The Truth about Cheating in ET

(Sauron|EFG) #61

The client doesn’t even know where the hitbox is. It’s still the server that does hit detection, it just takes latency into account and tries to calculate what you were aiming at when you hit the button.

From the unlagged FAQ, ‘it’ refers to the server: “Unlagged uses a technique called “backward reconciliationâ€? for hitscan weapons’ hit tests. For the duration of a hit test, it moves players to where you saw them when you fired. (It knows because it sent you the player origins in the first place, it saves that information up in a history queue, and your fire command contains a timestamp.) After the hit test, it moves them back.”

Btw, shooting around corners is another “alleged cheat” that you may want to add Kendle, and so is shooting through walls (tracer bug)…

(Kendle) #62

What’s “shooting around corners” Spoof? And could you explain what the tracer bug is? I have a vague idea but if I’m to add them I’d like a fuller explantion of what they are and why they’re not “real” cheats. Thanks :wink:

(Sauron|EFG) #63

Shooting around corners:
http://www.planetquake.com/alternatefire/unlagged_faq.html#IJGSAAC
(I had a really hard time convincing some people I wasn’t cheating when I was on 28.8k. :slight_smile: )

Tracer bug:
Sometimes bullet tracers appears to go through walls (this may have been fixed in ETPro, at least I haven’t noticed it in a long time). When people see this and at the same time get shot in the back it’s easy to mistake for a cheat.

(SCDS_reyalP) #64

herf: Antilag is always server side. ETPro simply lets individual clients decide if and how this is done for their own bullets. b_antilag just gets transmitted to the server, to tell it what you want.

shooting around corners is an artifact of antilag.
Briefly, Antilag works as follows:

  • player a shoots at time T0 on their client.
  • command to shoot arrives on server at T1.
  • when doing the hit test for this shot, the server moves all the clients to where they were at T0, and does the hit test. Once the hit test is done, it restores them to their most recent positions.

So from your POV, you could be in a fight and get behind cover and then die, because someone shot when you were on their screen, but their command didn’t reach the server until you were behind cover. The unlagged FAQ http://www.planetquake.com/alternatefire/unlagged_faq.html should have a more complete description.

FWIW, etmain antilag had some code that was supposed to stop the shooting around corners, but not only didn’t it work, it would also discard perfectly valid shots.

The tracer bug (fixed in etpro, AFAIK) is tracers showing up on random parts of the map. This is a bug that has existed from RTCW at least. People see traces where no fighting is, and assume someone is shooting through walls.

(evilsock) #65

Are you going to include performance cheats also? Like warping and lighting?

The lighting ‘cheat’ is most effective when

I don’t have demo’s of either of these but I’m sure most of you are already aware that both these ‘cheats’ are around - the point is to just make ppl aware of what is possible.

Isn’t getting killed whilst behind a corner just an after-effect of antilag player prediction?

(SCDS_reyalP) #66

You shouldn’t play on servers that don’t have some cvar restrictions (either pb or etpro) With modest restrictions, etpro should negate most of the ‘lag hax’.

Re: Driver tweaks/cheats. I’m not sure how much detail we want to get into on things that are questionable and generally not detectable.

Isn’t getting killed whilst behind a corner just an after-effect of antilag player prediction?

See above. Antilag doesn’t predict.

(SCDS_reyalP) #67

Um, the aimbot may help him aim, but surely it can’t decrease spread?

(Something for Kendle to add…)[/quote]
You are correct. The spread that matters is calculated on the server. So barring some very bizzare bug, no client cheat can change your spread.

But if your aim is near pefect, spread doesn’t matter much. Especially if you have lvl3 light weapons.

(Kendle) #68

More amendments made, some tidying up and re-arrangement, thanks for the continued contributions everyone.

(RAV3N) #69

anti-recoil cheats :slight_smile:

(Kendle) #70

Don’t exist in ET.

(RAV3N) #71

thats alrite then

so many in call of duty :frowning:

(Oxygen - o2) #72

Great post kendle, hope we can find those damn cheaters *hides

is this thread basicly searching for all cheats and telling every1 else so they can be banned with ETpro and Punkbuster?

i think there is a wallhack type of thing you can set with cvars, set your gfx to the lowest possible and you can see a faint image of things through walls, it kinda flickers, also on caulks, usually on boards and stuff, props

i have only noticed this on RTCW but its the same engine so i thought it might be to do with ET too, ill get some screenies

(Grimmy_EFG) #73

Great thread. Perhaps it should be stickied?

(Sauron|EFG) #74

Getting shot around corners isn’t a bug Kendle, it’s a side-effect of how antilag works and it applies to all implementations.

because the antilag system has incorrectly calculated that you were visible to the shooter when they fired their gun

It has correctly (hopefully) calculated that you were visible to the shooter when he fired his gun, and that’s why it was considered a hit.

(Kendle) #75

Yep, amended and moved to the Gameplay Issues section. In my defense this is my last day at work before a week’s holiday and I’m trying to get up to date with stuff and keep on top of this thread :eek:

(Kendle) #76

No, all these things are already known to ETPro and Punkbuster. It’s about raising awareness of cheating, or rather the lack of it, because there’s so much crap spoken about it that a new player (or someone seriously misinformed) could be lead to believe that cheating is a big problem in ET.

There are some cvars that will do that, but they’re restricted by Punkbuster (if setup properly).

(Oxygen - o2) #77

ok, i see it on [FuN] on Marko’s beach RTCW server, im SURE that has PB on it, ill look

(Naminator) #78

Great post Kendle. Will make a link to this forum on EE website. Will be useful to try and inform players of ET what can and cant be done. Might even help them stop complaining and start improving to become better themselves :slight_smile: .

Keep up the good work btw Kendle. Seen a lot of work being done by you in the ET community and is all positive.

(ouroboro) #79

small soldier (oxygen): just because a server has pb doesn’t really mean much as far as extreme cvar tweaks goes. when you join a server, drop the console and wait for the cvar violations notice. if the server didn’t check for anything but just said you have zero violations, it’s not even checking. avoid those servers (most admins don’t restrict anything sadly). for example, the famous bio server is considered a pretty leet server, but it doesn’t even restrict m_pitch last time i checked. i wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole because the tweakers will likely have fancy headshot scripts. i am only able to ping a very small handful of sv_pure, pb, etpro 3, sw servers with appropriate cvar restrictions under 100 ms. funny that out of 2500 servers i am lucky to find 2 playable ones most days. i’ve often considered renting a server and setting up the ultimate et server, perfect in every way, but then i see the hundreds of empty et servers and realize nobody would play on it so why bother…

bottom line: if the server isn’t enforcing league-like cvar restrictions, don’t play there. there’s an example of good restrictions here: http://www.teamwarfare.com/rules.asp?set=Enemy+Territory+League and here: http://www.clanbase.com/rules.php?lid=1420 and several other places but you get the idea.

btw can someone address this post of mine? sorry to bump but i’m still not clear, and i apologize if i’m being thick-headed but i’m convinced server hacks are possible (not that i’ve ever seen anything to make me suspicious, just that it would seem logical):

“so basically, i can make a hacked qagame_mp_x86.dll on my server that i’ve added a secret command to that would give me/my friends an advantage, but it would have to use it’s own directory on the clients pc like shrubet does, thus alerting them to my antics…?”

(Kendle) #80

BiO doesn’t check m_pitch? I’ll have to check that out, m_pitch is a recommended cvar check, not to mention being part of the Clanbase config that BiO’s is based on.

fwiw I have my ASE filters set to ETPro / SW / <200 ping and I find loads, and I can’t remember the last time I stumbled on a server that didn’t have properly setup Punkbuster restrictions.

Based on Rains post on the subject of server hacks I’m convinced they’re possible just not very probable (you can use client hacks on many servers but server hacks on only the ones they’re installed on).

Also, I assume (but I’m not sure) that a server hack would indeed create another folder within your ET directory, thus altering people to its existance.