[versation]

Let's say there is an anti-cheat that I want the players on the server to run before the game. Is there any way to check without any external software whether the anti-cheat process is running on the player's computer?
In other words, I want to check if a specific process is running on the player's computer.
Thanks

[N3v3rM1nd]

Originally Posted by Exolent[jNr] It's not possible to see anything on a client's computer.

[Rohanlogs]

No. How do you figure you'd monitor your players processes without any external software? I mean yeah, sure, walk up to their house, and check their computer. This is just not very practical.

You need a way to monitor processes on the player's computer, which requires additional software and permissions. You would need third-party software installed on the player’s system, and then add a server-side plugin to check if that software is running, if its not, kick them and display a message that would redirect them somewhere to install this sketchy software.

Players should be clearly informed about what the software does and must give their consent to install and run it. You would also need someone to develop such a 3rd party software who knows what they're doing, though I'm sure these do exist to some extent.

Implementing this sort of anti-cheat into a regular server however can, and is seen as very intrusive and an overkill. Nobody in their right mind would install this kind of anti-cheat into their computer, and it would instantly kill any playerbase that you have.

This could be more acceptable for LAN tournaments, or other 'controlled environments', where players typically expect higher security and fairness. But to answer your question, no.

You can develop server-side plugins to detect some "non-modern" cheats like aimbot, or even bhop / groundstrafe hacks, which don't require anything installed on the players system. This also however can't be done by just will power, you actually do need to write some code.


Edit : I might have mis-read the question initially, unless you just edited it, but this did however answer your question. Yes you can check if the 3rd party anti-cheat is running through a server-side plugin taken you have access to the source code of this anti-cheat. But no you can't do any of this without both external and server side software.

[versation]

Originally Posted by Rohanlogs No. How do you figure you'd monitor your players processes without any external software? I mean yeah, sure, walk up to their house, and check their computer. This is just not very practical. You need a way to monitor processes on the player's computer, which requires additional software and permissions. You would need third-party software installed on the player’s system, and then add a server-side plugin to check if that software is running, if its not, kick them and display a message that would redirect them somewhere to install this sketchy software. Players should be clearly informed about what the software does and must give their consent to install and run it. You would also need someone to develop such a 3rd party software who knows what they're doing, though I'm sure these do exist to some extent. Implementing this sort of anti-cheat into a regular server however can, and is seen as very intrusive and an overkill. Nobody in their right mind would install this kind of anti-cheat into their computer, and it would instantly kill any playerbase that you have. This could be more acceptable for LAN tournaments, or other 'controlled environments', where players typically expect higher security and fairness. But to answer your question, no. You can develop server-side plugins to detect some "non-modern" cheats like aimbot, or even bhop / groundstrafe hacks, which don't require anything installed on the players system. This also however can't be done by just will power, you actually do need to write some code. Edit : I might have mis-read the question initially, unless you just edited it, but this did however answer your question. Yes you can check if the 3rd party anti-cheat is running through a server-side plugin taken you have access to the source code of this anti-cheat. But no you can't do any of this without both external and server side software.

Of course, this is a full approval of the players, and in any case they will have to run some external software ("the anti-cheat"). My question is how to know that it is indeed running on the player's computer.
I'll try to be more clear, today there are a lot of anti-cheat software that a player can run (more or less effective against cheats is something else, I'm not talking about efficiency). Of course the player will run the anti-cheat himself and of course with full consent, the question is how do I as a server know that the player has indeed opened the software.
By the way, the demand for anti-cheat is from the players themselves from the community I play in, but unfortunately the development of anti-cheat is really not at my level, so I want to use an existing anti-cheat software, even if it is not the most up-to-date.

[Napoleon_be]

Anything is possible with the right tools and knowledge, it's just not possible using amxx. Sure you could go a head and create your own software to achieve this but there's no way this will ever be approved by Valve to begin with. Neither will you receive any help on here to achieve something like this.

[HamletEagle]

As said before, you can not directly monitor what the player is or is not running on their computer from the server.

However, since they are already running the anti-cheat, the anti-cheat itself can send some "pings" or "heartbeats" to the server. Therefore, if you receive a heartbeat from an anti-cheat instance from IP X, you can assume the player that has IP X is currently running the anti-cheat. When the heartbeats stop coming, it means that something went wrong (they closed the program, it crashed, network error, etc).

Likely, the easiest way to do this is for the anti-cheat to talk to the server using sockets.