Crowd funded anti cheat

[darDar]

As Mr. Obviously has no time to work on an anti cheat solution and no one else can fill the gap, it might be a solution to integrate one of the many anti cheats softwares into soldat. Mob even BE as sable knows soldat from back then.
There are a lot of providers.
I personally would be willing to donate here and I'm sure there will be others willing to fund anti cheat too.

Less talk, more act.
How are the chances on that; devs?

[soldat-game]

Enough to add coding variables and valutes. This would reduce kids, the cheats using cheat engine. Then, add battleye to block all memory scans, and soldat code modification. And add address table coding to  download if soldat is open - good security method from blizzard. Because creating Anticheat-based scanning and detection is the worst thing you can do they will always creates new..

[Petterkowski]

yeah Soldat really needs this, coding or anticheat - i guess we don't care how its done, we just want to play a fair game :< I know that hacks are not that common in publics but competitive scene is full of it and it's a disgrace, we're really sick of it. if its anticheat then keep in mind that anticheat would need to be updated pretty often, probably every month so its not like its going to be a one-time payment, but a monthly fee. Only this way the anti-cheat won't get outdated. but yeah less talk - its time for the devs to make some moves and share some info, just contact with some people that are willing to make it happen and let us know how much we have to pay monthly. We will take care of the funds don't worry about that. I know you guys have your own priorities of the development, but sometimes we need to change our plans and verify whats really the most important thing atm. Wouldn't that be a relief if the number of hackers creaks down by 90%? Or even 50% ?

[CheeSeMan.]

Maybe a better idea would be for us to approach MR and find out the possibility of the MSAC source code being sold/given to Soldat DEVS(?) Or what if we all donate to MR will that change anything for him?

Creating a whole new anti-cheat system will be timely and possibly expensive, but surely for someone capable updating MSAC could be possible(?) I guess it just depends if MR wants to give up his project or not...

Just speculating really hopefully some devs can shed some light on the matter.

[darDar]

Mr. said he wasn't really happy with MSAC and that he would make a completely new one if he ever had time for it. However, there are anti cheat tools available, which you can 'just' integrate into each game and then pay them on a monthly basis. Such as BattleEYE.
The chances for Soldat's own unique anti cheat made by the devs are pretty much zero right now.

[soldat-game]

MSAC based on the detection of known cheats, other all works

[Shoozza]

There probably are, but I'm not sure how much they cost, how good they are and how much work they would require us to do to integrate them.

We had the chance to continue using BattlEye but for some reason it didn't happen. I remember that i would require the community to pay for it but I don't remember why it didn't happen.

Not sure it would work now as the community is smaller.

Some of the issues with cheats could be adresses be better netcode.
That is afaik what Mr's opinion is atm (but ask himself to be sure)

There are however cheats that cannot be prevented this way.

I cannot say if Mr is willing to give the source code of MSAC to us but back when he started working on it he declined to to so.
And then again we'd have to maintain it (and keep it from getting leaked)

[homerofgods]

Better to create account system so we can ban accounts that are caught cheating?

[Falcon`]

You already have hardware ids, accounts are not gonna be any more reliable unless you make player care about his account in a way, i.e. pay for it.

[machina]

Better to create account system so we can ban accounts that are caught cheating?

That would require creating some service for reporting cheaters and people to maintain such thing and eveluate reported proofs i.e. watch submitted demos for themselves and judge either player cheats or not. What sometimes is not so obvious. And all that shit gets even harder when you wonder if that's an eat or hack. Recently I wonder if players those get hit with my knife from very short distance and fast velocity of a thrown knife (i.e. certain death) are cheaters (because they survive the hit but lose a lot of health so it's not an eat) or just another bug.

You already have hardware ids, accounts are not gonna be any more reliable unless you make player care about his account in a way, i.e. pay for it.

I agree. No one will care to get free account banned.

[Moroes]

Maybe allow multiplayer only to those who have paid for the game. But I guess those regs aren't safe way of authorization and same goes for hwid.

[Falcon`]

Better to create account system so we can ban accounts that are caught cheating?

That would require creating some service for reporting cheaters and people to maintain such thing and eveluate reported proofs i.e. watch submitted demos for themselves and judge either player cheats or not. What sometimes is not so obvious. And all that shit gets even harder when you wonder if that's an eat or hack. Recently I wonder if players those get hit with my knife from very short distance and fast velocity of a thrown knife (i.e. certain death) are cheaters (because they survive the hit but lose a lot of health so it's not an eat) or just another bug.

... Which actually exists, you can report at least stolen/leaked auths at support@thd.vg. I'm not sure if you can report hackers there though.

Maybe allow multiplayer only to those who have paid for the game. But I guess those regs aren't safe way of authorization and same goes for hwid.

Go to any public server and take a look at how many players have stars near their nick. Are you sure you want all of those without stars gone?

[Moroes]

Go to any public server and take a look at how many players have stars near their nick. Are you sure you want all of those without stars gone?

Oh soldat is a bit overpriced and I am sure half of those stars are fake regs. I wonder how many ppl would pay for anticheat if they aren't dedicated enough to buy the game. On the other hand it might be better to donate devs instead of buying the game directly, I am not sure where those funds go.

[CheeSeMan.]

Well if the anticheat is some sort of pay to play model we are not going to find any company, there is not enough Soldat players to make that worth it IMO. Not some established company in any case... maybe a new anticheat trying to make a name for itself, but is there any?

And again I don't think Soldat is what they would be looking for, Sable came in with BE when BE was unknown and Soldat was in its prime. I believe he did it for pretty much for free because it was essentially free advertising for his product, when BE was picked up by bigger games I think he wanted to start charging for it? If I remember correctly MM covered the costs for a while but then could not and did not like the idea of BE charging server hosters/players so BE was dropped.

Remember guys in the grand scheme of things we are a very small game, no big anticheat company is going to come and save the day... crowdfund to find some developers who could create something? Maybe...

[darDar]

BattleEye was not free. It's monthly costs were around 250€ iirc.

[jrgp]

BattleEye was not free. It's monthly costs were around 250€ iirc.

250 EUR per month isn't shit. I'd be willing to cover a portion of that per month for Soldat. Question is whether Sable would come back and if the current dev team has resources to add BE back to Soldat.

[CheeSeMan.]

250 euros is practically free if you ask me for an anti-cheat, I really dont think you will find "proven" software at this price anymore. Look at the sort of titles BE supports now and it does not look like its a one man team anymore either, if it makes enough to employ people its not going to be 250 euros a month anticheat.

Again I feel the best option is going back to MR regardless of his thoughts on MSAC and trying to see if he is willingly to part with the source code... if he names a price we start a donation thing.

[soldat-game]

MSAC IS SHIT! This not working... Must be memory code or BE.

[CheeSeMan.]

Well it was working soldat-game, just not anymore.

[darDar]

BattleEye was not free. It's monthly costs were around 250€ iirc.

250 EUR per month isn't shit. I'd be willing to cover a portion of that per month for Soldat. Question is whether Sable would come back and if the current dev team has resources to add BE back to Soldat.

Same here. However, there's not much the community can do here apart from showing their will to contribute money-wise. Finding an actual solution, will remain a task of the devs. There are quite some options now. However, it's up to you to act and setup a possible donation account or whatever. There have been lots of people willing to contribute to the monthly BE costs but nothing happens due to bad public relations between devs and the community. I also assume the author of the topics there didn't ever contact devs.
http://www.sctfl.net/forums/index.php?topic=42253.0

other related topics; https://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=43849.0

[CCalp]

+1

[Falcon`]

Well, in case anyone still hopes for this: I've spoken to battle-eye devs. They want no less than 1,000 € per month for the anitcheat.

[CheeSeMan.]

Need to find an up and coming anti cheat developper who wants some practice

P.s try offering that we can arrange for Petter our top hunter to stock up their meat freezer for the year?

[CCalp]

Well, in case anyone still hopes for this: I've spoken to battle-eye devs. They want no less than 1,000 € per month for the anitcheat.

Fair enough. I'm afraid the community won't be able / willing to spend that much money on Soldat, but who knows.
Thanks for gathering and sharing that information with us!

[CheeSeMan.]

Also Falcon, if one of your goals is to port Soldat to run natively on linux then AFAIK any kernel based anti-cheat will not work for this. I remember when we did have BE working it was not possible to join a BE server if you were running Soldat via wine.

[Falcon`]

No multiplatform game i know of has a proper linux anti-cheat. There are simply no cheaters there, hence noone bothers. + the market is really small, too.

[Petterkowski]

eh.. this is looking really grim for Soldat We're like the titanic... slow but steady, while the cheaters play their violins on the lido deck. We need a big change fast, i hope that 1.8 will shake things up and i actually hope that it comes THIS YEAR.

[Falcon`]

me too

[Name]

Just don't spawn cheaters.

[cute_battlebunny]

Yeah 1000E is probably a bit too much for soldat but on the other hand that's "only" about 200 players paying 5E a month (and I would totally pay 5E a month if it's worth it).
but really the only way to find out how many people would pay for something like this is to put Soldat to crowdfunding plattforms (not just for anti-cheat but for general
game improvements as well).

[Falcon`]

I'll not put soldat on any crowdfunding platform because there's nobody that can work on it full time. Even if paid.

[Name]

You already have hardware ids, accounts are not gonna be any more reliable unless you make player care about his account in a way, i.e. pay for it.

It just struck me that this could be the idea behind Battlefield's XP levels and unlockables. I wonder what their conclusion was so far as to if it helps....

Or maybe they asked their old devs who were fired and they said "IT WORKS GREAT!"