🚀 go-pugleaf

"§ď×darts" <sixdartsREMOVE@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
news:yoCdndsBLJKOugnVnZ2dnUVZ_sjinZ2d@giganews.com...
> Some of the servers I play get a small handful of players whose ping never
> changes from 75.  It is always 75 exactly.  Now and again, someone will
> start ripping on the 75 pingers saying that all of the 75 pingers are 
> using
> "a hack".  I've never seen anyone say they are using a bot, or radar, or 
> any
> other sort of cheat... they always describe it (in game chat) as "a 
> hack". -
> OK.  So, is there any validity to a hack or cheat of some sort existing 
> that
> will make the server beleive that the players ping is exactly 75?  -  I've
> spec'd a couple of times and I can't spot any advantage those particular
> players seem to have.  In fact, more than a couple of them are just as
> crappy of players as I am and some even worse <grin>.
>
> I only found one that I had to wonder about.  I've played him and spec'd 
> him
> more than a few times.  He moves through every map as good or better than
> anyone I've ever seen, so I thought for a long time that he is simply a 
> very
> good player.  I have to pick up every single set of enforcer/minigun 
> bullets
> and keep him out of minigun ammo or I can't even stay within 15 frags of 
> him
> in a 30 frag deathmatch.  He's amazing with the minigun.  It doesn't 
> matter
> strafe squat jump flip whatever, I can't live through more than a dozen of
> his rounds being fired.  But, something odd happened the other day that 
> made
> think a capitolized bolded *"WTF?!"*.  I got distracted by something going
> on in my house for a moment and my fingers came off the keys.  He fired 40
> rounds at me while I wasn't moving and missed all but maybe two.  He had 
> to
> get right up to me to kill me with the minigun when I wasn't moving. 
> Every
> time I saw him in the next three games, I just stopped and he couldn't hit
> me for at least 20 rounds without charging right at me.  -  This sort of
> thing I can usually blame on lag, but his ping is an exact 75 and mine 
> runs
> from 68 to 80 on that server.  That's not a bad average to create *that*
> much lag.  -  So, is there any truth to the always exactly 75 ping = some
> sort of hack/cheat?
>

I can't really add anything solid except observation, but it seems that he's 
missing you because whatever program is introducing the ping compensation 
(lag or not) is also calculating movement delta on you and adjusting the 
fire point in reference to that. I'd guess that's why he can't hit you when 
you stop moving. It takes a moment for the induced ping movement delta 
adjustment to adjust downward to zero. I'd be intereseted to see if he could 
hit you at all if you made it a point to stutter step, and stop every few 
feet for a second. If he can't, it's for sure a bot of some kind.

There are ways for the client to artificially alter their ping to/from the 
server. It's tied to player replication info most times, and a good server 
admin should be able to see the inducement in the logs. If your admin wants 
me to show them what to look for, tell them to give me a yell. This sort of 
thing is what a bunch of the server crashers use to bring a server down to 
reset. They can flood the server with requests and lag out the game so much 
the engine eventually crashes. If you carefully limit this you can induce 
the appearance of lag on yourself only (as a player cheating), but still 
maintain a good low-ping connection because enough low-ping packets get 
through versus the high ping ones. Your listed ping is simply an average, 
not at all a constant, and varies greatly from game millisecond to game 
millisecond depending on what is being transmitted. This also has the side 
benefit of making you incredibly hard to hit because you are switching 
positions every microsecond on the playground depending on the ping of the 
second. I don't understand this as well as I would like to but I get the 
general idea of how/why it works. I have a couple of bots that do this 
archived so I might decompile them and look "under the hood". I'll know a 
lot more then. I just never had to get too deep into it. AntiTCC see 
anything like that on my server and they get immediately and irrevocably 
UTAN banned. Just a month or so ago a buddy of mine had a crasher that did 
so much damage crashing the server over and over, it corrupted his core 
files and he spent a whole day doing a total reinstall. Of course this is 
UT2004, but many of the engine constants are very similar.

I am baffled by the 75 ping constant. My guess is that it's untrue and some 
way has been found to spoof actual ping so that you can't see what he's 
really doing, which is causing his true ping to take on a waveform property. 
A good admin should be able to piece together what's going on by comparing 
logs of "normal' players and what the server reports when one of the "75ers" 
is playing.