Banning Player's in 1.3

[Commando]

In this thread, I am going to go over the two ways you can ban players in 1.3 and the differences between those two types of bans.

The /ban Command

The first way to ban a player is by using the /ban command followed by the player's name or index number. This type of ban is lifted once Battlezone II is shut down so it is not a good permanent solution. This method works great if you want someone banned right now. I recommend banning by Index due to muffin. He will join in with a name that looks 100% identical to a player already in-game. He will join a game as Leutenant-ita while his name is Ieutenant-ita. The uppercase i and lowercase L look completely identical in Battlezone II's font.

To ban a player, type in /list. This gives you a list of player names in-game along with their player index number. Once you have that index number, type /ban [index #]. For example /ban 1. The same applies to the kick command. For muffin, I recommend a kick, followed by a ban.

Editing banlist.ini

This is the second way you can ban players from your server. This method is permanent, unless you remove a banned IP from your list or you edit the banlist.ini file. To use this option, it is best you understand binary as that is how the netmask works.

Binary Basics

Binary exists of purely 1's and 0's. You read binary going from right to left. The digits, in an IPv4 address are 128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1. The very far right digit being 1, the next being 2, etc. For example the number 5 is 101. You take the 1 plus the 4 to come up with 5. I'll get more into this when I provide example IPs that I have banned.

If you want to calculate 192 it is 11000000 because 128 + 64 is 192. If you want to calculate 224, it is 11100000 because 128 + 64 + 32 is 244. For something different. If you want to calculate 129, it is 10000001 because 128 + 1 = 129. If you wanted to calculate 130 it is 10000010 because 128 + 2 = 130.

My Banlist

//BanIP1 = "68.3.228.114/24" // Sean/SeanTheGreat, who seems to be trying to cause lag in games
BanIP2 = "194.45.228.126/24"
BanIP3 = "46.16.33.209/24"
BanIP4 = "69.180.10.90/24" //Claims to be Nielk1
BanIP5 = "199.255.209.168/24" //Using Axeminister's Name

Ban IP Settings
When you ban a player, you must specify the ip address followed by the netmask. For example for BanIP2, 194.45.228.126 is Muffin's IP, and the /24 is the netmask.

Basics on netmask
I am going to use the BanIP = 194.45.228.126/24" to describe how this works. If I specify 194.45.228.126/32, only the single IP address 194.45.228.126 is banned. If his IP changes at all, he will get around the ban. If you use 194.45.228.126/24, any IP addresses starting with 194.45.228.* will be banned. The * is a range of 0 to 255. If you use 194.45.228.126, any IP starting with 194.45.*.* will be banned. Again * is a wild card meaning anything between the number of 0 to 255 are banned.

With netmask you want to be careful. You can easily ban more IPs than intended.

Where the netmask comes from
IPv4 is a 32-bit numeric address consisting of 1's and 0's. Each section consists of 8 1's and 0's. 194 is 11000010 in binary. If you count the digits, there should be 8.

Converting from Decimal to Binary]There are multiple ways to convert from decimal to binary. I'll cover the manual way and using the windows calculator.

Using Windows Calculator to Convert Decimal to Binary
1) Open up Windows Calculator located in Start -> All Programs - Accessories -> Calculator
2) Click View -> Programmer. This switches it to programmer mode which does decimal to binary conversions and vice versa.
3) Type in the number you want converted, for example 194. Once you see the number in the calculator, click on the Bin radio button.
This gives the output 11000010. This worked out perfectly because it gave an eight digit result.
4) Now click on the Dec radio button to switch back to decimal.
5. Now type in 45, then switch back to binary. This gives you the result 101101. This isn't as helpful as it only gives you six of the eight digits.
This is easy enough to fix. Just add two leading zeros 101101 now becomes 00101101.

Manually Converting Decimal to Binary
Converting from Decimal to Binary is fortunately fairly straight forward. The only math required is basic addition. The way I do it is to write out the following.
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
128 064 032 016 008 004 002 001

Going from right to left, you change the 0's to 1's. Then you add up the buttom numbers until your result is what you are trying to calculate.

1) You can also take the number you want to calculate, for example 145.
2) Since 128 is smaller then 145, change the 0 above the 128 to a 1. Now subtract 128 from 145. This gives you a remainder of 17.
3) Now work on towards the right until you find a digit less than or equal to 17. As 64 is greater than 17, leave the zero. Move on until you find the next number smaller than 17 which happens to be 16.
4) Change the zero above 16 to a 1. Again subtract 16 from 17 to give you a remainder of 1.
5) Now move on to the right until you find the digit equal or less than 1. Then change this to a 1.
6) The end result gives you 10010001

Banning a Changing IP Address
If a player's IP changes slightly, you will want to convert the player's IP address to binary (see above). That way you can see what portion of the IP is consistent vs. what portion changes. I am again going to use the IP address 194.45.228.126 as a demonstration IP address.

IP in Decimal Notation: 194.45.228.126
IP in Binary Notation: 11000010 00101101 11100100 01111110
Example IP: 11000010 00101101 11100100 01000001
Example IP 2: 11000010 00101101 11100100 01100000
Example IP 3: 11000010 00101101 11100100 01111101

I have bolded the portions of the IP address that remain the same for ease of reading. If you count the number of 1's and 0's, from left to right, you will count a total of 24. In this case, a /24 will suffice. Depending on the IP and the ISP, you may not run into a perfect /8, /16, /24, /32 IP netmask. That was the case with Vearie. Look below for the Vearie example.

A Second IP Example
The following is Vearie's IP address.

98.206.106.199/16 = Banlist entry
98.206.113.173 = veary new IP

That is why I added the /16 since that third octet has changed once before.

1100010.11001110.1101010.11000111
1100010.11001110.1110001.10101101

With the above IPs, a /18 would cover the ban as the first 18 bits have not changed. That doesn't mean they WON'T change.

[Red Spot]

Lets just hope those that need it actually pay attention to this.
Either way, bonuspoints for the effort (Y)

[Commando]

If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.

[vlad_C0M]

Commando, I have a question.
What does mean message from Player who was connected?
Message : "Your server is HACKED"

*(And then player connection, and play...very well.. like he has cheats. or something ...)

But I have the assumption that he is just a good player. And play with him about 3 games. (He always win.. but he has no idea about some of the tricks, like "Hauler + Constructor == pool\base destroyer" ) Is this possible ??

And he ask me about it.. And I dont know. What about FIRST message, before player Enter Server. (not enter the game yet).
Maby its joke. Or something..
--

I know a lot of fair play trolls. Who bullied honestly. They enjoy the fact that they host. (if client have bad internet like my. client can't take aim during shooting)

Who can tell me about it. Sorry for the lack of restraint.

[General BlackDragon]

Yes, it was them joking or trying to mess with you.

[MrTwosheds]

Lets be clear about it, there are quiet a few people who like to play jokes such as Message : "Your server is HACKED"
Best to see this for what it is, a bit of harmless fun. We have however had a now historic problem with a very small number of players who actually seem to want to spoil/end other peoples games and prevent other players from enjoying BZ2. Some of us feel (know) that this has been very harmful to the survival of the community as a whole.

But I have the assumption that he is just a good player. And play with him about 3 games. (He always win.. but he has no idea about some of the tricks, like "Hauler + Constructor == pool\base destroyer" ) Is this possible ??

BZ2 has a long learning curve, many of us old players can be very intimidating to newer players and it can be quite difficult for new players to accept that they are not going to win any time soon...
It takes a lot of practice just to get to the point where you can offer a serious threat to a veteran, something our griefers seem intent on preventing people from getting.

The "Hauler + Constructor == pool\base destroyer" thing works well in mpi, in a strat game it is expensive and unlikely to succeed.

[Joe]

Hi,

I don't like IP address range bans because they effect not just greifers but also many users of their ISPs.

Could a new BZ2 version use unique data on a player's PC to generate a unique ID for them?

If it could use their network card's MAC address then players would have to buy and install a new network card in order to change their ID.

[Nielk1]

I don't like how IP address range bans effect not just greifers but also many users of their ISPs.

Not enough players for that to really be a factor.

[Commando]

Joe, I proposed something similar, but more devious. With MAC addresses, you can change your card's MAC. Fancier cards allow you to go into device manager and override the MAC there so a MAC address ban will not work.

My suggestion was shot down. It wouldn't help with the DoS attacks as those are not originating from within bz2.

[Zero Angel]

Based on my experience with looking at and maintaining IPLists, I would have to say that i've never seen two legitimate players from different households using the same IP subnet (e.g. 212.41.75.*), at least not in BZ2.

To answer Vlad_c0m's post and as an aside to the main topic...

Generally it's very hard to prove cheating. I know at least one or two people who have appeared to lag/warp at the most convenient times, and I myself have been accused of cheating due to a bad internet connection (but generally the lag/warp works against me just as much as it works FOR me), and i've known people who think that a good population of the BZ2 strat community uses cheats to 'warp' especially in 1.2 where warp/ghosting is a normal part of the playing experience, but i've never had difficulty with these people very much because I *started* playing bz2 on 28.8k and most 'warp' is invisible to me because I grew up playing with nothing BUT warp.

If someone says that your game is 'hacked', then they're probably just trolling you, I do know a few people who claimed that they 'hacked' another person's PC even though they did no such thing, it was just a way to troll someone who was otherwise not very literate with PCs and ultimately harmless.

As far as cheats go, I honestly do not believe that a majority of the player community would use cheats even if they knew them, because the damage to that person's reputation would be too noticable if anyone ever found out that they were cheating as anything but a short term 'proof of concept' or just for fun (think about if you were playing poker, would you ever want to play with someone who got caught stacking decks?). I remember a long time ago, I discovered a cheat (now fixed) whereby you could use terminal commands to mod any kind of weapon onto any ship. I used it once in desperation in a 1v1 to give my scout salvo rockets so that I could take down the rec of someone who I really disliked, but from then on I simply only used it for amusement purposes (like to spawn a dabomb, or to make turrets equipped with nothing but jetpacks) in non 'serious' games.

I do believe that some players are just 'very good' at bz2, not because they know how to dogfight really well, but their level of tactics such as distracting, flanking, timing base hits, etc really puts them into a whole other class of players ('S' class or 'S+' based on my personal ranking system, whereas I only operate at an 'A+' or even 'A' class level of performance most of the time). A lot of people who havent put much time or effort into improving their skills in BZ2 like to accuse superior players of cheating or otherwise being lame, but I know just as well that being good at BZ2 takes a commitment to become good, many of the really good players have been noobs at one time that were mentored under masters or have put time into training exercises or 1v1s to develop skills properly, finding out the mistakes they made instead of just blaming their team (1v1 is good for shedding off the ego thats holding you back). I know a group of people who have game-breakingly good sniping skills, but i've also seen them train and keep training in DMs to increase their sniping skills to be that good. Furthermore, I used to also play a lot of sniper DMs years ago and got my sniping skills to a rather high level in BZ2 1.2, partially with the aid of Timevirus's keybinds that could quickly change between different steer/pitch sensitivity levels, the 50% setting being ideal for sniping and 150% being ideal for general-purpose thugging, but i'm no longer a really great sniper because I havent been putting the time and commitment in to maintaining that skill, and also my ego gets in the way of me really enjoying and benefitting from 1v1 games.

[Red Spot]

I do know a few people who claimed that they 'hacked' another person's PC even though they did no such thing, it was just a way to troll someone who was otherwise not very literate with PCs and ultimately harmless.

I can assure you this has happened, since I am not an unliterate when it comes to PC's ..

As far as cheats go, I honestly do not believe that a majority of the player community would use cheats even if they knew them, because the damage to that person's reputation would be too noticable if anyone ever found out that they were cheating

We all know it is very possible to create situations in this game where there is an imbalance cause of what people did to their games. But as long as it can be presented as a form of modding nobody calls it cheating. Like we all changed visibility ranges in 1.2 and set MWF to 2. Any new player does not know this and some of the 'tweaks' require skill to use and those who posses those skills very much change the balance between players with the settings & skills and those without. But as I already mentioned, in this game that is not called cheating, apparently.

[Zero Angel]

those who posses those skills very much change the balance between players with the settings & skills and those without. But as I already mentioned, in this game that is not called cheating, apparently.

I can see where you're going, and I only half-disagree. Most new players also wouldnt know to turn off auto-leveling, set a previous weapon bind or tweak graphics settings to get a higher level of performance, or turning off triple buffering to squeeze that last little bit of responsiveness out of the mouse controls, or cranking up the turning speed to get more responsive turning. Its the same with any game which possesses less-than-ideal defaults. One could extend that to also include something like Newkeys which creates keybinds to make things better.

And lets face it, any fresh new player, no matter how latent their talent is, is always going to be at a disadvantage against most experienced players who have 'been around the block'; during the time that they are taking to evolve their skills, its not hard to ask about some very well known information like what MWF is and how to change it or about newkeys, or about long-vis keybinds. You know, one person may call that cheating, but another person may call it 'man these make the experience SO much better! This shouldve come as default!'.

[MrTwosheds]

Hmmm, that long vis thing was very very close to cheating, as the advantage it gives a player using it, over one not using it is massive. I clearly recall the day I found out about it...I was not at all happy.
I had played hundreds of games against people using it, nobody had said a thing. I stopped playing for quite a while after that, I wasn't really willing to use it, knowing that others may not be. I am happy to be beaten by superior skill or tactics, but not to either win or lose because the playing field has been unleveled to such a degree. I had been driving around blind in the fog while others could see what I was doing on the other side of the map. I am very glad that it has gone, things like that make a farce out of competitive games.

[Zero Angel]

Yeah, the long vis keybinds in particular were present in TV's newkeys distribution, but had rather conservative settings. I made an effort to publicize the keybind as much as possible in order to level the playing field which of course was the big thing (since there is no point in only a small number of people knowing the bind). If I could have gotten everyone to adopt it at once, then it would have nullified the disparity of advantage that players had since it wasnt nearly as talked about as MWF was. That said, with terrain lodding implemented, I think it's time for mapmakers to revisit their 'standard' vis/fogrange settings and maybe bump em up (standard was 350 back in the day, and while many comps can run 1000 without lag some cannot, so I would personally advise 650.)

[GSH]

1.3 should have a more level playing field for MWF and visibility - the server dictates MWF for everyone, and the map files on disk (should be asset checked) dictate visibility. Perhaps there's a case for changing defaults for auto-leveling for the future -- existing profiles won't be changed, but newly created ones would have the updated default.

-- GSH