Cheats and ACS

[AFADoomer]

Is there any way to check (via ACS) to see if the player has activated any of the original doom cheats (most specifically god mode)? I've looked around and searched the forum and wiki, but haven't seen anything related to this...

Thanks!

[Macil]

I know a way to tell if the player used the all items cheat. You make a level that has no Chainsaws, and the script sees if the player has a chainsaw. if he does, hes obviously cheating.

[Lumpy]

what if he got the chainsaw in an earlier level?

[chopkinsca]

Although it is useless, I came up with this:

Code: Select all

script 50 enter {
	thing_changetid(0, 255);
}

int hone, htwo;
script 100 open {
	delay(5);
	hone = GetActorProperty(255, APROP_Health);
	thing_damage(255, 1, 1);
	delay(5);
	htwo = GetActorProperty(255, APROP_Health);
	if(hone == htwo){
		thing_damage(255, 99999999, 1);
		terminate;		
	}
	setactorproperty(255, APROP_Health, hone);
	restart;
}

You would get a pain sound every time the script restarts (and the screen flashes red). Also the health goes down one for a very small time, so if you are at one HP, you will die.
Therefore it is useless.

Reminds me of tricks used in starcraft maps to prevent cheating.

[AFADoomer]

Yeah, I had tried something similar before... I can't think of a way to check to see if damage can be taken, and not have the sound and flash....

And god mode doesn't just set the aprop_invulnerable flag... I've tried checking that already, too...

[HotWax]

I've said this before and I'll say it again. It is neither the wad author's right nor responsibility to police the people who play their map. If they want to cheat to get through your map, that's their business, not yours. Obviously this doesn't apply in multiplayer, but that is ZDoom's job to worry about (via the sv_cheats cvar) and not the mapper's. Quit wasting your time trying to come up with ways to "punish" a player for enjoying the game the way they want to. I thought it was the most moronic thing in the world when I saw what the author of the Aliens TC did with the BFG, and I still think it's moronic to do things like that.

If a person really wants to cheat at your map, what's to stop them from modifying the behavior lump anyway, or find other ways to circumvent your "protection"? Quit wasting your time with this shit.

[MartinHowe]

I've said this before and I'll say it again. It is neither the wad author's right nor responsibility to police the people who play their map.

Damn straight.

..."punish" a player for enjoying the game the way they want to. I thought it was the most moronic thing in the world when I saw what the author of the Aliens TC did with the BFG, and I still think it's moronic to do things like that.

One of the first things I do after downloading a WAD with a DEH patch is to remove any "Cheat 0" section (of course I standardise the map header names too, but that's another story ). Cheats are administrative commands used for testing and experimentation. I don't normally use them when playing, but to see how something works, then it is sometimes necessary.

[AFADoomer]

I've said this before and I'll say it again. It is neither the wad author's right nor responsibility to police the people who play their map.

I wasn't planning on it... I'm coding a hud/status bar replacement, and would like to have an image show up indicating that god mode is on...

Though you do bring up a good point that I hadn't though of as to why this may not be implemented right now. I didn't even think of using it to kill someone who cheated... That's just dumb.

[Graf Zahl]

If a person really wants to cheat at your map, what's to stop them from modifying the behavior lump anyway, or find other ways to circumvent your "protection"? Quit wasting your time with this shit.

Well said. And that's exactly what I do when I encounter some idiocy lke cheat protection etc.

[Graf Zahl]

One of the first things I do after downloading a WAD with a DEH patch is to remove any "Cheat 0" section.

ZDoom doesn't read this anyway so why bother?

[HotWax]

Heh, and it wouldn't affect the Aliens TC anyway. That PWAD changes the BFG (which isn't available in the game) so that it takes about a minute to come on or leave the screen, and displays some stupid message about chating in place of the sprite.

"Oh man you're really punishing me!!! Oh man I can't believe I cheated and have to sit through this!!! NOOO!!!! NOOOOOO!!!!!! ..... Oh wait, that's right, I can just quit now and delete your stupid WAD."

Yeah, that's grand.

[Nanami]

Is there any way to check (via ACS) to see if the player has activated any of the original doom cheats (most specifically god mode)? I've looked around and searched the forum and wiki, but haven't seen anything related to this...

Thanks!

If you want to know what I did:

I set the max health to 999 in DeHacked and then made a script that always makes sure that health never goes past 200. I made the god mode cheat give the player 999 health, and a script checks to see if the health is ever 999. If it is, it kills the player.

Also, there was supposed to be an inventory item that the player would only get 1 of, so I made a script to see if they ever had MORE than one, and if they did, it killed them.

The problems with this:

1) You can still pick up health items even if your health is at "max," thereby wasting them.
2) Typing "god" in the console won't set the health to 999 so they'll still be invincible.
3) Most people will hate your guts for it. If they're going to cheat, they're going to cheat... if it kills them for cheating, they probably won't play at all. I took it out of the wad I had it in because it was annoying ME.

[HotWax]

Exactly. It creates negative side-effects and pisses people off, two things you DON'T want to have happen to players of your WAD.