SiMPLE | Forum

Thanks for showing us the last piece of evidence. I think the explanations already posted should be enough to dismiss this video too. I'll add that there are many reasons to rotate the turret, like in 0:10, other than to aim for firing at an enemy. In this case the primary reason was probably a quick reaction to the grenade which came into view right before George rotated the turret. As your demo shows, George would have been able to watch for the other grenades which followed. Another reason to change one's camera position or orientation is to listen. You can determine a sound source's direction by looking around until the sound is balanced on the right and left channel. Even when you're not going through this procedure, you can estimate a source's approximate direction without looking directly at it. For this it helps to get multiple samples of the sound from different orientations. So it's worth quickly changing one's camera orientation and then listening again, preferably not moving so as not to make any unnecessary noise. Even wild animals know and use this trick. Another reason to rotate the turret is to get ready to attack something which is not in gun sights yet, but may soon be, e.g. by going forward in that situation, as George later did. When you are used to switching to other cameras, as George apparently is, often you don't need to keep your turret pointing forwards when you can see forward better in the third person camera anyway. Better keep it pointing in some other useful direction and then you can switch between 3rd person (forward) and 1st person (some other direction) very quickly, with just 1 button for each.

I think if I was in George's place I would probably play these situations even better, without any cheats.

Put yourself in George's shoes, like in the "George 3" video. You're a presumably innocent (until proven guilty, right?) player and someone keeps approaching you and attacking you in ways in which they presume are undetectable. They may or may not actually be undetected, but they are definitely dangerous situations and unusually frequent situations (because, as it turns out, the other guy is using a map hack in order to find you specifically). So when the hack-users decide to target you, you're gonna have a bad time playing, or get unexpectedly banned, or both.

Put yourself in the shoes of a third player too. You're someone who likes playing fairly on the server. Then one day, one team is doing unusually well. You're thinking: is it because there's some new talented or experienced player here? That would be great. Or is it because someone is cheating? That would be bad. Before you know it an old, known player you liked playing with is gone, permanently banned. How would you feel?

Bottom line is: if you're one causing this you're at fault. Take corrective action or you'll end up with a situation which is bad for everyone and getting worse. Especially for the ones causing this. But I don't know if you in particular did this (playing with hacks on). Did you do it?

As someone who plays this game a lot and who cares about being able to play with fair players and avoiding playing with unfair players I feel I have to share my opinion. This is directed primarily at tuia and all other admins in his situation.

You have to realize that with decent sound hardware and proper settings the sound is a very effective way to detect and locate targets and events. First of all, with a decent sound card and good separation of the left and right sound channels (like with headphones) you can very precisely determine the direction of a sound source. Secondly, in Sound.con in the profile settings dir there is a command Sound.setRolloffFactor, by default set to 1. It takes a float value as an argument. It affects how quickly the sound volume goes down with distance. If you set it to 0 the sound of a vehicle going away from you will have a constant loudness until it goes beyond certain distances defined in the vehicle's sound scripts. You will be able to clearly hear things from a great range, so clearly in fact, that the overwhelming auditory stimuli will make it feel like every enemy is right next to you and shooting at you. Your will only get limited distance cues from the parameters defined in the sound scripts. If you set Sound.setRolloffFactor to an intermediate value, say 0.4, you will be able to estimate a sound source's distance from its volume while keeping a good range of hearing. When you determine a source's direction and distance, you know its approximate location. If you follow all advice above and get some experience you will be able to quickly make pretty good approximations in your head. Perhaps only if you care to be good at the game.

<what I see in the videos>

In the first video between 3:05 and 3:15 George has spawned but you are not spectating what he is doing. And what is the tank approaching from north doing? Is it shooting? Is it smoking? It's not clear. I tested it and I found that as far back as 3:13-3:14 the tank is visible IF standing upright and jumping. And the direction of his minimap icon is not inconsistent with him seeing in the direction of the approaching tank. Even as far back as 3:11 the tank is audible with Sound.setRolloffFactor set to 0. By 3:28 (when the nearby tank stops and thus becomes less noisy) it is certainly audible even with default setting. I can hear it even in the video at that time. George had at least 2-3 seconds to decide how to act next.

At 3:52 you bring up the scoreboard and it is apparent that the teams are grossly imbalanced 5 to 2 due to the inactive players!

In the second video around 0:30 there are two tanks that are closer and about to come into view sooner than Heavy Metal's. It is not at all clear why he uses his admin powers against Heavy Metal. I don't know what happened before the video.

Then around 0:47 he starts looking for the closest tank (occupied by kanets(Ukraine)) possibly having heard him and instinctively changing the direction he faces in order to help better determine the direction of the sound. Also remember that as far back as 0:15 there was an unoccupied tank at the nearby flag which was obviously taken by an enemy and at 0:27 it kills a nearby infantryman. George would be careless and inattentive not to notice any of this. He must have expected him at the most likely route which is the route kanets(Ukraine) chose. As early as 0:49 he is visible in the video, so George would have been able to also see him in third person camera around that time, if not slightly earlier. He also keeps looking for the tank previously engaged, which was on about the same line of sight. After that, he DOES go for that bailing inf, firing at the ground beyond the burning tank where the infantryman must be. Then he keeps looking for him, and following where he predicts the infantryman may show up. He does that for a while and then decides to go to a more advantageous position, not knowing what else might or might not come from north or from west or from south.

In the third video Heavy Metal is seen going back into main towards the place where the Wespe spawns, immediately turning around and going through where he was at the beginning of the video. The video doesn't show what happened the minutes before. Did Heavy Metal and George approach each other, see each other, shoot at each other? In any case, another tank approaches George, and he is seen starting to move towards where the tank was at that moment in time. This is consistent with him staying in the gunner's position with the engine off to better listen for enemies and then moving towards the target. At some point the Wespe comes into view (perhaps even shooting) and he acquires this (presumably new, but possibly even older than the moment the video starts) and higher priority target, and then engages and kills it.

At that point he realizes that a flag has been lost and that his rear is no longer secure, and before you even start moving towards him, he starts turning back, intending to either go to the repair pad or to attack the lost flag. At 1:23 his minimap icon is seen moving sideways suggesting he may have flipped his Priest, necessitating further repairs. At 1:38 a shot directed at you is heard, a shot which passed right in front of George, and was probably seen and/or heard. At 1:39 he probably switches to the gunner's position again to listen and decide how to act next. A tank coming from the flag just lost is one of the things he is concerned with. His concern is immediately confirmed when he hears you, and possibly sees you in third person camera. His situation is desperate, he is perhaps low or out of ammo, damaged and being flanked and about to be attacked from the top. He decides to counterattack in a smart way but narrowly fails. What I see is George going for the source of the sound (yes, even a blind man can do that very well), then once visual contact is established he changes direction and only then drops the expack.

In "Neo 1" 0:03-0:04 a shell can be heard coming from left and exploding nearby. Not clear if it came from this particular Panzer, but it would easily attract attention to that Panzer anyway. And the last engaged target is dead, so of course George is going to look around.

In "Neo 2" all the targets which George engaged were first engaged by his team mates, attracting his attention. They were all obvious.

In "Closet cheater 1" George's attention is attracted by the first of two explosions at the flag. When he looked at the explosions he could see the infantryman.

"Closet cheater 2" is now private and I can't see it.

</what I see in the videos>

Overall, as a player in these videos George leaves the impression of someone who is experienced, competitive, mindful, puts extra effort into situational awareness, pays attention to the cues the game gives, and it pays off.

On the other hand, you and other server admins like you use cheats and at the same time move around the map, attract attention, capture flags, attack, kill, and overall influence the game for everyone on the server. What you rationalize as a tactic to expose a certain suspect as a cheater is in practice a directed cheating attack with the suspect being the primary victim and every other player being a victim too.

George possibly (I don't know all the facts) shouldn't admin the server if he can't be trusted to do that fairly but you definitely shouldn't play in the servers before regaining the trust of the other players as a fair player. Otherwise these servers are just servers for cheaters.

You should be happy for the opportunity to learn something new about the game. Now your actions will determine how players view the servers.

P.S: I would also be interested to see what other people were banned and for what reasons.