Posts by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
(DIR) Post #ATGg3iWY6SRBBRUC4u by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-03-04T07:31:52Z
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Usually these work by having code that can read the game's memory, and having someone reverse engineer where things like player skeletons are being calculated. Then you know where other players are. Done.But lets say your game has gotten really good at randomizing where that data is, or implementing ways to prevent game memory being accessed. Games have been doing that for years, and yet cheaters still have found ways around that.
(DIR) Post #ATGg3kOT9TA8yxillI by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-03-04T07:32:12Z
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For example, some cheat programs insert themselves into the D3D or OpenGL rendering API. Then they look at draw calls of meshes with a certain number of vertices, or with specific color textures, and voila, you know where other players are again.But what if your game is on console, and that console hasn't been jailbroken yet? You can't run arbitrary code on the consoles to look at memory, or rendering API calls. So what can cheaters do?
(DIR) Post #ATGg3mRjWIxhLfGP7w by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-03-04T07:32:35Z
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Well, console games often trust the client 100%. And this is bad, because then what they're really trusting is that the network data they're receiving is truthful.So cheaters would have a computer sit between the console and the internet, and watch the data being sent.
(DIR) Post #ATGg3oCYzg12nCBJlA by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-03-04T07:32:50Z
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More than one console multiplayer game had radars that showed where all other players were, or instant head shot keys. There were some infamous hacks where as soon as you joined a game you would be headshot, and shot again as soon as you spawned.
(DIR) Post #ATGg3q0EIVL2NWQUoS by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-03-04T07:32:53Z
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Those were accomplished by someone reverse engineering the network data and figuring out what to send the server to say "I headshot this player". And because console games often trust the client 100%, it would kill that person no matter where they were on the map.
(DIR) Post #ATGg3rf28HZVWMWb3I by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-03-04T07:33:12Z
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Again, putting more detection and trusting the client less can stop or at least reduce a lot of these kinds of cheats. As can making sure you limit how much data you send other clients. But as I said, that can get expensive quick. Servers cost money.The more the server has to do per player, the fewer players that server can support. So it's always a balancing act between how much cheat prevention to implement on the server, and keeping the game profitable.
(DIR) Post #ATGg3u2VHzXAtjWMue by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-03-04T07:33:30Z
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The crazy thing is we're finally getting to a point where it seems almost viable to just run the "client" in the cloud and make cheating impossible! Certainly there were games for Stadia that intended to do just that!But we're also to a point where computer vision has gotten good enough that aim bots can be written that run purely externally via a web cam pointed at a screen, and sitting inline with the mouse to spoof hardware inputs. So even fully cloud based games aren't immune.
(DIR) Post #AUMtnRnM6XkfwdnFei by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-04-06T06:54:07Z
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Excellent video on "What is the Frame Rate of the Human Eye?"(Spoiler: Whatever number you're thinking right now, you're wrong. The answer is none.)Also has some receipts to back up that claim. I feel like this is important watching for anyone interested in film or displays.https://youtu.be/quWecp4vU2g
(DIR) Post #AVMyDY6oCuAH8OcQ4G by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-05-06T01:55:06Z
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An interesting Game Dev Fact for tech artists out there. Infamous: Second Son is perhaps best remembered for its incredible and varied particle effects.It only had one particle shader, with no variants. All transparent particles were rendered in a single draw.
(DIR) Post #AVMyDb45DUlcIoMmjg by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-05-06T01:55:06Z
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To be clear. I don’t mean one draw per emitter, or type of particle. I mean _all_ particles. If you’re someone who’s used to using Unity or Unreal, every single particle used one shared material.All the different textures, all the different rendering modes, all one shader.
(DIR) Post #AVMyDcougroxkLHhMu by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-05-06T01:55:06Z
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It relied entirely on dynamic branches in a giant über particle material.Why would they do this? For sorting. They used compute shaders to generate and update the particle position and display data in one giant list, and then they just had to sort that one list.
(DIR) Post #AWlI4D96XR7ml2iZXM by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-06-16T21:09:17Z
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Sometimes debugging can be beautiful.
(DIR) Post #AiSmqrwYLfMS5oCNdI by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2024-05-30T00:48:55Z
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When @NanoRaptor 's bullshit somehow makes it into the real world.
(DIR) Post #AiSpWcZW5cLcUPSb20 by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2024-05-31T22:23:31Z
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@foone The cyborg future hollywood thinks we want vs the cyborg future we want.
(DIR) Post #AjOmutz4SQ4rlJw396 by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2024-06-28T21:14:51Z
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@foone I was going to say it had to be the Optimus Maximus, but insanely that didn't have any onboard computing and the host CPU had to run all of those damn screens.
(DIR) Post #AoZpABhMCKjcYbyio4 by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2024-11-30T18:35:31Z
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@foone I have 5 different keyboards in my house and all can do MY, but only one of them have N-Key Rollover. The rest are slightly different in what combination of keys are combined into groups, and thus which keys ghost are different.
(DIR) Post #Aocaz5XxuesePRHKm8 by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2024-12-02T02:40:47Z
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@foone leather mouse pad
(DIR) Post #Aqj2qT9IcNka9cBhUe by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2025-02-03T01:05:20Z
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@foone @mmu_man I've certainly been to Indian restaurants where they stopped cooking the chicken when it lost it's magnetic properties...🤢
(DIR) Post #AtIr27jWedPoUG2GMy by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2025-04-21T03:26:53Z
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@foone
(DIR) Post #AxmjDLsoi6P5iTkYee by bgolus@mastodon.gamedev.place
2025-09-02T00:21:53Z
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I sometimes wonder if the people who get really impressed by generative AI “game footage” also lack a sense of object permanence.