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viviti

Regarding Cheats and the Simpletons Who Use Them:

A lot of people ask if there are really cheats for Quake 3. Most of them are genuinely unaware because they never looked for any. Some are trying to find them. And others already have them, and are trying to make it seem like there aren't any.

The bottom line is: Yes, Virginia, there really are cheats for Quake III.

 First, some facts: The source code for the game has been publicly available for about 5 years. In that time countless mods have been made. Many of them you are familiar with: Noghost, Instagib, Excessive, OSP, CPMA and so on. But there are probably more that you DON'T know about. Many of these are hacks to the game code. Here's where things get a bit technical.

The majority of the game, in terms of calculations, is handled by the CLIENT not the server. There are two ways you can see this for yourself: First, download and look at the source code. Most of the aiming, trajectory, health, armor, etc. is done on the client side. All those files in the source code that look like "c_weapons" and the like, all indicate CLIENT SIDE CODE. This is a fact and cannot be disputed. All you need to do is alter that code, recompile your "quake3.exe" and you now have a hacked Q3 game with whatever cheats you want. That's assuming you understand Quake's code, which is very similar to C++ (Or plain old C, I forget which).

The second way to see how nearly everything is handled client-side is logic and common sense: Let's be conservative and say we only have 4 players in the game. Each one has a running inventory of sorts that tells the server where they are, their health, armor, weapons and ammo and so on. Now, does it make any sense, from a programming perspective, to have the SERVER (One CPU for all players) handle all those calculations? Or would it make more sense for the CLIENT (One CPU for one player) to do the math and just tell the server "Hey, I'm here and this is what I have..." Obviously, the latter makes more sense.

The server takes snapshots (or actually, it requests them) from the client at regular intervals. The client responds with its status. If the client doesn't respond to a request, the server can NOT wait for it to reply. It simply drops the request. This is what CONNECTION INTERRUPTED means. The server can't wait because this is all happening in real time. If it waited every time a packet got lost, the game would be unplayable online. You know how you stream music online and if your connection is crappy you lose audio in spots, or it stops playing until your buffer catches up? Well Quake3 is basically dropping the data that it requested if nobody replies. Of course after a long enough time of getting no reply, it times out. If it waited for each reply, people would be frozen in place between each packet that got lost.

So now, you get into cheats that aren't really cheats, but exploits of the game. If you can tweak your settings so that you're getting a lot of packet loss, but not continuously, (say, every other packet) you can make it very hard for people to hit or even see you properly, while you see things just fine. You know those players that look like they teleport or "warp"? A lot of them are exploiting the nature of the game's net-code. Often it's just a bad connection, but players with 150 or lower pings that "warp" are probably doing it on purpose. This is the most common way of avoiding damage, or lessening the damage you should take.

Perhaps the most obvious way to answer the question of whether or not there are cheats for Quake III would be to point out the existence of Punk Buster. (PB). From point release 1.31 I believe, PB was available as an anti-cheat download. Then with 1.32, it was actually bundled WITH the point release from iD Software. If that doesn't answer the question plainly and definitively, then nothing does.

A cheat in the hands of an average player is merely another weapon being used by an average player. Yeah, he might get a few good frags, or avoid getting fragged a little longer, but he's still only average. That same cheat in the hands of a good player becomes a massive advantage. If he moves well and is fairly accurate then he probably relies on those skills most of the time. But when he runs into an equally good or better player, the aimbot/firebot or health hack gets turned on, and with that edge, he can win, often very easily if he's got the cheats set up properly.

Identifying a cheater is no easy task, usually. Some are overt and make no attempt to hide it. I've even met a couple who openly admit it and name the cheats they use. (Obviously they're on the permanent ban list.) But these are rare cases. Most cheaters who are pretty good players or even excellent players are smart enough to only use the cheats when they need to. One way to help keep players honest is to spectate them. The Admins of this server have been accused of using cheats, and our reply is always the same. "No, we do not use any cheats, but please spectate and see for yourself."

Beware of any player who says there are no cheats for Q3. They're either extremely ignorant or lying. Most likely the latter.

Also, when a player is accused of cheating and actually IS cheating, he will typically become VERY irate about the accustaion and most likely start insulting the person or people who accused him.

Beware of any player who enters a server making claims like "I'll own you all" or other such nonsense. Blowhards like that usually have some hacks that almost guarantee a win.

Telltale signs of blatant cheats are high accuracy with the machinegun and shotgun at long range. Aside from the grenade launcher, only the MG and SG have random impact patterns that spread open the further you are from the target. After a certain distance, both weapons become almost useless.

For example, in DM17 (The Longest Yard), hitting someone on the railgun platform from the main part of the map with the MG is 75% chance. Hitting that same player with the SG is all luck at that distance.

Railgun accuracy is a lot different. The rail always hits the center of the crosshair, so it goes where you point. You just have to have a steady hand and a good eye for compensating for your ping. However, it's a lot harder to do a 180 degree spin and snap directly to your target and hit them with the rail. Any player you see that snaps to his targets constantly is probably cheating. It's one thing to follow and track movement but snapping to players constantly isn't likely at all. (Although a good player can do this, just not every time.)

It takes time but eventually you will learn to distinguish skill from cheat. Sometime soon a new section will be added to discuss how you can spot cheats.