There is a full working cloak mod, that cannot be exploited for cheating, available.

http://www.drachennest200x.de/flhook/fo ... c.php?t=67

It has been posted here 8 months ago, but has been shut down due to the TLR cloak rule.
On the other hand, mods which have incorporated this cloaking method are allowed to post news on the front page, so.. whatever

I tested the mod and it took me forever to setup a second server cause, vista doesn't like FL much.
Anyway me and a few friends tested it and noticed a couple things that seem strange (not sure if they are bugs).

First is that players that are in formation are able to follow the leader if he cloaks, doesn't make much sense to be able to follow somebody that you can't see.
The other thing is that npcs can still see you when cloaked, maybe not while fighting but, they can scan your cargo. This happened to me several times.

Not sure if you can do anything about them because, of the way the game is coded but, I had to bring this strange occurences to your attention.

Btw, there's no real reason I can see to avoid this mod, it works great and has excellent anti-cheat in it. I doubt anyone could abuse cloaking the way it is setup in this mod.

Edited by - merlinthewizard on 10/15/2007 10:18:13 PM

its a question how cloaking and cheating is definied
imo the current cloaking mod is more a cheat then a real feature

By the same logic Ioncross, FLShell, and FLHook can also be considered to be cheating as well.
After-all they do allow players to do things that weren't intended for the game originally.
I actually have no problem with any of those programs though, as long as they are used responsibly.
Plenty of the best mods I've seen out there make use of them so, I'm sure there must be alot of others out there that think they are OK (at least when the abilities aren't being abused).

I don't see how Ioncross server is the same as a cheat tbh, unless you mean the single player.

The difference has always been what people want and what servers want. Servers run FLHook or FLShell and other programs, they choose to let them run on their servers and get to set the parameters by which they are run.

The reason the cloak was banned is not because people didn't want to have "fun", but because people abused it and utilised it, AGAINST server admins wishes, to turn the online experience into hell.

Put it this way - Microsoft released a patch for this game - and it's reason wasn't to fix bugs or other as normal - it was mainly to tackle the rampant online cheating that caused the online aspect of the game to be hostile in the extreme. People couldn't even play the damned game due to cheaters... how often does that happen?

The cloak could still get around the cheat mechanism put in place by MS because they only check whether what you buy is available at the bases/within game... not what you mount. The cloak abuse therefore (along with a few others) became the next huge issue in FL - it had a fricken HUGE impact upon servers. Why do you think server admin software was designed specifically to make it so that people couldn't do it? Ioncross grew from anti cheat and easy administration software to manage those that cheat, and ban them simply.

True, if a server is using ioncross and they've got the things disallowed (cloaks, uber shields etc) then the cloak is redundant - but the "blanket ban" has always been maintained to protect servers and players from it's devestating abuse on servers that don't have ioncross.

Unfortunately some people don't agree with this, but truth is - tough. You can get off your ass and google the thing instead - it's out there, it's available.

Just not here.

>Unfortunately some people don't agree with this, but truth is - tough.

Truth is tough indeed. Cloaking abuse has no longer been an issue since 2 or 3 years. Every server runs some kind of anti-cheat software because without, you can almost do anything (cloaking being one of the minor cheats!).
A more open discussion about cloaking would also have lead to more simple ways of protection, such as renaming the cloak nicknames on the serverside so they can no longer be spawned.

Actually I dont understand why you now come up with this stuff?
The cloak I posted does not even have anything to do with the "known" Cloak cheat mods.
Its always the same, random anti-Cloak talk here at the TLR forums.

---

Truth is tough indeed. Cloaking abuse has no longer been an issue since 2 or 3 years. Every server runs some kind of anti-cheat software because without, you can almost do anything (cloaking being one of the minor cheats!).

---

Funnily enough, that's what i said. Cloaking may be "minor", but it allowed anonimity - which meant people could dock camp with a variety of cheats to obilterate people when they left planet Manhatten for their very first time... repeatedly. Yes, Ioncross rendered it obselete many years ago - something that was brought up when overhauling the forum rules 2 years back. A decision was made that the non discussion remained, meh. I tried, i failed, i left it at that.

---

A more open discussion about cloaking would also have lead to more simple ways of protection, such as renaming the cloak nicknames on the serverside so they can no longer be spawned.

---

Discussion used to be free and lengthy... very lengthy. It wasn't banned before cloaks started, it wasn't banned after the cloak mod was removed. It was banned because of the dozens of threads that clogged the forum every single day about people wanting the cloak - which occured months later (well, about 2 months later from what I remember). It wasn't original "discussion" threads, it was any thread. Make a discussion thread and you'd get 20 people posting saying "Where can i get it?"... so the blanket ban was introduced on all threads.

So if people honestly want it - like I say, google is your friend. Want to discuss it - within reason it appears to be okay. Want to distribute it here, or other such things? Nope, fraid not. Get the rules changed and it's all good, until then - fraid you'll have to live with them.


Edited by - Chips on 10/20/2007 10:03:59 AM

@w0dk4

If you have seen mods that have the cloak, e-mail me the offenders and I will check them out, and if they do have it, they will be eliminated.

I second Chips post on it, and it has been said before, if folks want to post the cloak and put it in a mod, they can, just not here. Why not keep the game clean. The only purpose for it, is to cheat/sneak up on people. There really is no other use for it.

>The only purpose for it, is to cheat/sneak up on people. There really is no other use for it.

Funny, on our server we have cloaking rheinland ships and it works well, meaning it is balanced - so much to "no use for it". (and our server is a popular one)

Oh and I posted in this very thread a link to a download of the working cloak mod that we basically use on the Hamburg City Server.
If you want to delete it, fine - its not my problem if you cannot open your eyes and see that this is not a cheat/exploit mod.

Sorry to sound rude, but this "if he tells about cloak, he must be a cheater" attitude really annoys me, when it is clear that cloaking works(!) and can be used to enrich gameplay.

Alright,
Post your logic as to how this cannot be used for cheating.
Be specific about it and Include the details.

I'm sure some of us want to know how you
or the anti-cheat software can prevent it.

I've be considering incorporating it into my mod,
however not on player ships but rather on certain specialized NPC's.
Simply, if I caught any player using it when it's meant only for NPC's...
that player would be personally stripped of his ship, equipment and most
of their funds via fines. Then kicked to a system in a basic ship set up
for trade. Mind you, the nomads in this penal system have the hots
for lower level ships.

I too play on the aforementioned Hamburg City server, which just happens to be one of the most populated FL servers. That particular cloak mod is now active since February / March this year (2007), and there has not been a single case of it being abused as a cheat.

With that many players enjoying the server on a regular basis (local eveningtime the server (~90 slots) if full; every evening), if the cloak was abusive, a way to do so would already have been found, forcing the server crew to disable it. This has not happened even once. I don't know how it works from a technical point of view, and I'm way too long out of modding to be even remotely able to guess. What I can say, from observing both the server's boards as well as reading the system / universe chat, folks are quite satisfied with the way it works.

I'm sure w0dk4 would agree when I say you are heartly invited to come and see for yourself. All you need to do is visit www.freelancerserver.de/v2, download the newest mod (as of this writing it's v3.01), install it to a vanilla FL installation without any SDK and join the server for a good time. If you make yourself heard (>/uchat on< to enable universe chat (one time neccessity), then >/uv message< and I happen to be around, I'll help you getting the cloak.

It's now up to you if you either curse this, or boldly step ahead and take a look.

Thanks Preacher, didnt know you play on HC
Whats your nick on hc btw.?

>Alright,
>Post your logic as to how this cannot be used for cheating.
>Be specific about it and Include the details.

Read the developer notes that are in the readme.txt of the mod.
Basically the server has full control over cloaked ships, there is simply no room for client-side exploits.

Balancing the cloak is another topic. The basic cloak mod already has simple settings, max cloak time and cloak-prepare time.
That way you can implement a cloak that only works for a few seconds, which can be interesting in PvPs or just to suprise players.
You can however write your very own custom balancing ideas, thanks to FLHook.

Preacher,
I can neither curse it or bless it.
Honestly, I don't want to download any mods.
The simple reason is I take up most of my time developing
the 20 Years Later Mod and that is something that I'm not willing
to risk cross contamination with any other files from other mods.
I have to keep my mod works "pure" if you can understand what I'm saying.
Aside from that, I'm venturing an educated guess that the Hamburg mod
probably uses a different SDK and FLMM that what I've been using.

I already know from experience that you just can't radomly play several different
mods out there without getting into activation/deactivation problems and files becoming "corrupted".
Mods will leave "custom" items in the main Freelancer data base and this
can cause <span style="text-decoration: underline">severe</span> problems. Even "Restoring Backups"
will not remove all the files left in the main data base. All too often,
this forces the person to perform a complete uninstall. (I know..it's happened to
me twice during the early stages of the 20 Years Later mod development)

So, I'm just re-empasizing my previous post to get more information on it.
I want some hard facts.

W0dk4,
where is this "developer notes" located?


Edited by - Rankor on 10/20/2007 8:42:50 PM

here is a copy:

IMPORTANT NOTE:

This is not a cheat/exploit mod. In fact, this mod is very secure as regards the mechanicsm to force the
client to uncloak and cloak. If a cheater somehow gets a cloak device on a server where the server-side extension of this mod is not
running, cloaking and uncloaking will just not work, so the cheater would not be able to fire any weapon while cloaked.


NOTES FOR DEVELOPERS:

First, please have a look right at the top of the FLHook.ini. You will find basic cloak related
settings there (you also have to list all your implemented cloak devices there)
I included the source code of the server-side extension needed for the cloak mod to work.
Please note that the client will only react on the incoming chat events "Cloak" and "Uncloak"
and will therefore deactivate or activate the local cloak device.
To fix the bug where player A would not see player B becasue player B has a cloaking device and is uncloaked but
player A just logged in with F1, I implemented a timer that, if a player is uncloaked, simulates a
'deactivate cloak device' message to other players every 0.5 seconds. This way, every spawning player would immediatly
get the uncloak message so that the uncloaked player with cloaking device will be visible to them.
I may add more features that allow for better balancing of the cloak in the future. But for now, if you
have C++ knowledge, you should already be able to implement your own balance ideas.
I would be very happy to learn about them and the code (just send me an email: [email protected] or contact
me on www.freelancerserver.de)