Cheating

[Lewin]

(P.S.: Matthew and a guy with My little pony avatar... coincidence? XD)

I think this guy is really naive. If I know well, Cheat Engine doesn't work in multiplayer games.

Well that's not entirely true. It depends how server sided the game is. A little while back, you could add/change/duplicate any item in your Minecraft inventory, while in an online server through cheat engine.

Not exactly, KaM Remake is 100% client side (server knows nothing about the game, it just forwards packets) and yet you can't cheat in it. That's mostly because we made a deterministic game engine only allow clients to send a very restricted set of requests to each other. There is no way a client can say "add 100 wood to this storehouse", they can just say stuff like "I order a road plan here", "I tell this soldier to move to this location", etc. (basically just player input) All the other clients check that the requests are valid, for example they won't let you move the another player's soldiers.

[Esthlos]

Not exactly, KaM Remake is 100% client side (server knows nothing about the game, it just forwards packets) and yet you can't cheat in it. That's mostly because we made a deterministic game engine only allow clients to send a very restricted set of requests to each other. There is no way a client can say "add 100 wood to this storehouse", they can just say stuff like "I order a road plan here", "I tell this soldier to move to this location", etc. (basically just player input) All the other clients check that the requests are valid, for example they won't let you move the another player's soldiers.

That's a pretty good solution... I guess that if some cheat engine forced one client to "add 100 wood to this storehouse", the online game would simply go out of sync, wouldn't it?

[Ben]

Yep. If i were to spawn 100 knights and destroy you, I'd win on my side, but you wouldn't even know it

[bears.are.welcome]

Not exactly, KaM Remake is 100% client side (server knows nothing about the game, it just forwards packets) and yet you can't cheat in it.

But cheating is still possible. Players could remove fog of war, watch enemy's field of view or see resources in storehouses. Because KaM Remake is open source project and any player can get sources and make own client with cheats. This short video explains the possibility: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoxeUhRnBDc

[Krom]

Seems that video shows the cheat only for SinglePlayer, where anti-cheat checks are not run. In SP players can cheat as much as they want

[Michalpl]

woops sorry krom

[bears.are.welcome]

Seems that video shows the cheat only for SinglePlayer, where anti-cheat checks are not run. In SP players can cheat as much as they want

You don't trust me. Ok. I've made another video in multiplayer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efog5mPm2GM
Krom, Levin, you've done a great work with code, it's better than 2 years ago and reading it is simpler. I haven't done much work to make this cheat version. It is so simple that everyone with a bit programming skill can do the same. Thanks to you!

[Michalpl]

we need accout system or ip ban or better anti cheat do something lewin or krom

EDIT: Swearing is not allowed here, I'll let you off this time but next time you'll receive an official warning - Lewin

[Lewin]

Seems that video shows the cheat only for SinglePlayer, where anti-cheat checks are not run. In SP players can cheat as much as they want

You don't trust me. Ok. I've made another video in multiplayer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efog5mPm2GM
Krom, Levin, you've done a great work with code, it's better than 2 years ago and reading it is simpler. I haven't done much work to make this cheat version. It is so simple that everyone with a bit programming skill can do the same. Thanks to you!

Try connecting to a legitimate client with your hacked version, you'll find that a lot harder

In theory, it will always be possible to make a map revealer cheat. All of the information about the enemy is sitting in your computer's memory, so a person who is prepared to invest sufficient resources into hacking could make their own viewer that can display the entire map based on live memory dumps from the KaM Remake. However:
a) This would require a significant amount of effort and skill
b) Revealing the map does not give you much of an advantage. Cheats that affect gameplay (and give you a significant advantage), like having unlimited resources or spawning troops, are still impossible due to each client simulating their own version of the game. I don't see why someone would be prepared to invest a large amount of time and skill into such an insignificant advantage (being able to see the map would not mean you can beat a player who is much more skilled than you, you still need to be a skilled KaM player yourself).

There is no way for us to absolutely 100% prevent someone from making a map revealer cheat. All we can do is make it extremely difficult to do so, and if such cheats become publicly available we can change the way our system works so the hacker has to do it all over again. We would prefer it if you do not continue to attempt to hack the game for multiplayer cheating, and obviously posting work like that here is against the forum rules.

I am now locking this topic. If anybody has any questions or wishes to report a vulnerability that we are not aware of please PM me or Krom.