Well the way i see it is like this:

Have no security module in place and be suspicious and vigilant against possible cheats

or

Have a security module and still have to be suspicious and vigilant against possible cheats but also loose the ability for some players to play



I know which I would prefer

'some' players = freebsd users?

at the end of the day its nicer to have a common platform/client and as close as possible to a level footing for all league players

and you'd still have a level footing without a security module.

Anyway im yet to see all the security checks done in eql, nqr and even ownage. I reckon in the 1.5 years ive come back to qw I have seen the checks done for a league/tourney game once or twice.

In ownage I haven't seen it at all yet.

I think that shows that if players really cared about having 'a little' security rather than none that you'd see the checks etc done far more frequently than they are.
The game is just as open to cheating now as it always has been, yet now we decide we should have security modules and the like. I just don't see the point.

agreed bandog, I never bothered with modules or checking models(since I use modified myself), I think it's all just paranoia to see if someone has modified sounds that make you hear some things better or whatever, I don't know
I don't see the person going through all the hustle of making new modified models or sounds that would improve their gameplay
fakeshaft, models, sounds and so on... it's not gonna help anyone!

Sounds are allowed to be modded, models aren't? :p

quad sound isnt allowed!!
same with pent/ring!
armos/weapons/amos aswell

yeh, can't modify then if you don' have the skills for it..
amos?
models should be, I demand a nicer quake with plague's models

Why, thank you.


Have you got your sock in your pocket yet? Have you made sure it's a smelly one?


Why don't you use MD5? Why don't you use SHA-1?

The real answer is that seat belts and hard hats are meant to protect against _accidents_. Neither will protect you from a malicious person stabbing you in the back with a knife.

The "security" module is trying to protect against malicious persons. It fails at that. And at the same time it locks out people and gives others a false sense of security.


But it helps sod all. It's couterproductive at best.

Should I quote the NNQL rules again? The NNQL rules say that you can't cheat with a "security" module.


Let's see... Buildings are generally such a thing. They're built to withstand normal wear and tear, and in some cases even earthquakes. And they do, in general. This is because buildings _can_ be made to not collapse every second week. But then again, buildings are not made to protect against someone bombing the building. That is, the objective of the building is to provide housing, thermal isolation, stability and a few others things. And they do.

The objective of the "security" module is to provide security. And it doesn't.


That's already where you began to become confused. Faustov statred talking about Ezquake, while it really had nothing to do with the problem. Then he asked me why I didn't contribute to Ezquake. I told him why I didn't. Then he started whining about it, and kept talking about Ezquake.


Ehh, what point was that?

You must be so far ahead of me that you know what my point is before I do


Saying that I am "on the FTE team" is a bit of stretching it, I think. Yes, I've contributed some fixes and a port to FTE, but that's about it. Stop trying to put me in a specific camp.

If it makes you feel any better, I can tell you that I don't use FTE to play Quakeworld. Just like I don't use Ezquake. I do use FTE as a server, though.


Hey, at least FTE has sound support. And probably has less critical bugs than your favourite. Though I guess we disagree what is a critical bug anyway.


Well, the whole thing is 100% completely fucking irrelevant. Why do you keep bringing it up? You're obsessed with Ezquake as well, it seems.

And Ezquake has serious bugs. Playability, installation, usage, security, platform support and more. But it is still 100% bloody irrelevant. Get over it already.


Right, good argument to why I should not use Ezquake. Thanks


Oh, I do well know the usage patterns of the general population. But why do you keep bringing this stuff up? It's boring and off topic.


Now, if it was only that. A feeble attempt which was not just close to zero, but zero, then it would be easier to ignore.

You keep forgetting the dark side of "security" modules, though.

You're happy to welcome absolutely no improvement at all while that "improvement" is destructive at the same time.

Why, thank you too!


OK, then why do your rules indirectly state the opposite?


OK, so, let's put "security" modules up against a simple alternative and compare positives and negatives:

"security" module:
- It locks out people.
- It gives a false sense of security.
- It takes up space on your HD.
- It ends up with tournaments having rules stating that if you claim someone is cheating, then it is just too bad.
+ Nothing

No measure taken:
- Nothing.
+ Nothing.

OK, let's see, this is an easy comparison The "security" module has 4 negative points and 0 positive points. No measure taken has 0 negative points and 0 positive points. Which thing is the best to do again?

Yeah, because we all know that Windows is the bestest OS ever and everyone wants to pay for it, pay for hardware which can run it and then use it. Oh, and then waste hours and hours and hours on trying to get Quake to run somewhat usable as well. The amount of times I hear people having to tweak the shit out of Windows and Quake to not have frame drops, laggy input, mouse acceleration and what not kind of scares me.

Nah, sorry, I don't buy it.

Heh, indeed. I've never seen it done in a QW tournament myself. I saw it in TF 4 years ago or so.

I see it be done on NA FFA servers where I am constantly accused of cheating

Kind of funny, actually.

Its actually done in div1 games!
I see them often, but thats only for official games
We dont think players "cheat" in the way you think of, with wallhacks etc.. but with modified stuff that a normal player can do and not using the security model.
its just a simple cheack, same as a simple check of the football the reff does before a game, to see if its pumped up good or not, he dosnt go and take drug test of all the players, he simply believes that they are all honest in that kind of way and just checks the shoes of the players!

Dont think QW is like Tour-the-france, we are not even close.
We are more like football, perhaps 1 out of 1000 player is cheating, but we spend all our man craft that we solidly have for other stuff to improve the game than to be focusing totally on this.

Imo you haveto weight up this and that against each other, it might be true that the nnql admins wrote wrong in some parts of the rules, I think it all was done in a haste .
they are from poland and they dont have the english-tongue that some other tourney-admins got.

Imo the security model is just a small check so that we can all sleep at night.
Without it we would have tons of whine, tons of demo checks etc..
with these, sure ppl can cheat but it will minimize it to such a little number.

just my thoughts about this, atleast in the European QW community.

btw, by football I ment world-football not american-rugby

Well said, Sassa.

personally i agree with bigfoot.

Why have a security module that doesnt provide total/very near to/extremely effecient security? It doesnt do anything at all. I would like people here to supply evidence of an example in a real qw situtation where the security module has actually foiled a cheater.

Yes the standard checks can root out modified mdl's and sounds, fair enough. But stopping more advanced cheats is the proof i want.

It would be a far better quakeworld either with a decent security system like punk-buster (and all the problems with that too) or just with fuck all. We all coped quite happily years ago without anything but the odd f_modified check so why all the fuss now when less people are inclined to cheat.

And at the end of the day most cheats are spotted by humans, not modules, and its also the person cheating that loses out.

So i think that unless we incorporate some kind of VAC system (which is brilliant btw) we will never have any security so lets just forget about it, sort the problems with linux users and all the other problems mentioned and get everyone access to tournaments.

bandog, I totally disagree!

I believe you have not been around during some official games in a long time!
just the whine over the ping issue is humongous and believe me, the f_modified f_ruleset etc is also a big deal!
if you take it away from them, then ppl will start specing demos and say "ParadokS you are such a cheater, I want wo vs slackers" etc.
Thats how the world of QW is now and has been the past 4 years I have been playing this game.

The security we got now is enough, if you want to play without it then play regular games and not official games.

Advanced cheats will always be possible imo!
Just look at a game such as Counter-Strike, were valve spends millions of dollars on it to prevent cheats and still day by day we get newer and advanced cheats.
You cant beat a cheater that wants to cheat, best way is to prevent most of the ppl and perhaps try to have a good sportsmanship within the community so the players dosnt try to cheat that hard and just try to "cheat" with models etc.. and can get caught before the game with a "f_modified" or "f_ruleset"

PB/VAC system don't say shit to me, still I can cheat with wallhack and aimbot in CS (latest version).

We have had some problems in NA (North America) that I know of and one single ILF aimboting problem here in Europe.
There are still some russians that cant believe that ILF used aimbot, they still believe that he played on fair terms and with legal stuff and that he just aims like a total aimbot.
The case would be here if we played by yours and bigfoot's suggestion that everybody will call each other for Ilf's, is that something we want?
CS community lost shitloads of players because of the cheating, yes they gained more because its childish friendly, but we dont want to loose those hardcore gamers we already got.
Think of this, if we took away the security model, then everybody would calling each other for ILF's, and the hardcore games would leave because of the community has failed.
I do not want that to happen, nor do you I believe.
Lets keep it this way and if we want to help to push QW forward we should try to solve this problem abit better!

Bigfoot, you are outside the community, well from the leagues as I have seen it, NQR/EQL. have not seen you at all and believe that you do not understand the mentality of the ordinary QW-tourney-player.
We are simple and we dont want these kind of truths to be published, we want this to be handled behind closed doors so we wont hear "there might be a cheater in the other team" after each game, that will simply just kill this wonderful game of ours.

thats about it.

Bigfoot I think you are speakin

lol sassa, cheating at cs
*ducks*

I don't understand why this is made such a big issue if the qw scene actually feel good with the status quo.

deleted the second sentence, dont need that kind of flame here /sassa qw.nu admin

at qhlan5, I believe, there were 4 kiddie cs players that said "cs > qw" so I told them I would beat them 1v4 anyday in cs.
Jumped in on the latest version of pb/vac or what ever it was with my latest cs cheat that I downloaded in seconds of astavista searchin and won eazly
QW ppl were specin behind me and laughing..

Well the security checks you mentioned were all possible without a security module.
I was doing those checks with 1517 and no security module. So the point of the module is?

ill say again, I would like people here to supply evidence of an example in a real qw situtation where the security module has actually foiled a cheater.


And like you say, yes, a committed cheater is almost impossible to stop. And in that case we should have hundreds of hax running around the servers, but we DON'T. Just shows how interested people are in cheating.

So this security module not only protects us from fuck all, but is ineffective at stopping a cheater even if one was to arrive, but in the meantime is preventing players enetering tournaments due to compatibility issues.

Why cant people understand that he module does nothing and all the 'security' they were on about has been possible without it?

Also, the advantage with VAc systems and the like, is that if you were to get caught you cant play the game ever again. That's enough of a deterrant for a start. Also although the odd hax would slip thru it has a large team of guys behind it and soon it would be covered, so players can only use cheats for a short time before being cuahgt and their IP logged and banned.


But tbh ive had enough of this now because its been the same for the whole 10 years ive been involved with qw. People always argue about 'what's allowed' or not and security stuff and allsorts and these arguments never get anywhere.

OK, then if you don't believe they're cheating, but just want to see if they, maybe accidentally or by being unaware, changed something which isn't allowed due to competition rules, why this feeble attempt at making it "hard to crack"? Just put the check in the client and be done with it, no need to rely on some pseudo-security half-baked solution. No need to pump it up to something it isn't.


Good, and that's how it should be.


Yes, and as I said, I don't really blame them, they just do as everyone else. The problem is with the general tourney admin mindset, not with a particular tournament.


Then make the check sensible, and not some you-must-run-this-platform-thing.


Hey, I'm perfectly clear about what football is, make no mistake

I'm only on this side of the pond temporarily for work.

okey, I think we are all cleared now!

The biggest question still stands;
When will we get that security that will be better than the one we got now?
I think ezQuake team is the only hope, perhaps fte but I dont think fte is suitable for pro-gaming
or is it?

too bad that Im no coder that can be in an assist for the ezQuake team so we can solve this once and for all.

thnx for the chat bigfoot/bandog etc..
learned alot

I guess he doesn't play against Swedes too often


Good enough and also way too much.


Indeed.


Not really. What is better? Someone gets turned away from QW because someone is cheating against him and noone believes him because everyone believes that cheating is impossible? Or that when it really happens, however rare it might be, that the person just gets kicked out of the tournament?


As long as it doesn't involve some happy magic mushroom binary, then I'm in.

Move the same functionality inside the client and then everything is fine, right?


It's kind of obvious that you don't see me playing competitions I'm not allowed to play.

Though once a team did sign me up for EQL without asking me, so I thought "what the heck?" and played a few games for them. So hey, I have played in EQL, despite that I broke the rules... And nobody ever checked


You hit the nail on the head here, it's all about psychology.

But then there wouldn't be a problem if f_modified gets moved inside the client, would there?


Well, I most certainly am

I saw what you wrote before Sassa deleted it.

I'm just wondering what makes you think that I am cheating and what makes you think I want to cheat?

Focus less on trying to make the client safe from local hacking.

The only somewhat workable way to detect cheating would be to have some server side heuristics, but even those wouldn't be perfect. But at least they don't rely on giving the client a secret it is supposed to keep.


Well, saying "QW" and "pro gaming" in the same sentence is a bit of an oxymoron


Thanks, you too.

Was nice to hear rational arguments for once

If your any good at this you should help the ezQuake team and the ktx team!
that is if you got the time!

What do you guys think of donating to the bigfoot fund, making him code what we want?

how about better netcode








/me runs

i read only 1st page and got bored.

bigfoot if you want to make this world better you can:
1) make your own client: which better that ezQuake, have some locks vs script kiddies (like replace eyes.mdl with player.mdl), etc. The protections agains "cp player.mdl eyes.mdl" usally named security module. And quakeoworld community use it since the qizmo was invented...

2) you can help with porting ezQuake to your favorite OS/arch. After that OS/arch port will be done i can share a part of security module, so you can implement security hooks and self-protection functions for your OS/arch.

3) If you dont want to do 1 or 2 you can stop publishing cracks ezQuake module at public forums and only send it to me by e-mail.

4) deleted by sassa

can you do this for mac please so i can add the necessary code to support security module

I'm not surprised


Hey, QW has always (or at least from Id Software times) had "protection" against that


Ezquake is, as I've stated, already available for a number of platforms which has no "security" module, including one where making one would take the exact effort of typing "make"... Yet this hasn't happened. I'm somehow not entirely convinced

Besides, making a compatible "security" module would not require any source code anyway.


So if I do 1 or 2, I'm still allowed to show not only how flawed the whole idea is, but also how poor the implementation is? Cool


You've got a point. I might consider this option.