Question about an anti-cheat system

[Ed the Bat]

I was just about to tell Kins pretty much what NS there. Maybe make the death pit powerful, but still below the one-million threshold, so invincible players won't die from it (but most others would)?

[BouncyTEM]

With cheats disabled, the moment I find myself stuck because of a map bug or whatever, I'll quit and throw the map in the recycle bin.

Just leave me to play how I want to play. Don't force your preferences on me. If I don't want to cheat, I won't cheat. If I want, or need, to cheat, I'd like to be able to, thank you very much.

[TimeOfDeath]

In singleplayer, one should never disable the player of using cheats.

I agree. However, I don't like ZDoom's current implementation of cheats while demo recording. At least you get a message when using the cheat codes, but there's no message at all when using console commands. Players could abuse that by changing gravity/air control a bit to make jumps easier. I don't see a reason why cheats/console commands should be allowed while recording demos.

[Enjay]

I don't see a reason that they should be disallowed (unless it is for competetive demo recording). What if recording a demo with altered gravity (etc) is exactly what a person wants to record?

[TimeOfDeath]

They could screen capture their screen without recording or alter the wad (mapinfo, etc). Competitive players don't have an alternative, and imo that's more important than if someone wants to casually record something with altered gravity. At the very least, I think there should be messages for all cheats and console commands.

[Hellser]

They could screen capture their screen without recording or alter the wad (mapinfo, etc).

Issue with that is that while I play ZDooM or GZDooM with fraps, my framerate is a bit jumpy. If I record a demo first then playback through that, I get consistent 30 FPS or 60 FPS.

[Kinsie]

Waitwaitwait, hold the phone here: Competitive speedrunners etc. record demos in ZDoom? And don't get laughed at for not doing things in vanilla?

I thought ZDoom had between-version demo compatibility that could be described as somewhere between non-existent and hilarious?

[Enjay]

They could screen capture their screen without recording or alter the wad (mapinfo, etc). Competitive players don't have an alternative, and imo that's more important than if someone wants to casually record something with altered gravity. At the very least, I think there should be messages for all cheats and console commands.

Meh, what you are talking about is a tiny minority, perhaps even no one. It's a non-issue IMO.

ZDoom is not used for any commonly recognised competitive demo recording.
Captured screens and altered WADs can be done regardless of whether cheats are allowed or not. If someone is doing this to fool other people, they are a douche. Who would really care anyway?
A message for every cheat/command during a demo? Well, I don't see the harm (other than someone would have to spend a little bit of time coding it) but, equally, I don't see a genuine need either.

[Gez]

There are messages for classic cheat codes because that's how they worked since vanilla.

Anyway, any changed setting will be recorded in the [wiki]demo[/wiki], which means that you can know if someone cheated just by looking at the demo's VARS chunk.

[TimeOfDeath]

Waitwaitwait, hold the phone here: Competitive speedrunners etc. record demos in ZDoom? And don't get laughed at for not doing things in vanilla?

People usually only get a hard time for recording in ZDoom if the wad is designed for vanilla/limit-removing/boom, but ZDoom can be competitive too. There are ZDoom demos by multiple people for all of my ZDoom format wads and I've recorded ZDoom demos for several other wads as well.

I thought ZDoom had between-version demo compatibility that could be described as somewhere between non-existent and hilarious?

It doesn't have as many playback features as prboom-plus and it can be a bit of a pain having to use the same version a demo was recorded on, but the ZDoom demo format is still solid and usable.

If someone is doing this to fool other people, they are a douche. Who would really care anyway?

douche-nozzle to the max. Anyone competing with them would definitely care.

A message for every cheat/command during a demo? Well, I don't see the harm (other than someone would have to spend a little bit of time coding it) but, equally, I don't see a genuine need either.

I don't know how long it would take to code, but what about displaying whatever is entered in the console (including any binds) as a message?

Anyway, any changed setting will be recorded in the demo, which means that you can know if someone cheated just by looking at the demo's VARS chunk.

I opened a demo in notepad and I see the VARS chunk, but does that only display the settings used at startup? I couldn't find where I manually changed gravity during the demo.

[Gez]

Yeah, that'd be part of the commands recorded in the BODY chunk.

Someone could write a ZDoom demo analyzer that would list the commands issued during game. I don't care enough about demos to volunteer, though.