Overlays and Multiplayer
 

Hello everybody!

Does anyone can answer the following questions from own experience (please no surmises and speculations however well founded and brilliantly argued ;)):

• Do overlays (i.e. Teamspeak, Mumble, or other) work in CloD at all?
• Are there any problems with overlays in online multiplayer (suspicion of cheating)?

Reason: We plan to make a small data and calculation tool available within IL-2 using overlay-technique, but if it's considered a cheat[1] online...

Artist

PS: Made a similiar post in the IL-2-Forum, too.
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[1] The suspicion of cheating could be real, because overlays in fact work on two ways: One, replacing the DLL(DynamicLinkLibrary) used for OpenGL/DirectX with a customized one, the other is to hook into the DLL-code in memory. In both cases an overlay does nothing less than placing itself between game and monitor, thus manipulating the game output before it is displayed on the screen - and you can imagine what would be possible.

Cheesehawk,

Thanks.

That is what I feared the most: "we don't know".

Artist

Nobody is, nobody knows.

But if VAC is active or not (yet) isn't the real problem. The real question is "Will VAC kick you/me for using an overlay once it is activated?"

Wouldn't make sense to develop something nobody is going to use anyway, would it? Or even worse: Being the cause for someone's ban for life.

Artist

Nothing of the sort. Rather just like the comm overlays: displaying data independent of the game.

The big "but" is, that the overlay technique necessarily relies (as described earlier) on rather dirty methods (hooking into DirectX/OpenGL). VAC could be configured to allow steam-overlay (as it's official) but alert on any other... Hence my question mentioning Teamspeak and Mumble.

But as we obviously do not know if VAC is active, we cannot test and find out... The only definitive clue would be somone who has been banned for using Mumble or Teamspeak - and that's the clue I would not like to have.;)

Artist

Great! Thanks!

Artist

*bump*

Anybody else with experiences? Nobody? At all?
:)

Artist

I have the vent overlay turned on. Basically every time you start vent it's on. In IL2COD the overlay works for every single screen in game EXCEPT when you are in game in the cockpit. But I think that's more of a buggy full screen mode than anything, because the overlay works for all other games I have.

Overlays work fine. VAC checks game file integrity, and overlays do not alter game files, they hook system draw calls.

VAC will not kick you for using an overlay. The guys at valve were smart enough to know that thousands of players on VAC servers for other games use vent/teamspeak overlays.

Are you running fullscreen or pseudo- ?

Hello CaptainDoggles,
Thank you for that info.

Artist