[?] Spades hacking? - Page 126

On June 05 2012 16:49 dvorakftw wrote:
For everyone complaining about Spades' Scv 'mini-map scouting' saying no pro would ever do anything like that:

1. Please download the MLG Orlando championship bracket replay pack

2. Go into folder 9 [note: I had to load the replay from in Starcraft, I couldn't click to launch]

3. Watch MKP vs STBomber on Metropolis

4. Go to 5 minutes in and tell us how much either player has scouted the other

For those who just want the answer -- Neither scouts the other AT ALL for 5 minutes.

Neither scouts the other AT ALL for 5 minutes.

And before anyone starts detailing all the reasons that situation is different, I don't care. The fact remains Spades does more scouting in his game in 3:30 minutes than either MLG champ Bomber or MLG champ MKP do in 5 minutes, which in their case was NONE AT ALL.

This alone destroys the Scv scouting argument.

[And btw don't think I spent a lot of time looking for this example. It was the third one I tried. The first two were the other games in the series. Bomber never scouts MarineKing so I could have used literally the first one I tried but Metropolis is even better since neither scouts.]

Remember Spades vs Lucifron is a showmatch. That means it's more like GSL where you prep for your opponent rather than going up against some random guy on ladder. At 3:30 Spades has LucifroN's location, one refinery, and two buildings. The only options are 2 rax or rax/factory and 2 rax makes even less sense than scouting only using the mini-map.

To be clear, overall I think it is more likely than not he was cheating and the Scv scout does look suspicious even with everything I wrote above, but if I were on a jury I'd be #8 of 12 angry men at this point. [Or Cousin Vinny for you kids who haven't watched the old classics.]

On June 05 2012 16:49 dvorakftw wrote:
For everyone complaining about Spades' Scv 'mini-map scouting' saying no pro would ever do anything like that:

1. Please download the MLG Orlando championship bracket replay pack

2. Go into folder 9 [note: I had to load the replay from in Starcraft, I couldn't click to launch]

3. Watch MKP vs STBomber on Metropolis

4. Go to 5 minutes in and tell us how much either player has scouted the other

For those who just want the answer -- Neither scouts the other AT ALL for 5 minutes.

Neither scouts the other AT ALL for 5 minutes.

And before anyone starts detailing all the reasons that situation is different, I don't care. The fact remains Spades does more scouting in his game in 3:30 minutes than either MLG champ Bomber or MLG champ MKP do in 5 minutes, which in their case was NONE AT ALL.

This alone destroys the Scv scouting argument.

[And btw don't think I spent a lot of time looking for this example. It was the third one I tried. The first two were the other games in the series. Bomber never scouts MarineKing so I could have used literally the first one I tried but Metropolis is even better since neither scouts.]

Remember Spades vs Lucifron is a showmatch. That means it's more like GSL where you prep for your opponent rather than going up against some random guy on ladder. At 3:30 Spades has LucifroN's location, one refinery, and two buildings. The only options are 2 rax or rax/factory and 2 rax makes even less sense than scouting only using the mini-map.

To be clear, overall I think it is more likely than not he was cheating and the Scv scout does look suspicious even with everything I wrote above, but if I were on a jury I'd be #8 of 12 angry men at this point. [Or Cousin Vinny for you kids who haven't watched the old classics.]

On June 05 2012 16:23 jsemmens wrote:
Here are my thoughts on these games. Take note that everything here is completely circumstantial and should not be taken as hard evidence that Spades is a maphacker. Rather, this write-up is a series of observations that can be answered by either one of two possible scenarios:

1. Spades is a maphacker.
2. Spades is just a really, really, really bad (albeit lucky) player.

I just looked over the Tal'Darim game. I'm not going to claim that this is proof of maphacking, I just thought that it was strange that Spades uses his first scan at 9:23 and then doesn't scan again until approximately the 31:00 minute mark. This evidence is entirely circumstantial, mind you, but it is strange that in a TvT, perhaps the most positional of all the matchups, he is almost never scanning. By comparison, Lucifron scans somewhere in Spades' base every couple in-game minutes like clockwork.

However, something in your favor is that, in that Tal'Darim Altar game, you somehow manage to let Lucifron's army sneak right past your army outside of his natural at around the 14:00 mark. It would seem to be improbable that you are maphacking if you allowed that to happen.

In your daybreak game, you never bother to check the timings that Lucifron takes his natural or third until you decide to drop him at the 12:30 mark. Again, this does not imply that you must be a maphacker, it could also be explained another way: you actually play at a platinum league level.

In the Shakuras game you hardly bother to spot expansion timings, or scan to see where your opponent is positioned. In fact, there is even a point (at about 15:30) where you get dropped in your main and lose a bunch of SCVs. You even bothered to to built a sensor tower, so, maphacks or not, you should have seen the drop coming. However, you do not respond to the drop whatsoever until you get map pings on your minimap from your SCVs dieing.

Might as well go over all the games. On Entombed Valley, when you pull up with your tanks at Lucifron's ramp at the 7:30 mark (and I won't even go into all the stuff about sieging outside of bunker range, it could have been luck), you have vikings to scout out what's on top of the ramp. It would seem to be very obvious that you would want to peek (no pun intended) with the vikings into the area around the ramp to get some intel on, say, bunker placement, marine count, tank count, if there was even an expansion up at all. Instead, you simply siege within vision from anything placed at the top of the ramp, an extremely amateur move.

On to Antiga Shipyard. After scanning the main at around 6:30, you then make no attempt to scout for the timing of the natural or the third base. Then, at the 20 minute mark, you decide to scout for the fourth base? Plus, when typical pros scout for hidden expansions, they send a single marine there to check for the expo. After showing so little regard for scouting your opponents other expansions, it makes no sense why you would be SO diligent as to send six marines to scout for a fourth base that you should have no reason to expect. You must have been extremely lucky to have stumbled into the hidden expansion like this.

Additionally, to address your claim that you could not possibly be maphacking if you're losing these matches. You can still maphack and play poorly enough to lose. Maphacking only gives you unlimited scouting of your opponent. It doesn't guarantee that you will micro well, macro well, do your builds correctly, manage your lategame composition correctly, or many other skills that go into winning a game. Your multitask and map awareness are so bad that it is difficult to really assess whether or not you used maphacks because, even if you could peek at the fog of war, you don't have the multitasking ability to properly respond to it, so you would still lose.

Let's also be clear here. If you want to explain this all by simply saying that you were playing badly, then it's obvious that you were playing really badly. This is not "an off day for a GM" badly, this is "I should be in Diamond league" badly. Let me lay it out for you:

1. You almost never scout any expansion timings.
2. You almost never scan or scout to see the position of your opponent's army.
3. You never exhibit any sort of micro techniques.
4. You can't multitask to handle two-pronged attacks, even when you have a sensor tower built to spot them ahead of time.

P.S. Don't act so uppity about all the suspicion being thrown your way. These things didn't happen to you by pure chance. You were caught cheating previously, so you have lost the privilege to not have extra scrutiny placed upon you. Similarly, criminals spend the rest of their lives under the suspicion of others, it is the punishment that cheaters and criminals must bear for having violated the trust of the community.

On June 05 2012 16:49 dvorakftw wrote:
For everyone complaining about Spades' Scv 'mini-map scouting' saying no pro would ever do anything like that:

1. Please download the MLG Orlando championship bracket replay pack

2. Go into folder 9 [note: I had to load the replay from in Starcraft, I couldn't click to launch]

3. Watch MKP vs STBomber on Metropolis

4. Go to 5 minutes in and tell us how much either player has scouted the other

For those who just want the answer -- Neither scouts the other AT ALL for 5 minutes.

Neither scouts the other AT ALL for 5 minutes.

And before anyone starts detailing all the reasons that situation is different, I don't care. The fact remains Spades does more scouting in his game in 3:30 minutes than either MLG champ Bomber or MLG champ MKP do in 5 minutes, which in their case was NONE AT ALL.

This alone destroys the Scv scouting argument.

[And btw don't think I spent a lot of time looking for this example. It was the third one I tried. The first two were the other games in the series. Bomber never scouts MarineKing so I could have used literally the first one I tried but Metropolis is even better since neither scouts.]

Remember Spades vs Lucifron is a showmatch. That means it's more like GSL where you prep for your opponent rather than going up against some random guy on ladder. At 3:30 Spades has LucifroN's location, one refinery, and two buildings. The only options are 2 rax or rax/factory and 2 rax makes even less sense than scouting only using the mini-map.

To be clear, overall I think it is more likely than not he was cheating and the Scv scout does look suspicious even with everything I wrote above, but if I were on a jury I'd be #8 of 12 angry men at this point. [Or Cousin Vinny for you kids who haven't watched the old classics.]

On June 05 2012 16:56 MCXD wrote:


Believe it or not, there is a very large number of players who only play on ladder, or only play online tourneys.

On June 05 2012 16:42 EtherealDeath wrote:
Here is a post on SC2SEA on a method that was used to catch a person using camera lock: http://www.sc2sea.com/showpost.php?p=99788&postcount=557

Edit - quick explanation of method. The camera lock sometimes doesn't just put no action. Instead it puts some fake actions in. Why it would do so I do not know. So, I looked for fake actions, which turned into a discovery of an action I believe to be physically impossible from a human using the interface.

I decided to try this analysis on Spade's replays. Now I could not find any combinations of the Hotkey 1,2,3 signature, so at first I thought it meant it cleared him. But then, I found something weird.

Recall in the OP that Spades has a 8 second window of camera stoppage in in the Antiga game at 11:02.

Here are the actions from 11:02 to 11:10. Yes I do have the default real time setting in SC2gears changed to game time. Initially I was puzzled by what it was telling me until I realized I needed to change this setting.


+ Show Spoiler +

Now I can see the hotkey switching in action, even when it is really fast. Of note is the scv selection deselection. This is also present at the beginning of the game but this is normal. This is simply dragging a box, selecting all the visible scvs, and then deselecting them by clicking somewhere on the ground. So, for a moment you will see a red circle around the selected scvs in the replay, before they are deselected. In fact you can see this happen all throughout early game, and this is normal.

I cannot see the red circle at all in the interval from 11:02 to 11:10, corresponding to this selection/deselection. I have stared at a twenty second chunk at each base intently over and over. The huge time window is so that I don't have to worry about looking at the timer. I am only trying to see that red circle pop up around an scv to show that it was selected. I cannot see this even at the slowest replay speed. He is either selecting and then deselecting them faster than I can imagine or something else is at play.

So at the moment I suspect that these hotkey selections and unit selection/deselection may be what a camera locking program is inserting as false actions. Either that, or something is wrong with SC2's replay storage, or somehow Spades can select/deselect faster than I can imagine. Why do the hotkey selections not disappear instantly you might ask? Well, the way the engine would interpret it is to keep the hotkey selection until another hotkey is pressed, or something else is done, so it cannot possible disappear in a flash. The instant unit select/deselection is thus the red flag to me.

If someone can explain this instantaneous selection/deselection please do. All other evidence aside, I have a hard time believing that a camera lock is not in play given this.

On June 05 2012 17:02 Greentellon wrote:


And they are the players that can be simply ignored.

On June 05 2012 16:56 SkyMightFall wrote:
In the game where spades is top right and lucifron bottom right. He looks into the fog of war to build a CC. (2nd expo)
On Catz stream, someone posted and talks about this, yet they neglect to go back and see what happened.
Point being, he looks into the fog of war but doesn't "screen lock".

Catz is probably just mad because Team Reign acquired Root's players when they disbanded instead of going to complexity gaming. Thus, why trust anyone that is heavily biased.

In a courtroom, the jury doesn't know the person on trial. So why have these idiots with their biases?


After furthering analyzing my case given here. I can't help but to come to the conclusion that Catz loves dicks in and around his mouth.

Case closed.

On June 05 2012 17:01 ChrysaliS_ wrote:


This post is retarded. The point is that he sent an SCV to Lucifron's base and never even bothered checking the SCV to see what buildings Lucifron was making. This is literally unheard of at the pro level and absolutely damning evidence that Spades did indeed maphack.

On June 05 2012 16:58 dvorakftw wrote:


To followup on this point with the other post I just did, watch the Bomber vs MarineKing game on Antiga from MLG Orlando that I linked in the other post from Bomber's point of view, pretend it was Spades, and just look how long he keeps the camera in his corner of the map at the start and all the times the camera doesn't move for seconds.

On June 05 2012 17:06 Zarahtra wrote:

It is possibly unheard of at the top pro level, but you can't really say that Spades is a top pro. He's a very good player, but he's a middle of the pack foreigner. It is very hard to believe that no one replying here and accusing Spades of hacking hasn't had the same situation happen to you, where you send out the worker, it is rallied to the other bases and then you are doing something else(for me, it's pretty much always trying to think what's the most dangerous build my opponent can throw at me on current map with the build i'm planning) and the worker is outside the base of my opponent before i realize.

On June 05 2012 16:55 Greentellon wrote:
I don't see how any pro wanting to be world class would do this kind of thing. If you use it you rely on it and then you are completely unable to play in "offline" events, events where you don't use your own computer. It would be completely stupid and illogical to hack.

Discussion is over as far as I'm concerned.

On June 05 2012 16:50 Geo.Rion wrote:

as a pro you might give some better insight, i've seen blind starport play many times, and sometimes it lost the Terran the game cuz it was all ultra. Im not saying it's not suspicious, and i think he's probably hacking, but at least the "big names" should maintain a level of professionalism when commenting on this heated issue.

I also wonder who's smurf is the OP, im curious if the admins IP checked him, no way he's a forum newbie

On June 05 2012 17:02 everyone wrote:

Nice find. Case closed!

On June 05 2012 17:01 ChrysaliS_ wrote:


This post is retarded. The point is that he sent an SCV to Lucifron's base and never even bothered checking the SCV to see what buildings Lucifron was making. This is literally unheard of at the pro level and absolutely damning evidence that Spades did indeed maphack.

On June 05 2012 16:52 IcedBacon wrote:
Spades sent out a worker but retrieved NO information from it.

On June 05 2012 16:42 EtherealDeath wrote:
Here is a post on SC2SEA on a method that was used to catch a person using camera lock: http://www.sc2sea.com/showpost.php?p=99788&postcount=557

Edit - quick explanation of method. The camera lock sometimes doesn't just put no action. Instead it puts some fake actions in. Why it would do so I do not know. So, I looked for fake actions, which turned into a discovery of an action I believe to be physically impossible from a human using the interface.

I decided to try this analysis on Spade's replays. Now I could not find any combinations of the Hotkey 1,2,3 signature, so at first I thought it meant it cleared him. But then, I found something weird.

Recall in the OP that Spades has a 8 second window of camera stoppage in in the Antiga game at 11:02.

Here are the actions from 11:02 to 11:10. Yes I do have the default real time setting in SC2gears changed to game time. Initially I was puzzled by what it was telling me until I realized I needed to change this setting.


+ Show Spoiler +

Now I can see the hotkey switching in action, even when it is really fast. Of note is the scv selection deselection. This is also present at the beginning of the game but this is normal. This is simply dragging a box, selecting all the visible scvs, and then deselecting them by clicking somewhere on the ground. So, for a moment you will see a red circle around the selected scvs in the replay, before they are deselected. In fact you can see this happen all throughout early game, and this is normal.

I cannot see the red circle at all in the interval from 11:02 to 11:10, corresponding to this selection/deselection. I have stared at a twenty second chunk at each base intently over and over. The huge time window is so that I don't have to worry about looking at the timer. I am only trying to see that red circle pop up around an scv to show that it was selected. I cannot see this even at the slowest replay speed. He is either selecting and then deselecting them faster than I can imagine or something else is at play.

So at the moment I suspect that these hotkey selections and unit selection/deselection may be what a camera locking program is inserting as false actions. Either that, or something is wrong with SC2's replay storage, or somehow Spades can select/deselect faster than I can imagine. Why do the hotkey selections not disappear instantly you might ask? Well, the way the engine would interpret it is to keep the hotkey selection until another hotkey is pressed, or something else is done, so it cannot possible disappear in a flash. The instant unit select/deselection is thus the red flag to me.

If someone can explain this instantaneous selection/deselection please do. All other evidence aside, I have a hard time believing that a camera lock is not in play given this.

On June 05 2012 16:42 EtherealDeath wrote:
Here is a post on SC2SEA on a method that was used to catch a person using camera lock: http://www.sc2sea.com/showpost.php?p=99788&postcount=557

I decided to try this analysis on Spade's replays. Now I could not find any combinations of the Hotkey 1,2,3 signature, so at first I thought it meant it cleared him. But then, I found something weird.

Recall in the OP that Spades has a 8 second window of camera stoppage in in the Antiga game at 11:02.

Here are the actions from 11:02 to 11:10. Yes I do have the default real time setting in SC2gears changed to game time. Initially I was puzzled by what it was telling me until I realized I needed to change this setting.


+ Show Spoiler +

Now I can see the hotkey switching in action, even when it is really fast. Of note is the scv selection deselection. This is also present at the beginning of the game but this is normal. This is simply dragging a box, selecting all the visible scvs, and then deselecting them by clicking somewhere on the ground. So, for a moment you will see a red circle around the selected scvs in the replay, before they are deselected. In fact you can see this happen all throughout early game, and this is normal.

I cannot see the red circle at all in the interval from 11:02 to 11:10, corresponding to this selection/deselection. I have stared at a twenty second chunk at each base intently over and over. The huge time window is so that I don't have to worry about looking at the timer. I am only trying to see that red circle pop up around an scv to show that it was selected. I cannot see this even at the slowest replay speed. He is either selecting and then deselecting them faster than I can imagine or something else is at play.

So at the moment I suspect that these hotkey selections and unit selection/deselection may be what a camera locking program is inserting as false actions. Either that, or something is wrong with SC2's replay storage, or somehow Spades can select/deselect faster than I can imagine. Why do the hotkey selections not disappear instantly you might ask? Well, the way the engine would interpret it is to keep the hotkey selection until another hotkey is pressed, or something else is done, so it cannot possible disappear in a flash. The instant unit select/deselection is thus the red flag to me.

If someone can explain this instantaneous selection/deselection please do. All other evidence aside, I have a hard time believing that a camera lock is not in play given this.

On June 05 2012 16:42 EtherealDeath wrote:
Here is a post on SC2SEA on a method that was used to catch a person using camera lock: http://www.sc2sea.com/showpost.php?p=99788&postcount=557

Edit - quick explanation of method. The camera lock sometimes doesn't just put no action. Instead it puts some fake actions in. Why it would do so I do not know. So, I looked for fake actions, which turned into a discovery of an action I believe to be physically impossible from a human using the interface.

I decided to try this analysis on Spade's replays. Now I could not find any combinations of the Hotkey 1,2,3 signature, so at first I thought it meant it cleared him. But then, I found something weird.

Recall in the OP that Spades has a 8 second window of camera stoppage in in the Antiga game at 11:02.

Here are the actions from 11:02 to 11:10. Yes I do have the default real time setting in SC2gears changed to game time. Initially I was puzzled by what it was telling me until I realized I needed to change this setting.


+ Show Spoiler +

Now I can see the hotkey switching in action, even when it is really fast. Of note is the scv selection deselection. This is also present at the beginning of the game but this is normal. This is simply dragging a box, selecting all the visible scvs, and then deselecting them by clicking somewhere on the ground. So, for a moment you will see a red circle around the selected scvs in the replay, before they are deselected. In fact you can see this happen all throughout early game, and this is normal.

I cannot see the red circle at all in the interval from 11:02 to 11:10, corresponding to this selection/deselection. I have stared at a twenty second chunk at each base intently over and over. The huge time window is so that I don't have to worry about looking at the timer. I am only trying to see that red circle pop up around an scv to show that it was selected. I cannot see this even at the slowest replay speed. He is either selecting and then deselecting them faster than I can imagine or something else is at play.

So at the moment I suspect that these hotkey selections and unit selection/deselection may be what a camera locking program is inserting as false actions. Either that, or something is wrong with SC2's replay storage, or somehow Spades can select/deselect faster than I can imagine. Why do the hotkey selections not disappear instantly you might ask? Well, the way the engine would interpret it is to keep the hotkey selection until another hotkey is pressed, or something else is done, so it cannot possible disappear in a flash. The instant unit select/deselection is thus the red flag to me.

If someone can explain this instantaneous selection/deselection please do. All other evidence aside, I have a hard time believing that a camera lock is not in play given this.