Valve bans keyboard automation in Counter-Strike 2 update

RightHandOfIkaros , 2 hours ago

Good. If the skill is humanly possible, let the human learn it. Otherwise don’t allow it. Easy stance to take.

shnizmuffin , 1 hour ago

An eternity ago, I got really good at manually strafe-hopping in Team Fortress Classic. I got banned from a few pubs for “scripting” anyway.

I don’t like banning users because of the devices they use or the technical knowledge they have. I feel like the onus should be on the development team to make hardware or software macros impossible or unnecessary. Like, maybe the switch from left to right has a random interval that would instantly nerf a script. Or maybe the apex of a player’s jump is also a little variable or random - or deeply tied to their momentum in a weird way.

Barely noticeable changes for natural players, kryptonite to script kiddies and Mad Katz Turbo Mode, but still accessible to people with disabilities who legitimately need macros or weird hardware because they only have 2 fingers or whatever.

MossyFeathers , 3 hours ago

It’s not automation though. It’s just changing the way A and D interact. Like, it’s not sending any extra commands, if anything it’s sending fewer commands.

sp3tr4l , 2 hours ago

The title is more general, and not incorrect.

In CS2, Valve is going to be banning Snap Tap / Simultaneous Opposing Cardinal Directions in addition to any kind of bind that allows one key to execute multiple game inputs, like jump throws, which is automation, or a macro.

While the exact definition of ‘automation’ can be argued to death, its clear (to many players and also Valve) that having a specific fancy keyboard that compensates for a players low dexterity to allow them to perform as if they have much higher dexterity constitutes cheating in a game where a whole lot of the trained skill … is dexterity.

MossyFeathers , 39 minutes ago

It doesn’t require a fancy keyboard though. If anything, that’s how keyboards usually work, it takes conscious effort to stop them from working that way. Personally I had to learn how to program character controllers so they wouldn’t function like snap tap.

Even so though, I’m 90% sure you could use a macro to do the same exact thing so long as you have a keyboard with n-key rollover (afaik most keyboards have it nowadays)

catloaf , 2 hours ago

The article doesn’t explain it, but it sounds like the keyboards are detecting a transition from A to D and making it happen faster, instead of having a momentary dead zone while both are pressed. That’s definitely getting an advantage from something out-of-game, which is cheating.

nekusoul , 1 hour ago

While being able to do this from outside the game is definitely cheating, I’d personally say that being able to decide what happens with conflicting inputs should be an option in any game where that matters.

Whenever I start pressing A while I’m still holding D it should be obvious that I now intend to go left, so the game should interpret it that way.

catloaf , 1 hour ago

Yes, but the game doesn’t necessarily even see those inputs. What a keyboard transmits, and how the OS handles it, is a complicated process with a bunch of legacy handling code. Often, if you’re pressing more than one key, the keyboard might send only one of them.

I remember in one game I used to play, I would hold W to go forward, and shift to boost, but if I wanted to turn left or right, only adding D would be recognized. Pressing A would do nothing at all, no turning left.

nekusoul , 54 minutes ago

Isn’t the issue you’re describing less about the OS and more about cheap keyboards with awful or nonexistent NKRO? On my keyboard with full NKRO I can press as many keys as I want and the OS will recognize all of them being pressed without fail.

Also, if I’m in a text editorand hold down one key, then start holding down another one, the new one is immediately picked up, which is pretty much identical to this situation.

MossyFeathers , 43 minutes ago

Afaik it should see both inputs simultaneously if you have n-key rollover, which is a pretty common feature now. I think the last time I was looking for a keyboard, they all advertised n-key rollover. As such, it’d be on the game, not the OS.

You can actually test this in the Unity editor if you have some programming experience (or I assume any other engine for that matter). It’s very easy to write a character controller in which A+D results in the game using the last input instead of adding the inputs together. I actually had to learn how to make a game not do that. It wouldn’t function exactly like the keyboards currently under fire, but it would function very similarly.

I’m pretty sure you can also do this very easily with a macro (assuming you have a keyboard with n-key rollover), no special keyboard required as well.

Edit: your specific example is an example of a cheap keyboard losing inputs, which n-key rollover fixes. Ironically, find the right cheap keyboard and you might be able to partially reproduce the effect they’re talking about (having one key override another other).

sp3tr4l , 8 minutes ago (edited 2 minutes ago)

So, keys on a board normally have a specific travel distance (depending on switch type) that they must be pressed to flip between ‘pressed’ and ‘not pressed’.

This tech uses fancy keyboards with fancy switches and fancy software (on the keyboard) to change the required travel distance of one key to register, dependant on the travel distance of another key, and then also alter the output state of the other key.

So, if normally you needed 80% travel to register a key… lets say it takes a player 100 ms to push D to 100% then another 100 ms to fully release D and fully push A to 100%, simultaneously.

Timeline:

0 to 80ms of nothing.

At 80ms, D is registered, strafing right

80 to 120ms, or 40ms of strafing right.

At 120ms, D is unregistered.

120ms to 180ms of no movement.

At 180ms, A is registered, strafing left.

180ms onward of left strafing.

An initial delay of 80ms, 60ms of nothing, then leftward movement after 180ms.

Thrown on fancy bullshit, and the software say, changes A to need only a 20% travel to register while D is past 80%, and this also cancels D once A gets past 20%.

Also, this software says that if no strafing inputs are being received, and then one is, that input only needs 20% to register.

New timeline:

0 to 20 ms of nothing.

At 20ms, D is registered, right strafing.

20 to 120 ms of right strafing.

At 120 ms, D is unregistered and A is registered, left strafing.

120ms onward of left strafing.

Now you have an initial 20ms delay, absolutely no non strafing time, and you get to left strafing after only 120ms.

So, you’ve now initially started moving 4x faster, totally eliminated your non strafing time, and gotten to your end desired strafe direction in 33% (60ms) faster than before.

This is a huge crutch in a fast paced twitchy competitive game.

I have seen videos of these keyboard being used with floating/flying characters in OW2 and it basically allows you to jitter your character 2 meters to the right and left almost instantly, such that it looks like you are fighting against someone with movement hacks. Nearly impossible to hit someone doing this… without an aimbot, lol.