Status of "Cheat" Mods

[RangerK]

So let's talk about this controversial topic.

FIRST RECENT INCIDENT

I recently got crushed in a 4v4 at the 12-minute mark.  I watched the replay and popped back into the game before if finished.  I said about my opponent:  "It looked like he used a start script, and possibly auto-queuing too.  His start was sick."

He said that I'm a sore loser, which isn't entirely wrong -- I was sore about losing so quickly and decisively.  And he said that he wasn't cheating, though I didn't quite use the word "cheating" in my comment.  I'm not 100% sure that such mods are cheating.  I'm probably only 80% sure. 

When I asked him how it's possible to get all units into the TC, and then simultaneously send them to three different locations, he responded that used some start script, which was exactly what I had said.  I didn't press about auto-queuing, as I wasn't completely sure about it from the replay.  If it wasn't auto-queuing, he was just extremely precise and efficient.  There were only two barracks going at the same time, which is within a good player's ability to do manually, though the timing and rhythm seemed uncanny.

SECOND RECENT INCIDENT

About a week ago, I got crushed in another game.  (Yes, that's a recurring theme in my 0ad experience.)  Except this time I wasn't sore at all, because it was at the hands of an elite player who often plays in top games.  This time, I watched the replay not out of frustration, but to learn how these top players do it.

To my great disappointment.  It was completely obvious that he was auto-queuing.  There were multiple barracks producing at the same time but all of them out of sync, and the instant one batch finished, another would form with some different amount -- depending on available resources and house limits.  Also, he had turned on the auto-queuing for javs too early, and the TC production of women was briefly interrupted by javs.

Anyway...

I'm curious what the status of this startup mod is, and what's going on with the controversial "Pro GUI" mod.

I tried installing the Pro GUI mod, but it doesn't seem to be compatible with any hosted games.  Is the incompatibility a new development? I remember checking out the mod a year or two ago, and though it was confusing, it worked.  What happened?

Also, I can't can't find any start-up script mod at all.   And the guy I played just today said he was using one.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Gurken Khan]

I don't do MP and I don't use any mods. Of course anyone can play the game how they like, but when playing against others I consider it poor sportsmanship if they don't make their use of mods transparent and consider anything but purely GUI cheating.

I think ProGUI does this sending off units in three directions simultaneously and automating the batches; if the other players try to hide the use of that mod it's cheating. Don't know if you have any other recourse than just not playing with them anymore.

 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, RangerK said:

I'm curious what the status of this startup mod is, and what's going on with the controversial "Pro GUI" mod.

I tried installing the Pro GUI mod, but it doesn't seem to be compatible with any hosted games.  Is the incompatibility a new development? I remember checking out the mod a year or two ago, and though it was confusing, it worked.  What happened?

What you have identified as a cheat in the above is consistent with proGUI. The version of proGUI that you see in the mod downloader is required to have compatibility checks on, so all players must have the mod. This was required for the mod to be signed and allowed on mod.io AFAIK.

The individual behind proGUI has a github where you can get the version that has these checks turned off. This is the version that you see individuals using when they are playing against players that don't have the mod.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Isn't sportsmanship a old-fashioned thing?

[Gurken Khan]

4 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Isn't sportsmanship a old-fashioned thing?

Yeah, like decency and basic courtesy. Call me old and conservative.

[Lion.Kanzen]

5 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

Yeah, like decency and basic courtesy. Call me old and conservative.

That's a good answer.

Seriously now, I don't understand why the players would cheat.

It's like lying to themselves.

There is no honor. They are more dependent on the pleasure of winning than on having fun and being honest with themselves.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

Just now, Lion.Kanzen said:

That's a good answer.

Seriously now, I don't understand why the players would cheat.

It's like lying to themselves.

There is no honor. They are more dependent on the pleasure of winning than on having fun and being honest with themselves.

 

Unless they are trolls messing up other people's lives, but that is so pointless, senseless.

It's like stealing unnecessarily.

There is a psychology of pleasure in winning by cheating.

https://www.webmd.com/balance/ss/slideshow-competition-win#:~:text=Your desire to win could,reward area of your brain.

https://www.madmonq.gg/dopamine-control-for-gamers/

 

[RangerK]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

What you have identified as a cheat in the above is consistent with proGUI. The version of proGUI that you see in the mod downloader is required to have compatibility checks on, so all players must have the mod. This was required for the mod to be signed and allowed on mod.io AFAIK.

The individual behind proGUI has a github where you can get the version that has these checks turned off. This is the version that you see individuals using when they are playing against players that don't have the mod.

In the SECOND scenario, I'm completely certain there was auto-queuing of unit production.   In the first, the only thing which I can say for certain was a startup script that directed the initial units.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Both are in the mod 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

That's a good answer.

Seriously now, I don't understand why the players would cheat.

It's like lying to themselves.

There is no honor. They are more dependent on the pleasure of winning than on having fun and being honest with themselves.

 

There was one player that I think fit this more sinister category, but I don't think that's the case with the mod creator. I think the creator just insists that the game should be played that way (highly automated) and doesn't see an issue with playing against those without the mod.

in other words, its not like "rage cheating"

Edited October 31 by real_tabasco_sauce

[Atrik]

Skipping replying to degenerate accusations of dishonor and what not... Not even sure some actually play MP...

5 hours ago, RangerK said:

tried installing the Pro GUI mod, but it doesn't seem to be compatible with any hosted games.  Is the incompatibility a new development? I remember checking out the mod a year or two ago, and though it was confusing, it worked.  What happened?

The version on mod.io is technically compatible. It has however the compatibility check turned on. If it wasn't, it would have been better to measure the popularity of the features in the mod. And why not consider adding some to the game. Some are pretty obvious like idle building notifications, list of all units... I already pointed this out multiple times elsewhere. Boongui top panel is also much more modern looking then the vanilla one, same for fgod panels...

Now about the famous auto-trainer, it's also making the game much nicer to play for some players. You get increased control over production and it works seemingly compared to vanilla auto-queue. It's quite a bit unforeseen to have a single panel to control all buildings in AOE type rts but this too isn't that stretched off to think of an adaptation for vanilla ui.
This would probably not be the case at least for the foreseeable future in 0ad, but, despite a few people pretending the opposite, auto-trainer doesn't provide any substantial advantages. If you turn on vanilla auto-queue in all buildings you will have the same APM required then having to manage auto-trainer. Sure, the batchs resize themselves and you don't have to panic when the game throw you the "Insufficient resources" error message yet it's not going to impact your game performance noticeably. Theoretically the dynamic batch would be optimized, but in practice left-over resources just get consumed seconds later by another building, and overall it's not that much harder to consume resources with any of theses systems.

 

[Dunedan]

One idea I got to make it harder to cheat is to limit the mods available for multiplayer games to signed mods. This way all mods would be verified not to give unfair advantages, as they are reviewed before being published on mod.io. This still wouldn't prevent cheating, but would require recompiling 0ad to do so.

I'm not sure though how testing new mods which with multiple players would work with this.

[chrstgtr]

@RangerK Name and shame. Also, you are describing ProGui. I (and many others) consider it cheating. I (and many others) do not allow it in my (their) hosted games. So if you see it ever occurring in any of my hosts feel free to let me know and I will fix it. 

6 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

The individual behind proGUI has a github where you can get the version that has these checks turned off. This is the version that you see individuals using when they are playing against players that don't have the mod.

This is seriously concerning. Mods are supposed to go through the review process in order to go through a security screening. Creating a mod and advertising it on Wildfire's servers is a workaround to these security procedures. 

[Stan`]

Maybe should be an opt out option like ranked. This way you can still play with custom maps and whatnot should you want to.

[Atrik]

15 minutes ago, Dunedan said:

One idea I got to make it harder to cheat is to limit the mods available for multiplayer games to signed mods. This way all mods would be verified not to give unfair advantages, as they are reviewed before being published on mod.io. This still wouldn't prevent cheating, but would require recompiling 0ad to do so.

I'm not sure though how testing new mods which with multiple players would work with this.

This idea is clearly not to make cheating harder as it has been seems so many times that real cheats are just undisplayed mods (hidden in other mods, or are direct modifications of the game...). As well, you can cheat in 100% freshly downloaded vanilla just using the command prompt to reveal the map for example.
Some other ideas were also: get rid of compatibility check all together, forced on by default. If we want to prevent cheating, atomizing user experience with mods to 'make progui usage a little harder' is top priority and obviously worth it in my opinion. We should go ahead and do this. Let's not make something that actually improve usability like tooltips/lists of mods for all players in a room, let's just ban instead. Too scary to rely on individuals opinions, so we need to enforce things globally like commies.

[Dunedan]

3 minutes ago, Atrik said:

This idea is clearly not to make cheating harder as it has been seems so many times that real cheats are just undisplayed mods (hidden in other mods, or are direct modifications of the game...).

It isn't? Undisplayed mods wouldn't work that way either, unless the player uses a recompiled version of 0ad, which is a much higher hurdle than just installing a mod.

4 minutes ago, Atrik said:

As well, you can cheat in 100% freshly downloaded vanilla just using the command prompt to reveal the map for example.

So you're arguing that preventing some cheats is pointless, because there are still others?

5 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Let's not make something that actually improve usability like tooltips/lists of mods for all players in a room, let's just ban instead.

In my opinion the best way to have an even playing field is to contribute useful features directly to 0ad. That way all players have access to them.

Also splitting "harmless" features and features which might be considered cheating into separate mods would also solve this issue.

[ffm2]

Don't be confused because some consider it not cheating. It is very clear cheating.

It disables game penalties:
In game auto-batching gets disabled when the player don't have the resources. It's not on pause (like proGUI) because the programmers lack the capability to program it otherwise, it is a draw back to use this automated way.

1 hour ago, Atrik said:

And why not consider adding some to the game

Do that in the dedicated place, hand in the patches and wait for the next alpha. The topic here is cheating. You can discuss new features for future versions else where. You disable penalties for yourself while playing with players that have these enabled in their game.

I had games recently, after the game I get mocked "lol, ffm only 60 kills". I check the replay and see the opponent was a proGUI user. Other games I get a clear win with a ally over decent players, check the replay and see my ally uses proGUI.

Also I happen to play in rounds with known cheaters, because the host tolerates it and the better players are already there. The motivation for the cheaters I assume is because they can join rounds of better players and compete with them.

The easiest way to identify cheating with proGUI is the quickstart part. It sends 7 commands in one turn, at about turn 12.

cmd 6 {"type":"set-rallypoint","entities":[400],"x":200.843017578125,"z":647.5227661132812,"data":{"command":"gather","resourceType":{"generic":"food","specific":"fruit"},"resourceTemplate":"gaia/fruit/berry_01","target":419},"queued":false}
cmd 6 {"type":"unload-template","all":true,"template":"template_unit_support_female_citizen","owner":6,"garrisonHolders":[400]}
cmd 6 {"type":"set-rallypoint","entities":[400],"x":208.0706787109375,"z":558.1127319335938,"data":{"command":"gather","resourceType":{"generic":"wood","specific":"tree"},"resourceTemplate":"gaia/tree/oak_hungarian","target":411},"queued":false}
cmd 6 {"type":"unload-template","all":true,"template":"units/rome/infantry_swordsman_b","owner":6,"garrisonHolders":[400]}
cmd 6 {"type":"unload-template","all":true,"template":"units/rome/infantry_javelineer_b","owner":6,"garrisonHolders":[400]}
cmd 6 {"type":"set-rallypoint","entities":[400],"x":168.57574462890625,"z":588.1920776367188,"data":{"command":"gather","resourceType":{"generic":"food","specific":"meat"},"resourceTemplate":"gaia/fauna_chicken","target":425},"queued":false}
cmd 6 {"type":"unload-template","all":true,"template":"units/rome/cavalry_spearman_b","owner":6,"garrisonHolders":[400]}

A mod that warn users in game about a amount of commands that is beyond the best player (plus a threshold) could be a idea. But I don't know where to start with it at the moment. Hardening the game against abuse is one front to fight.

But this is absolutely ridiculous to defend and pretend "is it really a cheat if a 1200 player don't win 10 out of 10 vs a 1800 elo player", "it's just a few commands at the start". It's another thing that the cheats are so easy available, widely used and pretended it wouldn't be a cheat.

[guerringuerrin]

@RangerK
The idea that the proGUI smart train offers no advantage over the original vanilla autoqueue is false. The vanilla production system stops when there are no resources available. The proGUI system automatically adjusts production based on available resources and houses. And it does this instantly while you can be busy in battle or whatever else.
You don't even have to think about batch size based on barracks. The system does everything on its own. You set the ratio you want in your army (ranged/melee, etc.) and the mod produces on its own. You can even set an amount of resources you don't want to be spend. It's fantastic.
You only have to worry about houses. If you run out of available houses, as soon as you build a new one the system automatically starts producing units.  And calculate the batch size to produce per barrack. Instantly. It gives you freedom to do other tasks without worrying about production in a much more efficient way than the original system. It is not, by any means, a simple aesthetic/GUI improvement.
We can argue whether this is cheating or not, whether vanilla gameplay should be like this, whether it is more or less fun, or fair.
I consider many of the mod's contributions very valuable but to say that it offers no advantages is ridiculous. Just try it by yourself and you will see.

Edited October 31 by guerringuerrin

[Gurken Khan]

19 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

We can argue whether this is cheating or not

All parties in the know = not cheating

Using it secretly = cheating

Is it that complicated?

[Dunedan]

I created an issue to add an option to only allow signed mods: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/7166

[Atrik]

2 hours ago, Dunedan said:

It isn't? Undisplayed mods wouldn't work that way either, unless the player uses a recompiled version of 0ad, which is a much higher hurdle than just installing a mod.

So you want some new checksums on each mod to be performed upon login or something? I've just tested and modified signed incompatible mods are joinable by players with the original one as I was expecting. So I don't understand what you mean, I'm probably missing something.

2 hours ago, Dunedan said:

So you're arguing that preventing some cheats is pointless, because there are still others?

Wanting the game to introduce a features that clearly will downgrade user experience, just to attempt to enforce a ban on a single mod is totally out of measure, add to it that (what I would consider) the ultimate cheat is available from command prompt; some hacks a widely spread, and now it's just ridiculous, yes. Sorry if that sounds like mocking but clearly I can't even have a clue of wtf is that hysteria about progui. Players that already can't bear such unfair advantage provided by the mod are already successful in enforcing players not to use them in there host....

[Dunedan]

28 minutes ago, Atrik said:

So you want some new checksums on each mod to be performed upon login or something? I've just tested and modified signed incompatible mods are joinable by players with the original one as I was expecting. So I don't understand what you mean, I'm probably missing something.

That's what https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/7166 would solve.

29 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Wanting the game to introduce a features that clearly will downgrade user experience […]

In my opinion cheating is degrading the user experience way more than giving hosts the option to disable unsigned mods.

30 minutes ago, Atrik said:

just to attempt to enforce a ban on a single mod is totally out of measure

We're not talking about a single mod here. Such a change would prevent all unreviewed and unsigned mods to be used, if the host of a game decides so. There are for examples instructions on the internet to create mods just meant for blatant cheating.

35 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Players that already can't bear such unfair advantage provided by the mod are already successful in enforcing players not to use them in there host....

The first post in this thread proves the opposite. You can only enforce something you know about and the use of certain mods is not known to other players.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I'd be throwing the ban hammer like Thor in Ragnarok if I had the power.

[Gurken Khan]

10 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Hmm. Considering conservatives these days... 

Politically I'm far to the left, so my understanding what decency means or what old-timey things or concepts are worth keeping may differ wildly from other interpretations; "conservative" in this sense isn't a political affiliation, regardless of the country.

[Atrik]

24 minutes ago, Dunedan said:

In my opinion cheating is degrading the user experience way more than giving hosts the option to disable unsigned mods.

If it's an option, it can be nice. But (obviously) it's nothing as good as just making every player mods visible in the game room. The latter also being probably simpler to make, and more useful as some host could maybe want to ban some signed mods. Using unsigned mods isn't uncommon and a lot of them don't even make the slightest debate. As for solving cheating, I still don't understand why you think this would prevent it.

34 minutes ago, Dunedan said:

We're not talking about a single mod here. Such a change would prevent all unreviewed and unsigned mods to be used, if the host of a game decides so. There are for examples instructions on the internet to create mods just meant for blatant cheating.

I think I can affirm that we are indeed talking about a single mod. Even in your cited example you might point out to instructions on how to modify a (signed) mod to reveal some infos. That is actually an example of cheat/modifications that would not be impacted by the option. Even if you consider adding some stuff like checksums I don't think  cheats wouldn't find their way through it, easily since it's an even an open source game. So again, this feature would be to disallow (a) mod, not prevent cheats.

Because we love so much to throw cheat every sentence to look very smart, the debate will hardly evolve around more useful matters. I think there never was a single threat about this mod saying something relatable beside "cheat cheat". Even when talking about introducing features, it's about preventing cheats, and the suggestions are totally biased toward preventing mods, not cheats.