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mlewis1969

BattlEye: make it work for the common gamer

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Making it work for the common gamer: It's complicated and not easy to use and has to be configured for every new map. It's like being told to add our own virus definitions to BattlEye when most of us don't even know the first thing about hacks or what the code looks like in the RPT file (remember, I'm not a coder). Don't you think BattlEye should be handling these definitions and updating on a regular basis and not us?

P.S. The learning curve is getting out of hand, most of us just wanna come home from work, build mission files and have fun playing the game w/o having to worry about being hacked.

Edited by mlewis1969
added post script

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What? Server administration != "common gamer"...

If you're trying to host a dedicated server then you should get acquainted with the tools at hand. BE can also use a set load of definitions and rulesets in the form of .txts if I'm understanding you correctly (and my knowledge of BE). If you can't manage to run a dedi, I suggest scrapping BE and playing with your friends instead.

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First of all, the "common gamer" is the player, not the server admin. And it works for the player.

Also, the script filters you are talking about are optional. You don't have to use them, you can just leave BE on and don't do anything else. This way, you don't really have any protection of scripts being executed, however you still have the basic protection of BE itself.

Also, it's not BE's job to provide fitlers for any mission or mod. Those are Admin features after all, and covering all of them is pretty much impossible anyway. The best solution is probably the mission creators supplying and updating filters together with their mission.

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First of all, assumptions are the termites of relationships. So, why would you assume I know nothing about battleye and server administration? in fact, I've had my own server since the beginning of alpha. But that's not what I wanted this discussion to be about. I wanted to discuss battleye and how it should be more user friendly, not about common gamers. I suggest you don't go around trying to educate the world with your profound knowledge and keep your smart remarks to yourself. And if this post turns out to be a non-moderated troll-fest, you know what you can do with it.

Lol @ scrapping BE and playing with your friends

3rd World sucks don't it? Bunch of unhappy prunes.

Edited by mlewis1969

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I wanted to discuss battleye and how it should be more user friendly, not about common gamers.
BattlEye: make it work for the common gamer

Huh?

Anyway, how would you suggest they make it more user-friendly?

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BE's client / server side script-filters are optional, additional layer of security added next to BE's own security ...

they not mandatory

due to simple fact there is 100k user missions which can use 10k user made scripts and 10k mods made by content makers

hence why the mission maker/mod maker or server owner must take care of this himself

it's technicaly impossible to offer You 'universal' ruleset working in each mission well enough ...

sure, someone may argue 'make automated parser which produces the filters' ...

but that's not BE's job ... someone from community might want to take up that challenge

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naivety aside, isn't everything that you mentioned in your first post in that thread been implemented? ie, the removal of those scripting commands that caused all the problems? Or am I completely missing the point here?

Not all. There have been a few steps in the right direction like the removal of setVehicleInit and addition of compileFinal, but there are still several functions that can be called from the client (if BE filters aren't configured to block them) that change MP state.

As usual BattlEye's come along to fix BI's problems, but that will never be as good as a proper fix. And of course then you get people like this that will consider it to be BattlEye's fault that the filtering isn't magic, of course without providing any alternative solutions themselves.

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Aren't we also in the first iteration of the new BE and there is more to come? That's what I am assuming anyway.

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Aren't we also in the first iteration of the new BE and there is more to come? That's what I am assuming anyway.

Maybe there are more filters BE could add (I can't think of any but who knows, seems people have always found script commands with unintended effects) in the future, but that still isn't actually resolving the problem, just a band-aid fix. And that's the problem: the band-aid fix is all BE can do. BI is the only one that can actually make the API changes. The problem with the BE filters is that they require mission-specific configuration and also rely on mission makers not doing stupid things to be completely effective.

Once again, I'm happy that BE is around for this and appreciate what $able has done for this game and A2, which includes these filters, but this is more "$able picking up the pieces and fixing BI's problem (and doing the best _he_ can possibly do from his end)." And that's what I don't want to see... I want a proper MP architecture that does not blindly trust everything the client says, just like DayZ SA gets.

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It would be nice if someone could/would explain exactly how to go about making these server side script filters. If it's easy enough, everyone should be able to make their own but, not without a good example. I thought battleye worked like any other virus scanner and updated their own virus definitions. I see now that I must have been wrong about battleye because I thought it was their job to control the hacking situation entirely. So now my understanding (please correct me if I am wrong) is that it's up to the server admins to add their own protections along-side battleye. And if this is the case, can't we just copy the whole list of definitions and paste them into the script filters? I wouldn't know what to do if I had to edit or make my own from scratch. I don't wanna do without battleye, I think it's a great idea but is it useless now that we have to use these script filters?

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just like DayZ SA gets.

While I do agree that Arma's server architecture could be more secure, you can't compare that to DayZ SA. DayZ SA netcode is mostly server-side and made to be played as an MMO. You just can't do that with Arma.

I thought battleye worked like any other virus scanner and updated their own virus definitions. I see now that I must have been wrong about battleye because I thought it was their job to control the hacking situation entirely.

BE detects cheats completely on it's own. However, it's up to the server admin to decide what scripts BE should kick/ban for.

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the only person who wrote 'major sized' BE filters for 'whole mod' was me for DayZ mod,

i made it as Proof Of Concept, with hope others will follow, but i kept doing it for nearly year ...

from last monh it's in hands of the Dayzmod dev team (namely facoptere)

https://github.com/DayZMod/Battleye-Filters

and i'm just obseving to fix lil glitches or oversights...

i know some made similar ones for other mods but nobody really published it for general use ...

Edited by Dwarden

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I swear to god Terox made a Battleye tutorial which partially went on about the relevant filters. They're optional really, the more you add the more you lock your server down, but it's optional. It will work well enough without the filters.

There are no "good examples" because no-one has either a) Needed to use them or b) Needed guidance on them. The fact it's a relatively new interface so old filters won't work may also be a factor in why there are none present at this moment in time.

Just take deep breaths and sure enough we will see progression.

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it's not new interface, exists since last summer, it was just expanding with more server side filters over time ...

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While I do agree that Arma's server architecture could be more secure, you can't compare that to DayZ SA. DayZ SA netcode is mostly server-side and made to be played as an MMO. You just can't do that with Arma.

Why not?

I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but there's no reason such an architecture "isn't possible for Arma" or "doesn't fit the Arma gameplay style." All it means is that clients are unable to directly modify MP game state (as they can do now by calling any of the BE-filtered functions). Instead, they'd make RPCs to the server and those functions would be performed on the server, in accordance with the mission logic.

All BI needs to do is disable those functions from being called by clients (and make the server ignore them). Ideally they'd get rid of publicVariable as well and provide an RPC mechanism for those remote function calls as well as a mechanism to sync state to JIP players, but it's not like the community can't implement that themselves using publicVariable (sadly, this seems to be the BI thing).

To reiterate: no functionality whatsoever would be lost in Arma (anything and everything you can do now would still be possible), just the implementation of it would be different. And the advantage is significant - security by default (by forcing mission developers to not do stupid things) and without any mission-specific configuration as is the case now.

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I somewhat agree with you eddieck, however I guess it's too late for Arma 3 to move to something like that. :/

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@eddieck: How about we all or those in favor of it, vote on it in the A3 feedback Tracker? If someone has already made the suggestion, I would be glad to give my +1 vote in favor of a new API layer.

Edited by mlewis1969

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BE detects cheats completely on it's own.

theoretically, yes.

playing pvp 99% of the times since arma 1 only in servers battleye protected. i saw just 2 guys get banned for hacking, probably they were the biggest noob hackers ever i guess. or we have 1 of the most fair players in the mp game community of all games or BE sucks. make a choice. i saw people shooting hellfires from a pistol (less than 1 year ago in OA) inside a server with BE protection. i think we have a looooooot of work to do on this software before being able to calling it "decent".

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@eddieck: How about we all or those in favor of it, vote on it in the A3 feedback Tracker? If someone has already made the suggestion, I would be glad to give my +1 vote in favor of a new API layer.

If someone creates it I'll +1 it, but frankly, it's a complete waste of time. Not only has BI known about these issues for a long time and made efforts to resolve them in another game, DnA himself has provided an excuse of why it won't be done:

I do not believe for a moment we can have both freedom and fully secure MP without serious restrictions. The only seemingly valid method would be an approach taken by the DayZ project via its MMO architecture. Keep in mind this concept does not gel with Arma 3 as it was designed - it means all client actions are validated on a server, and this makes client-side modding and scripting much more difficult. Acceptable for DayZ, not for Arma 3. We will however do our best to improve security, reduce vulnerabilities and walk the fine line between freedom and security based on your feedback.

(Once again, that approach would not limit anything.)

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theoretically, yes.

playing pvp 99% of the times since arma 1 only in servers battleye protected. i saw just 2 guys get banned for hacking, probably they were the biggest noob hackers ever i guess. or we have 1 of the most fair players in the mp game community of all games or BE sucks. make a choice. i saw people shooting hellfires from a pistol (less than 1 year ago in OA) inside a server with BE protection. i think we have a looooooot of work to do on this software before being able to calling it "decent".

So just because you saw a few cheaters automatically means BE sucks? Please, go on a server with BE disabled and then see how many cheaters you will get. It's also possible that the missions that had those cheaters had poorly configured filters...

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So just because you saw a few cheaters automatically means BE sucks?

pretty much, obviously. when you have some thousand hours in game you can say that.

Please, go on a server with BE disabled and then see how many cheaters you will get.

no thx.

It's also possible that the missions that had those cheaters had poorly configured filters...

yes, it could be an explanation. the other 1 is that BE sucks. simply.

since you probably will not believe me if im telling that we tested hard BE and its lacks to detect cheaters ill make a video on that.

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you simply fail to realize BE isn't there to auto-detect in-game script cheaters ... for that are custom build BE script filters ...

BE can't determine if script is abuse or wanted by script /misson /mod designer?

anway BE works agains 'cheats' quite well ... prove me otherwise (via PM) about working cheats :)

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