MkII/Kha0s
Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 12:12 am
'Ello there
I realise it's a bit odd to be reporting myself, but I figured it was best to explain in advance rather than be banned on princible. As was pointed out by Count on the server tonight, I've got a VAC ban on my account. I know this is pretty dodgy looking, but I can assure you it's for a completely ridiculous reason, whether you believe me or not.
I'm not sure if there's any way to check the date it was issued, but I was banned at least 2-3 years ago if I remember right, maybe a little longer. The reason for the ban was the use of a shader mod that gave a bloom/HDR-like effect in the Half-Life 1 engine which I'll link to at the bottom of my post. At the time I was playing various HL1 mods, namely 'The Specialists' for which I created a lot of custom skins/models. To make my custom skins look a bit better in screenshots when I uploaded them anywhere, I was making use of this mod for added effect.
This was fine for a while, however after some changes to the way VAC detected cheats back then it was falsely detected as some sort of hack. While for the most part you are free to modify games however you want, this particular mod changed a .dll file which I have since been informed is often edited by aimbots/wallhacks/other various cheats. Had I known that at the time I would have avoided it altogether, but sadly this didn't come to my attention until I did a bit of research after I found myself banned.
If you do a quick search on google for something along the lines of 'bloom hl1 vac ban' you should see quite a lot of results from other people who had the same problem as myself. The ironic thing about the whole scenario is that the mod did pretty much the opposite of what any hack would do. Rather than make you some some of uber rambo spitting lead-death at anything that moves, it would cripple your frame rate to the point where doing anything with it other than take fancy screenshots would be pointless.
I've been playing on the server for quite a while now and get on with pretty much everyone as far as I know. While I realise this won't really count for anything since popularity contests aren't exactly the best way to settle a ban, I'm hoping that from what people have seen on the server it's obvious I'm not any sort of cheater. While I do pull in decent scores on some maps, I quite often get ripped to pieces too (tonight included).
If anyone is wondering how I can be playing on the server at all with a VAC ban in place, it's because they use a seperate VAC system for HL1-based and source-based games. While I have since taken to buying any new games on a different account to avoid being unfairly labelled a cheat, I already have a bunch of source-games on this account. I petitioned the ban at the time, explaining the situation and offering links the the mod I was using and providing as much proof as I could that it was completely harmless but the best I got in return was a string of pre-written responses.
While I realise I might still get banned from the server as a result of this, I think it's best to have it all out in the open. Hopefully this can be resolved and I can continue to play on the server, but if not I respect the SA's descision on this whatever it may be. I'll avoid playing on the server until a verdict has been reached so as not to worry anyone.
http://www.madabouthats.org/projects/cgshader
Cheers,
-MkII
I realise it's a bit odd to be reporting myself, but I figured it was best to explain in advance rather than be banned on princible. As was pointed out by Count on the server tonight, I've got a VAC ban on my account. I know this is pretty dodgy looking, but I can assure you it's for a completely ridiculous reason, whether you believe me or not.
I'm not sure if there's any way to check the date it was issued, but I was banned at least 2-3 years ago if I remember right, maybe a little longer. The reason for the ban was the use of a shader mod that gave a bloom/HDR-like effect in the Half-Life 1 engine which I'll link to at the bottom of my post. At the time I was playing various HL1 mods, namely 'The Specialists' for which I created a lot of custom skins/models. To make my custom skins look a bit better in screenshots when I uploaded them anywhere, I was making use of this mod for added effect.
This was fine for a while, however after some changes to the way VAC detected cheats back then it was falsely detected as some sort of hack. While for the most part you are free to modify games however you want, this particular mod changed a .dll file which I have since been informed is often edited by aimbots/wallhacks/other various cheats. Had I known that at the time I would have avoided it altogether, but sadly this didn't come to my attention until I did a bit of research after I found myself banned.
If you do a quick search on google for something along the lines of 'bloom hl1 vac ban' you should see quite a lot of results from other people who had the same problem as myself. The ironic thing about the whole scenario is that the mod did pretty much the opposite of what any hack would do. Rather than make you some some of uber rambo spitting lead-death at anything that moves, it would cripple your frame rate to the point where doing anything with it other than take fancy screenshots would be pointless.
I've been playing on the server for quite a while now and get on with pretty much everyone as far as I know. While I realise this won't really count for anything since popularity contests aren't exactly the best way to settle a ban, I'm hoping that from what people have seen on the server it's obvious I'm not any sort of cheater. While I do pull in decent scores on some maps, I quite often get ripped to pieces too (tonight included).
If anyone is wondering how I can be playing on the server at all with a VAC ban in place, it's because they use a seperate VAC system for HL1-based and source-based games. While I have since taken to buying any new games on a different account to avoid being unfairly labelled a cheat, I already have a bunch of source-games on this account. I petitioned the ban at the time, explaining the situation and offering links the the mod I was using and providing as much proof as I could that it was completely harmless but the best I got in return was a string of pre-written responses.
While I realise I might still get banned from the server as a result of this, I think it's best to have it all out in the open. Hopefully this can be resolved and I can continue to play on the server, but if not I respect the SA's descision on this whatever it may be. I'll avoid playing on the server until a verdict has been reached so as not to worry anyone.
http://www.madabouthats.org/projects/cgshader
Cheers,
-MkII
. It's over a month since I posted and I've been checking back frequently, but I've not heard anything yet. I realise it takes a fair amount of time to come to a descision over these things and obviously everyone would have been busy with other things over Christmas and new years, but I was hoping to have found out the descision by now (preferably one in my favour 
). I didn't want to be too pushy or look as if I'm trying to rush things which is why I've left it until now to post, but I was beginning to wonder if I'd been forgotten about. Hopefully I'll speak to you all in-game again soon!