Anyone has knowledge about the way cheats are made ?
What I really want to ask is this: Would it be possible to make a game engine with metamorphic capabilities ?
Something that would require very little effort from developers to deliver a new patch and disable existing cheats.
Something that could be done at regular basis (and/or when necessary).
My idea is that people would stop buying cheats from netcoders if they would work only for a limited time.
Maybe possible, but it wouldn’t be a game anybody would want to play if you need to download an update every 2 days. Also not possible if it were on steam since I think it’s a whole ordeal to get each update approved etc.
When looking for a good AC method the first thing you need to take into account is that client can’t be trusted. Best solution imo is just watching players stats an kicking, banning or flagging the players that are getting 90% headshots etc.
Another method that could stop some cheats would be define what a client can see on the server and only send him network updates about the stuff he can see. So if another player is not in your LoS you don’t receive network updates about that player. I don’t think that’s been done before in an FPS, but there’s probably a good reason why (server load, very hard to implement,…)
Another reason your idea wouldn’t work is that you must always assume that the hacker is infinitely smarter than you. If you can design a metamorphic game then the hacker can design a metamorphic hack.
I was thinking about 2 months (not days).
That does not work, because that’s precisely what we have in ETQW right now. Leaving humans out of the loop is the goal. Also in some aim-bots you can configure the accuracy. Or the cheater can spend some bullets regularly (not hiting anything) to make sure the accuracy stays low.
It could work if the server had the capacity to do the same job as all client’s GPUs together (maybe next century).
Of course the metaphorfic engine would just scramble the client and server code. But it would never be presented to anyone (either server admins or clients). It would only be used to create a new pair of server-client code (new patch) that would result in the same game as before.
Anyway i was expecting an answer from someone that had any knowledge about how the cheats work in detail. How the cheat software interfaces with the game to create wall hacks. And how it interfaces with game and mouse to create an aim-bot.
10 years ago i would say you were right.
but now, considering the amount of games ruined, and the state of the web … not so sure about it.
Yes and a no. In theory this could be possible (although I think it will be hard to do so and quite messy).
However, as far as I know Dirty Bomb runs on Unreal Engine 3 , which is a premade engine by a third-party. Because it’s a pre-made engine, it has common/similar hooks to other Unreal games (obviously). I think it would be a pain to alter the engine in a way that it masks/obscures the offsets hackers use.
don’t be sorry. your idea about restricting the amount of information the client gets is good. and probably is not so impossible as i said. because the client’s GPUs have a lot more work than the required to process that. which, btw, could probably be done in a smaller resolution, in order to be faster.
if possible, it would prevent wall-hacks. which have been the most common form of cheats i seen around in the games i played more recently (wolf ET and ETQW).