[lutoma]

> not sending the client other players' positions until absolutely necessary (either the client can see the other player, or there's a movement the client could make that would reveal the other player before receiving the next packet)

I think the problem with this is sounds like footsteps or weapons being fired that need to be positional.

Which makes me wonder if you could get away with mixing these sounds server-side and then streaming them to the client to avoid sending positions. Probably infeasible in practice due to latency and game server performance, but fun to think about.

[Ukv]

To whatever extent the sound is intended to only give a general direction, I'd say quantize the angle and volume of the sound before it's sent such that cheaters also only get that same vague direction. Obviously don't send inaudible/essentially-inaudible sounds to the client at all.

[Workaccount2]

They need to just make CPU's, GPU's, and memory modules with hardware level anti-cheat. Totally optional purchase, but grants you access to very-difficult-to-cheat-in servers.

[didntcheck]

That sort of already exists - I believe a small number of games demand that you have Secure Boot enabled, meaning you should only have a Microsoft-approved kernel and drivers running. And then the anticheat is itself probably kernel level, so can see anything in userspace

It may still be possible to get round this by using your own machine owner key or using PreLoader/shim [1] to sign a hacked Windows kernel

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unified_Extensible_Firmware...

[quenix]

Another way to get around it is reading the memory directly with direct memory access (DMA) hardware.

[bpye]

I guess you’ve just invented an Xbox/PlayStation.