Cheat Discussion

[BlackBox]

Well, the mission doesn't have to obey the disaster setting. The game will still allow disasters, even if the setting is off.

Also: I disabled the cheat detection program on the bot.

[Sirbomber]

Yeah, disasters are just triggers like anything else. The game can't magically distinguish them from anything else. You need to have if (TethysGame::CanHaveDisasters()) in order for the Disasters checkbox to do anything. Also, they aren't limited to disasters. You could have

Code: [Select]

}
SCRIPT_API void SetMoraleSteady()
{
	if (TethysGame::CanHaveDisasters()) 
  TethysGame::CreateWreck( x+31 , y-1 , (map_id)11999, 0);
}

So, basically, it would be very compatible.

[op2rules]

I own the original version of OP2 on CD, i could use em  

[Highlander]

Yes, you can use them to cheat your way through Missions and Colony games, but you can't use the original version to play online..

[Betaray]

hell, if you want to cheat in single player, why even use cheats? just hack it, its more fun (think accross map shooting rapid fire uberlasers lol)

[Savant 231-A]

Censorship in general is bad, and people have a choice if they want to use them or not. And they are also disabled in the newer versions, which means no one can use them in multiplayer. So at the moment, I see no valid reason why it should be banned mentioning them.

Yeah, it's stupid.
If you just say: Dan's dog could....
[OP2[]Bot[]Cheat detected.
IT SUCKS :BANNED:

It shouldn't be conseroed, just like other things. :x:  :x:  :x:  :x:  

[CK9]

After a somewhat recent convo with hacker, I can see why he is so hesitent to tell us the 4th dan cheat.  Apparently, it is a damage increaser.  Now, if someone where to use this cheat repeatedly in single player (just about every game they play) and then go onto multiplayer, they would have an instant disadvantage that is much harder to work out than just being bad at the game.  They will have set in their mind a certain pattern of play in which they type in the cheat.

1) they would be labled as a cheater and thus fewer people would be willing to play them
2) if they did get a game, the damage would be different than they remember, and they would start spamming on how the game cheated them


but with the ones we already know, we seriously need to stop censoring discussion...

[PUNK_FOX]

Look, I no that u all r not allowed 2 use cheats for multiplayer but I gotta ask? <_<  Can cheats be used in coloy games, cuz I tried 2 use them in colony games but they don't work. y is that?  

[CK9]

while updating OP2 ourselves (adding new multiplayer maps and some new things in the colony games) they were removed from the game.  If you want to use them in game, you have to use the CD version, but you will only be able to play the standard game

[BlackBox]

Also: I disabled the cheat detection program on the bot.

^ For those of you who missed it (or just plain ignored it <_<)

The cheat detection program simply kicked a user for typing text in the form of:

*Dan's*could*more*. It wasn't case sensitive (I think it might have matched with or without the apostrophe / period).

It didn't ban or punish the user in any other way, just kicked them and they could rejoin immediately after.

As for the cheat disabling, I was thinking maybe we could extend it to allow it in single player. However, at the same time, there aren't a lot of us who want to encourage cheating.

Learn to play the game -- don't cheat.

And as far as Beta goes with hacking the game, he still knows how to play the 'normal' way (at least I think, ) The hacking is more of a curiosity to see how weapons will behave when you drastically change parameters.

[Starfox00000]

I didnt read the whole topic, but there is not one person alive that if they knew the cheats they would cheat, but wouldnt cheat if they had the cheats in their pocket on a peice of paper. Unless they were just _that_ lazy or couldnt read them lol.

[dm-horus]

Ill necro with the best of them.

I was pretty damn disappointed when I joined OPU to hear all the cheats were removed from SINGLE player as well as multi. I can totally understand it being removed from multi but single player? If someone trains on the missions using cheats it just makes them fodder for multi. I actually see a slight bonus there. Plus, Id just like to see dan's dog. I miss seeing Dan's dog.

I dont really care much about what happens in multi (unless someone is an ass). Im pretty sure Ive had the 4th cheat used on me several times, and I have a feeling some of the regulars would have the brains to use it only for personal non-multi entertainment.

Did I mention I miss seeing dan's dog?

[CK9]

I've never seen Dan's dog...If only there was a thing with the savant that said, "Warning!  Dan's dog detected!"  lol

I honestly believe we should all hear the cheats and what they do once so that the curiosity of it all is dead (I can almost garuntee that, though this topic died, people still wondered)

[Sirbomber]

I honestly believe we should all hear the cheats and what they do

I've got nothing better to do right now, and you could probably find them on any cheat site really.

Dan's dog could make more ore.
>Fills your common and rare metal storages to maximum.

Dan's car could hold more people.
>Population increase by... I want to say 20% for some reason.

Dan's bike could backfire more often
>Your weapons rate of fire increases.

Dan's truck could ????? more ??????.
>I can't tell you this one. Blame Arklon for constantly badgering Hacker about it.

But here are some fake ones we've fed Arklon:

Dan's truck could engine more dirt.
Dan's truck could exhaust more dirt.
Dan's truck could box more thunder.
Dan's Art Director could make more SantaWalking.
Dan's 'ZIG' can bring more justice.
Dan's wife could suck more <censored>.

Well there you are. Now stop asking about them because nobody cares anymore.

[Arklon]

Dan's truck could ?? more .
>I can't tell you this one. Blame Arklon for constantly badgering Hacker about it.

Stop looking for excuses, n00b.

[Hooman]

I'm not sure any of us know the real 4th cheat, but I did find a collision. It's sadly unsatisfying however as it doesn't make much sense. I think it was:

Dan's truck could crate more stormy.


I basically extracted the hashing algorith and the hash values and tried to brute force it. I used the know pattern from the other cheats and just filled in the remaining words from a dictionary file. It would have taken much too long to go through the whole dictionary, so I guessed at "truck" and had it test all the words from the dictionary for the remaining two. It took about 5 minutes to find a collision (or was it about 4 of them?).

I think it might have taken days to weeks to try everything. And even then, the real cheat might use a word that wasn't in my dictionary.
 

[Sirbomber]

That's not it, and besides, we're not supposed to tell Arklon.

[BlackBox]

Hmm, at first I thought you didn't want to give it out to everyone? (At least I thought we had discussed keeping it mostly hush-hush for now).

But yeah, that's probably not the cheat (nor are the other 2 collisions we have). Unless Dan really ran out of ideas for the last one. (or just had very poor grammar that day )

Hooman, didn't you say the checksum also doesn't take into account the last few bytes of the string or something like that? I remember having quite a lengthy discussion with you about the checksumming code. (I haven't looked at the code myself too much).

---

Horus, as for the cheats in single player: Two reasons:

1- We saw how cheats killed OP2 multiplayer on WON when some moron thought it would be a good idea to tell everyone. The same can go for single player. Cheats greatly reduce the replayability of the game (of course, not to say that everyone who plays single player is going to use the cheats). But by removing the cheats, you remove the temptation / possibility of cheating. (Also discourages people who would be interested in just seeing what they do in multiplayer).

2- Technical reasons. At the time we removed the cheats we probably didn't know of an effective way to prevent their use in multiplayer but allow it in singleplayer. (Well, we might have known how to detect single/multiplayer games but didn't bother to write code that would detect what type of game was being played, and disable/enable the cheats based on that).

Really I see absolutely no positive aspect to allowing any types of cheats (and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks this). IMO cheats can attract noobs / kiddies who don't want to actually play the game the way it was meant to be played, instead just try to cheat it to death.

[Sirbomber]

2- Technical reasons. At the time we removed the cheats we probably didn't know of an effective way to prevent their use in multiplayer but allow it in singleplayer. (Well, we might have known how to detect single/multiplayer games but didn't bother to write code that would detect what type of game was being played, and disable/enable the cheats based on that).

Couldn't you just set the game version to 0.0.0 or something? So that if a cheat-enabled game tries to connect to a normal game it says "Player (name) joined but had wrong game version and was ejected."

[Chandler]

Does all this mean that OP3 won't have cheats ? Awww....

I like to play with cheats after I finish a game just to have fun and play around

[Hooman]

Hmm, at first I thought you didn't want to give it out to everyone? (At least I thought we had discussed keeping it mostly hush-hush for now).

Heh, "For now"? When was the last time we talked about this? It must have been months is not years by now. I can't even remember if this cheat was found before or after they were disabled. I think it might have been before, which is why we didn't want to talk about it.

Hooman, didn't you say the checksum also doesn't take into account the last few bytes of the string or something like that? I remember having quite a lengthy discussion with you about the checksumming code.

The checksum was written a bit odd. It used the first few bytes twice and doesn't use the last few bytes at all. I don't think it was designed to work the way it did, more like a slightly messed up loop condition or incorrect optimization was applied. I could be wrong though, it might very well have been intentional. Not that it really matters much for a hash algorithm like this. But yeah, it takes the length of the string into account, but not what the last few bytes actually are. Hence you can replace the last few characters by something else, as long as you don't change the length, and the cheats would still work. (The last few bytes might have been the remaining bytes MOD 4, since it was processed in 32 bit chunks).

Mind you it's been longer than I care to remember since I last looked at this, so don't quote any of what I just said there.  :unsure:



As for why the cheats were removed entirely. Well, it was an easy 1 byte edit. Trying to detect multiplayer and conditionally disable them would have been more difficult. Not only would we have needed to write more code, but we wouldn't have been allowed to simply overwrite existing cheat code since it would still be needed to function in the single player case. Instead we'd have needed to insert a code hook, and the location to insert the needed hook wasn't obvious. (Ever thought of doing the multiplayer detection based on the DescBlock fields of the DLL being loaded?)

Another option we had was to leave the cheats there, but guarantee detection. (Basically you wouldn't hide the "WOOF! WOOF!"). But removal was decided to be much better than simply detection.