Is hacking actually a big problem?

[Sonarpulse]

1) Eventually - feel free to extract it for now
2) Fuck that. It's a simple launcher, and it should run fine under mono (untested).

Once you clean it up a bit (based on your earlier responce), might you open source it so we can get native builds for Iceball and Voxlap when it's ready. Keys + passwords might be nice too.

[TB_]

No, to me people are just paranoid these days. There doesn't seem to be as many hackers as there once were and with the new project called voxelauth we will be able to better detect and ban hackers. The only thing keeping the hackers coming is because hacks that were made two years ago still work now. I do think that hacking will go down even more quickly now but some people who play almost every day may find hacking to still be a big problem sometimes.

Well, since voxelauth is based on whitelist, not blacklist. The only way it would help would be to create a server where you whitelist tons of people you know are legit.

[Sonarpulse]

Blacklist is fundamentally broken because people make new accounts. Blacklist only works if you have to buy the game for each account. VoxelAuth's method is extreme, but it will actually work.

My guess is that different servers will require different levels of confidence. So there can be a white list and a blacklist. Noob servers just use blacklist so new players can prove they don't cheat (and have people to play with), and the best servers will implement white list.

[White Hot]

No, to me people are just paranoid these days. There doesn't seem to be as many hackers as there once were and with the new project called voxelauth we will be able to better detect and ban hackers. The only thing keeping the hackers coming is because hacks that were made two years ago still work now. I do think that hacking will go down even more quickly now but some people who play almost every day may find hacking to still be a big problem sometimes.

How is having to ban hackers every damn minute being paranoid?

[Jdrew]

No, to me people are just paranoid these days. There doesn't seem to be as many hackers as there once were and with the new project called voxelauth we will be able to better detect and ban hackers. The only thing keeping the hackers coming is because hacks that were made two years ago still work now. I do think that hacking will go down even more quickly now but some people who play almost every day may find hacking to still be a big problem sometimes.

How is having to ban hackers every damn minute being paranoid?

It depends on the server

[White Hot]

No, to me people are just paranoid these days. There doesn't seem to be as many hackers as there once were and with the new project called voxelauth we will be able to better detect and ban hackers. The only thing keeping the hackers coming is because hacks that were made two years ago still work now. I do think that hacking will go down even more quickly now but some people who play almost every day may find hacking to still be a big problem sometimes.

How is having to ban hackers every damn minute being paranoid?

It depends on the server

There are hackers on all servers. Of course, more populated servers have more hackers.

[Jdrew]

Most of the servers I play on have maybe one hacker but he is kicked within a few minutes by ether an admin or a player

[MrHaaax]

It's a damn big problem, but thank god it's not like joining a game with 31 hackers as a legit player(see: Crossfire VN).

[Handles]

I don't think it's a really big problem but it is annoying.

[HoboHob]

There are hackers on all servers. Of course, more populated servers have more hackers.

Oh really? When I was a hacker I would intentionally go to servers that weren't popular. Why? I knew I wouldn't get banned and put on the GBL there. I never hacked on Minit/GoonHaven/Aloha (okay maybe that one time but I admitted it to the admins)

[rakiru]

1) Eventually - feel free to extract it for now
2) Fuck that. It's a simple launcher, and it should run fine under mono (untested).

Once you clean it up a bit (based on your earlier responce), might you open source it so we can get native builds for Iceball and Voxlap when it's ready. Keys + passwords might be nice too.

GreaseMonkey is disgusted enough by the fact I'm using C# for the launcher that he's started writing one in C (I believe). As for opening it up for Iceball/Voxlap, the actual auth protocol is documented here, and everything else is pretty much specific to Ace of Spades, so wouldn't be of any great use. If someone does get around to creating a client that is compatible with AoS servers, I'll happily work with them to get VoxelAuth working with it.

Blacklist is fundamentally broken because people make new accounts. Blacklist only works if you have to buy the game for each account. VoxelAuth's method is extreme, but it will actually work.

My guess is that different servers will require different levels of confidence. So there can be a white list and a blacklist. Noob servers just use blacklist so new players can prove they don't cheat (and have people to play with), and the best servers will implement white list.

I mentioned this a little bit in the main thread for VoxelAuth, but I plan on creating a reputation system that uses VoxelAuth. Reputation will be earned based on time played and age of account, and maybe some other things (it hasn't been fully planned out yet), and lost by being banned. Servers will then be able to put a lower limit on the reputation of players that are allowed to join.

We will also be adding in a feature to the server plugin that will automatically set a user's group when they join (as if they had used /login). As well as allowing the admins and mods to have a secure method of authenticating, it will also allow regular VoxelAuth users to automatically be set to a slightly more trusted user group, for example, by having a default group that is used for non-specific VoxelAuth users. I didn't explain that brilliantly, but hopefully I got it across (since it's a pretty simple concept).

Another thing VoxelAuth will have (and is being worked on now) is anti-cheat. As people need to run our software to be able to play on VoxelAuth servers anyway, we can add some basic checks for common hacks. This obviously won't stop anyone who is smart enough to write their own hacks (from scratch, not skidding the source that's out there already), but those people are few and far between. Basically, simply requiring VoxelAuth should get rid of pretty much every hacker.

Most of the servers I play on have maybe one hacker but he is kicked within a few minutes by ether an admin or a player

Just because they are usually dealt with quickly on the better moderate servers, it doesn't make them any less of a problem - the server staff still have to deal with them.

[Ninja_pig_pro]

:P When I votekick I turn on hax mode and say "My hax are ON until "insert name here" is GONE!"
Even then I get headshot by everyone with rifles

[UnrealIncident]

Another thing VoxelAuth will have (and is being worked on now) is anti-cheat. As people need to run our software to be able to play on VoxelAuth servers anyway, we can add some basic checks for common hacks. This obviously won't stop anyone who is smart enough to write their own hacks (from scratch, not skidding the source that's out there already), but those people are few and far between. Basically, simply requiring VoxelAuth should get rid of pretty much every hacker.

I'll be working on that this weekend hopefully. Also we know most of the people who have written hacks from scratch and most of them don't use them to be assholes. The anti-cheat will have multiple checks and I might even implement something that will be able to determine if it's actually the current public hack. It's also up to the server owner to handle hack detection as they wish. If they trust our anti-cheat enough they might even just make it an auto-kick/ban (which I wouldn't advise).

[GreaseMonkey]

:P When I votekick I turn on hax mode and say "My hax are ON until "insert name here" is GONE!"
Even then I get headshot by everyone with rifles Blue_Rifle Green_Nothappy

Don't do that shit, you'll just make stuff worse, and I will permaban you if I catch you doing that.

[White Hot]

:P When I votekick I turn on hax mode and say "My hax are ON until "insert name here" is GONE!"
Even then I get headshot by everyone with rifles

Do you consider this to be good judgement? You do realize that we ban for hacks no matter the situation.