Archived News:
A thread called Open Source Quake Causes Cheating
on Slashdot discussing John Carmack's .plan
update from earlier ( story)
has inspired a
post by John Carmack in which the id Software lead programmer goes into
further detail about the situation (thanks Jacek Fedoryński and King_Darius).
Here's a short portion of the longer post where he discusses possible cheating countermeasures:
There are server-side countermeasures that look for sequences of moves
that are likely to be bot-generated and not human-generated, but that is an arms
race that will end with skilled human players eventually getting identified as
subtle bots.
Media cheats can be protected by various checksums, as we do in Q3 with the
sv_pure option. This is only effective if the network protocol is not
compromised, because otherwise a proxy can tell the client that it's hacked
media are actually ok.
If the network protocol is not known, then the extra-information cheats
generally can't happen unless you can hack the client source.
Federation HQ interviews
The Collective as a collective, managing to track down VP/Creative Director
Richard Hare, VP of Development Gary Priest, VP of Production Doug Hare, Lead
Artist Dan Mycka, Level Design Director Elliot "Myscha the Sled Dog"
Cannon, and Lead Designer Kevin Deadrick all talking about Deep Space Nine: The
Fallen, their upcoming third person action game that will use the Unreal engine
to help recreate the Star Trek universe.
The Engineering Room's Quake III Arena
Console Commands listing has been updated with well over 100 new
commands/cvars, leaving only 57 Q3A commands and variables left to be described
(they welcome any insights into the missing info anyone can provide).
id Software's John Carmack made a
.plan update addressing the unhappiness some have expressed at the release
of the Quake source code ( story)
since it may allow for more online cheating. According to the lengthy update, all is not lost:
There are a number of people upset about the Quake 1 source code
release, because it is allowing cheating in existing games.
There will be a sorting out period as people figure out what directions the
Quake1 world is going to go in with the new capabilities, but it will still be
possible to have cheat free games after a few things get worked out.
Here's what needs to be done:
You have to assume the server is trusted. Because of the wau quake mods work, It
has always been possible to have server side cheats along the lines of "if
name == mine, scale damage by 75%". You have to trust the server operator.
So, the problem then becomes a matter of making sure the clients are all playing
with an acceptable version before allowing them to connect to the server. You
obviously can't just ask the client, because if it is hacked it can just tell
you what you want to hear. Because of the nature of the GPL, you can't just have
a hidden part of the code to do verification.
What needs to be done is to create two closed source programs that act as
executable loaders / verifiers and communication proxies for the client and
server. These would need to be produced for each platform the game runs on. Some
modifications will need to be done to the open source code to allow it to
(optionally) communicate with these proxies.
These programs would perform a robust binary digest of the programs they are
loading and communicate with their peer in a complex encrypted protocol before
allowing the game connection to start. It may be possible to bypass the proxy
for normal packets to avoid adding any scheduling or latency issues, but it will
need to be involved to some degree to prevent a cheater from hijacking the
connection once it is created.
The server operator would determine which versions of the game are to be allowed
to connect to their server if they wish to enforce proxy protection. The part of
the community that wants to be competetive will have to agree to some reasonable
schedule of adoption of new versions.
Nothing in online games is cheat-proof (there is allways the device driver level
of things to hack on), but that would actually be more secure than the game as
it originally shipped, because hex edited patches wouldn't work any more.
Someone could still in theory hack the closed source programs, but that is the
same situation everyone was in with the original game.
People can start working on this immediately. There is some prior art in various
unix games that would probably be helpfull. It would also be a good idea to find
some crypto hackers to review proposed proxy communication strategies.
Blade Universe
interviews Juan Diaz-Bustamante talking with the Marketing / PR manager from
Rebel Act Studios about their sharp-sounding upcoming RPG/adventure title,
Blade. The Q&A discusses life at Rebel Act, progress on Blade, and even
makes mention of plans for Blade 2.
The Quake Editing Resources page
has a pair of new releases based on the source code for Quake, which was
recently made public ( story).
There is a new QuakeWorld client and a new version of GLQuake, neither of which
is intended to change the game so much as to add in cool features from more
recent games.
The debut release of SDL
Quake is now available, a port by Loki programmer Sam Lantinga of the
newly-released Quake source code ( story)
to work under SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer), a cross-platform graphics and
sound library. Thanks Jacek Fedoryński.
Otser's Site has the release of
version 1.00 of QRec (pronounced cue-wreck), a utility that provides automatic
unlimited demo recording for Quake, Quake II, and Quake III Arena. There is also news there on
a bug in Q3A demo recording that may require a bit of working around: There
is a bug in v1.11 of Quake 3 that won't let you stop your recordings when a bot
match has ended and the players are standing on their podiums. Apparently bound
keys (like the one used to stop the recording) are not read by Quake 3 and thus
your recording can't be stopped. The only workaround for now (until id Software
fixes the bug, and I have E-Mailed them about it) is to lower the console and
enter /stoprecord. Thanks to Barry Collins for this information.
NWGN
interviews Jay Cotton talking with the president and founder of Kali, the
original server browser/online gaming service. The Q&A goes into the
program's beginnings as an Internet IPX emulator, through its current successes,
and on into the future.
Polycount has a second beta
release of Npherno's Quake III Arena md3 model compiler, which can also export
Q3A models in md3 format. They also have a third beta of their 3D Studio MAX 3 import/export plug-ins, and while they are at it, they've also released Alphawolf's latest
Q3A model: Nrk (I'll buy a vowel Pat).
QuakeStarter's Official Homepage has
a new version 0.75b of the QuakeStarter front-end. The new release adds full
Quake III Arena support to this program that can also serve as an interface with
Quake/QuakeWorld and Quake II. Though QuakeStarter is freeware, there is a
registration function, and registered users will need to re-register since
that's been rewritten.
Hope all that celebrated (or didn't for that matter) had a happy, safe, and
healthy Christmas. Today is Boxing Day and Kwanzaa, so there's plenty more
celebration left for various celebrants. The Blue Tower's favorite celebration of the season is Festivus (12/23), and of course there's still Saturnalia to account
for, so there's our excuse for keeping the eggnog around a while longer.
Link of the Day: Spanky's
Bounce-o-Matic Trampoline. Thanks Chris Jones.
Story of the Day: ZDTV Update We've Been Had!
A follow-up on a previous story of the day called Why Is Bill Gates Mad at John Vanderslice?
Image of the Day: The 3D Realms Entertainment Web Site
has a reproduction of their cool 1999 season's greetings card.
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