- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Posted by: sawnose
Regarding aimbots - I've never personally researched anit-aimbot programming, but I imagine it would be very involved and intrusive into the codebase, to make a real, permanent fix that doesn't just become an arms race. Real fixes must involve kernel-level anti-debugger and anti-memory-snooping code, and remember, this game runs on Win98 too! Trying to tack in this sort of feature now would certainly open us up to many new compat problems and a number of iterations; the development time would be prohibitive.
Or let me put it this way: the game executable (including the patch released today) is wrapped with SafeDisc technology that is brand-name protection developed by a large company to prevent both copying and memory-intrusion attacks on the binary. And yet I'll bet that a large percentage of the game's regular users run utilities to un-safedisc the binary to save having to put in the CD; of course I'm familiar with them. If the 3rd-party commercial package we use to protect the code doesn't do the trick, you can bet that fixing the aimbot problem isn't just a matter of me sitting down and deciding to do so :-)
It's one of the big differences between the PC and the Xbox - the Xbox is designed from the start to be a secure platform, particularly when you're signed in to Live, and it brings a new level of fairness to games. The PC, on the other hand, is *your* platform, as the user. There are very limited ways of preventing you from doing what you want on your own PC, such as automating your aiming. The ways that have been fairly successful in other games have needed to keep evolving, and that's a level of support that Bungie can't sign up for, for an old game that wasn't even developed in-house.
Instead, I have to recommend judicious use of the banning and server-password features. Notice that your ban file is plain-text, and the community can feel free to pool their banfiles to build comprehensive lists of known cheaters.
P.S. - I didn't add anti-aimbot code in this patch. If current aimbots don't work, it'll be because the new executable has a slightly different memory layout; as soon as the bot programmers investigate, updated aimbots will unfortunately be back.
You don't have to explain to us... Despite most of us being completely ignorant in programming knowledge, we know that there's no way that a casual patch like this would fix the problem. I for one appreciate anything at all - the gesture more than anything else.