Fri Oct 03, 2003 6:13 pm by Earendil
Yes, FLSO is great for those things that are in the saved game file. But there are things that are client side that may or may not be related to the messages in the console window. Unfortunately none of the warning or error (except for and error before booting) messages are linked to any online character or player ID. I have asked around but nobody knows and DA/M$ is more than useless in this area.
I have been trying to corellate some of the messages with some of the things I am finding with players on the server. I saw one warning message about unmountable thruster or some such. So I kept updating FLSO and sure enough I saw this guy speeding around. He did Cortez, through California to NY in 1.5 mins, that includes both jump gates. I actually faced off with him and noticed he "suddenly" appeared in my HUD at 1k - an obvious speed hack. Soon after he logged out and the warnings went away.
Those are more obvious, linking thruster to speed hacks. It's the ones with running lights, unmountable hardware on hardpoints and such I cannot link to even modding. I have seen "data points removed" (or something like that) during lag and modem users give 20-30 errors in a row. Nobody seems to know what they are or what they mean except that they link to C++ FL code.
moby was working on something that would compare server ini files with client ini files. Basically a modder couldn't even enter the server unless he checked out. But I've also heard of changes while logged on and some people think that is how some cheaters exist on servers protected by Lancerguard. (Lancerguard will boot those that attempt to undock with anything not allowed in an unmodded FL MP game)
FLSO is also trying to check on data gathered in the saved game files that may detect cheating. Say a level or credit increase of huge proportions. This is not always cheating though and very subjective in each case. Nevertheless anything these people can do to help sysadmins run their server the way they want it to be run can only be best for those players that play by the rules. All others are booted and banned.
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Earendil
SysAdmin of Boston Freelancer server