http://www.barrysworld.com/news/columns.asp?Author=82&Category=6&Item=24488
Long Commentary | Comments (1)
Sunday, August 12, 2001, 23:01
Having just read Leviathon`s column over on QuakeNation I’ve got to admit that it got me thinking a bit more about admining in general and cheating on the whole. Now I am fully aware that cheating has been covered before and that nowadays, in terms of subject matter, it seems older and dryer than the Sahara Desert.
I`m also fully aware that everybody out there has an opinion on cheating and what does/doesn`t fit into that category so I`m not setting out to take chunks out of Leviathon or his perspective on cheating (so please don`t take this as such m8). Basically what I`m doing is making a comment that I thought was far too long to tack onto the bottom of his column, this way I can just leave a URL 😀
Here goes nothing…..
Everyone who plays a game adheres to the rules, and these rules are either part of the restrictions in the medium the game is set, or are enforced by knowledgeable officials. In CS the medium is the CS client, server and the bits that cause lag, with the officials being public or league admins. Anything that forcibly changes the game medium such that by doing so your interaction with the world is different to other peoples is cheating.
To start off with I must say that using Counter-Strike as an example wasn`t such a great idea for a couple of reasons. Firstly because these days I think everybody is to wound up about cheating in Counter-Strike. These days if you randomly picked 20 players, sat them down in front of 20 brand new identical PC`s with clean fresh installs of the game on them, all of which are made read only as to prevent tampering, all using the same config, each in its own sealed cubical and asked them to play for 30 minutes, my guess would be that within 15 minutes that at least one of them would start making cheat accusations.
Secondly anybody that knows Counter-Strike knows that the half-life engine upon which it runs is shit. We all know that the developers of Counter-Strike have said on
numerous occasions that it allows people to do things that they wish they could prevent, but haven’t been able too. We also know that the engine is never going to get any better and accept this because Counter-Strike is such a good a game just on paper that we won`t allow the backdated technology upon which it runs to keep us from playing it. No matter how good an engine is for a game it can never make up for gameplay *cough* Quake 3 *cough* 😉
So using this way of looking at cheating, what do I think of Bunny Hopping and Strafe Jumping. Well, I don`t consider them cheating, in fact I consider them a skill and good luck to anyone who can use them to their advantage
Why are they not cheating? It`s because they are allowed within the constraints of the medium, the CS client and server. Until such a time as the medium is changed, or the admins condemn it and police the servers, it is allowable.
I can`t ever agree with this argument I`m afraid as in my eyes it will always be flawed. Now what I`m about to say here I`ve probably already said before and will no doubt end up saying again at some point in time, that’s just the way life is I`m afraid.
How I follow the logic in the column is that it seems to state that `Anything you can do which the engine lets you is fine`. Now for Counter-Strike specifically this is just a no go area. Following this argument would make Hostage Jumping in the game allowable. Now this may seem like an extreme example and some of you might be saying `Bunny Hopping and Hostage Jumping aren`t the same thing` and to those of you I respond How?
Both give you an advantage, for Bunny Hopping its speed, for Hostage Jumping it’s a better position (generally). Both are skills, you can`t just spontaneously do either of these things, to be good takes practise. Both are things that the developers of Counter-Strike didn`t want anybody to do and finally but by no means least both are unrealistic.
Now I can both bunny (badly) and hostage jump, however I refrain from doing it in publics as it gives me an unfair advantage and in leagues I will always conform to the rules given out. My argument to counter doing either though is the core fact that they’re both bullshit. Counter-Strike is built on the premise that it`s supposed to be a Realistic Counter-Terrorism Mod. Now you know its not (and never will be) 100% realistic, I also know its not and those of us that play it accept this fact. However I won`t accept people that try and justify making the game any more unrealistic than it already is as that goes against the games essence.
Anybody wishing to counter this argument feel free to please e-mail me a photograph of either a member of a Counter-Terrorism organisation jumping from left to right whilst on a mission or a Terrorist standing atop a 20ft high stack of hostages.
Let`s move onto scripts. Are they cheating? Was Sujoy`s (I think) exploit of fast weapon switching in Quake cheating when he wrote a set of binds and aliases to make sure you never died with a decent weapon in your hand? Now we`re into the good stuff, this is what you should be debating about. Scripts to help bunnyhoping, cheating? Buy Scripts? Scripts for this, scripts for that, are they ALL cheating? Where do you draw the line?
With regards to scripting I`m divided. In leagues, if it were possible to enforce, I think scripts shouldn`t be used at all so the competition remains as level as possible. However since there is no method to put in place such a system other than asking people to enforce it themselves, which is hardly reliable, I concede that scripts will be used in competitive environments. In publics I`m not so fussed, although when people use announcing buy scripts I want to lop off their sexual organs because I just don`t see the point. (rant) Who cares that you bought a fucking MP5? You`re only going to live for all of 20 seconds before you die and lose it FFS (/rant)
As to where you draw the line its also hard to be specific. My personal guess is that scripts that do something you couldn’t do personally are a definite no no, for example Bunny Hopping scripts. Scripts that do things faster than you could I think are also a no no, for example Grenade spamming scripts. Scripts that do monotonous things that don`t truly affect the game are I believe ok, for example a round start buy script. I say this because I too get tired of having to ask for my AK47 to be delivered into my hands at the start of rounds. Also because I can always buy all the things I need quickly enough at the start of a round I`m not gaining any advantages over another player.
Makes sense?
MYstIC G