# Warden Newsletter #3
##Welcome!
Join us again for another weekly newsletter! Also note we plan to be creating a thread like Soaked UP for you to subscribe too later this week so keep your eye out for that!
Todayās Topics
#1: Weekly Warden Check
#2: New Members
#3: Some Discussion
#4: Recruitment
#5: Questions
Weekly Warden Check
This week weāll be going over the speed check. This week Iāve decided to go over the speed check because while it works, and catches about as many public clients as NCP (different ones, but more all the same). It is not actually finished. It still has a bit to go, and thatās why Iāve decided to share it. To hopefully get some polling from the community.
So the way the Warden Speed Check works right now is it grabs the location of the players last position, and the players current position. We then figure out the distance 3D inbetween the points which can be done as so:
xSqr = (secondPosX - firstPosX) * (secondPosX - firstPosX)
ySqr = (secondPosY - firstPosY) * (secondPosY - firstPosY)
zSqr = (secondPosZ - firstPosZ) * (secondPosZ - firstPosZ)
sqrt = Math.sqrt(xSqr + ySqr + zSqr)
distance = Math.abs(sqrt)
A pretty simple distance formula. But I digress. We then perform speed multipliers based on what the player was doing between the two positions. Note some of these (such as ice) are dependent on what player the block is on. We actually perform these checks at the intervals that would cause the speed to stay the same regardless of when they got on/off the blocks. Anyway the basic idea is this:
speedMultiplier = 1.0;
if (player is/was on ice) {
speedMultiplier *= 1.4;
}
if (player is/was on web) {
speedMultiplier *= 0.12;
}
if (player is not on ground) {
speedMultiplier *= 1.5;
}
for (each poition effect) {
if (speed potion) {
speedMultiplier *= 1.0f + (0.2f * (levelOfSpeedPotion + 1));
}
if (slowness potion) {
speedMultiplier *= 1.0f - (0.15f * (levelOfSlownessPotion + 1));
}
}
if (player is/was blocking) {
speedMultiplier *= 0.5;
}
Wooh. Thatās a lot of math. Needless to say tons of testing went into those speed potions. Multiple days. Upon days. Upon Days. Upon Days. Upon days. For reference (took some original statistics around a couple days, than those modified stats took around 4/5 days). You can then multiply the players previous location with that to get a āMAXā distance that they can move. The problem with this is, this would be the max distance if the player was running diagonal. For clients that are running straight they can actually cover a bit more of ground than is normal. Iāve personally been able to test, and get around a 1.4 speed boost off of it. So the question is. Do we want to start trying to grab directions of players, and calculate those offsets, or do we leave it with the little bit of speed being able to become accomplished. When we start messing around with directions it could potentially lead to more lag, and much more data needing to be kept, and more powerful servers to run it. However we could also be deadly precise. So the question to you is where should we go from here?
##New Members We'd like to welcome @Favorlock to the Warden crew as a developer. It was a long, and grueling process for him to fight it out. However we're very glad to have him on the team.
A bit about favorlock: Heās interested in getting involved with the sponge community anyway he can. Heās been programming for 4 years, leading a number of teams. He was a dev team lead at MCProHosting for 8 months, worked on SSundeeās TitanMC network, worked on AntVenomās network, and is currently the sole developer for BodilGames. Needless to say weāre very happy to have him on the team.
##Some Discussion It has been brought to our attention that some developers of Sponge are now working on a "anti-cheat" module directly built into Sponge that can be configured. Now note the following opinions are mine (@LordLambda), and might not be reflective of the entire Warden team. However this new "anti-cheat" module I think brings up some serious discussion points, that I would like to discuss with everyone, and get feedback on. This is a love-hate thing for me. First what I love about it. It's a push for an open-source anti-cheat that can be understood by many people. This is fantastic. This is exactly what Warden is pushing for. Warden is definitely pushing for this all the way, it's the movement we want to see. However. It isn't happening in a good way. Which is what worries me personally. First let me start off with the fact saying I'm disappointed. Mainly because myself (and @FerusGrim ) both asked on the irc if Sponge was going to be implementing a built-in anticheat module. Two different developers specifically said no due to the fact it was "out-of-scope" (which I agree with fully, more on this later). Now we turn around, and theres plans to implement an anti-cheat module directly into Sponge (seemed to being lead by: @me4502). So that upsets me there's either 1) A dis-communication between the Sponge Development team, or 2) Me, and @FerusGrim we're lied too. Needless to say there are other things wrong with this proposal. Let's jump to two things specifically said regarding the form, and advertisements: "making Sponge hack-proof", "incorporate flawless anti-hack measures", and finally "directly into Sponge". Let's start from the last thing said, and work our way backwards.
"Directly into Sponge"
The first problem with this is itās actually going against some principals of open-source. Instead of working with existing project maintainers, theyāre actually choosing to go against, and create their own solution. There is a great section talking a bit about this open-source in this post by saurik here. One of the most important parts of open-source is being able to work together. To more or less say: āhey, I saw you had issues with this thing, can I help?, or hey, I think you can do this more optimally have you tried X?ā. Here developers of Sponge are going against multiple implementations. Now you could say Warden is vulnerable of this as well. Which admittedly we sort of are. However we are far less violating this rule. Warden has completely different ideals, and has multiple things planned that NCP developers said they do not want to fix. So we tried working with them. However the Sponge devs who are doing this did not even attempt to work with the existing project maintainers (NCP, Warden, all of the other projects on Spigot). A powerful component of Open source is working together. By not working together weāre actually being detrimental to ourselves. The other problem here is the anti-cheat module will most likely cause problems with other plugins/forge-mods. While certain modifications are needed in order to stop exploits. The exploits the server should implement directly is denial of service, or problems that can mess up data on the Sponge side. The reason we have to use packets for our Bukkit/Spigot implementation is because the APIās actually do not give us a reliable ability to query data. We can specifically see this because NCPās main problem is itās event system. Data from events, being added at incorrect times, and so on, and so forth. NCP is directly using the Spigot data passed to it (not packet data). The server is directly a cause of why NCP is not performing as well. The problem here will be even bigger because sponge is meant to be compatible with mods, and lots of custom things. The API already has much more abilities to do custom things than Bukkit/Spigot. This could heavily trip up the anti-cheat module, and possibly other plugins (such as Warden/NCP!). By attempting to fix the problem at the sponge level, their actually worsening it for everyone else (including NCP!) Iām glad they want to do an anticheat however, they should work with existing project maintainers, or handle it in plugin space.
"incorporate flawless anti-hack measures" & "making Sponge hack-proof"
I simply direct you to my post on Warden The Plan. Specifically this quote:
"The Mass of the Earth is: 5.98 * 10^27 gramsNumber of atoms on earth: 1.33 * 10^50Number of atoms in the universe: 10^78 ā 10^82
Next Lets put that in bytes:2^K = 10^50K = 50 log(10)/log(2)K = 166.09 (bits)K/8 = 20.76125
So with 21 bytes we can basically fit every single atom in the universe. However most memory sticks are 2GB, which a normal conversion (with calculator) would show 2GB being 2e+9 bytes. Meaning we can literally fit around 2e+9 universes within a single computer running with sub par stats at using 2GB of ram. The problem is there is literally tons of states, and the chance of getting two machines who work in the same way at the same time is virtually impossible. How does this tie in with combat? Well itās simple you have thousands of states, and thousands of different connections with all different types of bandwidths. So the problem is you canāt try to stop good kill-auras. Instead what you have to do is completely remove any type of advantage that you can. You have to attempt to make it fair, not to make it to block." Again you canāt make MC hack proof. By trying, and advertising your lying, and creating false-advertising. This dissapoints me as one key goal of Warden is too create knowledge about anti-cheats. And the simple fact there is no such thing as a perfect anti-cheat, or an unhackable system. There is always someway to get to it. Microsoft, Valve, Sony, Nintendo, etc. People who get paid to work on anti-cheats days in, and days out still have cheating/hacking problems. You CANNOT create a perfect anti-cheat system. Instead you just have to try to get what you can, and adapt when new exploits come out. Which is what Warden is preaching, and what people need to realize.
Anyway thatās my rant about it. Please do let me know what you think of this. Iād love to hear your opinions on this, and get a serious discussion going.
Recruitment
Thatās right back with recruitment again! Last week we only had one person apply for the web developer position! I know there are many great web folks here! Weād love for you to submit! If you donāt want to tell us why, and maybe we can fix that. As Warden is meant to benefit the community, and be a community driven effort.
Web Developer
However the core part of development is important, we also want to set up a base of operations for all things related to Warden. While we will still try to outreach to the communities as often as possible the goal is if you need something Warden, you can get it here. You should be experienced with both front-end, as well as back-end development.
Amount needed: 3
Apply Here: http://goo.gl/forms/ghg91TJQAJ
(If your the one person who applied last week, no need to re-apply).
Questions?
Do you have any questions for us? Feel free to write down below!
but thats just me playing devils advocate. Anyway glad to see that Iām not alone in this concern.
