Is the developement of this game still alive ?

[Veritas]

i'm no programmer, but this sounds good to me

hypothetically, what if there was an automatic way to shuffle a little part of the code everyday just to make the hacks incompatible. The change would be so small that users would update (automatically) their client in seconds, for example while viewing lobby

P sure it would not be difficult to automate the process of finding the correct address when all you're doing is shuffling offsets

[Clawbug]

Let them be. How is that a problem? Why wouldn't the Soldat's developer be faster? There are hacks, and there will always be hacks. I'd say that if it takes 2 days to get around a bypass, they're quite slow.

However, there is no reason to start hacking a game when you know your hack will become obsolete in matter of months, if not weeks. Then you need to do most of the work again. It's a completely different story to start scanning tens of addresses, than to take a new recipe out from the book and implement it. The way the hacks work and bypass the anti-cheat protection isn't anything new. Hackers just copy other hackers' ideas and implement them to their hacks and it works. Cool.

Right now, a hack which was working when 1.5 was released still works. And will work until 1.5.1 is released. Then you need to redo most of the work to get it working again.

I'm trying to figure out why you say first that 2 days is a long time to develop a hack and then that there's no reason to hack a game when it will become obsolete in a matter of months

I've programmed for hours to get something I use for 5 minutes, that's a damn good return on investment there

The idea that shuffling a binary around every couple weeks (forcing users and servers to patch as well) is sufficient for preventing hacking is really, really dumb
Understand that I don't think you're dumb Clawbug but that ``protection" is a joke

Same, but right now Soldat gives a great platform to experiment and learn how to hack, because the binary never changes, or changes once per every few years.

What else would you propose? BE isn't an option and built-in methods prevent nothing, just slow it down a bit for a while. BE is the only hope, and frankly I'd rather start writing hacks for myself than start paying for BE, just to fight for the cause.

I hope we both agree that the ultimate reason and benefit behind stable release cycle isn't hacks. Actually, why on earth do people care about hacks that much? It's not like they're the real problem with the game. Just create your own server and play with some friends, or join your friends on another server. Problem solved.

Edit: Holy crap, MM is viewing this thread! :O

[Veritas]

What else would you propose?

Heuristic and signature based detection, same as every other computer security measure

BE is the only hope

I'll reiterate that I'd gladly work on anti-hack measures if the game is open-sourced or gets a decent sized dev team

I hope we both agree that the ultimate reason and benefit behind stable release cycle isn't hacks.

Word

Actually, why on earth do people care about hacks that much?

Because people play in and enjoy pubs, gathers, cws, leagues, etc

[Clawbug]

What else would you propose?

Heuristic and signature based detection, same as every other computer security measure

Who would maintain the database? How would this be implemented in a way that there wouldn't be a bypass in 2 days after update? Obfuscating code, self-modifying code and polymorphism are the key to success against signature based detection methodology, and easy to implement depending on the language.

BE is the only hope

I'll reiterate that I'd gladly work on anti-hack measures if the game is open-sourced or gets a decent sized dev team

Same, but that isn't going to happen I'm afraid.

Actually, why on earth do people care about hacks that much?

Because people play in and enjoy pubs, gathers, cws, leagues, etc

During the past 4 or so days which I've spent on publics, I haven't seen a single obvious hacker. If I couldn't distinguish a good player from a definite hacker, I wouldn't have noticed the one certain aimbot I encountered. For me it seems that everyone is suspicious about everyone, for no real reason. But the most irritating thing is the vote-kick system when every good player gets kicked because of hacks.

Edit: Ha, it didn't take long. I just met someone very obvious player using malicious things for his own advantage. There's definitely a problem with it.

I don't know about the situation in gathers/leagues, as I haven't played any competitive games for over 15 months now, but what I can recall, there was some serious issues even back when I used to play actively "in the scene".

But I consider the amount of bugs, broken functionality in the game and weapon balance to be a bigger concern than hacks. A new release will get all of them fixed instantly.

[Veritas]

How would this be implemented in a way that there wouldn't be a bypass in 2 days after update? Obfuscating code, self-modifying code and polymorphism are the key to success against signature based detection methodology, and easy to implement depending on the language.

Hence heuristics. Also, that doesn't make signature detection not useful.

[Illuminatus]

Yeah, I'm starting to think that mass community rage spam directly to NSC's and MM's email/twitter/blog/whatever is the only thing that might actually work.

I'm beginning to think the same. But not yet. I'm giving him (MM) 3 weeks from now on. I want at least a clear message that he read the thread, understood our issues, (hopefully also worries about the situation) and tells us what finally will happen to Soldat. I gave up the hope that we will see the new v1.5.1 within this timeframe.
Maybe me get kicked of Link-Dead alphatesting for the following spamming but I don't care. I don't want to help testing a game if the developer behaves this way (stop communicating with his old community which made him big).

[CheeSeMan.]

Actually it has , cause if soldats new version would come out right now they would play with an outdated version and stuff.

The version (and servers) used would be updated as soon as possible. Why would the SCTFL staff delay something that's obviously good for the league itself? Not to forget that MM and EnEsCe has no actual connections to the people running the league; one could say they don't even know it exists.

new soldat versions have came out numerous times during past SCTFL seasons and sctfl upgrades to the new version immediately...  i've given up hope of anything tbh^^ no updates at all not even a little message and BE getting removed has sent this game directly down the drain.

[kunderez]

I think you can prevent few hacks from the server side quite easily.
You just need to keep track of player's actions... for example:
- Teleporting: track player's movement when he is alive, if position changes too much, warning should be raised

- Faster reloading: when player start to reload his weapon server should save the timestamp and after reloading check if the time difference was appropriate, if it wasn't then raise warning.

- Multiple bullets / faster firing: When player shoots a bullet, disable firing until he actually can fire the next round... in other words... just simply ignore network packets saying "fire bullet x" until weapon is ready to fire


Edit: And for the smartasses... of course latency should be taken into account as well as environmental effects ( explosives/bullets pushing effect )

From: October 22, 2010, 01:58:50 pmGive me the source code and two months and you'll get completely refactored multi-platform soldat with OpenGL rendering, OpenAL sounds, lower system requirements and better netcode. I cant promise new features with that schedule.
Why two months... well, it takes one week to fully inspect the whole system architechture at the same time doing some minor optimizations and refactorings( optimizing the performance of frequently used functions, re-structuring similar functionalities into functions/classes, limiting variable scope to reduce errors caused by using dangerous globals, securing the code for errors ). The following four weeks would be major refactorings and optimizations( converting ancient routines to newer, spaghetti code / spiderweb to properly isolated logical blocks aka classes and interfaces - using common design patterns ). Then there will be three weeks for proper testing, fixing and tuning.
Am I going for this alone? Nope, I am willing to delegate tasks for other programmers who have the skills and interest for this.

[Veritas]

I can sell you a bridge in a day

[Clawbug]

Kunderez, just make your own client. Reverse engineering the protocol shouldn't be much of a job, if you could do all that refactoring and testing in two months.

[darDar]

@kunderez trusting strangers on the web is kinda difficult without any background information about
- person
- former projects
- and stuff like that...

by the way its not sure whats gonna happen to soldat and its future.
its a bit too early to apply for that job but still i´m appreciating that.

[kunderez]

I know it's hard to trust a stranger.. as I stated few ten posts before in this same thread... and I cant blame you, internet is anonymous place.

I have mailed MM and I told him the same story, he havent responded yet...
I just thought I could use my profession to save my favourite game. I didnt expect anything.... well, to be honest I expected some trolling, and thats what I got( ty veritas & clawbug )... but I was happy to see dardar's positive reply.

well then, lets think this around... If I was a scam-artist, why would I bother doing this? Could I benefit somehow? There are tons of open-source game engines( irrlicht, ID tech-engines, unreal tournament engines ), full games etc... why would I ever want to steal Soldat's spaghetti-sourcecodes?

[Clawbug]

Trolling? I genuinely believe that reverse engineering the protocol and writing your own client would be easier task than getting hold of the source and refactoring the almost 10-year old Delphi code to get things rolling again. Even if you'd get the source, it would still be wiser to do most of the work from scratch. Have you taken a look at openSoldat?

[kunderez]

Yep, I looked at openSoldat... but I didnt consider that as an option.

If I had to write soldat client from scratch I would use java... I know you guys just got scared because most of the people hate java... and hate usually bubbles from poor knowledge of java's possibilities.
Just to proof that java is a serious option I will shortly list the good and the bad points...

Pros:
+ multiplatform by default ( windows, mac, linux, mobile devices, you can even embed the game into webpage => more players )
+ clear looks ( visually looks like other common OO languages, => easy to understand and develop.. of course you can f*ck it up by poor design but that's not the case here )
+ super-easy scripting support with javascript ( I know you guys got scared of javascript too but trust me, it will rock, at least it kicks lua's ass 100x and JS is a rising star in the industry... and for a reason. Imagine that you can write your own GUI-drawing code, command aliases and snippets... and you are not limited to using clumsy interface-editors or few limited console commands that cant be chained or parameterized... )
+ easy to create modular structured programs ( you can easily split the program to several subsystems that can be replaced, for example input-module, gfx-module, sfx-module, networking module.... and those can be developed separately by other developers => faster bugfixes and new features )
+ memory manipulation will crash the virtualmachine ( in other words: cheating will get a lot harder )

Cons:
- performance ( I know you smartasses were waiting for this, but I have studied this more than the most of you guys and this will not be anywhere near a problem if things are done correctly. The reason why I listed this here is that runtime compiled languages will allways be slightly slower because of their nature )

If I had to write soldat server from scratch I would use nodejs.. If you are a developer and you dont know what nodejs is then quickly google it! It is a event based scriptable network server built on top of the google's super fast v8 engine. There just simply is no reason why nodejs shouldnt be used.

[DarkCrusade]

This entire discussion is futile as long as MM or EnEsCe don't reply.

[darDar]

its my birthday wheres my goddamn present 

[Clawbug]

Yep, I looked at openSoldat... but I didnt consider that as an option.

Why not?

[kunderez]

Yep, I looked at openSoldat... but I didnt consider that as an option.

Why not?

It seems like a doomed project... Quotes below are copied from oS forum...

So, is this thing even alive?
is there any progress, and is anyone caring about this?

I was wondering myself. Everything just kinda.. died.

OpenSoldat may be well structured project but it is not soldat, because it is an partial approximation of soldat's "business logic". Soldat however, despite that it may be poorly structured, already has all features ppl want.. all it needs is restoration.

[Clawbug]

...

Source code is there in easily hackable form, just fetch it and start working. Right now it must be the path of least resistance if you want to contribute somehow.

It's easy to talk big, plan and make sure everything should be ready for development.. However, actually getting things done is completely another story, as oS shows. It is far more important to get things done, than to plan them beforehand.

[CheeSeMan.]

kunderez make yourself less of a stranger and code us an anti-cheat for sctfl! )))

I really don't understand how/why MM has let it come to this point... any rage @ soldat topic posted here or in sctfl forums causes pretty much immediately a 10+ page thread which surely must mean something about the general feel atm ...........