.net

It's the Crusty Old Fossil Rockers community. I haven't checked the constitution lately but I think you have to be either 18+ or 25+ years old to get in, and you MUST be sponsored by someone already inside who you've played with on their pub server for several months.

They do other things besides CS, but CS is what got the whole thing going a couple years back.

 

[Bambers]

Cheating Death was the best anti cheat program CS has had yet. I'm not sure exactly how it worked but it hooked onto the dll and stopped wallhacks by moving or not showing players that were behind walls, it also managed to stop aimbots etc. Pity it got stopped when valve disabled dll hooking in the next HL update as it made even popular publics almost completely cheat free.

 

[tobbe]

A better solution is to do like in UT. The engine doesn't even try to draw invisible player and the overdraw is very low. So even if you modify the renderer you'd still not gain a whole lot. I was playing around with the OpenGL renderer once and actually tried this, the gain was very small. I wonder if this is still true for UT2003.

You still often have to send at least x/z coordinates of players to the client, because of sound, even if you stop graphics driver hacks.

 

[jb]

But there are other ways to do this. The DrawActor is a powerfull command. I have write a code for a Rail Gun for UT2k3 that can shoot through walls and worse yet see "heat" through walls as well. My goal was to do something simular with Red Factions Rail gun. I have limted the range to can "see heat" as well as the range that the rails will travel. It works well both in on-line and off line (with the only bug being I have not gotten the fade effect to work right = meaning the red outline of the player should fade out related to the 1/distance^2 relation). But yea I can draw actors in games that are behind walls even in on-line games. However this is nothing new as we did it before in with the orignal UT code. Just never got it working well enough to release. Here is an older pic: http://www.pc-rockers.com/chaos/ChaosUT2Evolution/temp/Shot00038.jpg

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Ye.. cheaters suck and worse the programmers who write the cheats suck.

As for team play and normal play, where i come from(South Africa) we only have like 13 or so servers.. but most of the servers are properely managed(Admin's update and use external Anti-Cheat software). But we still get cheaters coming on.. and it's funny when you see someone get kicked by the server for cheating. I've been playing CS for 3 years now.. and am starting to slowly grow tierd of it. This year will defiinitely be my last year of Competitive CS play(been playing Competitive for the last 2 years). But the 2 ISP's here who run the CS servers are great(well the one anyways is outstanding) and they run a few 5-6 normal servers. As to teamplay on the servers.. If you can get the ppl to work together then you play well .. if not .. well either you play well, but team sucks .. or you suck and the team sucks. The best is still clan matches.

I've started playing Ghost Recon lately(last 3 months) and that seems to play alot better not. We are busy having a Comp. 1 vs 1 in GR.. and while I thought i the begining that it would be slow.. it's actually turned out quite alot of fun and fast. They are even starting a 2 vs 2 Comp. shortly.. and i'm expecting it to be lank fun again.

http://games.saix.net/cgi-bin/sgsbb/ikonboard.cgi?s=3d3ba7770894ffff;act=SF;f=52

Have a look.

US <-- Hope CS:CZ improves anti-cheating etc.

 

[Randell]

Unknown Soldier,

Its funny but a couple of things have happened in the last 2 weeks, bearing in mind I havent played CS competitively for about a year

- my old CS clan has been ressurected for fun, not competition
- CS players in my community are looking elsewhere for team based fun and come up with 2 games that they all like - Tribes 2 and Ghost Recon.

So The Tribes 2 ex CS'ers clan is now up and running - Ghsot Recon seems more problematically as its not easy to find in the stores anymore.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

lo Randell

great man, Ye find GR anywhere now seems to be abit problematic. Only copies i've been able to find are the dvd case ones. We are play with the Desert Siege Official game pack though(and this seems even rarer than GR). This weapons are different to the vanilla GR and gives a bit more variety. Two of the guys here have actually created a mod here called SWAT and has an even larger weapons variety.

Unfortunately we only have 3 servers running here in South Africa and the pings ain't really the best in the world. But it's still lank fun and hey I got to meet new friends as well as play with old ones. We actually just started the Island Thunder Dual Duel which goes into Round 1 now. The Single player SGS Solo SWAT Comp(We playing the SWAT Mod) is about to end. I'm one of the last 3 in the comp.

Alot of fun. I've actually been getting some of my CS clan mates to try the game out. It's different but alot of fun.

For more info check out the site above

US

 

[Randell]

Ok will do, I also like Op Flash SP but found the MP a bit too laggy, GR seems more polished from what I've seen/heard.

Still with AI bots and my mate on my sons machine on my home LAN we've ahd some good Op. Flash games.

Does GR allow bots in MP?

 

[OpenGL guy]

Does GR allow bots in MP?

There used to be a "Terrorist Hunt" co-op mode in Rogue Spear, but I don't know about GR.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Hi Randall

Ye .. AI and bots are in GR mp. Quite kewl actually cause you can have different senarios(everything from total elimination to doing objectives). Also the AI comes in different flavours... although we usually have it on Elite(highest level). Then there are the maps and the missions.

btw.. saw this

Ghost Recon Bundle Pack at the Ubi Shop

The ubi Shop is offering a special deal on Ghost Recon products. Check it out below: http://shopping.ubi.com/gameinfo.php?id=429

"Save $10 when you get Tom Clancy's Ghost ReconT: Island Thunder with Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Game of the Year Edition which includes the mission pack Ghost Recon: Desert Siege. This bundle of games is just $59.98."

The normal price i see for GR is $49,99 so looks like it's a good buy.

US

 

[Randell]

Cheers U.S.

BTW its Randell

I'll look into the pack, I thought somethig like that might be on the cards. WHen I was considering buying EQ last year it was unavailable, becasue they were clearing stock for a bundle edition.[/b]

 

[Unknown Soldier]

eish Randell .. sorry about the slip up

Won't do it again.

US

 

[Randell]

Ok a Ghost Recon Deluxe for £24.99 is being released on 15th November in the UK I assume this is the same pack as yours.

Worth me hanging on then as best price for Ghost Recon alone online is £20.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Hmm.. seems like we will also be getting the Deluxe pack here Randell.. I'm just worried since I see no mention of DS being bundled in that pack.

The bundle that i posted was called "Ghost Recon:Game of the Year Edition" and this one that you are mentioning is just called Deluxe pack.

US