Project Reality Forums

Does anyone know if PunkBuster still actively works on anti-cheat software for Battlefield 2, now that Electronic Arts has ceased its support of the game and GameSpy shut down its online services for the game?

I ask because I've been in some recent matches where I had suspicions that a teammate or someone on the other team was cheating (through wall hacking, auto-aiming, or other hacks). I'm not one to accuse someone of cheating without rock solid proof, so I didn't say anything. However, it made me concerned enough that I did a quick online search and, sure enough, there are hackers out there selling cheats to PR players.

I don't want to see cheating ruin this game, so I'm hoping PunkBuster is still actively countering the hacks. However, the last BF2 PunkBuster update was in June 2013, which makes me suspect that nobody is working to prevent cheating in PR...

no punkbuster support. u have to record (battlecorder) and submit your findings to the server admins i believe...

IMI-GALIL.223 wrote:no punkbuster support. u have to record (battlecorder) and submit your findings to the server admins i believe...

I'm unfamiliar with Battlerecorder. Does it show what everyone did during the match, or only your individual perspective?

I am not very familiar either, someone with more knowledge should chime in...

You might be right...

Ason wrote:You might be right...

That's the bullshit I'm talking about. With deviation, recoil, etc. this game is frustrating enough. I don't need the added stress of wondering whether the enemy is playing legitimately or not.

Battlerecorder records not any individual perspective (that'd be huge files), but the position and direction of every player / vehicle at any time. You can play it like a recording and watch everything, but some details may be inaccurate because they were not truly recorded, but reconstructed based on some actually recorded data (like position, direction, when someone shot etc), so for example impact effects may be a bit off because the shot was calculated differently...

It's the best we have though.

[R-DEV]Spec wrote:It's the best we have though.

What would it take to contract with Punkbuster to provide support for PR?

Given EA dropped all support for BF2, I doubt Punkbuster still updates BF2. PR servers also don't longer required to use PB since 1.0 given it's problems with our 100p servers and pretty much punkbuster being useless anyway. So I doubt any server still uses it today.

PB IMO has always been pretty useless for BF2. Never had proper support IMO and gave more troubles then it did good. Only thing beneficial about it was the usage of ban streaming like GGC.

I did a little research on how to use Battlerecorder. For anyone interested, here's a good instructional video I found which gives some basics on how to get and view Battlerecorder footage:



From what I learned, it looks like it would be very hard to get proof someone is cheating using Battlerecorder footage, unless they are being totally blatant. I'm not a programmer and don't know squat about coding, but surely there is some other way to find and ban cheaters?

oh boy, that voice

never gets old

BattleGuy234 wrote:From what I learned, it looks like it would be very hard to get proof someone is cheating using Battlerecorder footage, unless they are being totally blatant. I'm not a programmer and don't know squat about coding, but surely there is some other way to find and ban cheaters?

Not too sure there is... unless the dev's build their own system which I'm guessing is way too much work and out of the question. A third party could be hired to do it, but with what money? Luckily for PR we have a strong, somewhat close community that is for the most part honest. There will always, however, be the cheating snakes that ruin it for everyone. It is up to the community to weed these snakes out and remove their heads...

Admins. Admins are the best thing against cheaters.

If a cheater is very successful with his cheats, he's going to be noticed. Someone'll know the guy who always scores best. And if noone does, people will watch him closely.

If a cheater is unsuccessful, then the cheats never made him a more than average player - in which case you could just ignore him and pretend he wasn't a shit player turned average via cheats, but would've been average to begin with. Chances are he'll give himself away by being incredibly bad at everything except for the things that aimbots help with.

If a cheater is just slightly above average (as most actually hidden and yet 'successful' cheaters are), they can go under the radar for a while while still causing more than average damage... These are the worst, but then again, they are rarely obvious and you can just pretend they didn't exist, and you won't notice them much. If anyone does, they start getting in trouble, because as I said initially:

Admins.

As a community, just report suspicious behaviour. Make videos if necessary. Admins can review the footage, or go undercover and follow the suspects. It's a lot of work, but it's the best thing short of a working anti-cheat software (and even the latter is not effective without good administration).

If a player lone-wolfs or plays only with the same buddy or two all the time, yet scores very high: Be suspicious, watch them, try to stick close to them, make videos if something seems off. If it's a lone wolf, kick them for that.

If they're actually social, there'll always be an admin nearby.

characteristics of cheater to watch out for
1. dont talk over mumble
2. lone wolf

boot them from your sqd.
!r "cheater's_name" report them for not using mumble on a full server and they should be kick by admins.