EVE Search - Anatomy of a macro

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Rex Garvin	Posted - 2010.12.13 11:15:00 - [1] I see a lot responses by players saying it impossible to stop a macro. This far from the truth. Macro users put out this propaganda. A programmer uses a language to control the mouse and keyboard to simulate human control. He can see only what you players can see. If he could see the actual program code he could change anything he wanted in EVE. The macro must use timers and count on windows, menus , icons and keys being in the same location doing the same things every time. EVE runs like swiss watch. You can count on everything doing what its supposed to do all the time. If you randomize any one of these areas the macro will not work. If CCP had a forced response window pop up every day at a random time and random screen location every macro would fail after the response window became active. When the one hour shut down notice window pops up most macros will fail unless they have programmed a response to this window. If this window was in a random area and a random time instead of 1 hour all the macros would fail. To stop any macro that unloads cargo to any type of item container all you need is to have the container open in a random size and location when activated by the player or macro. The macro can not see the random location or its size like a human. It must search thru all the pixels to find this window and then determine its size so it can move the ore inside it. The container window would close when the player leaves the station or moves farther than 2500m from the container. If CCP changes the ice mining laser process all current home made and store purchased ice mining macros would not work. All players using macros would have to change thier macro, purchase new ones or get updates. If CCP includes a forced response window that pops up in a random location at the end of every ice laser cycle all ice macros will fail forever. I am going to get many responses saying its imposible to stop a macro. Dont you believe them. I have an ice mining corporation and I notice when something has effected all the macro ice miners near me. Remember when we had to have all the patches because the interface was all messed up. The amount of macro mining ships in my system dropped dramatically until CCP fixed the problem. Thats why these macro users get very upset when CCP changes anything in EVE or if things are not working as usual. Humans can easily adapt to change but a macro cant. They will also attack any article that wants to stop macro users. They know if CCP wanted to stop them it would be easy.
Al Gabraith	Posted - 2010.12.13 11:22:00 - [2] Hi, I really thought that this had been covered ad-nauseum but anyway. CCP does not want to stop macros players. They are paying subscribers. CCP is a company and it exists for ONLY 1 reason .. to make money. Not for your benefit, not for the greater good of mankind .. only to make a profit. Its a none too delicate balance between paying lipservice to these 'ban the macro' articles and losing a few people who rage-quit. CCP is not a charity. Its goal is to make money. If it can juggle losing people like yourself who quit vs. getting money from paying macro accounts then thats the business model. Al

CCP Spitfire	Posted - 2010.12.13 11:25:00 - [3] Moved from 'EVE General Discussion'. Spitfire Community Representative CCP Hf, EVE Online

Rex Garvin	Posted - 2010.12.13 11:25:00 - [4] Originally by: Al Gabraith Hi, I really thought that this had been covered ad-nauseum but anyway. CCP does not want to stop macros players. They are paying subscribers. CCP is a company and it exists for ONLY 1 reason .. to make money. Not for your benefit, not for the greater good of mankind .. only to make a profit. Its a none too delicate balance between paying lipservice to these 'ban the macro' articles and losing a few people who rage-quit. CCP is not a charity. Its goal is to make money. If it can juggle losing people like yourself who quit vs. getting money from paying macro accounts then thats the business model. Al Im agree with you 100%.
Infinity Ziona Minmatar Cloakers	Posted - 2010.12.13 12:34:00 - [5] Edited by: Infinity Ziona on 13/12/2010 12:35:44 Originally by: Rex Garvin I see a lot responses by players saying it impossible to stop a macro. This far from the truth. Macro users put out this propaganda. A programmer uses a language to control the mouse and keyboard to simulate human control. He can see only what you players can see. If he could see the actual program code he could change anything he wanted in EVE. The macro must use timers and count on windows, menus , icons and keys being in the same location doing the same things every time. EVE runs like swiss watch. You can count on everything doing what its supposed to do all the time. If you randomize any one of these areas the macro will not work. If CCP had a forced response window pop up every day at a random time and random screen location every macro would fail after the response window became active. When the one hour shut down notice window pops up most macros will fail unless they have programmed a response to this window. If this window was in a random area and a random time instead of 1 hour all the macros would fail. To stop any macro that unloads cargo to any type of item container all you need is to have the container open in a random size and location when activated by the player or macro. The macro can not see the random location or its size like a human. It must search thru all the pixels to find this window and then determine its size so it can move the ore inside it. The container window would close when the player leaves the station or moves farther than 2500m from the container. If CCP changes the ice mining laser process all current home made and store purchased ice mining macros would not work. All players using macros would have to change thier macro, purchase new ones or get updates. If CCP includes a forced response window that pops up in a random location at the end of every ice laser cycle all ice macros will fail forever. I am going to get many responses saying its imposible to stop a macro. Dont you believe them. I have an ice mining corporation and I notice when something has effected all the macro ice miners near me. Remember when we had to have all the patches because the interface was all messed up. The amount of macro mining ships in my system dropped dramatically until CCP fixed the problem. Thats why these macro users get very upset when CCP changes anything in EVE or if things are not working as usual. Humans can easily adapt to change but a macro cant. They will also attack any article that wants to stop macro users. They know if CCP wanted to stop them it would be easy. Programming languages have special functions, like grabbing a window and setting it to focus. Every window you create is registered with the application and windows itself. You can cycle through them easily with calls that are part of the api. In cases where you couldn't do that there are functions you can write that allow you to compare elements of the screen so knowing what the window looks like you could program the bot to compare pixels till it found the correct window. Anything that you can code to bug a macro a macro coder can adapt his program to counter. I used to be a computer programmer myself and the thing that really made me get so into it was that you can pretty much make your computer do whatever computery thing you like, with a bit of skill and imagination. What you also need to remember is that apparently, the bot software can reportedly ignore the user interface and directly send and receive data from the server without it needing to go through the graphical user interface which complete negates any popup window solution since the bot can simply send back the code thats generated when you click the button with your mouse. --------------------------------------------- Hate Bots / RMT? Do something worthwhile and good for EvE and cause tears and anguish for others, while doing absolutely nothing yourself! Join up.
Alaizabel Bronstein	Posted - 2010.12.13 12:36:00 - [6] Edited by: Alaizabel Bronstein on 13/12/2010 12:41:41 Originally by: Rex Garvin A programmer uses a language to control the mouse and keyboard to simulate human control. He can see only what you players can see. unless we want to get into semantics games (bots vs macros) you are wrong. next time do your research before posting. hint: there's a SF movie that is name patron for a very interesting Operating System (has a bunny as a mascot). Take the last part of this movie's title and "invert" it.
Black Dranzer Caldari	Posted - 2010.12.13 13:07:00 - [7] Originally by: Rex Garvin I see a lot responses by players saying it impossible to stop a macro. This far from the truth. Macro users put out this propaganda. A programmer uses a language to control the mouse and keyboard to simulate human control. He can see only what you players can see. If he could see the actual program code he could change anything he wanted in EVE. Words can not express how much I hate you right now. I am now going to take 15 to 20 minutes out of my life to explain to you basic server client architecture. Clean out your ears, because I'm not going to do it again. The internet is basically an extremely fast relay message system. When data is sent over the internet, a collection of data (specifically, a string of binary digits) is sent over a communication line to another computer which then sends the data to another computer, and so on and until the message reaches the target computer. Any computer can send this data. There is no requirement. If you have an internet connection you can send any data to any other computer on the internet, so long as you have their IP address. Now, here's how an MMORPG works: There is a computer, somewhere, that acts as a "Server". What this computer does is it basically runs a simulated game world without graphics. Meanwhile, all over the internet, there are "clients". These clients are personal computers running the actual game program. This game program, this "client", sends messages over the internet to the "server". The server then sends messages back to the client. In this way, the client takes the messages that it receives from the server and uses them to help produce the pretty game world you see and enjoy every day in such wonderful games as Eve Online. In spite of Eve being very pretty, not a lot of data is sent from the server to the client. Things that are on the client include 3D models, music, and most importantly, the user interface. Things that exist on the server are basically all the "game mechanic" stuff; How fast you're going, how much isk you have, that kind of thing. The server sends "game mechanic" data (how fast you're going, what ship you're flying, what other ships are around you) to the client. The client then uses this game data to build the pretty pictures you see on the screen. The server says "there's a ship over there", and your client takes a 3D model and renders it on your screen where the server said it should be. Now, here's the real kicker: When the server receives messages from the client, it doesn't know that those messages are from the "official" client. How can it know? Think about it this way: If I send you an e-mail from your friend's e-mail address, and I'm good enough at pretending to be your friend, there's no way you can know from that e-mail that I'm not your friend. What a macro user has is a "special" client; It's a client that basically runs itself. It sends messages to the server and pretends to be the normal Eve client. Whenever you suggest something like "putting a random window up" or something, you have to remember that the user interface only exists on the real client. Now, while it is true that those macro programmers could write a computer program which looks at the screen and moves the mouse around, that would be very dumb. Why? Because it would be harder than just writing a program that pretends to be a normal client, and you wouldn't be able to do anything else while the macro was running. Believe it or not, a macro does not only see what the players see. A macro sees what the players don't see. Modifying the UI to stop macros is like putting up a roadblock to stop aircraft. \|24 Hour Plex\|Mining Makeover\|
Horizonist	Posted - 2010.12.13 13:22:00 - [8] OP, thanks for the suggestion, but this has been covered a lot before, hence the people above got quite angry about it. I am a programmer myself, and this will not solve the botting problem at all. The reason is that modern bot programs (or emulated players if you want) do NOT rely on "face-value" data, such as the location of containers, etc etc. They can tap into the actual logic of the client, and have no need of "eyes", so to speak. They just send the message for "place item X in container Y", which is the same message you send by dragging the item with your mouse and dropping it. The bot has no need to know where on the screen either is, it just needs to send the message. The solution to bot mining, in my opinion, is for CCP to use analytical software that plots patterns in character behavior. For example, there is no way an ordinary person is online and mining 23h 30min a day. Either they are botting, or they are sharing accounts. Both are illegal under the EULA. Banhammer. The same data can be used to conduct stick samples on suspected botters, such as trying to contact them. No response after several attempts? Still going back and forth to station? Banhammer. Another solution is to include within the game a human element that is extremely hard for an ordinary computer to do - such as identifying and typing Captcha letters, or answering a direct question (what color is the home page of this game? for example). Of course, this would downright look silly to have in the game, so it is not a very good one. The battle against botting goes on, but I do believe the analytical approach is the better.
Gemberslaafje Vivicide	Posted - 2010.12.13 13:57:00 - [9] Originally by: Horizonist The solution to bot mining, in my opinion, is for CCP to use analytical software that plots patterns in character behavior. For example, there is no way an ordinary person is online and mining 23h 30min a day. Either they are botting, or they are sharing accounts. Both are illegal under the EULA. Banhammer. The same data can be used to conduct stick samples on suspected botters, such as trying to contact them. No response after several attempts? Still going back and forth to station? Banhammer. Though I don't agree with instant Banhammer (What if I got a lan-party and decide to mine for 24 hours... ok, that's not my idea of fun, but just for example) I do agree with your basic suggestion: Make flags for suspicious behavior. Mining 23h a day would be one of them. Clicking the same pixel every time could be another, specific timed events (e.g. sending packages faster then a human could've responded or something) could be another. A smart CCP would just buy a bunch of bots and analyze them, each one of them will have some kind of signature: big flag. Then just have a few guys check out the characters who are flagged, and start with the character with the most flags and work your way down from there, check if they're real by either client-sharing or just human interaction. That way, if you ever accidentally flag one of them (e.g. some strange hickup causing a faster reaction then normal) you'd never even be checked, while people really 'abusing' bots would be caught first. --- Creator of the Eve Character Appraiser: http://gemblog.nl/skill/ Also a spy.
Wartrec	Posted - 2010.12.14 07:55:00 - [10] Time to get rid of macro users!

Wartrec	Posted - 2010.12.14 08:11:00 - [11] If CCP makes changes to the areas used by these macros it would force companies to make new macro programs or at least make updates. It would also force players to buy new macro programs or updates. It may also stop non-professional programs from working. I also like buiding into EVE reporting features that can help CCP find macro users.
Rex Garvin	Posted - 2010.12.14 08:18:00 - [12] I think all of you who responded to my thread have valid points. But I still think CCP could get rid of macro users if it wanted to. I also wrote the article to bring more awareness the use of macros in EVE.


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