Well, time to let you guys in on the big not-so-secret project we've been cooking up over at Modacity.

Quoting myself here:


I won't update this thread often, so read the rest on Modacity [http://www.modacity.net/forums/showthread.php?t=16477] .

The primary developers of the Cerebrum-Synapse system are myself (better known as AdmiralBacon), jcap (admin on Modacity), and kornman00 (master of all things Halo hacking).

Global banlist: Synapse will provide servers with a global list of banned players (ie, botters, horribly annoying people, etc.).


So if this is implemented into almost all the servers (dedis mainly) people are banned from all those servers?

The global ban list is a moderated system managed by us over at Modacity, but yes, in theory, an accepted ban on the list would be respected by every server running Synapse. Server administrators are expected to accept our banlist when they install the server extensions that provide Synapse service. The list will be otherwise closely guarded and specific to such things as botters and the most annoying TKers. There will be an appeal process to fight it.

Nice. Can't wait to see this happen sometime soon.

Is there any possibility of linking this into Intergalatic Moron's heatmap program, and will you add "achievements" of any sort (ie a player gets over 50 kills in one round, a player has lifetime kill amount over X)?

We have our own heatmap implementation in the works, developed by kornman00 himself.
We do have plans for achievements and medals, as well as a complete ranking system.

If you read the thread on Modacity, you'd know these things.

Could you do something along the lines of being able to have a friends list of sort, so you can keep track of what game they're in?

Actually, is it possible to change where Halo CE looks for servers? If so, that would open up a lot of possibilities for Halo CE.
Edited by pwner5889 on Jun 23, 2009 at 05:54 PM

Yes, I mention this in the Modacity thread.


This has nothing to do with Cerebrum-Synapse, and to my knowledge, no one has reverse-engineered the GameSpy server list yet.
Edited by lolz on Jun 23, 2009 at 06:01 PM

pretty good idea, I really like the ban list thing, kinda like a halo ce most wanted lol

This should be optional. I would not run a server where the ban list is mandatory. Especially not from an bunch of anonymous moderators . All it would take is for one of the anonymous moderators to initiate a global ban and shut down all servers. This feature should be optional.

jcap was quite clear on the issue:

And at that, I agree. We're not anonymous moderators, we're well-known names in the world of CE, especially kornman00. And the CD Key hashes on the list will only be of the worst sort - botters and hackers, people who quite clearly cheat. It's also something CE needs: Less of a burden for server administrators and a little more sense of security in the games.

e: And at that, we'd DQ any games with players on the banlist if we did allow admins to ignore it.
Edited by lolz on Jun 23, 2009 at 08:29 PM

I've seen plenty of biased crap go on at Modacity. How can you guarantee that there won't be biased banning on this app?

The ban list itself will be publicly visible and appeals will be listened to in an open forum. We're also talking about jcap, kornman00 and p0lar_bear, some of the most respected people in the community.

Jcap constantly harrasses Masterz publicly. I don't support this at all. Jcp= Far from mature

You don't know that. I will bet you that you will have people that you banned running your application just to ban other players.

So you will be publishing your given name, address and phone numbers as I have then.

I won't. That feature gives you and other server operators too much control of my server.

Im thinking the app should have a popup with a question like:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A person on the suggested ban list wants to join the server, will you let him join?

[Yes] [No]

Options:
[]Always ask about this person?
[]Always let this person in?
[]Never let this person in?
(This can be changed through Settings)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just a suggestion

Also, if a person is on the banlist, will they be banned from their own server that they make, both dedi or ingame?
Edited by Advancebo on Jun 24, 2009 at 12:08 AM

Too much risk involved.
1) Biased Banning.
2) Mistaken Identity.
3) Possible Server-Crashers.
4) Security lapses.
Just to name a few.
I appreciate what the App can do for us , but i feel that the supreme banlist thing is retarded.
For all you know , some moron could have been playing and felt like TKing everyone in the room , resulting in the innocent party being banned.
Some Apps , such as the SightJacker would be considered : ' Hacks ' and devmode consoles.
The players that wish to run your App would probably have been able to Police their own servers with the DevConsole , so there would be no point.

^This.

Although it is a very nice idea, I just think not many people like the banlist.

Agreed, if some moron joins, I have my own fingers to ban him, I don't need some people to keep a list with people banned because some people are lazy to ban themselfes.

I mean seriously, how much effort do you need to type sv_players sv_ban #? it's just gonna be too much hussle and complaints, leave it out i say, entirely.

I surely do not wish to lose control of my own servers for god sakes... stats is nice, keep it at it, do not try to take control of anything in any way

http://who.godaddy.com/WhoIs.aspx?domain=phpwnage.com&prog_id=godaddy
My legal name and current place of residence have been available to anyone who cared enough to look for over two years.

We can't allow banned players into games that are tracked for stats. Period.

If we allow them in, we have to void the game completely because their sheer presence has an effect on the game. We can't accept partial stats because they don't reflect a complete game.

(quoting from the Modacity thread here)
What is the banlist for? The banlist covers known, proven, and tried aimbotters and TKers, the kind that just join servers to do these things and rarely ever play an honest game. If you botted once a year ago, you're not going to be on this list.

What happens when a banned player is able to join a game? We have to void the entire game. We can't accept parts of game - Jcap explained why. That banned player may have made a massive difference in the game play. We just can't accept it, so the entire game must be voided. And at that, why should we give the botter the luxury of a constant monument to their cheating by providing them with a game overview?

How would you like it if you were in a game where you had gotten hundreds of points on our system, and were in the lead, and then a botter joins in the last few minutes? Your game has just been ruined, all of that effort has gone to waste, and why? Not because a botter joined, but because the server admin refused to accept a ban list.

Synapse is a service that can be provided through other apps. Whether you use Synapse depends on whether you accept the banlist, but only Synapse depends on this. An example of this system is the iPod: To use Genius playlists, i have to allow iTunes to send information on my music to Apple. If I don't accept that, I still get to use my iPod, but I can't use Genius playlists. In this case, Synapse is the Genius Playlists and the iPod is rec0 or SAPP, etc.

It should be fairly simple, if you want to allow cheaters to join your games, you will not be allowed to use our service because the only way we could allow that to happen would be to destroy the experience for players, and we refuse to give botters another weapon.
Edited by lolz on Jun 24, 2009 at 10:54 AM
Edited by lolz on Jun 24, 2009 at 02:08 PM

That’s good Kevin, however the control of the ban list does not reside with you alone but with every server operator who runs your application. Those people ARE anonymous and can easily initiate bans on valid players that will propagate across all servers running your application. That action by anonymous server operators will impact every server until you or your associates sort out the ban list. This methodology is fraught with complications outside of your control.

Then your paradigm and methodology for tracking the stats is fundamentally incorrect. For proper statistics tracking of players and games any negative action like a team kill or a kick or a ban should negatively impact the player’s and therefore the game’s statistics. In particular a player ban should negatively impact his overall ratings. The purpose of the stats is to entice players to play better and give them positive goals to achieve some score. Negative actions should have negative effects to de-incentivize them from those actions. Games with bad players should be recorded lower than games with good players. Voiding game or player results because of a ban does not reflect the reality of the game and artificially elevates and skews the statistics thereby doing nothing to dissuade bad behavior.

From my own experience I have been banned or kicked from servers for being too bad of a player, for being too good a of player, for using an aimbot even though I was dead last, for not getting in a hog, for not being in the clan, for not responding to taunts and for responding to taunts by agreeing with them. I have been banned because my username was “player”. I have been kicked and banned for so many reasons that I cannot determine and according to you I should be banned from all servers running your application.

You spoke of an appeals process but unlike Valve’s Anti-cheat system that is unbiased software determined and linked to steam your application is relying on teenage server operators to make a determination as to who is or isn’t cheating and then unquestioned propagating that decision across all servers. For any appeal you will not have enough information to make a decision as to who should or should not be banned.

There are two scenarios that I see. 1) The ban list is automatically propagated without human intervention and people have to appeal the bans or 2) Every ban is evaluated by a human before they are added to the ban list and propagated. Both are unworkable.

With option 1 people can be penalized due to an overzealous server operator and the appeals process will be lengthy and mostly unknown by many players. This will result in them not being able to play on servers your application runs on and invalidates all stats. Not only that but you would have no real data to make a decision whether to keep or void the ban.

With option 2 you would not have any information to determine if the ban was valid or not so you either would not add the hash to the list or it would be added it without question.

The concept of stats tracking is a good one, the mandatory ban list is in all practicality unworkable and will remove any and all value from the stats that are generated. You need to rethink the methodology because there is a fundamental flaw if bad actions are not accounted for and included in the stats.
This is the fundamental flaw in your system. You are relying on highly biased emotionally charged and mostly incorrect server operators to make the determination as to who is cheating.

You don't seem to understand how the ban system works.
Bans on one server do not propagate to others - that is not how the system works. The global ban list is openly managed at Modacity and has nothing to do with what players are banned on a particular server (it doesn't even affect the server's ban list, as the players are banned by Synapse when they join).

Oh I see now, thanks for clearing that up.

Good to see we've cleared it up for at least one person.

So if the individual server operators are not the ones to place people on the ban list then who decides? How does one get on the ban list? Who manages it and who gets to place people on it? My contention is that any human intervention is inherently biased.

Server admins can report players, with CD key hashes and video evidence, to us at Modacity. This evidence will be openly available with the player's entry in the banlist (which can be viewed from the Cerebrum site).

There will always be a little bias, but we're open about the banlist, who's on it, and why they are on it.

So let me get this right, Your making a banning program that people can download and run while in thier game that makes it so some people can't join?

... You know what, I quit. I don't need this.

If you guys can't understand why we need to make this part of Synapse, I'm not going to try and make you.
Edited by lolz on Jun 24, 2009 at 06:57 PM

I understand it, but you still realize that many players will not realize that the ability to appeal is available. It is a really good idea, but the concept still needs fine touching.

Welcome to halo maps. Learning is what its all about.
Once you are done, please go to your left and head over to modacity to get 'some' crit and have fun watching others act as pricks.
After then, go to your right and head over to a real community that will help you out and not act like a bunch of hippies. :)

You have no idea who you're talking to, do you?
Modacity is my home, been there since H2Vista, and I've been here since 2005. l2knowpeople.
e: And at that, I've been on this account for almost two years longer than you've been here, Mr. Joined in May.



Cerebrum-Synapse is a stat tracking and game summary generating system for Halo Custom Edition. It is being constructed by some of the greatest minds in CE (I'm looking at km00 on my AIM buddy list when I say this). The reason for the mandatory global ban list, moderated by ourselves, is simple: If you want to allow people to cheat your server, fine by us: You're not getting statistics reported on the games played in it. Period.
Edited by lolz on Jun 24, 2009 at 08:18 PM

Modacity is for scrubs.

I dunno Masters, there was a guy there by the name of Screward who seemed to have some decent opinions :)
Bacon,if you had to estimate, what percentage of server operators would run this?
Edited by Maniac1000 on Jun 24, 2009 at 08:18 PM

HALO CE does not need a global banning system it has been fine all these years. Actualy i like hackers coming into servers. without hackers and noobs who would there be to make fun of? so there fore i think this idea sucks. i like the stastics but the global banning is not for CE.