How much would you donate to an Anti-Cheat?

[Junkyardboy]

Cheating accusations are getting rampant and we are in desperate need of an up to date anti-cheat, how much would you be willing to donate to help get an updated anti-cheat in this game?

[Hermione]

5$ max at first and if there is progress that appears with the new anti cheat coming along, then more can be given for sure.

[RickJames]

UT99 is my one love, but at most it has 400 players on at any given time. Any competitive mod besides ictf is really dwindling in activity, and I think the people talking about "rampant" and "blatant" cheating in the community are full of shit, honestly.

I think that, at this stage, it's better for competent coders to be focusing on UT4 instead of wasting time on UT99.

I'd like to see Anthrax working with Epic. I talked to some of the private cheat coders who bypassed ACE, and they all had nothing but praise for Anth and his abilities. Anything can (and will) be broken after a period of time, but from what I understand Anthrax's work was very solid for its time.

[Darkside]

i would hope an anti-cheat for UT4 could be backwards compatible? That'd be awesome.

As a grown up, with a job, that spent years of his life with this game, i'd throw down $100 if it was for sure. I like the idea of half up front and the remaining half on completion.

[kud]

would depend on their plan

[wndg]

If it weren't for ACE no one would be playing on 64 bit operating systems. As for the anti cheat capabilities of ACE, those were obsolete after a week.

Vatiko, Creek, Meep, diogo, none of them were at the top even with their confirmed bullshit. I guess there's only one tier of cheaters and they're all hardly better than a 300 dollar player such as myself.

creek:
http://i.imgur.com/0gKDKvg.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/g9zCXat.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/HLAjlWb.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/VDp73XE.jpg

vatiko:
http://i.imgur.com/EG1ak2X.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/kNDGEw0.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/xv2lYMH.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/i0rbwvL.jpg

meep
http://i.imgur.com/7cqlDLt.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/gRsSpSE.jpg

[Hinata]

@RickJames : Only solid stuff was GNAT by PizzaMan.

Better work on UT4.

[blade]

I don't play anymore, but I would donate $5 since I hate cheaters. If I get a halfway decent job by then, $25.

Good luck finding a few coders though willing to do this. I believe your best option is to 1) find somebody willing to update an old anticheat OR 2) find a company out there similar to punkbuster & donate money to them to expand theirs so it would work with UT.

Nobody has sourcecode for ACE to do updates for that, and very few advanced coders can reverse-engineer something like ace. I don't think anyone would make an anticheat from scratch for a game with 250 players total.

edit: If somebody could get source code for ace (I dunno who was working on it until 2011), somebody might step up for a couple grand to update it. You would need at least 3 coders and a couple testers.

[blackout\\]

$22.00

[kevinsan1ty]

I agree with RickJames. UT is the best FPS game there ever was, but any developer good enough to code a brand new anti-cheat should be focusing on UT4. UT99 is the shit. Best game ever. I've been playing it since I was 13. I'd love for it to keep chugging, keep improving.

Sadly, the time needed to code something sophisticated enough to catch what's out there now would bring forth a cost far outside of anything this community alone could muster. If 200 people donated $100 (probably the max I'd be willing to donate initially, and I have a steady job), that's 20 grand. We could possibly get a kind-hearted soul to work for us at that price, but I wouldn't count on it. It's probably at least a 500 hour job. Maybe I'm cynical because I work with developers every day, but I just don't see it happening. TimTim coding newnet on his own accord was a blessing that breathed new life in to this game, but I'm sure he's on to new things.

Add that to the fact that once we do have existing anti-cheat, anyone who is truly dedicated enough to cheat at a 16 year-old game will find their way around it. Then you have updates, which, if I were a developer, I'd want even more money for. It's probably a futile exercise at this point, unfortunately.

[RickJames]

[Darkside]

well if we were to crowd source funds let's just use kickstarter or something.

[blade]

[Banko]

Honestly something like Ace isn't terribly complicated since it's magic compared to other Anticheats was that it was a DLL that UT would load at run time, which is then able to run any code on the OS level.

Now as long as you can get a hold of a cheat, fingerprinting it should not actually be that difficult but no one that is a professional programmer around here has time for such a product.

Especially since it will be just a cat and mouse game, and I doubt you would catch any current cheaters (except a drop in skill), because everyone will notice UT downloading a new DLL.

[Murder]

I can put $300 upfront, and if it does progress, even more. as long as we all have something reliable to work with.

[snky]

[csnafk]

[kE-]

It's a lot of effort to just catch the few cheaters left. Also likely that it would have a negative impact on the low activity left in UT anyway :E

[n0mer]

$50

[kud]

[Ales]

100 $

[tigerclaw]

Nothing

Unless you plan to replace ace with something decent, in which case

Nothing

[kud]

[jaydrade]

You all would be silly to throw money at an anti cheat in a game this old. Plus, would it be updated?

Coders these days will break it in a day. Where is the time and money then?

You can't really stop cheating, period. Even the giants can't, what makes this any different? Anti-cheats have to evolve, and will always be a step behind.

[miracle]

[blade]

[miracle]

Looking at it in hindsight and all things considered.. Honestly, timtim would probably have been better off spending that time on an anticheat. Zeroping was FAR from perfect, but it did the job well enough for even high-pingers especially with 65+ tickrate. Newnet did help plenty, but if we do a basic risk-benefit analysis, there is more to gain from an anticheat than newnet. Catch some people and create some sort of deterrence.


I agree blade, but honestly for the community since zp was here and with newnet here now. I've seen so many new euros I can't even count. And yes it would of been better for the anticheat but at the same time, the euros like hatchet, viperzzz, what not that came to this community out of no where and there's a lot more to count. And blade, I may change my name soon, i'm running out of miracles

[xios]

I feel bad for you guys suffering from cheaters in UT99 if it is actually rampant. I know cheating in UT2K4 is pretty rampant and I've encountered more than a few people who are open about doing it and simply don't care. It's like some people just accept it and think that it's okay in such an ancient game. 2k4 is showing it's age at over 10 years now. However, I'd be surprised to see anyone interested in dedicating new anti-cheat code for these old old games without charging a pretty penny.

I'm sort of in the boat as RJ, in that we need to push for a good anti-cheat going into UT4. Epic is really not interested in doing it because of the whole cat and mouse game which makes it a constant battle between updating cheats and anti-cheats. I do however see an opportunity either on Kickstarter or through Epic's new Marketplace that could be a great way for someone to step up to the plate and make a new anti-cheat for a new UT. If it's on the marketplace, it means it can be sold and put on servers and the programmer doesn't have to do it for free (ie Wormbo) and as I mentioned to Steve Polge before, a 'donate' button on various Marketplace apps could be put in place so as to maintain a level of motivation for that programmer. They could even set it up where there are monthly monetary goals just like some people have for keeping their servers up and running. That way, if people want to keep the AC going, they can look on the Marketplace and see what the goal is or if it has been met or needs more money.

Despite the fact that anti-cheat is a continuous game that can never be truly won, I think it is still a worthwhile investment for a game that could potentially garner tens or hundreds of thousands of players with an active competitive scene with legitimate sponsorships.

[atr0city]

No need to keep stating the obvious people, of course the private cheat makers would update their cheat to bypass a new anti-cheat within a few days.. but that is why you would need a dedicated guy to constantly updating the anti-cheat when this happens.

I don't know where this 15k amount came from, that's absurd. There are certainly people out there who would do it for much less. It's just a matter of finding them.

If we were able to find the right person to do this, I'd donate $500-1,000 for the initial anti-cheat and would pitch in another $50-200 a month for anti-cheat updates.

[Cromaniac]

Well even though we r small community, creating anti cheat would be worth it imo. As long as it is kept a secret when its put on servers, ideally, you d get all the cheaters banned and you are at peace for another 4 years ;D Not many new incomings of players to ut99. Besides, even chances of new cheat being created are small? No matter how much would some programmer charge for it, it wouldn't be worth it for him to sell it to maybe 1 or 2 people. Well i might be wrong on that one.

Donation? well, maybe, when you d put into perspective how much we have to collect. Though, i d only do it for the sake of others. I, myself don't suspect anyone of cheating atm.