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Every now and then someone joins a random open free-for-all game in Descent 1, hacks it and ruins the fun for everyone involved. Over the past year or so its been fairly rare however, I've been told its becoming more and more frequent of late. Oh and by 'hacks' I don't mean Jedi hax or Birds fusion hax...

-Someone usually joins without a pilot name " ' ' has joined " (they still appear when you press 'Pause Break' in the window that pops up).
-The ghost ship that appears in the level is always stationary and it seems to be equipped with a full weapon loadout.
-The ghost ship is impervious to damage and it makes no sound when fired upon.
-The ghost ship can fire both primary and secondary out of its back and sides.
-It can instantly detonate its smart missiles.
-Other pilot names are affected and aren't always displayed correctly as a result.
-Other pilots can also be affected as the ghost ship can interfere with their ability to take damage.
-The ghost ship appears to adopt the colours of another pilot's ship to make you think its someone else, although its clearly not them.

This is just for information and I'm not asking for anything to be done about it (if there even is anything that can be done). You'll probably start seeing alot more restricted games instead of open games so be patient if you're trying to join one of them. Its sad that someone would stoop to this but I guess it takes all sorts to make a world

The no name thing is me. Its just a symbol as a name that Descent has no idea how to display it. The hacker... Well there are only two that I know and pretty much everyone knows (that have been here a while) but who knows maybe its someone new.

Yeah at first I mistook you for him in the Shiver game but you actually flew and had a ping. His name was blank and his ping didn't show at all.

Yeah, when I was watching from spec mode his ship wasnt moving but it was shooting and killing people across the map. I was just thinking it was lag. When I joined in the game then I seen what was going on.

Yea Lee Hacking is sensationally Evolving into what we have all feared for a very long time but the main source of hacking comes from the Program "Cheat Engine" it is VERY good and free most players that are not Dcl or Rangers Resort to the hacking Path and when you host an open lobby all they have to do is join and ruin the party it is a terrible thing but there is no security in descent and no Anti-Cheat only the host Can be The quote "Anti-Cheat" and many people use its age to advantage for continuously hacking and cheating with no Consequence... If it's possible I would like to see Anti-Cheat in future versions of Retro or Rebirth it would really revolutionize Descent... None the less Hacking is a seriously bad... Your exploiting the fun out of a game by doing something you shouldn't be doing to the game it's like drugs you find a way to get it and after the first use you want to do it again then Bam your addicted and you get busted... Game over The only thing I can really suggest to keep hackers away for the mean time is to make a BlackList of people who are confirmed hackers or Suspicious, and Put open lobbies on forming so you know who is joining and if the player is on the BlackList Deny Access from them joining.

Yeah this has happened enough now that I'm going to start Restricted games sometimes. Lame! Thanks for posting, Lee.

There's also a pilot who moves cheat fast but I mentioned it privately to Drakona. Could be the same person. I wish we could employ her to make some anti-cheat stuff :/

Descent has survived cheaters for 20 years, I imagine it can survive another one....

This is beyond what cheatengine can do - which normally just does infinite shield and energy, changes particles for weapons and so on. Cheatengine does not change the actual code, only what's in RAM. As a result, some of these things are impossible with cheatengine - and would require a custom build. It could be a malicious build, or it could be someone running a version of rebirth just before they changed the multiplayer version ID's, but after significant changes (unlikely).

Analysis of hacks:
If, for example, the movement packet had some data re-arranged or removed, then it is entirely possible their ship on your screen would not move, (and thus appear impervious because your bullets are calculated on your screen - you won't hear the hit sound because there ship is only there on your screen. Their hitbox will be where the weapons are coming from). So shoot the ghost ship - pretend that it's cloaked and take it on.
Remotely detonating smart missiles is impossible, as that is handled on your PC with no network involvement. However, primary weapons can fire smart globs as projectiles. But once on your screen, they will behave as smart missile blobs
Shooting from back and sides: At least it's still attached to his ship. I'm not familiar with the code, but as you can't see him, are you sure? It's one thing to change what a gun is firing. It's another entirely to move the gun. And yet again harder to move the gun whilst in-game. Backwards wouldn't be too hard as you have the prox-bomb spawn location to play with, but it is unlikely to shoot sideways. As a result: flank him.

I'm curious about the interfere with other pilots ability to take damage. If you disable the retro p2p protocol I imagine this will go away. Actually, it may be an artefact of his pilot's name overflowing - we already know the name does overflow because it influences other pilots names (which are likely close in RAM). I'm surprised we aren't seeing crashes.

@Code:
I wouldn't say that cheating is addictive. I recall playing a "cheaters only" game at some point with some of the rangers some years back, which was good fun. We all fired up scanmem or cheatengine, and tried to kill each other by firing mega's instead of plasma globs.... Or just flooding the map with mines.
The best solution for hackers? Maintain a community where they feel ashamed being the hacker. Make them not want to hack the game.

I feel I should mention that I've seen the something very similar to the ghost thing happen to people who are definitely not cheating. From memory, couple of months ago a fun game with slurpy and someone else in RIP. B2af (I think it was b2af at least...might have been someone else but he was on voice coms and confused) joins, we do not see his name show up. On our end he sits in his spawn as a ghost ship and teleports around at random and fires weapons. He seems invulnerable to to fire but he's still dying every now and then from random smarts or primary blasts that are nowhere near him, and what mean with that is that he would die ion completely different rooms from where his ship was at on our end. As soon as he died his ghost teleported to the death spot and did the death roll. From what i recall things were screwed up on his end too but I don't remember exactly how. Oh and from the moment he joined secondaries started duplicating like crazy, we ended up with hundreds of smarts. (I think birds saw this when he joined the game later)

I have definitely seen someone who's ship moves way to fast. They appear to be clearly doing something malicious.

The other stuff not so much, there was a big game the other day with a ship that very obviously was taking too much damage, but then there was lots of weird stuff going on in that game. People who said they couldn't see others but they could still chat etc etc.

The more i think about this, the more it seems just modern day lag or bugs? Ive definitely had it a few times in 1v1 where suddenly i've been instakilled. A few times I've asked my opponent and they were also confused, I must've not seen and ate a smart but the assured me they hadn't fired one. Sometimes its like there's little micro burst, not the traditional ones where their ship freezes and suddenly the screen is full of fire, but much more subtle where I suddenly take 60 damage from two homing missiles that appear right on me.

I played my fair share of high ping descent (350ms+ for many years in Australia) which produced many ridiculous (and sometimes hilarious) games, but it just seems these days there's some really odd situations.

The other issues is ID'ing people. There have been cases where people think someone is using another persons username and abusing the game. I know sometimes people like to fly as an unknown, but it would help in these situations so we could know if it was just lag or people actually doing the wrong thing.