Cheater Boards (How to Stop Them)

[SlartyBartFast]

Originally posted by nuclear zombie
There is only one way to get the kind of "control" you want over players. The guns are not owned by the people playing , everybody gets the exact same stock marker, no modifications, no upgrades , preprogrammed and they get it a couple of minutes before the tournamnet so they can fill it with paint, much like the IROC of paintball.

And people thought standard chips would be expensive.

You can blame electronics all you want , people will find a way to cheat with mechanical markers.

[SlartyBartFast]

Originally posted by truss
first off dont ever tell me what i obviously do and do not do.you dont know me.all i am saying is if you dont like playing against people with faster guns dont play against them.

[Branchvillian]

With all of the programing knowledge around today, even if the refs checked the boards on a computer, whose to say that that programming is falseified, and doesn't show what's actually happening on the board. If people will go so far as to make these boards for the sole purpose of cheating, that should show you right there that there not going to stop if they don't have to, which they really don't.

[raehl]

It's a matter of ease...

Originally posted by Branchvillian
With all of the programing knowledge around today, even if the refs checked the boards on a computer, whose to say that that programming is falseified, and doesn't show what's actually happening on the board. If people will go so far as to make these boards for the sole purpose of cheating, that should show you right there that there not going to stop if they don't have to, which they really don't.

Commodity microcontrollers are cheap, but they all (well, any particular model) behave the same way. What makes it easy to cheat with a commodity microcontroller is that you can easily reprogram them - but it's just as easy to read the programming back and see if it matches approved software.

Now, could you have a chip that looks like a commodity microcontroller and runs one program but gives a different program when you try to read it?

Sure - but, that would be a special, limited run chip, which defeats the whole point of a comodity microcontroller - the special chip would be prohibitively expensive. Additionally, in order for your ruse to work, you'd have to disguise your chip as one of the real ones, which gets you into not ony tournament rules problems if caught, but also all sorts of trademark violation problems. Making something and passing it off as something made by someone else is just asking for a nice, nasty lawsuit.


Just because we may not be able to come up with a perfect solution doesn't mean we shouldn't use very good solutions. If our very good solutions can force 99% of people to play fair, it becomes that much easier to find and deal with cheaters, and players will have a much lower motivation to cheat themselves if they believe the vast majority of their competition is not cheating.

If you don't put in any controls at all, you'll just have the half of the players who are cheating, and the other half of the players who want to be able to cheat too because they don't think it's fair that their opponents are allowed to have an advantage. (And they're right, it isn't.)


- Chris

[FallNAngel]

Which is why I said each board could be flashed before each game. That would ensure the programming was correct. After the tournament, markers from the winners could be taken and examined by a 3rd party as someone else suggested.

[hitech]

Re: It's a matter of ease...

Originally posted by raehl
Just because we may not be able to come up with a perfect solution doesn't mean we shouldn't use very good solutions.

I agree, but… (there is always a but, isn’t there ). I had the same idea of only allowing certified markers from certified manufactures and downloading and comparing the code. However, after thinking about it for a while, I could EASILY make a cheater “board”. Basically, it would be an additional board hidden in the marker that “enhanced” operation. If I can think of it and am capable of building it myself, so are others. Now, that doesn’t mean that it still isn’t an idea that should be implemented. It should. However, it would only be PART of the solution.

I’m beginning to understand why F1 had so much trouble trying to build a system to catch “cheaters”.

[speedyejl]

Personally I think the solution I mentioned would be the most effective. (of course I think so ha)

Its:
Modular
Universal
Takes no time to tighten it on the end of barrels
Cheap to implement
Untamperable since players only have it for the duration of the game
Adds yet another specator aspect to the game


In fact I believe the NXL has wireless chronoies which transmit the speed to the scoreboard, so the technology is more than here.

[hitech]

Originally posted by speedyejl
Personally I think the solution I mentioned would be the most effective. (of course I think so ha)

Modular – Yes, this is true
Universal – Sort of, see below
Takes no time to tighten it on the end of barrels – All barrels do not have the same OD.
Cheap to implement – I guess it depends on your definition of cheap.
Untamperable since players only have it for the duration of the game – Not untamperable, just more difficult.

It wouldn’t be inexpensive. How expensive would a chrono be that can accurately determine BPS up to 30 or so? Is light enough to not make the marker front heavy? Fit well enough to not fall off varying size barrels, but also not interfere with the paintballs trajectory? Also, it can’t be a radar chrono. It’s going to have to use another method.

The biggest problem however, is what are you going to use as the criteria to define cheating? As soon as you define it the cheater software does something different. Rely on a person? Then it becomes subjective again.

It’s harder than it first appears.

[speedyejl]

This is one of those things where people can argue back and forth slightly modifing what they said or thinking of new ideas.

It would have basicaly a clamp composed of two arcs with rubber padding to make sure it doesnt marr the barrel and stays on. It would easily fit every barrel on the market, unless someone decides to play with a M98 that has a silencer on it, don't think we will be seeing that in PSP or NPPL any time soon.

Look up at my first post on this, explains mostly the questions you asked. As far as the chronos operation I assume a doppler radar chrono like the handheld ones would be suffeceitnt. They are advertised at +/-6 which is good enough for someone to notice an increase in velocity high enough to be harmful.

[hitech]

Originally posted by speedyejl
It would have basically a clamp composed of two arcs with rubber padding to make sure it doesn’t mar the barrel and stays on.

It seems to me like that would be BIG. It would make to large of a target to get players to agree to. Yes, I know it’s the same for everyone, but that doesn’t mean players will agree to it. Also, if it’s big us warp users are going to cry the loudest.

Originally posted by speedyejl
As far as the chronos operation I assume a doppler radar chrono like the handheld ones would be sufficient.

You couldn’t use radar. They would interfere with each other and not work. Also, as far as I know none of the handhelds will measure BPS.

Originally posted by speedyejl
They are advertised at +/-6 which is good enough for someone to notice an increase in velocity high enough to be harmful.

Is rising velocity the only thing you are trying to detect. Exceeding one shot per pull is also a big issue.

[truss]

Originally posted by hitech

You couldnt use radar. They would interfere with each other and not work. Also, as far as I know none of the handhelds will measure BPS.

you could use radar but you would have to use different freqs. on all of them, or maybe a frequency adjile radar.i think it would be wa to bulky on the front of your gun either way.

[hitech]

Originally posted by truss
You could use radar but you would have to use different freqs. on all of them...

Maybe I'm missing something, but as I understand doppler radar it detects a freq. shift. That means it needs a freq range to operate in. You also have the problem of the radar waves affecting other chrono’s waves and shifting them. Then there is the small problem of all those objects flying around the field shifting everyone waves…

[truss]

Originally posted by hitech


Maybe I'm missing something, but as I understand doppler radar it detects a freq. shift. That means it needs a freq range to operate in. You also have the problem of the radar waves affecting other chronos waves and shifting them. Then there is the small problem of all those objects flying around the field shifting everyone waves

no it wouldnt be a problem with a freq adjile radar because they only recieve the freq they send out for a very short time.all other freq's are disregarded.this wouldnt be a dopple radar but more like a military radar.

[speedyejl]

The clamp would be as large as it needs to be to fit over most barrels which is extremely small. The instrument package would be smaller than your fist, possibly comparable to two handheld chronos lined up.

The radars wouldn't interfere with each other. They emit a very low energy wave because it only needs to travel at the most a foot or two to reach the paintball. Stray waves wouldn't be strong enough to even interfere with another device 3 feet away. (I've done exit shots simultanesously with a person next to me, no issuses)

Counting BPS? It wouldn't be hard at all to beef up the sofware just a tiny bit to calculate the equations needed. The doppler effect is an extremely simple process and it can easily be kept under 10ms which would be 100bps.

Also FPS increases are more important to look for since they actually pose a more serious danger. More than one shot per pull would be easy to detect since if the time between shots would most likely be identical and be a round number. Or if two shots were 50ms apart (20bps) something would sound fishy.

[Miscue]

/me does not understand the point of having this barrel gadget. This does not solve the ability to send false inputs to the chip's input line.

I think a lot of people are talking out of their hind quarters.