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379 points mobeigi | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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ZeroCool2u ◴[] No.41862659[source]
Server side only anti-cheat is one of the problem domains that I'd really love to work on at some point in my career. This is the type of adversarial arms race that just seems really fun to think long and hard about.
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Night_Thastus ◴[] No.41862725[source]
Only problem is, a lot of companies do NOT want to pay for it. It's 'treadmill work'. No matter how many people and how much money you throw at the problem, it still ends up just coming back. It's a losing battle because there are many, many more players than there are developers.
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willcipriano ◴[] No.41862959[source]
My idea:

1. Determine minimum human reaction times and limit movement to within those parameters on the client side. (For example a human can't swing their view around [in a fps] in a microsecond so make that impossible on the client) this will require a lot of user testing to get right, get pro players and push their limits.

2. Build a 'unified field theory' for your game world that is aware of the client side constraints as well as limits on character movement, reload times, bullet velocities, etc. Run this [much smaller than the real game] simulation on server.

3. Ban any user who sends input that violates physics.

Now cheating has to at look like high level play instead of someone flying around spinbotting everyone from across the map. Players hopefully don't get as frustrated when playing against cheaters as they assume they are just great players. Great players should be competitive against cheaters as well.

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1. ultimafan ◴[] No.41864936{3}[source]
Playing against subtle cheaters is imo more rage inducing once you realize it's actually happening. New or poor players won't notice and won't call them out on it or participate in a votekick because they genuinely can't tell the player is cheating. Average to good players get tilted because they might have enough game knowledge to know something is off but not notice it every time or be able to call out exactly what's happening. They end up second guessing too much. And you can't improve and get better playing against subtle cheaters because they're going to be doing things you just can't. Great players can probably tell more often than not but they're going to quit in droves when they realize the playing field isn't fair. Subtle cheating is much more destructive to a games longevity because trust in public matches is heavily eroded over time. Rage hackers you can just kick/ban/leave the match yourself because it's obvious.