Demo clients crashing

[LesserDeity]

Some players are claiming that certain other players are crashing their UT2004 clients. Someone said it may have something to do with a retail client auto-joining voice channel (i don't know exactly). A brief online search turned up nothing but vague bug fix notes.

It should be noted that after certain players join, four or five players will disconnect at precisely the same moment a minute later. Some players will reconnect and disconnect repeatedly over the next several minutes indicating connection trouble.

Is there a known issue involving older demo clients crashing because of INI settings in retail clients?

If so, can these retail clients be detected by Catalyst admins, warned and temporarily banned if needs be?

[Gunner666]

Most likely one of those players have an exploit to crash the servers. The players crashing may recieve UT errors or a windows error. There is no fix for it other than to be aware who joins and then who gets kicked or crashed.

[Valis]

Sorry gunner I edited your post to be a bit less specific :cool:

[RE*S.T.A.R.S.*2]

No suprise fellows, its well know that many players with unsecured clients plays on catalyst, most of them have retail and now i few are demos.....

hopely UT03 will have less cheaters its the engine its well designed, but if MS windows Vista activation was worked for activation, guess this engine will be cracked anyway, good day to all... :hammer:

[Valis]

LesserDiety,

The fix is known to us, but for obvious reasons we don't state it outright. Security through obscurity isn't going to fix the issue of course, but it helps mitigate having the idiots multiply.

As you've said it's not too difficult to tell who is at fault for the player crashes, just watch and see who joins, within 45-60 seconds the demo guid players' connections will time out (having crashed in a lot less time). Of course it really helps if an admin is there watching this because he will have a better idea of who is a demo player, etc. Also note that it will generally NOT be demo players themselves using this because it would cause them to crash immediately on loading the map on their end.

When we see this issue, it can sometimes be hard to get people's attention in game to help them in 'fixing' this cause. So if that means they don't respond to warnings and need to be kicked/banned to get them to respond, then yes we'll do that. Quite often a player may not even really know what the full effects of this particular issue are, we understand that (of course they may very well know and just lie, eh?). But it's also good to keep in mind that consistantly crashing multiple other players out of the server (even if they haven't got a retail install) is something we need to resolve, so we might be a bit more forward than usual about trying to get someone's attention.

Since this fix has no other ties to known exploits, once it's fixed and we can confirm that the Player at fault isn't an issue any longer, then no further action needs to be taken since it won't affect gameplay any longer.

Now a player using this particular issue to crash the server outright will probably be given a long term if not permanent ban, because that is quite outside the bounds of 'gee I didn't know...'.

[RE*S.T.A.R.S.*2]

LesserDiety,

The fix is known to us, but for obvious reasons we don't state it outright. Security through obscurity isn't going to fix the issue of course, but it helps mitigate having the idiots multiply.

As you've said it's not too difficult to tell who is at fault for the player crashes, just watch and see who joins, within 45-60 seconds the demo guid players' connections will time out (having crashed in a lot less time). Of course it really helps if an admin is there watching this because he will have a better idea of who is a demo player, etc. Also note that it will generally NOT be demo players themselves using this because it would cause them to crash immediately on loading the map on their end.

When we see this issue, it can sometimes be hard to get people's attention in game to help them in 'fixing' this cause. So if that means they don't respond to warnings and need to be kicked/banned to get them to respond, then yes we'll do that. Quite often a player may not even really know what the full effects of this particular issue are, we understand that (of course they may very well know and just lie, eh?). But it's also good to keep in mind that consistantly crashing multiple other players out of the server (even if they haven't got a retail install) is something we need to resolve, so we might be a bit more forward than usual about trying to get someone's attention.

Since this fix has no other ties to known exploits, once it's fixed and we can confirm that the Player at fault isn't an issue any longer, then no further action needs to be taken since it won't affect gameplay any longer.

Now a player using this particular issue to crash the server outright will probably be given a long term if not permanent ban, because that is quite outside the bounds of 'gee I didn't know...'.


Valis the issue its not a demo or retail game. they got loaded a bot, that can crash clients and also i have seen myself bot that detects admin and kick them out, this is someone messing with the server.
lets call it by what it is, its a cheat making people crash its games,
and i ban won't make any differents only if the person using the bot its a stupid that just loaded the bot and thats it, if he know a litle of computers he can get to the demo server anytime whitout thinkin much, unless he is got static ip ....... hope i make myself clear good day to ya all :rockon:

[Valis]

Crashing the server ('ala pasto) and the issue LesserDiety is discussing are two different things. lesserDiety is quite specific in his descrption of the symptoms, and accurate as well so I know for a fact that this particular issue doesn't require a bot--but I'll decline to clarify further for obvious reasons. :)

[LesserDeity]

Thanks for responding. I wanted to get the symptoms out there so searching will turn up results. Unfortunately "security through obscurity" does not help people legitimately searching for solutions.

This particular problem bugs me because it cannot be directly attributed to anything by the player experiencing it. It's not like someone says, "May your cup runeth over with GPFs" followed by a crash. It just happens. Software crashes for any number of reasons, usually drivers or service incompatibilities. So players may not think to contact admins.

Anyway, thanks for responding. I noticed attempts to fix one player a few days ago :hammer:

[Valis]

Actually I agree that security through obscurity isn't much help, however the admins here certainly can help. Unfortunately this particular 'issue' is simple enough that I'm quite sure that posting it here could potentially cause as many (if not more) problems as it would solve. If you really want further details just pm me or email the catalyst email and I'll respond.