Can Someone Tell Me About Vac?

RyoOhki · August 2003

<div class="IPBDescription">I've heard stories....</div> Whilst I love anti-cheat measures coming to NS, I don't really know much about them. Most of the servers I play on don't require CD or anything like that so I havn't paid much attention to the whole anti-cheating software scene. But I have heard stories of people with VAC being globally banned for no reason, or if they're using Win XP (which I use). Is there any truth to such stories, and if I don't cheat (which I don't and never have) do I have anything to fear? Is VAC foolproof?

DramaKing · August 2003

If VAC was that bad counter-strike would be dead, however it continues to grow, doesn't it. Don't worry about VAC, you're fine.

XCan · August 2003

There is one major problem with VAC. They don't give a jack **** about other mods than the mods they can make money on, which are DoD and CS (Mostly cs tho). Check a cheating page, there are much more working cheats for DoD than there is for CS.
Only good about VAC is that it might scare off some people to cheat because they dont' want their cd-key to be globally banned.
In every other aspect CD is superior.

PS. If you didn't know VAC is a client side anti-cheat too, you download it everytime you connect to a server which is why it takes longer to connect to DoD & CS servers than NS servers.

Warfare · August 2003

VAC sounds like something Daragoth could use...

Hunty · August 2003

VAC likes to ban people of cheating when they arent.

Xodlike · August 2003

i dont see why they hate HLamp so much sure its client side but all it does it let you listen to music yeesh

HKK · August 2003

5 years you get banned for.

Onkel_Dittmeyer · August 2003

Well you shouldn't compare C-D and VAC as they work entirely different: C-D injects the calls between the engine and the client.dll that are responsible for network communication and filters unneccessary informations about the position of players out of the PAS/PVS. Thus making wallh4xing mostly impossible. It doesn't detect any cheats but only prevents them from working correctly (except for aimbots, there's nothing c-d can do about that). VAC tries to detect cheats and then ban users CD-key globally when they found something. (like HLAmp =P)

Soylent_green · August 2003

Hlamp and CD as well as other useful programs are "third party hooks". If VALVe allows CD to be used under VAC it is probably simple to make a cheat, disguise it as the CD client and get a way with it. CD will allways be incompatible with VAC. Thus CD is run on "insecure" non VAC enabled servers.

memory corruption errors(which can arise from a bad stick of RAM or overclocking, if you have never cheked that your memory is OK it could be fun and useful to run memtest86 from a bootable floppy for a few hours...) used to cause some false positives with VAC but supposedly they have fixed the problem and instead just drop players and alert them that they have memory corruption problems. CD tries to disconnect you when it detects VAC, and says read the manual yadayada.

The problem with CD as far as I see is that VAC only bans people from secure servers(VAC enabled), lets say you cheat and get detected by VAC and banned for a few years, you can still play on CD servers(but it will be harder to cheat because CD works better than VAC). This might lead to more cheaters/ex cheaters playing on CD servers with banned WONIDs. This is just idle speculation.

If I play CS(I play a whole bunch of MODs so I sometimes even play CS) I usually play on VAC servers with HLguard

RyoOhki · August 2003

Ok, I'll make my request a little easier <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'>

I run Half Life completly legit install with natural selection 2.0 installed onto that. No cheats, not extra software, no additional programs of any kind (including CD). Am I in any danger of getting banned by VAC?

Alcapwn · August 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Ryo-Ohki @ Aug 23 2003, 12:00 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Ok, I'll make my request a little easier <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'>

I run Half Life completly legit install with natural selection 2.0 installed onto that. No cheats, not extra software, no additional programs of any kind (including CD). Am I in any danger of getting banned by VAC?  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
no, you shouldnt be....

lazygamer · August 2003

Yah that's a good point about CS. But it's also worth noting that some cheaters have multiple CD keys, I wonder how many are like that. Can VAC be disabled in a mod, by the server operator?

esuna · August 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (lazygamer @ Aug 23 2003, 06:25 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Yah that's a good point about CS. But it's also worth noting that some cheaters have multiple CD keys, I wonder how many are like that. Can VAC be disabled in a mod, by the server operator?  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
To the best of my knowledge, VAC is optional for the sever admins, they can choose whether they want VAC, CD or anything else at their own discresion.

XCan · August 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Onkel Dittmeyer @ Aug 23 2003, 02:56 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Well you shouldn't compare C-D and VAC as they work entirely different: C-D injects the calls between the engine and the client.dll that are responsible for network communication and filters unneccessary informations about the position of players out of the PAS/PVS. Thus making wallh4xing mostly impossible. It doesn't detect any cheats but only prevents them from working correctly (except for aimbots, there's nothing c-d can do about that). VAC tries to detect cheats and then ban users CD-key globally when they found something. (like HLAmp =P)  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
Why shouldn't you? They don't work the same way, correct. But their purpose is the same, to prevent cheat. And atm CD is doing way better than VAC with its stupid retarded so easy to pass string-scan.

lazygamer · August 2003

BTW, CD is not just something that prevents some cheats. Stuff like invalidating wallhacks is a backup method, IIRC it detects cheats too. Doesn't it invalidate aimbots too?

Can Someone Tell Me About Vac?

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