Dragonji Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 (edited) Orginally posted on N!tmod forum: Anyway my idea is that mod gives you a new GUID. Because atm you need to have PB running on your server if you have XP save or admins since adminlevels and xpsave works on PB guids.But PB is slowly killing ET, now since the last few updates it's becoming unplayable thanks to PB, so it would be nice if nitmod could take over this task. I like the idea. Since I disabled PB on the server I started to have players on it, but everyday I see kicks for "Duplicate GUID" of players who don't have GUID (if on the server is one person without GUID, 2 people will be kicked for the same GUID, I mean no GUID - connecting one and playing one). They don't know how to install/configure PB right and they will stop playing on the server if they will get kicks over and over again. If there would be something like "silEnT GUID", every player will get it with first connect to the server and there won't be any issues anymore with people who don't have PB. The game will stop to be addicted to our lovely PunkBuster . Original thread posted on N!tmod forum: http://nitmod.com/vi....php?f=22&t=222 Edited October 5, 2011 by Dragon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management gaoesa Posted April 18, 2011 Management Share Posted April 18, 2011 In silEnT starting from 0.3.0, there is a server side option that can enable PunkBuster on the client side that was made because of this reason. This has proven to be very reliable and the cases when this fails are very rare. It is not possible to install ET without PunkBuster, therefore the facility is already installed to all players. Also, every version of PunkBuster is capable in getting the GUID. Therefore the client doesn't need fully updated PB client. It is true that disabling the PunkBuster on server side will get rid of the annoying kicks for legitimate players. However, there is no valid reason for anyone to tamper ET installation by making something to prevent PunkBuster operating at all. The facility that PunkBuster provides is the most reliable way for identifying individual players. There is no need to reinvent the wheel just to get something that already exists. The dublicated GUId kicks can be disabled with a server option as well. Removing the flag 8 from g_XPSave will remove the dublicated GUID kicks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragonji Posted April 19, 2011 Author Share Posted April 19, 2011 Hmm, but as I know, XPSave doesn't even work for the people without GUID (I had to explain to few players how to install PB to get working XP save). And other issues, PB didn't want to register an etkey for 2 players and I had to send them keys generated at my PC (they had PB enabled). BTW, g_XPSave on the server is set to 21. However, there is no valid reason for anyone to tamper ET installation by making something to prevent PunkBuster operating at all.2 less processes in the system (PnkBstrA.exe, PnkBstrB.exe) and I know people who remove PB completely only because of few more free MB of RAM The facility that PunkBuster provides is the most reliable way for identifying individual players. There is no need to reinvent the wheel just to get something that already exists.The reason why I suggested the new GUIDs system is that a lot of players don't have GUID (even if they have PB enabled) and in the most of the cases they don't know how to "register" a GUID. The easiest way is connection to server with PB ON cause sometimes /pb_cdkeyreg just doesn't work. But first someone have to say about it to these players, otherwise player see there is no XP save and he/she starts to think "WTF, nah, sh*t server, XP don't save, gonna find a new one". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management gaoesa Posted April 19, 2011 Management Share Posted April 19, 2011 Few days ago noone was getting new GUIDs. This happened about the same time the master server list was down. They are getting them now. It doesn't have significant effect on the CPU to have PunkBusterA and B processess running idle. I doubt very much the memory effect can be at MB level. Even if so, the impact is insignificant compared to overall amount of memory ET uses and with the amounts of memory comuters have these days. Like said, there is no negative effects with PunkBuster being enabled on the client side when the server is not requiring it to do anything. I'm against this because it is using time and efforts to achieve something that all the players already have and what always works well on each platform. I don't see how it can be too much of an effort for players to enable PunkBuster. Afterall, it is only one mouse click that should have been already done when the profile was first created. However, for that purpose the g_punkbuster server cvar was created and it has worked very well since it was introduced. Before there used to be a lot of players without GUIDs, but these days with few exceptions, all have one. There is one fault though. If the player doesn't have the guid in the connecting userinfo, the XP will not be loaded for him. This is an implementation detail that can be fixed. However, whatever XP he collects during the map, will be stored to the database at the end of the map. The same thing concerns the admin levels. The admin level/privileges are never elevated during the map unless some admin makes explicit !setlevel command for that player. The reason why players are getting kicked for dublicated GUIDs even though the XP is not saved is because ETPub XPsave was not designed to work with servers that don't have PunkBuster enabled. However, in silEnT the XP save and admin system works even if not everyone has a GUID. The enforcing the disconnect of previous clients with same GUID was originally designed to make sure the player will get the formerly collected XP in cases when the client gets disconnected from the server for any reason without the server getting proper disconnect message. It can be added to the conditions that disconnects are not enforced to players who are not storing XP. I'm actually not sure there is need to have this option at all anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragonji Posted April 20, 2011 Author Share Posted April 20, 2011 Few days ago noone was getting new GUIDs. This happened about the same time the master server list was down.IMHO it can be the next reason, PB goes worse and worse every day Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management gaoesa Posted April 20, 2011 Management Share Posted April 20, 2011 Own GUID is a valid option when it happens that PunkBuster stops functioning. However, there are several constraints with the GUIDs. They must be unique in time and space and they must work with all supported platform. Also, they need to be reliably sent to the server. None of these constraints are hard or easy. But all of them need time and effort. The alternative is just to issue /pb_cl_enable in client. Which will solve the whole current problem with a perfectly working solution for all platforms. When the need to replace the PunkBuster method comes around, we will reconsider. Although true enough, using 2.55+ patch renders the PunkBuster practically useless. My personal opinion is that since at these days there are virtually no 2.55 servers, if all servers would now convert to 2.60b over night, it would force all players updating their clients to the 2.60 (there is really no reason for anyone playing with 2.55) and it would solve many problems with players playing with undetected cheats. Not going to happen though, I'm sure of it. PB goes worse and worse every day I haven't really noticed it going worse at all. Furthermore, when the server Punkbuster is not enabled, there is no negative effects at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragonji Posted April 20, 2011 Author Share Posted April 20, 2011 (edited) Own GUID is a valid option when it happens that PunkBuster stops functioning.(...)When the need to replace the PunkBuster method comes around, we will reconsider.Anyway, it's satisfying answer. Thanks for the conversation Edited April 20, 2011 by Dragon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragonji Posted October 5, 2011 Author Share Posted October 5, 2011 (edited) Bump! I have read the article: http://mygamingtalk....ifferent-games/ Doesn't this mean that PB will stop generating new GUIDs for ET players? I found such an information on SL: With the PB auth server offline no new GUID's will be generated and current ones will not have the age info anymore which effectively means this is the end of the line for PBBans support in ET. Without the PB auth server the Hub will not add new bans. Edited October 5, 2011 by Dragon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management hellreturn Posted October 5, 2011 Management Share Posted October 5, 2011 That's true. No more GUID afaik. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragonji Posted October 5, 2011 Author Share Posted October 5, 2011 Hmm, I think that the conversation about an own silEnT GUID system could be resumed then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management gaoesa Posted October 5, 2011 Management Share Posted October 5, 2011 We are thinking of solutions for this. Novice 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragonji Posted October 6, 2011 Author Share Posted October 6, 2011 Would be great to see some solution to this problem in 0.4.0 final release Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
=EMP=Avery13 Posted October 7, 2011 Share Posted October 7, 2011 I know our clan will be starting to talk with jaybird to see if it is possible to get a jaykey for the Jaymod servers when players connect to the server. Maybe make a silent one and jump the gun before everyone else does. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
=EMP=Avery13 Posted October 7, 2011 Share Posted October 7, 2011 (edited) **DRC**MUPPETUK has created a generator to produce etkeys. It works for our servers and others as well! So there is a way... Edited October 7, 2011 by Avery Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phantasm Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 I am very interested in seeing a solution to this support issue. This could be a serious problem for ET. Most new players are lazy or uninformed about ET. Many of them will not lookup an etkey generator to play an "old game" when there are so many other free games out there. Perhaps this is an opportunity for you. If you can link it to a new type of keygen, one that is very stable, and not based on each individual server, you could become the dominant ET mod. Or if you could embed a link to a website that provides an etky automatically when a player connects to the game, that would be a good way to patch it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
=EMP=Avery13 Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 I feel like I keep posting something new on this topic everyday... Once again... our clan has created a new thing for the new et player. Now it is a full installation of the game, with the etkey generator on it that puts the etkey in the etmain folder so that you can play. Also, it uploads jaymod, silent, pro, 2.60b patch and other folders that are necessary to play on our servers, but it's very simple to just connect to others as well. It's like a normal installation of the game, we just added our files to it. So with that being said.. I am sure that silent can create an installation that could do this as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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