Hey everyone, I just got done with creating an R15 arm wrestling minigame that records each players wins/losses on an in-game leader board. The game works in a way where if you spam the space bar, then you gain more force against your opponent in the arm wrestling match, which puts you closer to beating your opponent when you reach a maximum of 50 force against them. This is offset by your opponent spamming the space bar as well, which at the same time adds to their force against you while subtracting your force against them, and like in real life, it becomes a desperate struggle between two people. Anyway, after testing it with some friends I realized that players can easily cheat their way to the top of the leader board by using an autokey/autoclicker program to instantly beat the other player, is there a way I can stop this? If so, what is the best way I can go about it? I would really appreciate any feedback, thanks!
I don’t think there’s much you can do about this except change how your game works. You could have it switch between random keys and show that on a GUI, and if they get a key wrong they get a debuff instead of more power.
You could also check if they’re clicking more than humanly possible, but this isn’t guaranteed because players can adjust the speed until you don’t detect it and still have an advantage.
Maybe you could do what Hypixel(MC server) does, and try to detect if the client is clicking unrealistically? I used an Auto clicker way back then and I got banned instantly. I regret doing that because now I can’t play T_T
On the server where ever you calculate the “strength” to determine a win you could do some sort of check to make sure the intervals between clicks isn’t insanely fast, although this could yield many false positives. I could imagine there are some creative more skillful ways to handle the input such as clicking on randomly generated gui buttons around the users hand. Should probably also go ahead and check the users input, every time they click make sure the difference in time between clicks Isn’t constantly the same. If im spamming my mouse and the clicks are exactly .05ms apart then chances are that isn’t luck, its always possible though.
You could use a server side debounce to prevent people from too fast, as i would assume you are using a remote event for the force applied
so the code could look something like this
local plrDebounces = {}
for _, plr in pairs(game.Players:GetPlayers()) do
plrDebounces[plr] = false--setting up the debounce for every plr
end
Remote.OnServerEvent:Connect(function(plr,...)
if plrDebounces[plr] then return end
--code here
delay(0.05,function () plrDebounces[plr] = false end))--50 ms delay
--note that wait() can also be used for this purpose
end)
This is an interesting solution, but would it have a chance to create false positives like the others stated?
It wouldn’t completely stop players from autoclicking. 5 year old kids with autoclickers will still be able to click the fastest and will always be able to beat the other person, even with a debounce. Also, if you make the debounce too high, winning would just be either luck or autoclicking.
Maybe prevent them from clicking for a few seconds if the interval between clicks is identical for 10 clicks?
You could try putting up some friendly warnings such as these:
Player is clicking too fast?
-
Message telling them to slow down! No speed change = consequence after x time
-
Prompt saying “Are you still here?” after x amount of seconds clicking to prevent against AFK clickers.
Alternatively you could just have a threatening notice at the beginning of the game saying “auto clickers will be prosecuted.” Sure it’s mostly a bluff, but it will deter most.
If you wanted to put some effort into it, install multiple autoclickers in a VM (so you don’t get a keylogger!) And for every click collect the mouse position and timestamp. You should also get your friends to help you.
Using the data you could train neural networks, decision trees, or many other common machine learning algorithms to detect cheaters. This should stop most attempts.
Of course though, it is theoretically possible to make a clicker that clicks like a human. In those case your only solution is to require more complicated interaction that it is difficult to get a bit to do, like asking them if they are there or changing keys to press.
Honestly what I did is when I had a gun that could have been autoclicked, I just setup a system where they could only shoot every like 0. something seconds. I tried kicking but then some testers got kicked, so I just had it not shoot the gun.
Most clickers are done on clicks per second. Most wait the exact same time between clicks, this means all you have to do is monitor the time between clicks. The majority of players wont be able to keep exact timing for fast clicks so you can get away with checking the time and averaging it out.
I understand this is a old topic but I think it will be useful for people who are looking for the anwser.
Heres my quick whip up of a script:
What this does is it takes a specified sample count, and checks the time between clicks and averages it out. The checker and timer will reset every so often to prevent it clogging up. You can change the sample count and how accurately it judges time between presses. (I kept it simple in that loop to prevent lag, simple + 1 wont strain the server if its looped). Most of the time people have autoclickers clicking about 100 to 200 times a second this means it will fill up the sample count quickly, this means that they can be caught quickly and kicked from the server.
(Feel free to use my script, It will need a little bit of editing, e.g faster PeriodicResetTime and a lower increment time to better catch clickers.)