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On October 07 2010 06:13 TheRabidDeer wrote:Show nested quote +On October 06 2010 01:46 bbsss wrote:On October 05 2010 20:26 Ashur wrote:On October 05 2010 20:26 bbsss wrote:
I have yet to hear an argument against them importing a serversided -what data should be available for client- system. Apperently HoN and LoL have this system already.
Sorry I am flooded by messages a bit. As Ilintar already wrote that you can choose between two main things. One of them is that everything is stored clientside which gives you good performance and replays (current SC2 solution), or on the other hand (HoN solution) everything serverside, which would bring some problems. It is nearly impossible to (re)implement for so many objects that StarCraft 2 have to handle (HoN is a game with ~ten objects), StarCraft got thousands. In addition StarCraft have got amazing map editor, where you can change almost every single rule how the game really works, and thats the other problem, because how do you know what the server should hide and show in custom maps? It would require some HW, which is actually not so big problem for such a company. If you ask what else can be done to stop such a cheat, I must say... I don't know. Seriously no idea. It was bad Blizzard guys knew that its flawed in this way (and yes, they really did know that during the beta, guys at anticheat dept. are not that stupid to find it on their own, so they basically knew it in even during concept of StarCraft 2), but sadly, they didn't do anything to prevent it because of performace issues. So argument one is good performance; I don't see how serverside handling would in any way reduce the performance clientside. Increase in serverload, so what. The other is comparing the amount of objects between hon and starcraft. It's not as if this has to be manually converted or am I mistaken Serverside handling would result in massive amounts of lag, which is the performance he speaks of. The server would have to keep track of each individual thing on the map. Can you imagine how much more laggy it would be if the servers suddenly had to manage several hundred times more information than what they currently do? There are also other issues with it. For example, in HoN the pudge-like character that has the hook, if he casts the hook and it goes towards a player, then the player that cant see pudge sees the hook always come from the SW corner of the game regardless of where it actually came from. He cant interpret where he really is because the game cant handle what it doesnt see.
Your example is not true, HoN handles hooks comming from an previously unknown source just fine?
I'm pretty sure the server already does keep track of every unit on the map. Leaving how the game runs for the client to decide will introduce some big problems. So once again you give the argument of increased serverload, but I say this can not be a good reason since I can only imagine the extra load to outweigh the problems it causes (maphack). With my knowledge I'd say that a solution like the one I propose might cost some extra programming time, but not so much serverload that it would be more crippling than having hackers.
I can see the problem it would pose for custom games and what should be visible and not. But this could be so easily bypassed (just give an ability to bypass the -lets call it a fow-check- and custom games will be fine).
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Why does Blizzard have to be reactionary to the Op and people like him. Awesome! you can find a way to do this or that in the game and Blizzard makes it so easy that it's not even a challenge with your leet hacking skills. There are other things you can do with that talent you have besides taunting a company into thinking they have to one up you when in reality all they have to do is wait a couple months and then ban your ass so you give them another 60 dollars or just move on to something more "challenging."
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I think the easiest answer that they wont make it server sided is that they also have a Singleplayer.
Overall Multiplayer works the same as Singleplayer, just that the data is exchanged, but the basic "module" of the game works as it is.
So if they would totally change this module for multiplayer, its just extra development cost, while its so much easier to produce a singel "game module" that works for single AND multiplayer the same way.
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On October 07 2010 07:44 bbsss wrote:
Leaving how the game runs for the client to decide will introduce some big problems.
Such as?
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On October 07 2010 06:47 samalie wrote:
FOr the encryption people....
WAY back in the Everquest days there was a program called ShowEQ. When it first came out, the datastream was essentially unencrypted, so a user of the program could sniff out in the packets what creatures were spawned, where they were, etc. It flourished in Linux, undetectable, until someone ported it to Windows to run in tandem with the EQ client. Then Sony started searching for the ShowEQ executable, ala Warden today. Mass bannings happened.
But the linux people lived on, and IIRC a windows verson came out which allowed the remote packet sniffing of Linux. ShowEQ florished.
Sony encrypted the datastream.
Hackers learnt where the decryption code was in memory. Import the decryption routine in ShowEQ, hack once again worked.
It turned into a back and forth battle...they'd try to kill it off, the hackers found a new way to do it.
We're basically in the same boat here...all the info that is needed is in the datastream during a match. Sure, its probably encrypted, but if someone puts forth enough effort they'll figure out how to watch the stream...on another PC...which is undetectable in every way by Blizzard. Shit, it would be undetectable in any situation except (obviously) a live tournament.
THere's money involved in this....so it WILL happen. Its just a matter of when.
Intesting read.
Though, I cant see that "ther's money involved". I have trouble seeing that alot of players would pay for a cheat in SCII, mainly cuz its not driven by the same psycology as for example WoW or EQ. Sure, the world has some black sheeps here and there. But saying that there is money in it is kind of an small "overstatement". IMHO atleast.
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On October 05 2010 17:27 Ashur wrote:
Think, first of you can rename the process to firefox.exe, change its size by modifying resources. Change the resources themselves. So the question is for Warden is, is this a browser or a cheat? And what if the cheat is actually a plugin for firefox.exe, it does not need to be a process at all. If you want to hide such a thing, you simply hide it.
Well yes I'm pretty confident you can do all of this, but your average cheater joe can't.
If you release a hack publicly 99% of the ppl using it will not be able to prevent the Warden from detecting it, effectively making the hack obsolete except for a handful of individuals who aren't competitive enough at starcraft to make a difference in online money tournaments.
Or am I mistaken?
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On October 07 2010 18:32 Klumaster wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2010 07:44 bbsss wrote:
Leaving how the game runs for the client to decide will introduce some big problems. Such as?
Speedhack.
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On October 07 2010 20:56 bbsss wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2010 18:32 Klumaster wrote:On October 07 2010 07:44 bbsss wrote:
Leaving how the game runs for the client to decide will introduce some big problems. Such as? Speedhack.
As in, units moving at a different speed? If one player's game allows them to do something that the other player's machine doesn't see happening, you just get a desync.
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On October 07 2010 21:04 Klumaster wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2010 20:56 bbsss wrote:On October 07 2010 18:32 Klumaster wrote:On October 07 2010 07:44 bbsss wrote:
Leaving how the game runs for the client to decide will introduce some big problems. Such as? Speedhack. As in, units moving at a different speed? If one player's game allows them to do something that the other player's machine doesn't see happening, you just get a desync.
Which client would decide who is right?
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Obviously, this fault exists in practically any client sided game, but I think what the OP trying to say is that special attention should be given to it in Starcraft 2 because money will be on the line alot of the time, therefore bringing hacking during tournament games to the same level as lets say cheating in a Casino. You are commiting Fraud when prize money is involved? and probably breaking Blizzards TOS by doing this. To be honest though, during any tournament where money is involved, replays should be analysed and people should be willing to be transparent about the setup of their computers to an extent.
Obviously, to the average casual player trying to make his way up the ladder, "secret" hacks like this if they become common are doing to lead to frustration, annoyance and maybe even the quitting of the game, IE, not buying the expansions when they come out. Blizzard need the expansions to sell well, they are designed to help pay for the servers and other things which will be costing them after the games initial release. If there is widespread anger amongst gamers, people aren't going to give Blizzard more money, and then they will have to spend time attempting to fix this.
Blizzard probably ignored your email because they didn't want to be seen getting help from someone outside of their company who isn't respected, or they have been told they are not allowed too. They knew about this weakness from their other games, but Client to Server just wouldn't work for Starcraft. Over the past 10 years, the abilities of computers have come alot further than the abilities of most peoples internet connections. You would be passing so much data between Client and Server, and server would need its own time to do its thing. Your putting a third party inbetween your link, which slows everything down. This third party is just another thing which could have problems or not be reliable.
Imagine this: If the server goes down: Who wins the match ?
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Noone wins the match, it will be a Tie or both lose I don't remember exactly(remember battlenet going down several times during the beta?). I would like to hear from someone who actually knows how this game runs. Because I'm pretty sure there all data goes through the server, and implementng so that the data that runs through the server is filtered for both clients wouldnt cost shit for serverload or performance drop client sided.
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It's not just a question of filtering though. The minute you don't have full data on the client, you have to run the actual game simulation on the server too.
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Of course, what I've found surprising is that on client based models there's never been random auditing.
In a lot of applications (Finding peaks and shortest paths), random sampling works well. Likewise, if the server *randomly* ran some of the calculations to validate against client behavior, couldn't it detect cheaters? This could even be randomly elected subsets of units upon the start of a game (I.E., each unit spawned has a 5% chance to have all its calculations done on the server side, in addition to client side). For the clients, they keep chugging away on calculating this 5% of units, but if the server detects a deviation from expected or allowed parameters, it's overrrr.
Sure, for a few games it's possible that a cheater wouldn't be detected, but as the number of games goes up, the probability of not being detected goes down...
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I think the thing there is that no serverside verification is needed - if someone cheats at one end, the game just goes unstable and the game ends. Though it would be good if something could verify whose machine was misbehaving, it's not needed to prevent cheating. The problem here is that once you've got the simulation running on the client, the data can be extracted without client behaviour changing.
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On October 05 2010 20:29 Anfere wrote:
I trust the Warden. I played WC3 for 6 years, and even last year, the Warden was still working pretty fine on ladder games.
i played wc3 aswell and there was a lot of cheating in it, mostly really awful things like drophacks.
Shortly before sc2 released i started to play a bit of ladder again, encountered 2 guys that made my screen freeze every 2 seconds and finally lagged out themselves and 2 goldhackers in the first 20 games. i immediately quit again.
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Ashur is the typical story of a villain who was once a good guy.
Was awesome, got traumatized for some reason, turned depressed, started behaving auto-destructive by doing bad things to things he loves.
Thank you Ashur for all the good stuff you did before. I hope you get better and become the positive figure in the community again.
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On October 13 2010 03:12 niteReloaded wrote:
Ashur is the typical story of a villain who was once a good guy.
Was awesome, got traumatized for some reason, turned depressed, started behaving auto-destructive by doing bad things to things he loves.
Thank you Ashur for all the good stuff you did before. I hope you get better and become the positive figure in the community again.
Did you not read anything he has written in this thread? He's basically making the hacks to show blizzard that there is still exploits in the game so they can get on top of this and fix it already. He's tried already to speak to blizzard and they just keep turning their backs on him. So he's doing what needs to be done in order for blizzard to realize what is going to happen very soon. He's still fighting on the good side, but doing it as a "bad guy."
Ashur and Ili, I've always trusted you both either way when it comes to the community. Let's hope there is something that can be done about this, if not, here goes to another game ruined. /cheers 
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On October 13 2010 03:12 niteReloaded wrote:
Ashur is the typical story of a villain who was once a good guy.
Was awesome, got traumatized for some reason, turned depressed, started behaving auto-destructive by doing bad things to things he loves.
Thank you Ashur for all the good stuff you did before. I hope you get better and become the positive figure in the community again.
Wow, I think you read wayyy too much into this stuff...
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Just get to high level diamond and don't worry about it. 95% of players at the top level (read: anyone playing in top tournaments and especially LANs) aren't going to be using maphacks because they actually want to be good. Plus, the more you worry about shit you can't control the more you're going to blame your losses on maphacks when you just got outplayed.
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While I am sad about the existance of hacks and depressed at the thought of seeing more of them in the future, I've got to say I am wholly unsurprised as well.
The hacks/scandals of the past few months like drophack and Immortal warp-in I read about already gave me the impression Blizzard did not take the security of their game serious enough.
As for Ashur posting this, it has long been established in online games of any kind that companies - who need to think economically - will only exert themselves to fix exploits and hacks when they become numerous and/or very publicly known.
Its is a lesson I always assumed everyone knew from way back in the old DrTwister days, but instead it seems this needs to be relearned every few years...
So in short, if one encounters a working hack or exploit, the best thing to get it fixed FAST is to not use it yourself but instead make it public so the numbers of it being used skyrocket and the compamy is forced to do something about it. It also serves to get some of the idiots banned who jump up on a public hack/exploit bandwagon 
However, if I understand Ashur correctly - and I am by no means a programmer myself - then the issue is a lot more grave this time, because there probably will not be a thing Blizzard can do about it ?
Maybe thats correct, maybe not - but especially if a coming hack will be undetectable, it is very important that the customers know about it and Blizzard does not get to pretend nothing's amiss.
I do not know what amount of server infrastructure and cash would be needed to run things server-side like in HoN, but I DO know that I'd much prefer to pay a monthly fee like in MMORPG games for them to be able to keep things as cheating-free as possible as opposed to play for free on a hacked ladder.
So if things are indeed as grim as predicted by Ashur, then the Sc2 community will have to ask what we want and maybe ask Blizzard what they can do to ensure a continued and enjoyable gaming experience - and we should preferably ask them before we buy two more expansions.
To me at least the multi-player part of Sc2 is the reason i want to buy the expansions, and I'd really like to know the ladder wont become a farce for being a hack-fest before I shell out the money for them.
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EPT
