I hope this is the right forum to place this message in. I am wondering if there are any other efficient methods to defeat memory editors (a program where people can change the values of variables at their discretion). The only way I know of blocking this in a multiplayer game is to make everything server side so the client just acts as a terminal while the server does everything except getting the user input. Are there any other solutions to stopping this? Thanks

but the funny thing in the hl/cs hacks is that you dont need to use modified drivers. you simply hook the client.dll (ok not simple to do, thanks to crc checks and the like) which gives you access to all the player positions that the client knows about in a prefectly accurate driver indepenedent (read direct3d, opengl, or software renderer) way of displaying players behind walls and "helping" the player send input to the server (aiming, autofire and such). of course legitimate resons include, winamp players, irc clients, and other non cheat things that draw to the screen. there is only ONE way to ensure the client does not install cheats or use exploits. never let the client connect in the first place. because data he dont retrieve is data he cant modify for cheating purposes. best bet, let the admins deal with some of it. try to make your code a bit bloated when dealing with memory, try to encrypt stuff, try to figure out if things loaded in yoru address space should not be there. unfortunatly all these things only slow the hacker down. this is because you MUST trust the os and the player to some extent. since the os can even lie to you (by saying certain apps are not running or that certain files dont exist) through the use of hook system dlls which firther makes things difficult. dont mget me wrong though, this applies to any os that you can use. including linux and windows. though windows makes things a bit more difficult because it is not oen source nor as well documented as linux. this does not say linux is not a secure os, because it is fomr a network perspective or someone trying to log in remotly. but if the person has root acces, they can simply recompile the os to suit their needs.

long story short, there is no gaurunteed way to ensure no hacks at all expcept by never releasing the software.

Convict@Large you are so smart. maybe all games should use that system. oh wait a second, every mulitplayer game worth its bandwidth does. the problem lies in the fact that in tribes2 the level to player size ratio is larger so players behind walls are less likly to be in the potential visible set. though the fact remains, aimhacks work quite well due to the distance one can see in the game.

checksume are not toatly useless. the trick is not to try and prevent all hacks, but make it a much of a pain as possible for the hacker. simple checksums will prevent 80-90% of so called hackers to create cheats. granted only one cheat needs to be avaiblible publicly for ppl with no skills to use it. the harder you make the hack to create, the less likly multiple groups will release hacks and less likly they will become widespread.

use external programs? that is the WORST method of cheat protection. external programs, just like your game, can be patched. look at pb, it was hacked reguarly. granted they only released updates once week if even at that pace. it did keep more ppl from cheating, but then again it was more thrilling to cheat on a pb server since most ppl though you could not cheat on them. the screen shot feature was useless, in fact it created a major problem since they had too allow voodoo2/voodoo1 video cards to work with the game. this meant no screen capturing would work correctly in an extrenal program unless you did some fancy tricks (which obviusly they could not get to work since i dont think the screen shot feature ever went out of beta). hackers used this as an advantage, simple send screen shots back to the server that looked like they were taken on a voodoo2 board, (which in some cases meant just denying the screen shot request) and you would not have to worry. though the tried and true method was to just hook directdraw (since thats how pb took its screen shots) and turn off visible cheats on your screen, after pb took the shot, you turned your cheats back on.

external programs also have the overhead of having to use windows functions to check things as well as use extra cpu and extra bacndwidth. the windows functions for readin memory of another app are a bit slow, and can esily bring a fast system to its knees (this is why pb "lagged" players). this overhead reduces enjoyment for legit players and leads to very cumbersome interface to the game itself (why do you think the pb team decided to quit after valve denied them the access (and money) they wanted to continue on the project).

this is not to say that all external methods are bad, it is to say that they are more difficult and dont work as well as is the same work was applied to the actual game. in fact, how will your extrenal program detect that it has been patched? or even better that windows is returning the real running apps/memory that you are trying to check and not some fake stuff that the hacker knows yoru progam wants to see.

it all comes down to trying to make it hard for the hacker to create things and then when he gets it working you change things to make him have to do all the work over again. unlike you however, he is allowed to modify system files (like the kernal32.dll) and do other low level tricks you cant do simply because you would be breaking the law (searching the harddrive for instance without consent is breach of privacy). NOBODY in there right mind woudl install ANY software that would modify system critical files just to play a game in a "cheat free" enviroment.

just for a pondering, go see the 13th floor. its not based on cheating or games, but on the idea of simulating a world on a computer. and how you truly dont know what goes on, beyond what the world tells you. for instance, how do you handle cheat detection on hardware that is being emulated? now at the hardware level the hacker has control fo the system and controls EVERY aspect of what your game is allowed to do, all without yoru knowledge (the OS level hacks are one step below using hardware emulation). dont think hackers wont resort to hardware emulation either, espicealy with free x86 emulators like bochs starting incorporate VMWare style emulation that uses the hardware cpu to decode and handle instructions.

cheat prevention sound difficult and it is. you should really try finding some cheat development forums and read up on what your up against.