Question about Modding vs Hacking

General
1

I recently noticed something in my youtube inbox that involved someone using a mod/hack to give himself and/or herself a much better 3rd person view. on the live servers.

So I need someone who better understands modding in this game to clear some stuff up for me. as I don’t understand where the line is drawn between modding, hacking, and cheating.

What I saw. for me, i consider as boarder line cheating if you have to create a program to tamper with the game to force a better 3rd person view. I assume the 3rd person view was given a low visibility with no function to zoom in or out because that is how the devs wanted the game to be played, they did not want their players to have a larger view point. I assume because the devs wanted the players to try to have some form of situational awareness during combat, and altering the game to get around that, is not quite right, inless this is the result of a dev supported end point and if that is the case, such a thing should honestly be something that can be done with out having to mod because that doses give a tactical advantage over someone who doesn’t have this when it comes to combat in this game. furthermore This is something that would be impossible for PS4 players to use and be jolly unfair for them if this is something the devs allowed. or can PS4 players mod/hack aswell?

Is this a mod that comes in the form of an .EXE where the person haves to pretty much hack the game to enable this? are there endpoints the devs setup to allow this? or was this done by just tampering with some configuration files?

If this is the result of having to program and compile an EXE or other executable file, to tamper with the game, that is hacking in my book, and also shows the game most likely needs an anti cheat engine to prevent this from happening, because i am sure someone might be able to program something that doses a lot more harm then that. Live Official servers should not be able to be modded like this in my book, it should be limited to endpoints that the devs explicitly gone over and allow to be tampered by the general public. Not to mention the unexpected side effects and/or bugs that may or may not result from random poking around that may or may not open up exploits.

Can someone give me a better understanding of this? because as it stands right now, from what I understand right now, I am not amused by this.

Combat, it being PvE or PvP, on an official server, should be a level playing field and everybody haves full access to any options, controls, and configs that alter this experience by default. no fancy adjustments should be required.

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I don’t have knowledge of coding, but my husband works with computers and if you know what you’re looking for, it can be very easy to change things.

Any form of code-changing, imo, is not right. If it’s not accessible to everyone and is not a changeable feature I consider it hacking.
I heard there were ppl who made certain blocks invisible a while back. That should never have happened.

Unless it’s a skin texture mod freely given to the public (like Minecrafts skin textures), then that’s ok.

In regards to your example of field of view… I still don’t think they should have been able to do that, but personally if I’m able to in a game, I zoom out as far as I can.

I guess it’s a moral and a everyone or no one thing for me.

3

I would be carefull with such things, im sure its not intended.
Ps4 players could never have such mods -> unfair
Steam also can completly ban an account if you modify game executables or even inject something in runtime, all games and invested money is then lost (well if they found out anyhow)

I think reading websocket stream / msgpack pakcets and game assets was also not intended, but i think its tolerated for stuff some ppl did, like the crafting page or that guy that renders nice images with the models.

As long as outgoing packages to the server are not modified in any manner.

I also readed in the mem of the game with cheat engine and my own tool a bit, to collect some information from shop stands but switched to ocr now.

Maybe the devs should roll out some info what is allowed and what not, but i think its clear: dont cheat, dont mess things up for others.

4

if i remeber right that would only happen if the devs put VAC( Valve Anti-Cheat System) into the game otherwise any bans useing any other type of anti cheat system (easy anti cheat,battle eye) would only effect that game and not the account

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As far as I am aware boundless is not VAC protected…

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yeb i was meaning VAC would be the only way for a steam account to get banned for cheating/hacking otherwise it would be that game account only

7

So in theory somebody could hack the game to see gems through walls and stuff, like that one post warned us about…

8

if we have access to the blocks assts then yea you could old school minecraft it where eveything but gems blocks are see through would not even be classed has hacking just texture swapping

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9

I was assuming they put in some server side anti hack protection ala minecraft. Detecting things like wall hacking is incredibly easy using a bait and switch algo.

Some of the other stuff on the client, like camera and such… much harder to detect and probably not worth it.

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i know they do have some in place like speed hack detection it was a bug back in early acess if you used a grapple on a portal and reeled in you would come out the otherside so fast the game would boot you for speed hacking

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I feel much the same as you on this. I was looking through the game files looking for relevant information for a video when I saw the camera settings and wondered. After some tinkering I had a working prototype and showed it to James… half proud of my work half ashamed at manipulating the game. He thought it was cool, had some insights on viability of 3rd person, and mentioned that a better 3rd person has always been planed but never a very high priority. He also said that It was ok to share this… which shocked me… saying the spirit behind the mod was not to cheat or help others cheat but to explore and see what works and doesn’t work… but maybe I should have stuck to my original plan to delete the mod after satisfying my curiosity :thinking:

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12

Embracing community mods (non-cheating) will free them up to work on more pressing issues and allow them to progress quicker with low priority ideas like 3rd person. You’re doing payroll level work and not costing them a dime!

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Games have in the past made player made mods an actual part of their game before. Steam users have a great advantage here and there are plenty of smart players.
The best (personal) example for me is the Ragnarok map in Ark. It was originally player made but was incorporated into the game as a selectable map. And it, imo, is the best map they have. The developers worked with the original map maker on this one.

But, yeah, the issue is this is live.
Not sure on how one would go about trying to make a mod that would benefit without breaking any existing mechanics. Or that they werent doing it for selfish reasons. Maybe on test server?
Maybe just textures? (Cloooothes?)

14

Wow getting a giant FOV is soo nice. Too bad the weapons just hover in mid air lol.

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They have a modding section… so mods are legal. Also steam allows mods in games too, so as long as you’re not directly injecting data and just modifying the assets etc… it should be legal. Also the point of view mod you’re talking about…it could be hard to detect unless they verify the integrity of the game files every-time it loads.

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I think it’s a great idea. Especially if @james approves of it :slightly_smiling_face:

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Please I need this in my life! I normally stay away from 1st person point of view games but Boundless is well enough I never minded too much. I think 3rd person would greatly improved my game play experience. I didn’t buy this skin for anyone else but myself I want to admirer it :partying_face:

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Same for me and the forge tweaks. :slight_smile:

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Is this really something that could be 100% done by just tampering around with an plain text configuration file? Or did you have to also compile an exe file to tamper with this?

If this is an exe file, then yes that shocks me as well, what is even more shocking to me, is that he doesn’t see it as cheating, or maybe he was more distracted by the fact you could do this that he was not considering that it can be used in combat at the time.

And this is where my question comes from, even more so if james still thinks this kind of mod is ok. Where is the line drawn between Modding, Hacking, and Cheating? Because as mentioned in my original post, this to me, feels like crossing that line a little bit.

If all of this was done just and only by tampering with plain text configuration files, then I am not as shocked. just mildly surprised that would be in a plain text config file.

maybe. but how I feel about this is mostly dependent on what I am not 100% sure about at this time. What you said suggests that maybe this was done by configuration files only but didn’t really state it in a firm way the use of the word “Prototype” makes it a little ambiguous for me. And your own use of the word “mod” where I saw this content on youtube, also led me to believe it may have been an EXE.

Since james claims you are allowed to share this, and if he for some reason still doesn’t think this is cheating. Then can you post in here what you did to do this and/or the source code if this is an executable file?

Even if there is no EXE used, tampering with game files for some games can get you banned. It would be nice if a dev (if this information is not already posted somewhere else) could tell us what files we are allowed to tamper with and what files we are not allowed to tamper with, because I am pretty sure most of us assume because we are playing on a live official server, we would risk getting banned for trying to do whatever it is Jiivita had done.

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I noticed there is a modding section but that modding section also states something about the player servers that we don’t have yet so I assumed that was mostly aimed at things that do not effect the official servers.

Because outside of addons, i have never played a game that allows the modding of an official server. Example, steam haves mods for ark, but you cannot use them at all on an official server.

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