When Can We Have A Proper Filechecker BIS?

[Marshal 0]

Dear BIS Leaders and Marek,

I am asking you on behalf of all the teams and player in my league (TNT League - http://www.tntleague.com) for a proper release of a filechecker for our servers.

It seems that since the release of patch 1.96, little has been done to support the current OFP community. The vast majority of players who play the game on a regular basis (especially those in leagues and ladders) are basically at their wits end trying to work out a way to stop cheats coming onto our servers.

Surely you can release some patch with code which will quickly and effectively route out the cheats?

I think the main problem is that cheatfiles can basically be named anything which makes home-made filecheckers become obsolete very quickly. Wouldnt it be a good idea for a future patch or OFP2 to have a server based program which could check all legitimate files that are part of the original code of OFP? Then ANY suspect files will be shown up as the player logs onto our servers.

I think that OFP is basically as perfect as it can be other than the way it lets cheaters to roam free in our leagues.

This is a desperate plea by the owner of one of the few leagues left to do something about it now before these cheats scare away the last of the decent community that OFP has left.

Marshal Law

TNT Owner

http://www.tntleague.com

[suma 8]

Quote[/b] ]Surely you can release some patch with code which will quickly and effectively route out the cheats?

I am afraid the answer is quite simple: no, we cannot.

To implement anything which would "quickly and effectively route out the cheats" is next to impossible, and it is certainly not a thing which can be done without significant effort and resources, which we are currently unable to dedicate to this, being busy with ... guess what ... other tasks.

We will do our best to provide much better cheat protection tools for the sequel, but you may want to keep in mind that preventing cheats reliably is not be possible until some "trusted computing" platform (like MS suggested Palladium) becomes commonly adopted. As long as anyone can reverse engineer and modify the game exe file, it is always possible to disable any filecheckers or circumvent any protection.

[benu 1]

Just have to rant a little here:

I have been combating cheats as a server admin for many years in this game and other games before ofp, but i would rather see the occasional cheater on my server than to see "palladium commonly adopted." Also, i don't think cheating is that much of an issue right now. See here.

I think bis supports 1.96 really well, because 1.91 should have been the last version of ofp and they made 1.96 to address some critical problems. Hell, i know games which did not even START after the first patch and the programmers made a second patch which they weren't allowed to put out because the publisher didn't want to put any more money into supporting that game. OFP got more than three years of support and if you look at the changes between 1.00 and 1.46 and between 1.75 and 1.96 you just have to greatful for all that bis did.

I too have my little gripes about ofp (netcode should be more so that authority lies at the server only instead of the kind of "democratic" approach of local events we have now, there should be more configuration options for servers, linux support should be better (where is 1.96a for linux?), some engine limitations, etc), but all in all i am happy with ofp and just hope that those issues will be resolved with ofp2.

I don't understand that xbox issue at all, but i guess some marketing experts will know better than me if this is worth the time and money. I would have really liked TJs idea of an ofp 1.5 for the pc containing the new features of the xbox version (jip, shaders, etc), and i really don't like to wait til 2006 because of the xbox version. Right now the ofp community is shrinking, many squads/communities we had good ties to stopped playing ofp and i am not sure if the ofp community will survive til 2006/ofp2. And i think ofp2 will not be as big a success if you have to recruit a whole new mp community again instead of building on the foundation of the ofp1 community.

[Gadger 0]

Can you atleast not add the possibility of using "wildcards" in the filechecker Suma? i.e. instead of adding 1234.dll you add ****.dll where * can be any character.

[Marshal 0]

What about games that come packaged with Punkbuster? They seem to do a pretty good job. Or maybe what if BIS encodes all its files with a specifically built code program that is only available to themselves?

In other words they could package the data in OFP so that no commercially available program is able to unpack or read it - it would just come out as gobbledygook.

Its fine BIS now turning their sole efforts to OFP2, but they have to remember that they still have a community from the first game (which will also be the majority of the public buying OFP2) that still want to play this game and still want to see it supported. Would BIS rather risk the loss of the majority of OFP players who have stuck with the game this long but who can now not get a decent game because of cheats or the fear of somebody cheating, or would BIS rather release a filechecker or server sided code which would come in a patch release which would go some way in trying to let the diehard fans play a game in peace without the threat of some idiot coming onto the server and raining bombs onto our heads?

I keep a close eye on a certain cheating community's website and I can tell you now that they are working on wallhacks and anti recoil programs to make the game even more pointless in playing.

Does BIS value its present customer base or is it just thinking of the sequel? And if I can put things into perspective - Why would players who have left in their droves over the past few months bother to buy OFP2 when it comes out if they think that come a year after release the game will be in the same situation that we find ourselves in now?

I can think of many ways to combat cheats and Im not even a programmer. For starters you make OFP only recognise original files that it was released with (and also update the list in any patches so that the game can keep up to date). You could also make it aware of file sizes of those files so anyone tinkering with the code would have to at the very least make sure that their code did not take up any further memory. You could also have a code which allowed server admins to add certain addon pack information - so for instance if a server or league wanted to use lets say the BAS addons, the BAS addons could be added to the list of files which were allowed.

Its a simple idea but one which could stamp out cheating in an instant.

ML

[kegetys 2]

In other words they could package the data in OFP so that no commercially available program is able to unpack or read it - it would just come out as gobbledygook.

Then we couldn't play OFP since OFP couldn't unpack or read it  

Quote[/b] ]Its fine BIS now turning their sole efforts to OFP2, but they have to remember that they still have a community from the first game (which will also be the majority of the public buying OFP2) that still want to play this game and still want to see it supported.

They have already supported OFP for a very long time, and OFP2 has already had its release date pushed back a few times. More OFP1 things would mean that OFP2 would take even longer. And I dont think the OFP1 community at it's current size is anything even near the majority of the people who would be buying OFP2, or you'd be expecting quite small sales numbers.

Quote[/b] ]I can think of many ways to combat cheats and Im not even a programmer.

And thats propably why the methods you describe won't likely work very well in practice...

[feersum.endjinn 6]

What it comes down to is that cheat prevention is theoretically impossible. You can have Punkbuster, but someone with sufficient motivation can crack it too. You can only catch most common and blatant cheats with it, someone writing his custom cheat software can probably get away with it.

It is same kind of problem why copy protections and DRM simply do not work in the long run - no amount of crypto does any good if the attacker and recipient are one and same person.

I'd just include some kind of spectator script on missions, usually you can catch cheaters easily when you're watching them in 1st person view. For really serious squad ladder matches you can have some 3rd party referee to look out for cheaters.

[Marshal 0]

Quote[/b] ]They have already supported OFP for a very long time, and OFP2 has already had its release date pushed back a few times.

And in all that time BIS never even attempted to release some sort of filechecker. It has been left up to the community to basically make their own filecheckers and hard cheese if you dont like the cheating because were working on the next installment. Ever heard the saying 'Start as you mean to go on.' ?

What I mean Kegetys is that if BIS zip up their program files with a brand new compressor program made for them exclusively, how can somebody be able to hack the files if they cannot even get them to open? Its a bit like BIS being the sole owner of winrar and everyone else has winzip. Obviously only the code would need to be zipped in such a fashion, the maps etc would have to have the ability to be opened, but once again, only OFPs map editor should be able to do it.

Ill give you all a very good example of a game that does not have cheats - Ultima Online. The reason being is that it is being constantly updated and on their own servers. Could OFP2 be run in similar way? I dont see any reason why not?

Lets put my idea into another context. Lets say that theres 1000 tickets sold for a Rock concert and the promoters know that there are going to be 1010 people turn up with tickets. What would you do if? Its simple. You sit at the gate (or in game terms - the minute each player logs onto the server) and check everyones ticket. It turns out that 10 people have fake tickets and you route them out. It could be the same in game terms. The program checks the files from the person who is logging on and if he seems to have too many files or they do not correspond to the files that were originally shipped (or updated) with OFP then that player gets the boot.

Lets all remember that as it stands OFP lets any file of any name be put into its folders. It does not scan to see what these files are, if they are well hidden then thats it, the cheat can get away with it, but under my idea, OFP would say 'hang on a minute - this folder shouldnt be here'.

As I wrote earlier, people wanting to use mod files can do so quite easily if they are in a league situation and the filechecker could be altered to allow certain addons to be allowed onto the server.

Get my point?

ML

[kegetys 2]

Quote[/b] ]They have already supported OFP for a very long time, and OFP2 has already had its release date pushed back a few times.

And in all that time BIS never even attempted to release some sort of filechecker.

Ermh... There is a "file checker" in OFP which was not there in 1.0 afaik., and it has been updated many times.

Quote[/b] ]What I mean Kegetys is that if BIS zip up their program files with a brand new compressor program made for them exclusively, how can somebody be able to hack the files if they cannot even get them to open?

This kind of things simply don't work. OFP needs to open the files, and when OFP can open the files, so can I or you or anyone else.

[cain2001 0]

Filecheckers have been proven being to easy to crack. What we need is to find other ways to combat cheaters. Marshal, the league matches cheating could be stopped with specators with fraps running. Its easy and effective. The real problem is to find a way to stop the public cheaters which causes the biggest dammage in the commnuity. Most filecheckers detect these guys since theyre noobs.

Super cheat players often get caught in the filecheckers, and that every 100th game when a guy drop bombs on me, i can be happy because i know its very rare.

[benu 1]

You can't have a secure connection if one (or both) of the endpoints are insecure. That's what Suma meant when he spoke about palladium. As long as a player can do with his computer what he wants to, he can decrypt any program/code. The cpu of the computer has to read that code in unencrypted form, and so can the user. Punkbuster gets cracked too. If the cheats get known pb will do something about it, but if someone keeps his cheats for himself they may never know. Afaik there are working cheats for pb right now, and when i set up pb servers we switched to other tools because pb did not work too well. Some admins even used several anticheat tools for their servers at once.

You can't "detect and prevent all cheats". It's a constant battle.

[Marshal 0]

But like I said Ultima Online does not have cheats, or at least those who have tried have had their accounts frozen, so the way forward as I see it is for BIS to run dedicated servers which check players as they come online. Granted, players can change code on their own servers, but they cant change the code on dedicated servers.

ML

[benu 1]

How do you know uo has no cheats? I just read the opposite a few days ago, duping was really massive in uo. Yeah, those caught may get their accounts frozen, but that does not mean that there are no cheats.

[c930 0]

Since we have the alsr checkfile on our Public Server, we havn't noticed any cheaters in the game. The only disadvantage is that our banlist becomes bigger and bigger..:D

http://www.alsr.djknuffel.de/board....ca7d138

But of course, wildcards would be great!

[sicilian 0]

BIS even wants us to help ourselves as they always give intends which were put in new ideas.

Without their help we were still not at the current point of knowledge to prevent cheats and other modifications! Remember that!

@Suma

Exactly because you want us to do our own methods it would be a very good thing if BI can provide the OFP server's code.

So the community could try to improve the servers methods and expand it to the best.

This would be very practicable, takes you the work and gives us more possibilies to improve OFP.

Take away unnesseccary code to limit it to the minimum we should know about. Think over BI...

[JRMZ 0]

BIS even wants us to help ourselves as they always give intends which were put in new ideas.

Without their help we were still not at the current point of knowledge to prevent cheats and other modifications! Remember that!

@Suma

Exactly because you want us to do our own methods it would be a very good thing if BI can provide the OFP server's code.

So the community could try to improve the servers methods and expand it to the best.

This would be very practicable, takes you the work and gives us more possibilies to improve OFP.

Take away unnesseccary code to limit it to the minimum we should know about. Think over BI...  

Do you have a readme somewhere to help people install this filechecker on their ded servers.

People like me who don't know sh*t about these things

[sicilian 0]

Klick on my signature to get install info.

For further info contact me again.

[Pappy Boyington 0]

I can think of many ways to combat cheats and Im not even a programmer.

i know of a single, easy to do, way of defeating cheaters.

make online, multiplayer cheating an international web-based crime; and then make it punishable by death

and after the 2nd lil punk mofo caught cheating has a 7.62 logded in his skull many other cheaters will think twice before downloading uberhack-for-dummys.exe

see, simple

[Blackden 0]

Yep,

I think like you Cain, we have more chance to have a clean league with referee in each match, i said this since i was in EFL. But who do the job...?

And Kegetys, even if the actual OFP community is less important than 3 years ago, we all still play this game every night, every times, 3 years after, so we can ask something even if we already knew the result.

No miracle. Anyway thx BIS for your fabulous game. And think about the poor admin league in your OFP2 dev.  

Suma, when u say :As long as anyone can reverse engineer and modify the game exe file.

Modify the game exe file is not prohibited by the law?

[cain2001 0]

Prevent people to get their cheats working on a server or find a way to detect them? These are two diffrent things. Every game have their ways to detect cheaters but no game will never be able to prevent them.

I belive in good scripting to solve these problems, even a thing like all buildings removed on hexenkessel or 50LST ships in the sky. It is possible to do, but it will take a good scripter a couple of days to do it.

[Taconic 0]

Suma, when u say :As long as anyone can reverse engineer and modify the game exe file.

Modify the game exe file is not prohibited by the law?

Robbing banks is also against the law. It doesn't stop people from doing it, though.

[Guest]

What it comes down to is that cheat prevention is theoretically impossible. You can have Punkbuster, but someone with sufficient motivation can crack it too. You can only catch most common and blatant cheats with it, someone writing his custom cheat software can probably get away with it.

That's very few people. While something like Punkbuster doesn't prevent 100% of cheats, it certainly cuts down the number by a huge amount. I've been playing Quake3 a long time and have seen many many cheats. Since Punkbuster came along in the 1.32 patch I've heard of one cheat, once on a PB enabled server. It's not perfect (it does add to lag, no matter what PB devs say), but other than some fairly draconian measures (Microsoft comes to mind), it's about the best out there.

$0.02

[sicilian 0]

I would say BI will do more for anti cheating next time. OFP was the first game on that sector with really new features. I guess noone expected one should spend so much time in cheat prevention and secure coding... That's why we should be proud of what they've done after for us! It's never simple to implement such features like they did.

The only thing we should do is to sometimes use our brain a bit more. Sure we need some ideas or hints from time to time but as all can see on this forums it is so much possible if you use your brain.

Asking for special details to "selfsolve" a problem should never be ignored but I read much more injudicious statements as really well thought out things.

Anyway we would become much stronger if some ppl get together and not only work alone! There are very involved ppl in this community but mostly there are only groups of 2 till 5 which work together and create new things. Coders are really rare here and we should do a much better job if more would work together...

Just a wish

[NKVD 0]

spectators in league matches is a bad idea since spectators can be corrupted or bought by some opponent team..or spec. could be on TS with one of the teams playing and telling them locations of enemy position...also, learning tactics and then telling about it to opposing team...

imho, BIS should concentrate on OFP2 now and make it the best game, better than OFP1 ...

or maybe BIS could release some SDK server tools to trusted members of our community like Kegetys etc, Im sure those guys have enough time to modify existing file checking system in OFP...anyway, that's my two dollars.

[sicilian 0]

or maybe BIS could release some SDK server tools to trusted members of our community like Kegetys etc, Im sure those guys have enough time to modify existing file checking system in OFP

Yes that's the right way as I mentioned before

My opinion to referees is they can't have their eyes on everyone at everytime. And even finding them is not the easiest task.