Mischief, the land of the Macaroni Quest overlords..

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by MischiefMan, May 28, 2021.

  1. code-zero Augur

    I always wonder if the people complaining about warping by others are themselves using their "Monk Tracking Skill".... if you know what I mean...
    Skuz likes this.
  2. Xhartor Augur

    It's a free trade TLP, everyone expect cheating to be over the top.
    Qimble likes this.
  3. plowers Journeyman

    I'm 12 and what's fraps?
  4. Captain Video Augur


    A video recording tool, used a lot by gamers.

    Every TLP cycle has had threads like this. IMHO there's no point in rehashing all the old arguments every time around. DPG knows what's going on, and they could be more proactive in banning some folks if they really wanted to. But the cash is in the Krono sales, so it will keep happening. I'm not a racer, so I never see the automatons, but like everyone else I know where to look for them. I choose not to.
    andross77 likes this.
  5. plowers Journeyman

    Jk no one has used Fraps since 2003
  6. Wovel Journeyman

    Really no other way. Unfortunately they don't even understand how that works. They see a dot move from one side of the map to the other and start shouting about warping.
    Bardy McFly, Skuz and code-zero like this.
  7. KrakenReality Augur

    Can’t you guys just toss out warnings to anyone running these programs and then subsequent bans? It seems like you’re able to identify and block certain programs from running, for example ISB on Rizlona. Last year, it was specifically enabled for Rizlona despite originally blocking players from selecting and entering Rizlona with ISB running.

    Why keep expecting the players to solve your problem, when you have to capability to severely limit the problem?
    Stymie and Jumbur like this.
  8. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Without the ability to inspect your PC remotely exactly how do they confirm you are actively using anything at all?
    They cannot accuse you & punish you for running cheating software with no actual evidence or they are acting purely on suspicion and that runs the risk of affecting perfectly innocent players.

    Even if they could look on your pc that is running the game some programs can be set up to work from a different PC that is connected to the same network & "observe" the game data remotely - how are you going to detect the undetectable in that scenario?
    Bardy McFly likes this.
  9. KrakenReality Augur


    Here’s a well-written post describing how it’s automatically detected from Secrets on FoH:

    Actually they do. Without going into too much detail, they send a 'loaded module' list to the server on GM request. On Aradune, this is still enabled as automatic - and I can reliably see the message appear after being logged in for 5 minutes. If I set the 'detected' flag to true after receiving a specific response from the server, it will crash. By editing the processes' running memory to set that flag to true, the game will crash. You won't see it in packet collects, as it is xor'd to prevent reading the plaintext data.

    The same packet includes information about if your client is detected running in a VM, a crc32mem of the text in question (crc32mem has been used for years in the EQ client for other anti-cheat purposes, like making sure you're using a eqgame.exe/spells_us.txt that matches the server), and crc32mem of a few hardware components - the Launchpad.exe program also records this data for analytics purposes. The three together make a 'fingerprint' for the client.

    The modules that get loaded outside of the game additionally show up. For example, if you have a Discord overlay enabled, that will be seen by them on the server side.

    If you remember a few years back, they had the list embedded into the client of stuff they check for. Now it's checked on the serverside instead of also being exposed on the client... and it's now XOR'd.

    This does NOT account for external programs like MySEQ which only read memory and exist in a different process space. But is stupidly easy to detect and makes no attempt to hide itself.

    This crc32mem function existed in clients dating back to 2003; it's quite old, but reliable.


    In the 2008 testeqgame.map, we can see a clear view of where that function is used:

    Even back in 2008, they had tried to prevent some functionality. You all might remember that 'stop cheating' warning they put out around that time for ghostkill, that was ominous and said, "We know who you are."

    Well, this is how they knew: they hashed the memory versus the value stored in WinMain. would sometimes not inject itself until the game was fully loaded, and this would work most of the time to detect memory hooks:

    The above is still in the client. I'm surprised they haven't utilized it. Or maybe they do. Who knows

    https://www.firesofheaven.org/threa...with-real-customer-service.11922/post-3658470
    MasterMagnus likes this.
  10. Kylo Classic Augur

    Dude! I waited till 8pm and you never showed.
  11. Magician9001 Augur

  12. Accipiter Old Timer


    First thing I do on a new TLP is buy SoW potions. Can't get across GFay in 2 seconds but there is at least one explanation for people running fast at level 1.
  13. Gnothappening Augur

    How do you know it is exploiting around the truebox code? All truebox requires is one PC per account. There is an easy fix to this, buy more PCs. Check out craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, or your local e-waste disposal and you can get computers that will run EQ for next to nothing.
  14. Gnothappening Augur

    For the first time I have bought a lot of SOW potions from the marketplace. The fact that they last through death is just too useful when you don't have a class that can sow.
  15. Magician9001 Augur

    Cause using Macaroni Quest to automate actions violates Truebox.
    Skuz likes this.
  16. Waser2020 New Member

    Thy need to ban there IP to stop it.
  17. code-zero Augur

    Yeah because giving anonymous, unpaid vigilantes the power to say who should be banned and who gets to play is going to work out great for them.
  18. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    Don't forget the power to protect their friends and hurt their rivals!
    Gnothappening likes this.
  19. Gnothappening Augur

    I think that violates the rules in general and not specifically truebox. To me truebox is just the limiting number of accounts to one per PC.
  20. Trakksem Journeyman

    The real answer to the problem is to remember, there is no spoon