ASUS Cheat Drivers

Awww, jimmedy. I play Diablo II for a few days and don't do anything else, and a bunch of paranoid schitzophrenics get a hold of one blurb about see thru drivers and now thats all I hear about.

Asus has already scrapped plans for the drivers, go to

http://www.rivastation.com/index_e.htm

and never planned to make drivers where on-line tournaments could be cheated with, in fact, well read http://www.riva3d.com/#newsitem964055276,96413,

Now go take your fucking lithium guys, and preferrably a lethal dose.

Here I thought games were about having FUN, and you people are crying because what mattters to you is winning. Sheez, I tell ya.

(This was originally written with indents and as such they may not survive the shugashack posting process)

I am the proud owner of an ASUS V6800-AGP Deluxe DDR Geforce card, am a frequenter of ASUS' sites, absolutely love Counter-Strike (stop complaining about the new netcode already :P), and can confidently say this:

Lars Weinand (borsti), RIVA Station administrator, is a liar.

My simple arguments:

1. The "Press Release"

The press release as posted at RIVA Station does not exist on any of ASUS' worldwide sites. This should be proof enough, but I will continue with further examination of this release, from top to bottom.

a) Press releases for the month of July 2000 begin exactly like this: "TAIPEI - July Xst, 2000, -- ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. (ASUS) ...". The press release header as in the one that RIVA Station posted begins "Taiwan, Taipei July 18, 2000: ASUSTeK Computer, Inc. ..." which is consistent with the header ASUS included with their release for the AGP-V7700 back in May, and the AGP-V7700 Deluxe in June. As the May and June press releases have basically the same format, as well as a statement by Jonathan Tsang (a Marketing/Sales VP), it can be concluded that borsti likely copied either the May or June release and reworded it.

b) In the May 2000 press release, ASUS capitalized their name as "ASUSTeK Computer, Inc.". in June 2000 and July 2000 press releases, they capitalize it as "ASUSTeK COMPUTER, INC.".

c) ASUS, as a global company, is smart enough to realize that translations from Chinese to English sometimes do not go smoothly. ASUS has referred to "secret weapons" three times (as garnered from the Search function on their main www.asus.com.tw web site), and has never ever spelled "secret" as "secrete". ASUS has also never referred to any of their technologies as "special weapons" (also from the Search facility), so this is a departure from the norm. ASUS' translator does a spectacular job, as anyone can see by reading the press releases, and the spelling errors and bending of syntax found in this release does not match anything ASUS has released before.

d) ASUS almost never includes a "TM" in the body of a press release, even when mentioning its own products, and when a "TM" is included it is not spaced from the product it refers to (as in RIVA Station's "3D SeeThrough TM"). The only ASUS product that ASUS includes a TM for so far is its SmartDoctor GPU-overheat-protection program. Externally-developed products must be acknowledged, so when listing motherboard specifications and such ASUS must include a TM for such trade names as "Athlon".

e) The ending section of the press release, "If you do not have an ASUS VGA card - be careful! ...", is amazingly arrogantly worded for the largest systems integration company in the Far East. It can be assumed to be part of the body of the press release and not a quote (as borsti has not made indication that it is otherwise), and therefore is taken as the opinion of the company. No formal opinion like this is ever found in ASUS' press releases. No company I can think of would put such a fist-shake in a press release, either.

2. The Screenshots

a) In-game screenshots
In RIVA Station's Figure 1 and 2 (I don't know what game that is, I'm sorry) note the original scene. In Figure 2 (with Transparent View supposedly active), some indistinct shapes are "visible" through the wall, as well as having part of a rock wall replaced by a sky texture. The magic of ASUS' nonexistent drivers is hard at work in these two frames. Note how the purple rock's texture, which should be clearly visible through an alpha-blended polygon in front of it, is warped and indisctinct when viewed through the "transparent" block in front of it. The same goes for the grate thing on the left-hand side of the screen - opaque in the first shot, darker and indistinct in the second. For those not in the know, to make the textures appear transparent is not hard, but the textures behind a partially transparent object will come through just clear as they would if there were no object there (they don't get "distorted" like they were viewed through ray-traced water). Also note the extreme selectiveness of the drivers - they allow you to see "weapons" through walls, but nearly everything else - your player model, parts of the world map, the purple rock - retain their solidarity and opaqueness.
That is one intelligent driver.
Either that, or borsti's mouse hand got tired using the Smudge and Lighten controls in his image editor.

In RIVA Station's Figure 3 and 4 (the shots of q3dm1), take a look at what is included in each scene. Models used include: the world map, the 50-health sphere, the rocket launcher view model, the ammobox icon and Sarge icon, as well as various 2D displays such as your frags and health.
Now, in the wireframe view, look at everything in the scene. Everything has been changed to a wireframe: the view model, the health sphere, the 2D text, with one exception - the "player hidden behind the wall". I find it mind-bogglingly amazing that the drivers magically know what a Quake 3 player model is, how it differs from every other model in the scene, and taking these magic factors into account, they know to render it normally. This is an impossibly amazing advance in artificial intelligence, and I can't wait for this magic discrimination ability to appear in other fields.
I can't see clearly what model that is (of the player behind the wall) but it also appears to be too small, considering it's only about 10 feet away in game space.
Note how the screenshots are all conveniently too small too low quality to see fine details.

The shot of the magically rendered player model in the wireframe display, along with the nonexistent, error-packed press release, are the most convincing points for forgery so far.

b) The localized German driver configuration window
Clarification of the screenshot: language localization for ASUS drivers is provided by the file "AnvMsg.ini" that ships with each driver download. It allows for quick translation of menu tabs, buttons and such. The "Line Interleave" and "Page Flipping" options under the German section in anvmsg.ini do not have translations entered (the English is still there), so they appear in English in the window.
I find it rather amusing that borsti has chosen to place the "cheat hotkey window" so that it completely covers the background OpenGL VR settings page. While in the interests of saving space and making his page viewable for low-resolution users, uncovering the window may reduce speculation among the unconvinced.
The driver being "not released yet" is a rather interesting fact. ASUS creates unified drivers (meaning users of a V3800, V6600, V6800, V7700, and VANTA2000 can all download the same driver) and posts betas somewhat regularly (the latest being based on Detonator 5.16 and 5.22). The latest beta driver addition to any world ASUS download site, be it Taiwan or the USA or Hungary or even borsti's Germany, is the 5.22 beta, dated July 3rd.

c) An update later in the day: a mysterious cheat program
Marvel at the absolutely tiny screenshot of a new "cheat tool" that, especially in the wireframe rendering mode, appears to do exactly same thing as ASUS' supposed cheat drivers. Perhaps this fun little program (once again kept secret like the ASUS cheat drivers) was used to create some of the base shots taken earlier?


This attempt at professional slander should be looked down upon. Rather than sending hate mail to ASUS, perhaps one should look closer to the maintainer of RIVA Station.

Please note that I write this from my computer in my room, that I do not work for ASUS (I'm actually a hardware writer for a soon-to-open gaming site, catch my review of the Intellimouse Explorer), and that these are my own opinions. While ASUS' support is somewhat lacking (to this I can attest, does anyone know how to get the 3D glasses to work with drivers higher than 3.68? :P), if this was his reason, borsti does not need to lash out at the company in this way. I don't wish to see a company that makes such wonderful products suffer due to one inciting comment.

The 5.32 drivers are out here, been out since early July (2nd)
There a lot of other mods of the Nvida BIOS too,,
It took me about 5 minutes to find all this stuff,
I wonder if they'll work on my old TNT card???
Oh Well, something cool to show the guys at the LAN party this weekend. Not Like I'll use them (or be able to get away with using them) Pretty hard to cheat at a LAN game... or easy to prove if someone is cheating...

Well, no matter what fps-style gaming will always be best at a lan:
-everyone has a 10/100baseT connection, so no one can bitch about lag
-you can either face-to-face trash talk the other guys (if you're into that kinda thing), or just sit there with a smirk on your face while you sk00l everyone else within viewing distance (as I prefer)
-teamplay rocks if you can get a 2-floor lan: top vs bottom floors-> you'd be amazed how amazing CS can be when everyone is working together, talking to each other and giving out strats (and y'can't be cheap by giving away enemy position anymore, thanks to the new CS version
-best of all, if one person starts to cheat and people get suspicious, they just have a guy keep an eye on his screen: and if he gets caught, he gets The Beats(tm)

damn, /me needs to get to another LAN party soon...anyone living in the ottawa area hosting one?

holy cow! This same article on Blue's has 56 comments!!!! that's got to be a record for them.. ;)

Spelling errors doesn't mean it's a fake press release. Asus is taiwanese, and thus their English can be poor as shit. Try reading one of their motherboard manuals!

Rivastation posted more picts that include screenshots of the Control Panel.

Dudes, this cheat can easily be defeated by modifying the server code for games.

All it needs to do is check your Line of Sight on the server side to see if there is a wall in the way. If there is, then the server doesn't send you the player data. So even if you are using the cheat drivers, you don't see anyone on the other side of the wall anyway.

The downside of this is that the server side code is more processor intensive: but then again, this reduces load on the client. So in all, it doesn't change a damn thing.

Throwing shit on client side INVITES cheating. Its actually legitimate as long as it isn't operated on server side. By TRUSTING the client to block LOS to enemies out of site, the software is causing the cheating, not the drivers, players, or whatever.

I have a ASUS Geforce 256... I will own you all in 3D games! Wuahahahaha... you all sucks... oh ... I play only Diablo2 right now.... doh... :(

If Asus goes ahead with this desperate fuck-you strategy, it will be interesting to see whether any developers have the balls to release anti-Asus patches. Developers and hardware mfgrs. are rather cozy; it's a fact of game industry life.

I suspect id would do something, but then, after floating the "blacklist" idea winter, id hasn't exactly been storming down on cheaters, have they?

Ahhh.. this just simplified my choice of GeForce to buy. ASUS all the way!

Oh wow I can see through a wall...:)if you guys think this is a big advantage stick to ghey ass diablo,I agree it's not the fair thing to do
but will probably sell some more card's for ASUS,so they could give 2 shitz about you're bitching and moaning...

Oh and someone here said they are fucking up the industry....:)P
without ASUS what would support you're damn Athlon? they have a good reputation for making stable mobrds,hey dont use thier fucking graphics card that's all..#P

What's to stop people from using the Asus driver with all other other GTS out there? They're all the same board.

And shit, when it's released, won't everyone try to hack the code into the drivers for their own card if they can't just use Asus's?


This is all very ghey.

You know, Zoid posted that this was possible on the QuakeForge mailing list back in January, and said that someone had even done this before (and showed id, not released the drivers) by creating a 'fake' opengl driver that sat between GLQuakeworld and the real driver. I'm not surprised that it's been figured out again.

This is one of the lowest examples of marketing I've ever seen. Shit like this belongs on early morning cartoons where two kids are competing to sell the most lemonade (or something). Now when I'm on a server I'll get:
Fucking bot
Timing whore
Asus using fucknut
Whoopie for Asus, you just made another shit sandwich for the gaming scene from which we will inevitably bite at one point or another.
cunts.

wouldn't that also increase the frame-rate?

It would kinda help in Single Player mode. :)
BAM!
*me gets hit with a concrete brick*

WTF that is totally gay, most multiplayer games can rely on the element of surprise, this would seriously FUCK UP MULTIPLAYER FOR EVERYONE.

Oh my fucking god. I play Counterstrike on a [far too] regular basis, and just when the cheating has been killed a bit [a bit, lamers tend to find new ways every release, the dickheads], ASUS comes along with this shit. If they release this POS, then...then..i'll fuck up their FTP [yeah right].

It's obvious someone has the drivers out in the public, unless ASUS provided the screenshots.

Yes, and I agree that if these drivers were truly leaked or even released, The Carmack would be hot on unfucking that situation with a patch that rendered the ASUS driver unusable or better yet, unstable in Q3A. I hope he does it with more than just checking the "Last Valid Renderer" variable... hmmmm

I wonder how this will affect peoples' opinions on buying these cards.
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Scene: Your local Best Buy, Computer Accesories Aisle

Best Buy salesman - Hi, can I help you?
Customer - Yea, I'm looking for a video thingy. My Gateway isn't running Who Wants to Be a Millionaire fast enough for me!
Best Buy salesman - Well, there's this card by ASUS...
Customer - Card?
Best Buy salesman - Thingy that goes in your computer.
Customer - OK
Best Buy salesman - This particular one is pretty darn fast, but as an added bonus, you can cheat in games!
Customer - WOW! How?
Best Buy salesman - This one gives you Superman vision!
Customer - I'll take 3!

fucking ASUS..it's pretty lame when a company has to offer a way to cheat to their consumers in order to sell their products..fuck off ASUS! goddamn idiots

I had the Asus geforce ddr,before I switched to the 64 herc prophet..I thought thier control panel was awsome I would turn q2 gamma way up and get those crazy light flares..It figures they would pull a trick like this out of thier ass...:)

In other news, a new version of Netscape was just released [4.74]. Does it fix bugs? Stop crashes? Add better support for freakin' HTML?

NO! It adds Winamp, RealPlayer 7, and support for Shockwave Flash to OSes that lacked it.

Blow.

Asus is their own worst enemy now. Everyone will be gunning for them - competitors, tournament organizers, players, web sites, everyone.

Just please make sure there are no driver leaks!

BUT DOSE THIS CRAD SUPPOR GLAID???!@?@!?`1?

HUH MR SMARTAY MAN GAEM SIET UPDATAR?!?!