UT99 online gaming latest years - bad impressions

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TammT
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Re: UT99 online gaming latest years - bad impressions

Post by TammT »

Just more messy replies, more headache.
There are diverse speed hacks - like Cheat Engine. What I described is that some even don't need any speed hack to be way faster. Not even old D3D renderer. Same is with Open GL renderer. It's all on NetSpeed, computer, GX speed. And lame Newnet, whatever other add ons.
JackGriffin
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Re: UT99 online gaming latest years - bad impressions

Post by JackGriffin »

I think you are one of those people who will never listen to rational explanation and will instead just hand-wavingly dismiss everyone they don't agree with.

You say
don't need any speed hack to be way faster.
but that's just not possible. You as a client do not dictate your speed, the server does. The only way to affect that is to submit data that isn't correct to the server about yourself. Literally all you decide is direction. The server is entirely responsible for velocity.

You are seeing what you want to see, not the factual way things really are. You are entirely welcome to plug your fingers in your ears and go "LaLaLa" towards me but it won't change reality. I've done extensive work on this, even creating and distributing methods to catch players doing these sort of hacks and cheats. The people replying to you understand the problem where you obviously don't. You should either listen to them or just admit that nothing anyone says will sway your opinion.

You can easily sway mine by proving your side. I can replicate everything I've explained to you and show you how I did it. When you can say the same then get back to me. I'd be happy to say "You are right and I was wrong" in huge font if that's the case.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
TammT
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Re: UT99 online gaming latest years - bad impressions

Post by TammT »

JackGriffin wrote:I think you are one of those people who will never listen to rational explanation and will instead just hand-wavingly dismiss everyone they don't agree with.

You say
don't need any speed hack to be way faster.
but that's just not possible. You as a client do not dictate your speed, the server does. The only way to affect that is to submit data that isn't correct to the server about yourself. Literally all you decide is direction. The server is entirely responsible for velocity. ...
I will prove that I'm absolutely right in my claim that can be faster without speed hack. All you need is to watch linked demo recording.
And I could finish here. But of course, hard to believe that you will accept it - despite fact that speed changes in middle of 1 match, and all what I did is changing Netspeed in UT options.
Yes, server dictates speed, and if you'd read whole thread you could see that I talked about it, and even mentioned some admin who is not aware about it.
I don't know what kind of data submission you mean - but saying that you just contradict to what wrote 2 sentences earlier (.. just not possible) :mrgreen: Is it possible that your logic is some colossal misfire ? :lol2: Sorry, but I really can not be serious with this .
Finally: if server is so "dumb" that accepts some irregular client data, then it needs update, to make it better. But if you read whole thread will see that there is solution for all it, and suggested not only by me.
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Re: UT99 online gaming latest years - bad impressions

Post by JackGriffin »

First let me explain some absolute rules that the game uses. When a player moves from point A to point B it will do so using three criteria:
1-orientation
2-velocity
3-update frequency
Aside from the server 'placing' you somewhere via teleport, etc. these are the only three things involved in your moving. You as a client are responsible for input on all three of these. You move your mouse and press forward and the server computes your 360 degree rotation and applies the map's player movement speed to you. This is repeated on a regular basis with some input from your update frequency. By affecting your update frequency you can confuse the server into updating a bit faster or slower which will make you move faster (or slower) than you would be able to do. This is why aimbots and hacks all don't have "super speed" options. You can only affect update frequency to a point.

Now, back to your post. I did not contradict myself. By changing your netspeed you affect your update frequency. In essence you are using the console to speed hack. By assigning this change to a macro you can make yourself incredibly hard to hit online in a DM match. This is why multiple changes to your netspeed (or local cpu speed adjustments will have the same effect) get you instantly and permanently banned on any server I ran. There's never a reason to change multiple times while playing, the only reason is someone attempting to game the ancient way UEngine is hard coded.

So if you have some other way to speed hack we are all ears. Everything you can do with your update frequency is already well known in the community though and good server admins will already be guarding against it (I'm looking at you, jets servers...you know your people are doing this).

As an aside to this discussion I wrote a pretty thorough anticheat to run alongside ACE before I retired. I sent the mod and source code to Medor. Please feel free to go ask him for it, he has my permission to share it if he chooses. Because you will also get the source code you are easily able to generate custom versions for your server. In the course of 30 seconds you can totally change the package name and this will allow you to identify the bytehackers who attempt to circumvent the anticheat. Also it has settings to let you generate logs on someone speedhacking without them even being aware you are doing it.

Anyway I hope this helps you out some.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
TammT
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Re: UT99 online gaming latest years - bad impressions

Post by TammT »

Yes, what you described is basically correct. And that method was OK with old, slow connections. Now it's just not.
But, as I said couple times here - noone will make such settings what make him slower. Contrary - will go on fastest possible. Asking player to lower his settings is ridiculous, and anything what you can set in regular UT options is just not cheat, not hack, that's completely legal, to say so. Much worse is that players won't admit their higher speeds - and that's probably most abused on mentioned UnrealTeam.de server.
Btw. in my case, and with crap connection - it's not slow, but has large fluctuations in packet delays (for instance sometimes my own rockets kill me) - I have experienced significant speed up on only 1 server. On many I'm just slower than most.
To add, that I know about how to control game/player speed in computer games. I recently modded old game for better framerate. It had some pretty lame solution for constant game speed, on even very fast oldies, but at price of low framerate. So, I reworked it, removed some Vblank waits. But that was easy part. After that needed to mod plenty of things to keep shield, fuel etc. consumption, player speed, fireing normal. And what has it with UT99 ? UT99 speed control is lame too in fact. If it was done properly, it would run well (not unplayable fast offline) with V-sync off, even on 20 GHz CPU . Online, it is certainly more complicated, but speed should not relay on network speed, until it is not too low. Not even on update freq. If it is lower, should do proportionally bigger movement.
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Re: UT99 online gaming latest years - bad impressions

Post by JackGriffin »

You are wrong in several places. First, there are many people that will make themselves slower and not just faster. It's really the same thing, your velocity becomes unpredictable and you are much harder to lead and hit. In fact slower probably goes undetected more since you won't notice it nearly as often as someone who can run/fly/dodge faster than you. It's a trade-off I'd willingly make if I had the choice: lose a bit of overall speed to become harder to hit especially at distance.
anything what you can set in regular UT options is just not cheat, not hack, that's completely legal
but that's also not true. There exist many, many options that can be set by a player that give unfair advantages and so are condemned by the community. As a player you have the expectation to be reliable. By adjusting a number of things on your client you can submit data that is not reliable and so the admins have learned to monitor for them and ban players who are trying to do these things.

Lastly you say
Online, it is certainly more complicated, but speed should not relay on network speed, until it is not too low. Not even on update freq. If it is lower, should do proportionally bigger movement.

I've explained and explained why this won't work. Are you even reading my replies?

Finally if you are the person with the admittedly bad connection why are you so upset overall with this? If you have such problems with PL then you can expect to see weirdness. Whether you mean to or not you are wielding an advantage and likely are subject to removal if the admins are doing their jobs. You seem like a nice enough dude but I think you see a little something irregular and you are guessing at a whole lot of things you don't fully understand. UT is a *very* old game, you have to just accept that. It's weird and odd but that's part of it's charisma to many of us.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
TammT
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Re: UT99 online gaming latest years - bad impressions

Post by TammT »

JackGriffin wrote:You are wrong in several places. First, there are many people that will make themselves slower and not just faster. It's really the same thing, your velocity becomes unpredictable and you are much harder to lead and hit. .....
Sure, being slower is an advantage :mrgreen: Slow is unpredictable and much harder to hit :lol2: I could continue and explain why it is ridiculous, then about your other claims. But that would be just waste of time.
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Carbon
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Re: UT99 online gaming latest years - bad impressions

Post by Carbon »

TammT wrote:... waste of time.
/thread.
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Re: UT99 online gaming latest years - bad impressions

Post by JackGriffin »

Yeah, I really tried :MHEnd:
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Higor
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Re: UT99 online gaming latest years - bad impressions

Post by Higor »

UT's player movement code (patched in XC_Engine) has an exploit where by making yourself slower you can turbocharge the speedhack so it works for more than 3 seconds.
EDIT: Also, using this in ZeroPing I was able to mow down non-pawn targets with over 10k health in less than 2 seconds, which is the real main reason I developed LCWeapons.
TammT
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Re: UT99 online gaming latest years - bad impressions

Post by TammT »

Taking about old 3D games - which started to be with filled polygons somewhere about 1987-88 (Starglider 2 for instance) :
There were well coded ones considering game speed, and not so well coded. Example for later is Castle Master - on faster computer framerate will be better, but also everything will go faster. Because there is no real speed control - it will run as fast as CPU can. Well coded ones will have better framerate, but gamespeed will be practically same. Starglider 2 would be one of such. Or lot of diverse race, flight simulations.
And 10 years later UT99 is released, yet, it suffers from game speed control problems. + there is mouse lag problem, what forces players to play online with Vsync off . I think that problem lies in not good implementation of game in Windows, direct 3D. As we know, first Unreal was with Glide, SW rendering too. And UT99 too. Guides recommend using OpenGL driver instead D3D. Diverse patches, reworked renderers arrived, and we have now mess. Mostly in heads, In online UT99. Lot of admins sets their servers to be good for self and their friends. There are firms selling cheats - making money from it. It may be simply that count of those who really don't want fairplay is bigger. We, fair players are outvoted, outnumbered. Self claimed experts just make all it worse.
Last edited by TammT on Wed Jun 21, 2017 7:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: UT99 online gaming latest years - bad impressions

Post by nogardilaref »

Wow, 4 full pages of absolutely no development. So far the plot is confusing and I don't see any twist coming anytime soon.


TammT, let's just, for a brief moment, assume everything you say is correct and everyone else is wrong:

1 - Don't you think you would get more sympathy and understanding if you formatted your big walls of text properly and made them easier to read, along with being nicer and polite with whom is genuinely trying to help rather than communicate with a gun pointed at their heads?

2 - Could you, in nothing more than a few, well formatted easy to read sentences, summarize what exactly you're claiming and what exactly you want to do to "fix" the problem at hand?
With so many shots being fired, I am not sure what's going on anymore, so a quick to-the-point recap would be nice.
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Re: UT99 online gaming latest years - bad impressions

Post by TammT »

nogardilaref wrote:Wow, 4 full pages of absolutely no development. So far the plot is confusing and I don't see any twist coming anytime soon.
TammT, let's just, for a brief moment, assume everything you say is correct and everyone else is wrong:
1 - Don't you think you would get more sympathy and understanding if you formatted your big walls of text properly and made them easier to read, along with being nicer and polite with whom is genuinely trying to help rather than communicate with a gun pointed at their heads?
2 - Could you, in nothing more than a few, well formatted easy to read sentences, summarize what exactly you're claiming and what exactly you want to do to "fix" the problem at hand?
With so many shots being fired, I am not sure what's going on anymore, so a quick to-the-point recap would be nice.
Well, for me there is certainly some development here. I did not expect that this thread will solve anything. We just talking here. Twist ? Sorry, but this is not TV show, or some crime novel :)
I never said that I'm right in everything. Actually, I mentioned here that some of my accusements about cheat were wrong, and that their much higher speed is result of connection, computer speed, server settings. Also, there were some replies here, whit which I agreed, welcomed them.
1. The fact that I reply to you at all after such shallow statements as above means that I'm polite. It could be better formatted, my English could be better. But I don't think that it's so bad, that anyone good willing can see what's the point.
2. I did already once summarize. What is going on ? As said, mess is going on,
Now, about that " gun pointed at their heads" : there is reply from self claimed expert: "I think you are one of those people who will never listen to rational explanation and will instead just hand-wavingly dismiss everyone they don't agree with." - does it look as "pointing gun at head" to you ? Because for me yes. Despite it, I replied him twice in polite manner. But after writing utter nonsense - that being slower is better, I could only laugh and use smileys. And finish that line.

Summarising the speed difference problem:
On same server, in same match diverse players have diverse speeds. Indeed, those with better connection and faster computers are the faster ones. And that difference may go pretty high. Some guy from Switzerland has lowest ping, about 32, and is insanely fast. I would say about 3x than some slower (still at some 140% UT basic speed) player on that server. He claims that cheats not, and that's probably true (now blame me because I don't know is he cheating or not). The real problem is that he won't admit, he wont see that he is just much faster, and that makes him huge advantage. You can beat him, but mostly on maps where speed matters not that much.
And this is actually very typical case. Typical is too, that such players vote always on maps where speed matters. Typical case is some long funnel map, with redeemers at top - who first gets redeemer has half victory. They are very hard to kill because of speed. Additionally, all their actions are faster: faster rocket recharge, faster flying redeemers, teleporting. They don't like shock rifle - combo is best to kill them. This was from player perspective.
Now, let see it technically: as some described - server determines player's speed, and there is tickrate for updating moving players, object's, etc. positions. Now, I say that this model is not perfect, but can be OK if is executed strictly, and on client side there is proper speed control.
The problem is that there is no proper speed control on client side, especially now/ with newer, very fast CPUs, variable CPU clock. There is so called "multi-core" fix UT99 main exec. , what has it seems pretty good speed control. But I don't know server which will force you to use it.
Probably much bigger problem is on server side, better said on admin side. Most of them don't understand how all it works, and/or wont understand. Most of servers use outdated anti-cheat and net code.
Unfortunately, I don't see that Newnet works properly (versions 0.9x), but really will not repeat here written about.
And for end, the biggest problem in my opinion is attitude of majority: most of is not aware about what is really happening. Unable to see who is real good player, and who is just too fast - not fast with his fingers, but just moving way faster than should be at current server settings. There is people who talk about that clients (players) should use such settings what makes them not too fast. Now, again - this is ridiculous. In competition game where goal is to win, who will make self slower ? And speed of player, his actions is essential - on some maps more, on some less. but it is advantage on all.
The solution: it was written about it too. Servers can have proper speed control, and some claim that solved it. The real problem is how to make all admins to install proper code on their servers. That may be too demanding for concrete server, for instance. Not easy at all. Harder from that is make people to understand, to care at all.
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Re: UT99 online gaming latest years - bad impressions

Post by Carbon »

Nice summary. Very concise, tight as a corset on a walnut, no wasted words at all. A lean, mean writing machine. :highfive:
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Re: UT99 online gaming latest years - bad impressions

Post by JackGriffin »

Tamm, I'm telling you this as someone who has worked directly with almost every server admin who posts on this forum as well as a ton of other server groups: to a person all of them understand the problem. Every single time I've helped an admin ferret out issues on their server it became a shitshow. Very fast they see that cheating and exploiting is a much greater problem than they thought and they get presented with two clear and divided choices:
-Do nothing and they keep the group together and don't lose players
-Actively ban and their group ends up imploding

You can guess the route most take. It's also why I could never run a non-MH server. They know I'll name-and-shame because to me a secure and fair game is much more important than having a top spot on GameTracker.

It's really as simple as understanding that if you don't tolerate some level of cheating then you won't get a consistent player base. It's that bad.

*Important edit: This also includes us coders, mappers, and developers. I can't tell you the exploits I've found hidden in maps, mods, etc. Years back I decided I would never use any mod I either didn't make myself or that I couldn't see the clear source code. Oh, and if you play on a server using NewNet then you absolutely do it knowing that it's the most insecure and exploitable server mod there is. Any time you allow the client to make decisions that servers should be making then you allow a clear path to those wishing to impose influence. There's a reason the super competitive players LOVE NewNet servers and it ain't because it levels the playing field.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
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