They all agreed it was cheating but a few said, 'so what, the game has been hacked, just live with it'. We also had several versions of the invisible plane stuff, some so funny I sent copies to several moderators at the Ubi Forums for their review. In another case we had a guy who modded the Spit 25lbs to do about 595 kph in level flight, just enough so that he could always catch any La7 he happened to fight. One of our Board members stealthly got the He162 up to speed and snuck up on him anyway to much comedy and cussing. The most notorious case was an open pit guy who had an La7 that did 910 kph in level flight ! He claimed 'no one could touch him'. On several occassions we ran into speed hacks.
Once the Advisory Board was up and running at full steam by Dec of 2008, we started to run into many interesting cases, where it actually took awhile for several vets to closely look at the Ntrks, since it was so hard to tell if they were really that good, or just getting some modded help. I knew crt=2 had a problem right off the bat. Actually, it turns out he really was not cheating intentionally but what was so unusual was that this was taking place on a crt=2 server ( a C++ programming technique to ensure that server and client match exactly in file versions). Within HL, I first ran across the more common invisible plane syndrome back in November of 2008 against a high level guy that I was just fighting for fun. Working on the project was also time consuming and I had to put it on hold for real world research grants. I did have some small success with my alpha programs but not enough to warrant releasing an initial beta to HL testers.
I am a experienced programmer and had some partial success but I did not have access to the source code of IL2 4.08m and I had trouble trying to secure some proprietary technologies and getting certain third parties to open source their code (only the USA patents software code.
Because we have been intimately involved with evaluating so many different people in their native environments (we just passed 520 HL fliers last week), and often with their mods enabled, we have seen all manner of cheating, both small and large.Īt the same time that I started the Masters List, I also began my own project to start an open source Punkbuster style program for IL2 both to authenticate versions and to catch all mods. But, one of the things we started back then and still do, is NTRK appraisals, which is recording the nominee fighting a member of the Advisory Board and then rotate that NTRK around for other members to review as well (but only after they have completed their eval of the nominee as well). At first, many of these vets, some seven and eight year guys, looked at me askance and a few even told me kindly to shove it. We then organized the names that we were getting in and started the evaluation process. Within a few months I felt I could not trust my own judgement in the matter and asked several long term vets and Master fliers of IL2 to help me with the List. By that time, I was getting better but it was still very hard for me to try to judge whether I was just fighting a really experienced 5 year veteran of IL2, or a very experienced veteran of IL2 who had illicit help. I did not record it on NTRK (didnt even know there was a record function back then) and dropped it since I had no proof.Ībout 4 or 5 months later, I got tired of getting crappy advice on who might be a good high-level flier to learn from and decided to start the Masters List so that others could benefit from my troubles as a noob. No one believed me and many said I made it up. Well, within 20 minutes I got 30 replies and was quickly booed down. This was on a well known open pit server on Hyperlobby and I quickly mentioned this the next day at the SimHQ forums. Well, at the time, I had no idea what in the hell he was talking about.
He said it was a FM mod and that he could do this on any crt=2 server. When I had been playing the game about a month and sucked badly (not alot has changed from then to now Wink ), I ran into a guy who could turn his plane invisible in an on/off manner at the flick of a switch, and even demonstrated it for me (and then shot me down while he was invisible). Up first, will probably be the AI mod to try out soon, which really interests me more as a programmer and AI specialist than anything having to do with IL2.ģ - Several times (for details keep reading) Found this in a forum and I really like that last part of it.ġ - 2 to 15 hours per week (depends on lab stuff and any courses the department assigns me to teach per quarter)Ģ - Never used any mods, but have heard nothing but good stuff about 6DOF, the AI mod and UI 1.1.