Anti X-Ray
PREVENTS cheaters from taking all the good stuff for themselves, without the tremendous overhead of Orebfuscator.
How does it work?
Basically, players are limited in the amount of valuable ores they can mine, based on their play time on the server. Legitimate, non-cheating players probably won't notice because the default limits are generous, but xrayers will be blocked from mining ore too quickly. So cheaters can still cheat, but they can't take more than a non-cheating player's reasonable share of ore. So their only gain is avoiding monsters while digging. They can't mine their first diamonds/"other good stuff" sooner than non-cheating players, and they can't take more total than they could if they weren't cheating.
How does this compare to Spigot AntiXRay and Orebfuscator?
The trouble with these and similar plugins is that while they're incredibly effective, they're very, very expensive to run. They consume a lot of CPU cycles doing deep packet inspection and manipulation, and they consume a lot of RAM trying to cache the results in memory. Small servers simply can't afford it, and larger servers have to cut back on their max players or other plugins. Any server which doesn't have enough CPU or memory may suffer heavy lag and crashes, other servers are simply spending too many cycles to stop a few cheaters - it's not a good trade-off.
In contrast, Anti-XRay is extremely cheap. It doesn't do any heavy processing, and consumes very little memory. It's true that technically cheaters can still use xray to find ores and dungeon chests (Mojang hasn't really made those worth hiding), but they're limited in how much advantage they get out of it. Basically, you're allowing players to cheat (but only very little!) to save immensely on CPU cycles and RAM.
How does this compare to ore loggers and ratio reporters?
Those simply don't work. Viewing a report to determine who has been x-raying only helps you catch players AFTER they've done permanent damage, removing massive amounts of diamonds so that non-cheating players can't find any. Banning the cheaters doesn't actually solve the problem, because it doesn't put the diamonds back in the ground AND more cheaters will soon replace those guys, so the problem continues. Also, this approach requires administrators to actively work to catch cheaters. An automatic approach like that provided by this plugin makes more sense.
Anti X-Ray keeps ores in the ground so that non-cheating players can find them. By placing limits on the amount of valuable resources a player can mine based on his play time on the server, Anti X-Ray guarantees that cheaters don't get greedy. They can still cheat a little, but not to the extreme of ruining the fun of other players. In fact, most new-to-server cheaters just leave the server to find another server where they can cheat without limits, solving your cheating problem very well.
Versus ore loggers, you're actually SOLVING the problem, and doing it in a fully automated fashion. Versus ore obfuscation solutions, you're saving RAM and CPU.
The Details
Players have an invisible currency which grows while they play (up to a maximum amount). Players who aren't actively playing (idling) don't gain any. When players break a valuable block, their total is reduced. If they don't have enough to break the block, they get a message explaining that they've reached their limit, and will have to wait X minutes before they can break that block.
Players who have been playing on your server since before you installed this plugin will start maxed-out to make the transition go smoothly.
Players who are NEW to your server after you install this plugin will start with a negative amount. This will prevent players from logging in and immediately x-raying to get valuables like diamond, because they won't have played enough yet to reasonably mine diamonds without cheating.
Yes, it's possible that some players who aren't cheating will run into the limits. It's my goal to adjust the default limits to minimize the chance of impacting legitimate players, while at the same time stopping xrayers from going crazy and taking all the valuable ore for themselves. If a player complains, these are the common scenarios:
- That player is a cheater, and is trying to convince you to disable the plugin or give him permission to bypass it so that he can cheat more.
- That player has "raided" someone else's existing mine instead of exploring on his own, allowing him to find diamond within the first hour of joining the server for the first time. Tell him to stop being lazy and earn his own diamonds.
- The player is EXTREMELY lucky, and managed to survive a reckless cave diving expedition without bothering to grow food or make armor and weapons. This is extremely unlikely - the player is probably cheating.
- That player is "branch mining", which involves tediously mining in long, straight, parallel tunnels near bedrock to collect lots of diamond. Chances are that player has an unhealthy obsession with diamonds, and already has a million more diamonds than he can possibly use. For this case, I recommend advising the player to take a break from mining when he hits the limit. If you give a player like this the bypass permission, he will grab most of the diamond in the area, robbing other players of the opportunity (even though he's not cheating, he's potentially causing a problem).
Catching Cheaters
This plugin will do a good job of preventing cheaters from benefiting from xray. However if you'd also like to actually catch and ban them, there's a configuration option to make a log entry and notify moderators (permission: antixray.monitorxrayers or op) when a player reaches the mining speed limit. This does NOT necessarily mean the player is cheating (read below!), but teleporting to the reported location will often be enough to determine whether the player was cheating or not. Since the 1.3 update, the Vanilla /tp command will accept coordinates, making these investigations very easy even when the player is offline.
What are the indications of a cheater?
It's impossible to know absolutely for certain whether a player is cheating or not unless you're looking over his shoulder while he plays. However all of these are indicators of likely cheating.
- Mines straight down. Xrayers don't fear lava because they can see through the ground.
- Mines in the dark. Xrayers don't need light - most of their blocks are transparent anyway.
- Mines in very long, single-block-wide tunnels (possibly winding), with very few, very short branches. You may notice a distinct lack of any pattern - unlike a "strip miner" who digs straight, parallel tunnels very close together, an xrayer's tunnels "wander". Xrayers don't need a pattern to be efficient, because they can see exactly where all the ore is, and so they can always take the shortest path to the next node.
- Starts mining before he even builds a rudimentary shelter, and without bothering to start even a small farm. Xrayers can see through most blocks, so they see caverns and monsters, and dig around them instead of fightning them.
- Carries very few supplies with him and doesn't wear armor while mining. May not even have a sword. Xrayers can see through most blocks, so they see caverns and monsters, and dig around them instead of fightning them.
- Finds diamonds VERY early after joining the server. Xrayers don't have to look for diamonds. They know exactly where they are and can see the shortest path immediately after logging in.
- Complains frequently, "Why do I have to wait to mine diamonds?!", while other players don't seem to notice the "problem".
- A VERY high ore-to-stone ratio. This plugin doesn't measure that, but you could supplement this with an ore logging plugin if you really want to catch and ban cheaters (this plugin will limit their cheating so that they don't mine more valuables than non-cheating players). Because xrayers can see the shortest path to any ore node, they minimize the number of stone blocks broken as they mine.
Setup and Configuration
Beyond just putting the .jar file in your plugins folder, all of these steps are optional. There is no database required - that is also optional.
Tweaking the Ore-per-Hour Ratio
Please do not adjust the diamond mining rate, starting values, etc, until you have actually tried the defaults for a day or so. Over-thinking them will likely lead to you choosing bad values which either prevent non cheaters from mining, or allow cheaters to cheat too much.
In the config file, you'll find something like this:
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AntiXRay: EnableMetricsTracking: true NewPlayerStartingPoints: -400 PointsEarnedPerHourPlayed: 800 MaximumPoints: 1600 IgnoreMaxPointsForBlockRatio: true ExemptCreativeModePlayers: true NotifyOnMiningLimitReached: false DefaultMaxHeight: 63 ProtectedBlockValues: EMERALD_ORE: Value: 50 MaxHeight: 35 DIAMOND_ORE: Value: 100 MaxHeight: 20 Worlds: world: '' world_nether: DefaultMaxHeight: 256 world_the_end: DefaultMaxHeight: 256 |
EnableMetricsTracking let's you disable metrics tracking. More about this at the bottom of this page.
New player starting points are how many points an entirely new player to your server (meaning he's NEVER been on your server before) will start with. The points are used to break blocks, like DIAMOND_ORE, which by default costs 100 points.
Points earned per hour played is the speed at which players get points. In this example, players get 800 points per hour, so on average, they can mine 8 diamonds per hour indefinitely without ever being temporarily blocked from mining.
Maximum points is the "buffer" players build up. Players don't spend ALL their time mining for diamonds, so this buffer gradually fills up with points. This means players who take breaks from mining will be less likely to encounter the mining speed limit.
In this example, because the starting points setting is much less than the cost of mining a diamond, this means that an entirely new player who has just joined the server can't mine ANY diamonds right away. This helps stop xrayers, who often start xraying right away, and will likely encounter the limit and either quit or complain (the latter helps you catch them).
You can add other ores as well, but generally xrayers don't bother to gobble up non-diamond ores, so those other ores probably aren't worth spending CPU cycles on tracking.
Cutom block definitions allow you to define new ore names by id and sub id (sometimes also called data). Read more about this below in the tekkit related section.
Protected block values is the place where you write down the default values for the ores you want to be protected by default in all worlds for which the plugin is enabled for. Additionally you can provide an ore-specific default maxHeight value for each of those. Read about maxHeight values below.
Default max height determines the default max height for all ores which don't have a specific maxHeight value set. Players are free to mine (break) as much ores they want above this height. This is useful for example to block players from mining to many diamond ore (which, in a default minecraft world, is only located below height 16), but at the same time allow them to place and break it again in their houses above that height with their fortune pickaxes if they like too, without having to reduce their point stock for that.
Now, there is the "Worlds" section:
This section determines the worlds in which AntiXRay shall be enabled and at the same time allows you to overwrite some of the default values specific for each world:
DefaultMaxHeight will overwrite the default max height from above, but only for this world.
ProtectedBlocks lets you add or overwrite ore values and ore specific max heights for this world.
In the example snippet below you can see how to use that: the example sets the value of diamond ore to 75 and it's height limit to 63 in world 'world' (maybe this world uses some custom world generator which generates slightly more diamond ore, up to height 63..).
Also you can see that the default max heights were increased to 256 in the nether and end worlds. By default players wouldn't be able to, for example, break diamond ore there (after placing it there of course) below height 20, because the section of default protected blocks from above restricts diamond ore by default in all enabled worlds if it is mined below height 20.
The world specific default max height value however overwrites all previously default max height values. So players can freely place and mine diamond ore again in the nether and the end.
In general heights get overwritten in this hierarchy:
default max height < default protected ore max height
< world specific default max height < world specific ore max height
More information on minecrafts default ore heights can be found in the minecraft wiki: http:www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Ore
If you want to add a world but not want to overwrite any default values or heights do as follows:
Let's say the world you want to add in order to enable AntiXRay in it is called "mining_world". Then create an (empty) section with the worlds name by putting 2 quotation marks behind the colon without anything between these, like so:
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Worlds: mining_world: "" world: ProtectedBlocks: DIAMOND_ORE: Value: 75 MaxHeight: 63 world_nether: DefaultMaxHeight: 256 world_the_end: DefaultMaxHeight: 256 |
Without the colon or the empty quotation marks the plugin wouldn't be able to read the world name and it would get removed after the next reload.
More detailed block type specifications and Mods
You can also specify block types by id instead of name. This might be useful if you want to protect some custom blocks which got added by some mod.
Note however that there are mods this plugin doesn't quite work well for because they introduce new methods of mining which completely bypass plugins.
Also note that AntiXRay will automatically replace the block ids in the config with the material name, if it finds a matching one.
Also you can specify the data value (subid) for protected blocks by adding the data value to the block name/id separated by a tilde (~). Data values for blocks are usually used to differ between different states of the block (ex. the rotation of log or stairs, whether or not redstone ore is glowing, the color of wool, the growing state of plants, etc.). If you don't specify a data value it will default to -1, which is used to specify that the data value shall be ignored. This could look like this:
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ProtectedBlockValues: 999~12: # maybe some custom modded block Value: 50 MaxHeight: 35 WOOL~14: # red wool, for example purposes Value: 100 |
Where's the Database Option?
By design, there is no database option. This is one of a few cases where using a database is definitely more trouble than it's worth, and possibly detrimental to performance. There are only TWO integer values stored per player. That integers are read from file only once per login, and written to file once per logout (or when you shut down the server). There's no need for a database, and besides that, it will slow your boot trying to establish the initial connection.
I used to have database support, and one of the problems was that the database was used so infrequently that the connection would fall asleep. I will not add the database option back in unless in the future, something about the above changes so that there's either a LOT more data, or very frequent changes to data.
Using a Block Ratio Instead
If you'd rather require players to mine more coal or break more stone to earn more valuable ores instead of making them wait an amount of time, you need to do three things. First, set the points per hour to zero. Second, set the "cost" of the other blocks you want players to break to a negative amount. Then when the player breaks those blocks, he will GAIN points, taking him closer to mining. Finally, update your messages.yml to explain that the player must break more stone or other ores (depending on your configuration), instead of telling him he will get more points by waiting. For example, if you wanted to allow players to mine one diamond per 100 stone broken, you'd do this:
- points per hour: 0
- starting points: 0
- DIAMOND_ORE: 100
- STONE: -1
- In messages.yml: "You're finding a lot of diamond! You have to break more stone before you can collect this ore."
Commands
/antixray help -> Overview over the possible commands.
/antixray reload -> Reloads the configuration and message files.
/antixray check [player] -> Shows you your or another players current points. I do NOT recommend you to give your players the ability to check their current points as they can use this information to avoid reaching their limit in order to avoid that you get a notification about them!
/antixray set <points|counter> -> Sets the players points or counter value. I do NOT recommend you to use this to reset your players points whenever they reach their limit (by doing so, you are wasting effort and you will make the limit useless)! This command is mainly meant for debugging purposes and trying out different mining limit settings.
Permission nodes
antixray.monitorxrayers (default: op) -> The player will get notified when a player has reached his mining limits and notifications are enabled.
antixray.bypass (default: false) -> Allows the player to freely mine any block without being checked by Anti X-Ray. Usage on own risk..
antixray.help (default: false) -> Allows a player to view the help page which contains information about the commands. Default: op
antixray.reload (default: op) -> Allows a player to reload the antixray configuration and message file.
antixray.check.self (default: op) -> Allows a player to view his amount of remaining mining points.
antixray.check.others (default: op) -> Allows a player to view an other players amount of remaining mining points.
antixray.set (default: op) -> Allows the setting of a players stored values, like the amount of remaining mining points.
Notice
This plugin uses Hidendra's Metrics class to report usage stats to mcstats.org. This is giving me (and you) an idea of how many servers are actually using this plugin. You can disable this by setting "AntiXRay.EnableMetricsTracking" to 'false' in the config.
Chinese Translation (v1.9.0)
A chinese translation by song_xin of this plugin's description, its config settings and messages can be found here: https://github.com/SongXin1015/translate/tree/master/Anti%20X-Ray
More Great Plugins!
If you like this plugin, check out these plugins too:
- Grief Prevention
- Prevents ALL types of grief.
- Easy for players and admins, mostly automatic.
- Players claim land to prevent theft and house wrecking.
- Automatically warn, mute, and kick or ban spammers.
- Blocks dumping lava and setting fire on another player in non-PvP servers.
- Disable fire damage, spread, or both.
- Wipe away ugly builds with a right-click - no database required!
- Automatically prevents spawn camping in PvP servers.
- Prevent damage to the surface by limiting lava and water placement, and TnT damage.
- Automatically clean up hanging tree tops.
- Includes a creative mode for creative worlds.
- Optional siege mode for build-based PvP.
- Population Density
- Automatically assigns new players to wilderness where they'll find other new players and plenty of space, wood, and ore.
- Optional teleportation system which can't be abused by players to escape combat or save them from being lost.
- Login queue to guarantee fairness when the server is full.
- Optional reserved spots for administrators.
- Automatically removes idle players when the server is nearly full.
Donations
If you like this plugin, consider supporting its development by making a donation.
Thanks in advance!
@ryvix
Awesommmme. :) Talk about a massive bug on their part, right? Unlimited diamonds for everybody, ouch.
Anyone getting the mcMMO dupe glitch, it looks like they fixed it in their latest dev build:
Made gigadrill not dupe if event is cancelled
Made superbreaker not dupe if event is cancelled
You're using a 1.3.1 plugin build with a 1.2.5 minecraft server (tekkit is still running 1.2.5). Downgrade to AntiXRay version 1.4.
hi, getting this error in console:
[SEVERE] Error occurred while enabling AntiXRay v1.5.1 (Is it up to date?) java.lang.NoSuchFieldError: EMERALD_ORE at me.ryanhamshire.AntiXRay.AntiXRay.onEnable(AntiXRay.java:159) at org.bukkit.plugin.java.JavaPlugin.setEnabled(JavaPlugin.java:215) at org.bukkit.plugin.java.JavaPluginLoader.enablePlugin(JavaPluginLoader.java:337) at org.bukkit.plugin.SimplePluginManager.enablePlugin(SimplePluginManager.java:386) at org.bukkit.craftbukkit.CraftServer.loadPlugin(CraftServer.java:264) at org.bukkit.craftbukkit.CraftServer.enablePlugins(CraftServer.java:246) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.t(MinecraftServer.java:387) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.a(MinecraftServer.java:374) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.init(MinecraftServer.java:208) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.run(MinecraftServer.java:438) at net.minecraft.server.ThreadServerApplication.run(SourceFile:492)
*******
Any tips about this? Can it be fixed? Using Tekkit server 3.1.2
@HexaDroid
Please look into your other plugins, it may be that another plugin is not behaving well, and is dropping diamonds even though AntiXRay has cancelled the block break event.
@zedadiaswick
Breaking with silk touch does count against the diamond rate.
Allowing a player to break with silk touch without it counting against his diamond count would be giving cheaters a workaround. An xrayer could then use silk touch to collect 500 diamond ore and stuff it all in a box for later - while it's true that he can't turn that into diamonds right away, he's still grabbed up all the diamond ore in the area for himself, which is exactly what this plugin is designed to prevent.
@Maroseliss
Thanks very much. :) This is a bug in McMMO, in my opinion. If another plugins says "dont break this block", then no drops should appear (ever).
@HexaDroid
Was having this issue as well, but for me it was mcMMO's double drop/super breaker that was causing it. When a player reached the threshold, they activated super breaker and the ore wouldn't disappear, but they would still get diamonds. I disabled double drops for mcMMO and it fixed it.
@TheSandwichMakr
If the silk touch is not counted, then this allows players to xray using a silk touch pick, collect hundreds of ores and break them at their leisure over time as and when they need the diamonds.
He is hitting the limit because he has collected plenty of ores, maybe 40-50; not necessarily in a short space of time in the mines. He tries to break all the blocks he owns in a short space of time, as he has already collected them it would take minutes to legitimately mine these ores.
It is frustrating for him, and is another voice urging for the plugins' removal. It really shouldn't get in the way of how legitimate players want to play.
@zedadiaswick
I dont think this should be considered as an issue since if he/she was counted for mining with the silk touch pick he/she would be counted twice. And if theyre hitting the limits theyre probably using xray :/
A player on my server has an unusual method of mining, he will take a silk touch pick down, use that on diamonds he finds and take them back up to his home; place them there and mine them all at once using a fortune pick. He says he does this to minimise his risk of losing his fortune pick. He claims he doesn't hit any limits when in the mine, but always does when breaking the ores once home.
I am wondering if silk touch breaks count towards the limit, but am mainly asking if ores could be counted either against a LogBlock database (fairly sure you'd not like this idea, though), or simply for height in the world to see if it is natural or player-placed?
player reported that he got diamonds from the ore and the ore remained in place because he coudn't mine more. but still the diamonds dropped.
1.5.1 Fixes
@Europia79
The trouble with separate points for different ores is that an xrayer could cheat for diamonds until he's blocked, then cheat for emeralds until he's blocked, then go back to diamonds... you see? So now xrayers have an easy way to work around the anti xray.
The original system was designed with emeralds in mind. That's why all the documentation says "valuable ores" or "valuables" instead of "diamonds". :)
Since your original idea was based on the avg rate (a non-cheater) could mine diamond per hour, i was hoping you'd do a separate point system for emerald_ore (and gold_ore for gold economies too). Because with a separate point system, mining emerald doesn't mean you can mine less diamond. And mining diamond doesn't mean you mine less emerald.
My basic observation playing on different servers: i'm a noncheater, and to me, diamond seems really rare... (maybe because the Xrayers have depleted all the resources). So on my server, i implemented a system whereby players can trade something worthless like Gold for Diamonds (so there's not as much incentive to cheat, but they're still working to get 'em)... And i noticed the 1.3 system (trading with Villagers with Emerald currency) is VERY similar to what i came up with in 1.2 (allowing players an alternative way to obtain diamond gear).
Anyways, just lemme know what you think about that idea: doing a separate point system for Emerald_Ore (& possibly Gold too, altho not many would use this option). Thanks!
It's ironic that right after I broke down and released a dev build version, the recommended build came out. I'm aware of the issue where a log entry "added points" appears in your logs every 5 minutes. I will fix that shortly.
1.5 Released for DEV 2311!
I recommend very strongly against running ANY dev build on a live server. However the Bukkit guys have told us that they will no longer guarantee any level of quality, even for the builds they label "recommended". Since there's no way for us to tell, then, which builds are good except by trying them ourselves, I understand if you feel you want to go ahead and update. IF YOU DO, BE SURE TO BACK UP YOUR WORLD.
Okay I'm off my soap box. See my changes below. I tested briefly, and it seems to work fine. Good luck, please tell me if you have difficulty - however be advised that unless you're on 2311, I reserve the option to not investigate your issue. 2311 is the build I'm "officially" supporting.
As you may know, starting in 1.3, players will be able to trade emeralds for diamond tools. This gives us a very convenient way of ascertaining the value of emeralds relative to diamonds, which should vary little from one server to the next. So then, based on the chart here:
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/File:Villager_Trading_Chart.png
I will tentatively be setting emerald ore value at 50, half the value of diamond ore. If we end up learning from experience that xrayers don't bother to hoard emeralds, then I'll change the default back to no value to save cpu cycles. In the meantime, this will keep your emeralds safe so that non-cheating players can find them.
This will come in the next version. Please remember that in order to get an update to ore values like this one, you'll need to either manually update your config file by adding/adjusting ore values, OR delete the config file and allow it to be re-generated with the new defaults.
@bigscary
Yea, agreed. I misunderstood your context.
Hopefully when spout is finished and everyone ports stuff over to it, it won't be so annoying.
@Sinistralis777
They are anonymous in the sense that we don't know who owns them. They're doing work for some player, but we don't know who that player is, so we can't deduct ore points from the player who's actually getting the benefit from the machine. If mods had a concept of ownership for their constructions, then they could inform plugins of an actual player account which is responsible for the machine's behavior, and then plugins like this one and grief prevention could do a much better job.
Machines actually are NOT anonymous.
The mods that have automation (Such as Buildcraft and Railcraft) are assigned a "player name". ([Buildcraft] and [Railcraft] respectively). This name is configurable.
The thing is, these players do not log "time" in a game, therefore they are always at the starting value of blocks for this mod, and when it gets depleted it does not regenerate. I would love to limit this but it would require probably more work than is worth it since you have to account for every single player.
I know there is a bypass now though so that works. I just won't allow quarries in the "building" world.
@Sinistralis777
The trouble with machines is that they break blocks anonymously. Allowing a player to use a machine to break a diamond ore and collect it will give cheaters a way to collect huge amounts of xrayed ores. But yes, you can do this with the bypass permission. :)
@daboross
Thanks for the tip, I'll look into this for the next version.