Considering shutting down master server...

by eihrul on 09/18/2006 02:59, 114 messages, last message: 10/21/2006 04:37, 95542 views, last view: 04/25/2024 12:09

Well, today I've seen the biggest display of immaturity I've ever seen. People running around, connecting to servers as soon as they saw someone else connect, crashing other clients, banning them, etc.

If this is what it has come to, we'll just shut down the master server. People only seem to want to abuse the service we're graciously providing for free, and fuck it up for everyone else.

If that's the case, if that's what some of you guys really want, fine, we'll just shut down the service since it's basically unusable to anyone as is.

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#1: ..

by Stakhanov on 09/18/2006 03:52

Excuse me ? You pondered at length the ways of crashing clients for cheaters hours ago on IRC...

But maybe shutting down the master server for a week could help rid servers of those pests.

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#2: Re: ..

by eihrul on 09/18/2006 04:11, refers to #1

Well, I was also toying with the idea of putting trojans in the source code for cheaters, but I haven't thought of any particularly good ones yet.

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#3: yup

by Aardappel_ on 09/18/2006 04:26

I think this may not be such a bad idea. We're getting to the point where cheaters outnumber normal players, and sauer MP on public servers is just pointless.

to repeat: we stand NO chance making this game cheatproof without going closed source and a major rewrite. We don't want to do this.

Our only option is to scale things down, and focus sauer MP as "a game between friends", i.e. find your friends on IRC/IM and play private games. The master server just helps the cheaters find you, at the moment.

We're not doing this just yet... I am considering ways of trusted people to find eachother more easily for a game.

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#4: I am VERY against this idea.

by Greywhind on 09/18/2006 06:57

I am very much opposed to changing the mater server. I for one have no other friends who play Sauer, or who would be willing to start. I would simply have to quit playing entirely if you remove the master server.

Please reconsider - I don't want to have to go back the 1990s days of finding a friend's IP address to play a game. Don't you remember how useless that was?

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#5: Re: I am VERY against this idea.

by Passa on 09/18/2006 08:24, refers to #4

"I for one have no other friends who play Sauer, or who would be willing to start. I would simply have to quit playing entirely if you remove the master server."

Yeah, I can get about 2 of mine.. MAYBE, plus they arent that skilled so its not a challenge..

WHY THE FUCK DO A FEW RANDOMS HAVE TO RUIN THE FUN FOR EVERYONE..

To those randoms, you might just have ruined Sauerbraten MP play forever, fuck you.. I am very pissed off about this, Sauerbraten is one of the only games I can really own at and actually enjoy..

I'm really upset about this :'(
Why is it that Cube has far less cheaters than Sauerbraten? (In fact, I have never seen a Cube cheater..)

Could you just try the bumped protocol version?

Anywho, I did notice today that I had one person on the server for a VERY long time and as soon as another client connected they were disconnected.. :/

Could it be possible this exploit is related to this release only?

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#6: ..

by John Doe on 09/18/2006 09:56

Please don\\\'t shut it down, I don\\\'t have any friends to IM to organise games.
:(

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#7: ..

by StillPeter on 09/18/2006 10:30

If that's the case, if that's what some of you guys really want, fine, we'll just shut down the service since it's basically unusable to anyone as is. -eihrul

Never a good idea to let a minority to dictate to the majority, I hope you can find another way.

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#8: Re: ..

by Passa on 09/18/2006 10:41, refers to #7

I'm sick of it, I had a look at my server logs again since my last post and it looks very suspicious..

I want to play normal Sauerbraten online, I want the master server service, thats why I vote for Sauerbraten to go closed source. Its been abused for too long (the copyright stuff) and now just rampant cheating.. close the source and let people have a good time. Yes, it means alot of the cool people in this community cant make cool mods.. but what can you do? Is there another solution?

Maybe closed source mentality might be good for this community for a change..

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#9: Re: ..

by StillPeter on 09/18/2006 10:42, refers to #8

I hope there's another solution, is there anything I can do?

All I can think of now is getting an strace for if I get crashed? Would that be useful?

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#10: anti cheat

by MeatROme on 09/18/2006 11:04

Sadness.
Whatever makes them do it?
I just don't get it; maybe it's just a sick craving for power over others.
They'd have made good Nazis!

And I was ready to upload a new ServerMonitorClient today :(
But in the light of the current reality this is probably a really bad idea.

A thought I've had before was :
Link authentication to this forum - requiring any would-be-player to hit a "know my IP" button before the masterserver will ever answer him.
Again - this isn't foolproof - but if each server also had a way to verify that a connecting IP was indeed registered here it would make it easy for us to SPAM the perpetrators with links to suicide-HOWTOs - maybe they'd take a hint?

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#11: Re: anti cheat

by Passa on 09/18/2006 12:42, refers to #10

I want to crawl into a hole and emerge when this is all fixed; I feel really hurt by this, Sauerbraten is one of the only non-retarded online games that I can play..

Dont make me lower my IQ even more by playing CS! I wont even get started on that, other than the fact that it rots your brain.

Yeah so FU cheaters/hackers/script kiddies/socially deprived nerds/paedophiles/complete morons/the sort of people who call the up-late-game-show to answer questions (rofl..)

I'm considering taking my server off the masterserver, and simple meeting up with people in #sauerbratem until this is over..

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#12: ..

by Max of S2D [Fr] on 09/18/2006 13:08

Damned. I prefer got a Closed-source Sauer than a Sauer without MasterServer...

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#13: dang cheaters

by mitaman@work_cave on 09/18/2006 13:18

All the fun of going online to play Sauer has been spoiled the last few days by cheaters. To bad they don\'t use their \"talent\" to contribute to the game instead of ruining it for others.
May you cheaters all burn in Doggie Hell.

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#14: Aww damn

by shadow,516 on 09/18/2006 13:33

What has this place turned into?

This was never a problem before, and Im rather pissed that it's emerging now. I dont like the idea of closed source OR no master server, but really what choice do we have?

This quite frankly sucks...

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#15: ..

by Cyk on 09/18/2006 14:08

Ok, for one thing, a better implementation of anti-cheating devices would help. If you have played Counterstrike or other Source-based games, you may have seen things like "votekick" that would possibly work here- maybe not with small games, but with larger ones.

You could simply make a closed-source version that adds a long identifier string, but I don't know how secure that is with hex editors and such.

Meh.

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#16: ..

by SanHolo on 09/18/2006 15:25

I really don't like the masterserver to go down. Some reasons got already provided by others, another is to never give in to "terrorists", in our case cheaters.

I am no game-developer, but how about this:

Every major release has the checksum of the three official builds hardcoded, and only clients with the correct checksum can connect? I don't know if that spoils the fun for anyone (besides cheaters), but cheating was way harder like that, now wasn't it?

We shouldn't give in to those idiots.

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#17: ..

by YG2F on 09/18/2006 15:46

player authentification ?
player account registration ?

a server which allows registered players only ?


I've just discovered Sauerbraten about 2 weeks ago ... that would be sad if i can't play it anymore ... :-/


Yoann

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#18: Re: ..

by rancor on 09/18/2006 16:50, refers to #17

An idea that has been circulated on the Urban Terror forums in connection with their distribution of a Quake 3 binary compiled from the source release is the idea of a keyserver. Basically, the thought would be that you'd register your email address and pay someone some small amount of money, and you'd get a cdkey.

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#19: ..

by Max of S2D [Fr] on 09/18/2006 17:16

Well... i wanna understand why there are no game protocol. If it's impossible to do a game protocol against the cheaters... don't publish the source.

But the problem of the "kickers/banners" stay complete... and "votekick" command would be usefull !

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#20: ..

by StillPeter on 09/18/2006 17:20

I know the checksums and whatnot solutions won't actually work for anyone with any perseverance, but I'm starting to think that at least some hurdles should be put it to make it slightly difficult.

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