er33t server, disapearing players

[Shreds]

when a person is in a window, or if I turn a corner fast, or if i'm weaving in and out of boxes in a fire fight, players disapear.
I hear its some anti-walhack protection, but at this point, i'd rather have the few wallhackers back so I can see people. Not trying to figure out where that stream of paint is coming from in the windows of maps.

Is there anything that can be done?

[Blitz]

eR33t.com Servers are currently running NCServer. NCServer currently has one main feature, and that is wall-hack protection.

NCServer is short for NoCheat Server. The aims of NCServer are to make a server with as much cheat protection possible done on the server-side without the client's involvement. It is generally harder to bypass cheat protection when the server does it.

The server has a check that it does for all players in the world. For each player, it will check all entities to see if they are in the PVS (Potential Visibility Set). If they are, the server sends the entity data to the player, and if not, doesn't send it. What happens though is the PVS isn't perfect. The over-draw can be great which means Quake 2 ends up drawing a lot of players and items behind walls which can't even be seen. Wall-hackers take advantage of this in several ways. One is making walls transparent, another is forcing Quake to render the players in front of the walls, or even simply doing a wire-frame mode ala Asus. NCServer defeats all of these by doing extensive tests on the server to see if the player is truly visible. To the average player, this isn't really noticeable. But what a wallhacker will see is a player disappearing the second he goes behind a wall. Whenever there is an obstruction in the way that 'completely' blocks the view of a player, the server tells the client to not draw the player. However, as you have noted - completely is not always accurate. There are times when a small portion of the model should be visible (small window, etc.) - yet - NCServer detects it out of the PVS.

There are two ways NCServer can not draw clients behind walls. Type 1 is setting the model on the entity to nothing so the quake 2 client won't try and draw it. This will preserve footsteps in the game. However, it is not 100% secure. Type 2 is simpler. The server simply doesn't send the entity data at all. This visually does the same thing as type 1, but footsteps are left out of the game when the player can't be seen. This, however, is 100% secure and unhackable.

Currently, we're using Type 2.

eR33t.com Administration feels strongly on the subject of maximum cheat prevention - such that the rewards of NCServer greatly outweight the flaws.

Hopefully, with a secure server side release of the Digital Paint standalone, we'll be able to do away with such preventive measures.

[Shreds]

Thank you blitz for the very detailed answer.

I know move the blame to jit! pball2 Stand Alone!!! move it chunks!  

[jitspoe]

That won't prevent driver hacks, unfortunately.  I might combine the nocheat server source with the pb2 server source and improve on it a bit (so people in windows don't disappear).

[Blitz]

One of the things I would love to see implemented with the stand alone (server-side) release is protection similar to that which NCServer provides. However, with improved handling of what's 'really' suppose to be visible. Rock on.

[Shreds]

"Type 2 is simpler. The server simply doesn't send the entity data at all. This visually does the same thing as type 1, but footsteps are left out of the game when the player can't be seen. This, however, is 100% secure and unhackable. "

so that means we cant hear people around a corner?

[Mr_MoFo]

riiiiiiiggggghhhhtttt

[Eiii]

no! bad!

[PLazTiC]

Posted by: eiii Posted on: 07/19/03 at 20:21:09 no! bad!

I second that. In that case we wouldn't hear if the player around the corner is out of c02 ... and a rush is missed.

\plaz

[Anrkist]

Type 2?? can we say ANAL =]

[Eiii]

look at the time on those.
It seems to be happening to me a lot nowdays.

[XtremeBain]

First off, eiii you made your bboard junkie status... now you can stop making useless replys on every thread and start making interesting threads if you really need to get your post count up.

With that said, the only thing you can't hear is footsteps, which doesn't make much of a difference since most threatning players jump 3 times per second.  This also means you can hear barrels/guns/ammo drop and co2 refills that happen around corners or on the other sides of walls.  The reason it is on the second setting is because _^Fk_ made some SoundESP(determining where players are from the sound the make.  Popular among CS/HL Cheats to defeat anti-wallhacking schemes) mode in his more recent "private" releases made specifically to defeat the NCServer on the 1st mode.  The point of running NCServer is too try to make wallhacking useless, if I let hacked clients wallhack again, then I might as well not use NCServer at all so legit players wouldn't have to deal with the lameness it causes with small windows.

IF anyone has a better solution drop me an email or catch me online.

[jitspoe]

Does that SoundESP thing work for jumping sounds too?

[Shreds]

The most threatening players also know when to jump and not to. Its not always a rush...
and ya.. does that make jumping sounds stop too?

I know of many times I dont hear a person coming because of no footsteps.

[Eiii]

First off, eiii you made your bboard junkie status... now you can stop making useless replys on every thread and start making interesting threads if you really need to get your post count up.

Um...that wasn't what i was trying to do, but look at that! When 3 people post in a time frame of 9 minutes, you just gotta comment on it.

(Yay! This also adds one more to my post count! YES!!!)

[Blitz]

Shreds: To quote from XtremeBain's previous response: "With that said, the only thing you can't hear is footsteps."

[Eiii]

That doesn't make sense. If you CAN hear jumps, ect. why can't you hear footsteps?
It's like....not being able to hear someone burping, but you can hear them farting.






Okay, so i suck at that. But you all get it, right?

[jitspoe]

The jumping, etc. sounds are sent specifically to the client, like "play jump.wav at this x,y,z coordinate."  The footsteps are played by the client.  The server just tells the client where the player is, and the client plays the footstep sounds automatically.  I think you can shut the sound off with the "cl_footsteps" cvar.