This was copied from the Nova Community Forums, since many of you play older games and can't access the Nova forums I thought it might be of interest.
Thread started by: GIA Project Lead
Like many of you, I think Joint Ops is a very good and (usually) fun game, in spite of a lot of flaws. But unfortunately, the worst flaw isn’t even a game bug. It’s the flood of cheats in the servers. Although streaming servers don’t have nearly the problem, the problem is still there none the less.
Even worse than this, is the fact that when any game is no longer updated then more and more new cheat utilities are able to get past the anti-cheat measures without being detected. I’m sure we all know how bad it got with games like Half-life and Ghost Recon and many more. The only way you can even play some of the games online now is if you have a better cheat than anyone else. Otherwise, it doesn’t much matter how good you are, you just get killed because you’re the only one in the server who doesn’t have an aimbot or wall hack or some other kind prissy arse cheat utility. Needless to say, this is precisely why I no longer play a lot of games and it is the same reason I don’t play Joint Ops as much any more. Unfortunately, it is inevitable and all games eventually go down this road.
This brings me to the point of this thread. I hate cheats and despise the cheaters that use them. But rather than whine and cry about it, I decided to see if I could do something to help the community and the honorable players reclaim the game servers and boot the cheaters. So, about 6 weeks ago, I began hashing out and designing the ultimate game security anti-cheat measure. It is called the GIA project.
GIA stands for Game Independent Anti-cheat. It isn’t so much an anti-cheat program as it is a game security package. Given the design, when GIA is set to its highest security level, it is essentially 100% secure against all forms of cheats (not including glitching). With such efficient cheat protection, GIA has the potential of making Punk Buster obsolete.
There are some minor details to work out in the high level design phase before we move on but I am very optimistic so far. GIA will be a separate program that runs independent of games. It could actually be used to protect any game and it would not interfere with other anti-cheats such as Punk Buster. It will run on both the server side and client side but does not require constant updating in order to keep up with the newest cheats. Basically, with the way GIA is designed, even if it was completed and never updated again, it would still be able to stop a cheat utility that is created years later. Because GIA has some properties of anti-virus software, firewalls, and other network and internet security packages, it has the ability to recognize that a particular program poses a security threat because it is unknown or foreign. Even, and especially, if a particular program or cheat isn’t able to be identified, GIA will still be able to catch it.
So in conclusion, I would like to get some feedback, opinions, and suggestions on this. I would especially like to find out how interested the community actually is. Because we will need some very honorable, talented, and diverse programmers, I will soon be recruiting volunteers for the project unless the community support doesn’t fair well.
I will be back in about a week or two to check the thread. I hope it stays alive and near the top.
GIA Project Lead came back and answerd some player questions later. But it's to much to post here. The thread is located in the Joint Ops: Escalation section under The Ultimate Anti Cheat Software thread.
