I cannot blame him for not getting the idea that in a game cheats would be hashed but when lots of people have a different opinion than you you need to at least hear their side to see if they are indeed wrong. It is not too rare that opinions are popular because they are right.

A short explanation: cheats are hashed. So when you type INEEDSOMEHELP that is hashed to a number - say 0x798d7e9a (yes, this is a number^^) - and this not-so-readable number triggers the cheat for health, money, and armor. However, there are infinitely many strings that give you the very same number when hashed, e.g. HESOYAM. That is called a collision: different string, same hash. Some of these "colliding strings" can be activated with only three buttons. A very easy to hit one is DDDDDDDAAAAAADWD.

I keep hearing "encrypted" - it is "hashed", though, unless I am totally mistaken. :D

Last week I saw a run die from an accidental cheat for the first time and I was curious how frequently this happens and how such a run would be treated. So I read a few discussions in this forum on how to deal with accidental cheating. Some people wrote that those runs should be accepted, but others were against it, even if it is clearly accidental and does not give the player any advantage. The reason I did this mod was that I thought it could be a solution everyone agrees with, especially since it blocks the last key that would activate a cheat, instead of simply disabling cheats, so players using the mod would not be able to perform movements other players couldn't without activating a cheat. However, since I'm not a speedrunner, I don't care if this mod will be allowed, used only in a separate category or not used at all.

S.: The last key of a cheat is only blocked in GTA and only if the game is not paused. This is how it works: Whenever the string that contains the recent key sequence is about to be changed, the mod makes a backup of the string. When the hash of the updated string would match a cheat, the cheat is not activated. Instead, the backup is restored and in the global array containing the state of all keys, the key that would have finally activated the cheat is set to "not pressed" to prevent the game from handling it (e.g. by moving to the right when "D" was blocked).

well u made a mod and kids here went nuts, if only u had made a key remapper

If this prevents both WASD cheats AND the specific movements done by the WASD keys, then I am almost in favor of allowing and using this. I certainly welcome the idea.

A single simple additional D press can do so much: It can prevent you from driving into a pole, or a car, or a pedestrian. If that very same D press also is the last of a cheat string, it should activate a cheat. If person A modded their game so that cheats are disabled, then that will give person A an unfair advantage over people who did NOT mod their game, as person A is now able to dodge that pole/car/ped whereas others are not. Yes, it's only relevant in very rare and very specific circumstances, and it's only a very minute advantage, but it's an advantage nonetheless, and it happens often enough to spark up discussion about it every so often.

Typing DDDDDDDAAAAAADWD should not be allowed, ever, whether it will activate a cheat or not (Unless R¤ comes with an unlikely official patch for it, which we wouldn't use anyway since it'd probably patch shit we don't want patched as well)

Here I am writing before I read other posts. It turns out I have repeated here what hdc0 already said, which means I pretty much agree with her. I'm fine with people using this tool. I'm not fine with people blocking cheats without blocking the input as well.

Here I am calling it a 'tool' when it appears to be an actual 'mod', and this is my problem with it. I think you/someone should make a non-mod version instead: A tool running in the background that doesn't modify the game or write into the game's memory, and instead just checks the input externally and blocks the input altogether in some way (system wide?), not just game-wide.

Draw the line where tool-assistance becomes too much.

I'm in favor of banning it all as long as it affects gameplay.

Which this tool doesn't Patrick it doesn't make you better or worse at the game

Let's allow memory watching then to see which Ambulance has the Mafia in it. This is obviously cheating and that it would slip by your definition should show that your argument is bad unless you can point out flaws.

I know that this tool assistance is minor. But it should still be banned just as we ban minor mods: Modding out plane crashes at Madd Dogg's house that can kill CJ would not be tool assistance but modding. It would be a small mod to fix a small problem. I hope we all agree thst it should still be banned.

The main thing that disturbs me is that there are multiple partial solutions proposed: Q/E, a keyboard layout that does not have a cheat that is as ridiculously easy to type as the dddd... one, ESDF, SharpKeys to rebind the WASD keys to F-Keys solving it completely.

All of these get ignored every time I mention them(only referring to the layout as I find that the best and advocate it) or dismissed as too much of a hassle and people rather complain about the game.

We are speedrunners. It is part of our hobby to analyze problems and fix them - sometimes partially. We are not supposed to mod-out or use tool assistance, we are supposed to be clever, find solutions, and get off our asses in implementing them. Or - we go the lazy route - but them we accept that we are at fault, at least partially.

Or we use tool-assistance.

Not only would using memory watching not fit his definition, it is also so different from this case you should be ashamed to even use it as an analogy. I don't care about the use of this mod cause I'm a controller player, I just care about people not being intellectually honest in their arguments.

From what I can tell this mod wouldn't affect the time in which one completes the game, just the validity of the run, so any arguments such as modding out bike falls or modding out plane crashes or modding out game crashes are completely different. Those are all part of the game that either penalize your skill or just your "luck" by decreasing your best possible time, this mod would fix something that doesn't affect time, it only affects the relationship between the game and the externally defined rules of speedrunning it.

Again I'm not arguing for or against it here, I'm just pointing out you can't say something stupid and expect to get away with it.

Moral of the story, use a controller, lol

[Quote]Again I'm not arguing for or against it here, I'm just pointing out you can't say something stupid and expect to get away with it.[/quote] I agree.

I did make a mistake. "This thing does not make you better at the game" - as in "better at playing - more skillful" as I understood it is an absurd argument against this being tool assistance and I showed that by putting forward the memory example.

But I think he actually meant "does not save you time" and just formulated it badly? In that case my analogy is worthless and looks dishonest.

Or you meant something even different: Say what you meant, exactly. ^^

Anyway, I could have found out that he means something else than I thought by giving him more of a chance. I also ask everyone to write more than one line to make your position clear, especially in a discussion where people - me at least - are quite unmotivated to charitably interpret your statements uf I care about the issue goddamnit - see this case. :D

I still disagree that this makes this not tool-assistance. So if (!) you want to convince me you need to argue for why this matters. I think that almost anything that helps the player in any way that is gameplay related (and is a tool^^) is tool assistance and tool assistance should be banned. There are exceptions, though, like Task Manager (or prio) for core affinity. That feels very different from this case, though.

I failed to mention that I also find modding out bike fall-offs or whatever it was is a bad analogy - see the first quote in the post. ^^

I look at the issue of "what does entering a cheat mean for the run" from the "consequences" angle: I accept that cheats are - most of the time - run killers (unless you have a save) while the other things are not always for unoptimized categories such as 100%.

I do not accept that cheats "do not change the time" and onwards. In terms of consequences, cheats are like crashes: you have to load a savegame(add time to restart the game^^). That affects your time. Most of the time killing the run.

There are other aspects that can be considered and you name one here: [quote]it only affects the relationship between the game and the externally defined rules of speedrunning it[/quote] I agree that it feels different. I disagree that it is relevant enough but I can see where you are coming from.

Interestingly, I feel strongly non-consequentialistic towards fixing the issue. Rebinding keys and tool-assistance do the same thing but I am against tool assistance way more than against key rebinding, although I am also against that. ^^

Anyway, vote on this tool. ^^

The only problem I have with this mod is it might lead to people wanting other mods that push the limits. Other than that I think it's great, it can't be abused, it is fixing something that is so trivial and that affects less than .1% of runs(estimating).

I agree accidental cheats are closest to game crashes in terms of effects to the run, but there is one big difference, when your game crashes you can't physically continue, if you type in an accidental cheat you can, hell its theoretically possible that nobody would notice.

It's definitely a grey area though, if they're are other workable solutions we should consider those first.

workable solutions like pressing Q and E

Agree. If we allow this mod we blur the line even further. "Why is this mod allowed but not that"

We're already allowing controller fix / windowed mode, and I say end it there. The less exceptions to the 'no mods' rule, the better.

On the other hand, I'm like, whatever. I'm willing to make that one extra exception for this mod still, although I can't really give a good reason as to why, so I'd have a hard time convincing people to also make that exception. The only reason I can think of is 'this mod doesn't mod out the consequences of an action, it just prevents the action from occurring at all.' (action being typing D7A6DWD, consequences being cheat activated) Except I can't come up with a reason why that reason is a reason at all, let alone a good one.

I can tell you however that even if this worked with my game version, I wouldn't use it. And therefore I'm not going to continue trying that hard to defend its usage (even if I knew how to). Patrick's solutions seem much better anyway.

Oh, here's another solution: Don't press DDDDDDDAAAAAADWD

Bonazzoli, if you think that you are smarter than everybody in this thread, at least test your fucking hypothesis. :D It is wrong.

I am not pissed, I am amused. Man, your self-confidence.

E: To elaborate, the game only registers the key-down event and adds the corresponding character to the cheat array ("list") once. You can trigger "hesoyam" without ever letting go of any button¤, just hold h-e-s-o-y-a-m. ¤ if your hard/software can send as many keys simultaneously. If you only get three simultaneous key presses, type h-e-s [release buttons] o-y-a [release] m or even h-e s-o y-a m

Bonazzoli, I assume you've never entered in a cheat by accident. If so, that's fine, but please don't assume that everyone else has played the game exactly the same way you have.

It does not matter how you play the game, you can always get cheats (I am not saying that there are no good and bad "ways"). WASD (without pressing some extra buttons like Q&E) is just the worst way to play it as far as we know because of that one cheat. You can minimize button presses, play with a non WASD layout, even switch to arrow keys for most of your action. As long as you press letters you can activate a cheat.

Bonazzoli, that's the confidence of a winner. I can respect that.

You are my new favorite idiot

To quote someone from the SDA thread back in the day: GTASA is not a typewriter

Teletype terminal¤ Tuplanolla, responding to Tirean. Turns out that he misunderstood him. ^^

[quote]type JUM, hold P for a few seconds, type JET and notice that the game is not a teletype terminal.[/quote]

E: I think you misundestood him, too. His hypothesis seems to be that if you hold one key, all the other keys are ignored - which is absurd, as one often holds two keys at the same time when typing, so entering a cheat intentionally would be a pain.

The guy thought that holding W would nullify any A and D presses for the cheat to activate. So it applies. GTASA is not a teletype terminal.

So can we have a vote on this?