About: [AAE]PBSS
Posted by Chainfire on 24-05-2005 at 14:40:00 - Comments: 17 - Views: 11037
Project: [AAE]PBSS - Tags: Games
Project: [AAE]PBSS - Tags: Games
[AAE]PBSS was a cheater catcher tool for the "America's Army: Operations" (AAP) game. This game utilized the PunkBuster anti-cheat tool, and servers could be configured so they took a screenshot of player's screens at set intervals. These screenshots would then be available from the gameserver itself, with a simple HTML listing and were called PBSS's: PunkBuster ScreenShots. As I was known at the time as "[AAE]-GodFather-", member of the [AAE] "America's Army Elite" clan, the project got named (very inventively) [AAE]PBSS.
The tool itself allowed you to connect to all the official servers, scan the screenshots and display them on your screens, showing new ones as they arrives. Many cheaters were caught and banned with this tool, and pretty much every server admin made use of it. It even inspired a whole gang of 'server trollers' that would scan for cheaters on all public servers. At its high time, [AAE]PBSS was the defacto cheater catcher tool. It also had based auto-detection of cheaters.
Due to cooperation with the AAO server admin organisations like AASA, Airdale Ops (AON) and AntiCheat Inc (ACI), cheaters found with this tool could easily be submitted to these organisations and added to their public ban lists (which most official servers used).
A fair while after the program itself was released, [AAE]PBSS Web was made. This was a web tool written in heavy JavaScript (jQuery) which provided a live viewer in the webbrowser. Though not as elaborate as the original [AAE]PBSS it did provide an easy way to watch new screenshots come in across the official servers. The coolest thing was, that through some trickery you could actually put the whole thing on the official server itself, replacing its normal (lame) listing and not needed an additional web server. The Web variant also had basic auto-detection of cheaters.
Both [AAE]PBSS and [AAE]PBSS Web have long ago been abandoned, as I left the game to pursue other interests after repeatedly being screwed over by the AASA. In their time, they were a great admin tool for the game, but it seems it is hard to find any reference to its existence these days. I assure you though - everyone who played in a clan that had their own official servers knew and uses these tools.
The tool itself allowed you to connect to all the official servers, scan the screenshots and display them on your screens, showing new ones as they arrives. Many cheaters were caught and banned with this tool, and pretty much every server admin made use of it. It even inspired a whole gang of 'server trollers' that would scan for cheaters on all public servers. At its high time, [AAE]PBSS was the defacto cheater catcher tool. It also had based auto-detection of cheaters.
Due to cooperation with the AAO server admin organisations like AASA, Airdale Ops (AON) and AntiCheat Inc (ACI), cheaters found with this tool could easily be submitted to these organisations and added to their public ban lists (which most official servers used).
A fair while after the program itself was released, [AAE]PBSS Web was made. This was a web tool written in heavy JavaScript (jQuery) which provided a live viewer in the webbrowser. Though not as elaborate as the original [AAE]PBSS it did provide an easy way to watch new screenshots come in across the official servers. The coolest thing was, that through some trickery you could actually put the whole thing on the official server itself, replacing its normal (lame) listing and not needed an additional web server. The Web variant also had basic auto-detection of cheaters.
Both [AAE]PBSS and [AAE]PBSS Web have long ago been abandoned, as I left the game to pursue other interests after repeatedly being screwed over by the AASA. In their time, they were a great admin tool for the game, but it seems it is hard to find any reference to its existence these days. I assure you though - everyone who played in a clan that had their own official servers knew and uses these tools.
