SRL Archive - Discussions & Debates

Hey, some may or may not know me. I've been lurking around the past while, not only on SRL, but on basicly all of the botting sites out there.
We're currently entering a 'revolutionary era for botting' as I've heard from several people.

I don't wanna go in-depth on RiD's Genesis, as there's already a thread about it, and I'm actually not interested in Genesis at all. I think it's a last resort from RiD's side to prevent them from dying out. Everyone knows the deadline of Runescape is coming closer and closer. Thus why RiD said Genesis will be used for other games than Runescape in the future.

That, along with the following quote.. (I believe this quote to be true, yes)

From: TRiLeZ

I'd say RiD has the most knowledge about mimicking human behavior, I have almost as much, PB has some, OSBot has a very limited amount, and all other bots/bot devs have no idea how to truly mimic human behavior.

The future is bright.

..The release of TRiBot's Looking Glass Client (which is what made SRL special from other 'regular' clients)..
Looking Glass Bans
~ The link shows a forum thread on TRiBot with bans. Currently (after a month?) there's 6 people who have posted on there. So considering that, plus the amount of time TRiLeZ spent on it, I honestly think this does change something.

From: TRiLeZ

I developed this at a very fast pace of about 1 week, while our competitor took months to work on their similar system (I had to brag).

And I haven't even spoken about TRiBot's Human Mouse Data collecting, reaction timing research and whatever more there is to come.

I've been going in-depth on TRiBot a lot, but it doesn't end there. OSBot released their Beta for their Mirror Client. Now we all know OSBot is just laughable, but what if they DO manage to successfully implement this in their client. Will this be a step up for OSBot? Or did TRiLeZ just knock them all the way back to were they were before their Mirror Client?

The amount of good programmers here at SRL is amazing. But is it enough?
TRiBot and RiD are growing every day, while all the other clients, including SRL, are just being left behind.
Can we do something about this?
And if we do, will TRiBot and RiD leave it by this?
Is this really a revolutionary era for botting, or just for TRiBot and RiD?

There's a LOT of questions, and a LOT of answers.
And a lot of different opinions, let me know yours!

E; I'm not sure if I'm not allowed to name and link other botting sites.
If I'm not, please let me know, I'll gladly remove them.

From: Annonymus
The amount of good programmers here at SRL is amazing. But is it enough?
TRiBot and RiD are growing every day, while all the other clients, including SRL, are just being left behind.
Can we do something about this?
And if we do, will TRiBot and RiD leave it by this?
Is this really a revolutionary era for botting, or just for TRiBot and RiD?

There's a LOT of questions, and a LOT of answers.
And a lot of different opinions, let me know yours!

Iv been messing around with mimicing human behaviour, like walking, clicking distribution from the target, even implemented situation based decision making. But hats amateur as i used some mouse clicks recorders and filmed real persons game sesions. 14 of my bots got banned after running 2months up to 23 hours a day average around 15-16h a day, but thats like less than 1/3rd of my army. As always 14/15 that shift on that computer. Totally i am running this bot over 3 months now. Statistics arent very accurate but they are sick in a good way: Fastest ban was 100k resources collected. Few are at 250+k and running. Most are at around 50-80k range and running. Areas are suicidal, accounts fresh and all very low cmb lvl no other skills :) Whole script antiban is misslicks/clicking patterns, decision making. No standart antiban apart in one place i use mousemovingobject.

While control group i gave/sold to chineese/lithuanians got like 80% banned before bond runned out, one important note as always chineese tend to be freakily fast banned, had a group of 150+accs banned within 5 days at 100%, while lithuanians runned same script lasted decent amount at like 3weeks average per account. This suggest if botwatch would monitor us for real, our scripts would be detected way faster as it always happens with chineese. Also very disturbing data is i tend to get bans for whole shifts, so jagex might target some areas heavily with botwatch at certain times. Control group used same walking methods but had no decision making and no dynamic antiban using clicking patterns. Basicly antiban idea was clarity like assigning mood. for example semi afker, movie watcher. Then reducing overall reactions times and addint lazyness within the amount of time spent. This suggests proper human-like decision making, walking, banking, and closer to real clicks distribution increases survivability dramatically.

Clarity mud rcer has good antiban and it inspired me to add something complex. And it has like only few accounts banned. But in the future this wont be enough. Today 2 bans tomorrow 90% accounts.

Jagex is constantly improving their botwatch, we need to improve our antiban too. To counter that we need to gather data of missclicks from the target patterns. Maybe redo/update mouse movements. But for that we all should collaborate. We need to add antiban in srl include maybe in a functions deviations such as missclicks and better clicking patterns. Maybe add lazyness/response time/impatience/spammclicking into include functions too, we probably need it as i dont want to get banned by worldhopping whole day with srl functions again:D

During some time i had ridiculously fast bans like 2 hours seemed to be a dream. Had idea jagex could catch bots by login. I mean username and pass typing. Some banks use typing patterns to recognize bot vs humans and even human vs human and they damn accurate. Also tried chatting between accounts during sesion of pre-recorded random skype chats and it only decreased survival times. So typing isnt very human-like in srl.

From: cosmasjdz
Iv been messing around with mimicing human behaviour, like walking, clicking distribution from the target, even implemented situation based decision making. But hats amateur as i used some mouse clicks recorders and filmed real persons game sesions. 14 of my bots got banned after running 2months up to 23 hours a day average around 15-16h a day, but thats like less than 1/3rd of my army. Totally i am running this bot over 3 months now. Statistics arent very accurate but they are sick in a good way: Fastest ban was 100k resources collected. Few are at 250+k and running. Most are at around 50-80k range and running. Areas are suicidal, accounts fresh and all very low cmb lvl no other skills :) Whole script antiban is misslicks/clicking patterns, decision making. No standart antiban apart in one place i use mousemovingobject.

While control group i gave/sold to chineese/lithuanians got like 80% banned before bond runned out. Control group used same walking methods but had no decision making and no dynamic antiban. Basicly antiban idea was clarity like assigning mood. for example semi afker, movie watcher. Then reducing overall reactions times and addint lazyness within the amount of time spent.

Clarity mud rcer has good antiban and it inspired me to add something complex. And it has like only few accounts banned. But in the future this wont be enough. Today 2 bans tomorrow 90% accounts.

Jagex is constantly improving their botwatch, we need to improve our antiban too. To counter that we need to gather data of missclicks from the target patterns. Maybe redo/update mouse movements. But for that we all should collaborate. We need to add antiban in srl include maybe in a functions deviations such as missclicks and better clicking patterns. Maybe add lazyness/response time/impatience/spammclicking into include functions too.

I've been working on an AIO Fletching script the past while. It's basicly finished, but I'm not releasing it (along with a bunch of other scripts) due to the lack of antiban. Also, the mouse movements I'm currently using are of zero similarity to my 'real' mouse movements.
I think the 'antiban' that most people use in their scripts are of no importance to Jagex' Botwatch system. Or atleast very limited. Like, hell. What does Jagex care if you check your skill xp every now and then? Most people use OSBuddy's Skill Experience Tracker anyways.
What I think is most important is not just limited to mouse movements. It's (as you said) missclicks, lazyness, response time, and maybe even chatting. Who stands at Varrock East bank for 12 hours without saying a word?
I've looked into applying human-response to my scripts but it seems so inaccurate and hard to do. So I dropped a couple of my bots in Zezima's cc and made them just talk along with the other spammers. It gave positive results, as far as I've tested it, but it's far from done.

What's revolutionary? I don't really understand.

I feel like a lot of this is bot makers just tooting their own horns. Sure, they're definitely developing cool things and those features might be useful eventually. Right now though, all the people I've spoken with in SRL have said RS3 has essentially quit banning accounts except for after months of suiciding an account (like cosmas does). I suicided an account for a week straight (24/7) with zero antiban (fresh account, no cmb training, etc) and months later the account still lives.

It's great to say "We know so much about mimicking human behaviour, we have no bans" but there have been like 0 threads here complaining about bans in the last month either. Apparently we're amazing too? Maybe I just don't like how cocky it sounds to be telling everyone how smart you are. I've always been a big believer that if you have to remind everyone how smart you are, you're probably not that smart.

Anyway. TDLR: I don't think there's any way to physically get yourself banned unless you're using a terrible bot with a terrible script. Literally using clickmouse (used to be instant bans) and no antiban is completely fine when using SRL now, so all the humble bragging from other bot developers is a little strange.

I don't see what's 'revolutionary' about the current botting era. AutoRune was, then followed by light-weight screen-scrapers. A flood many java-based scriptable bots such as STS and SBot. Then after the Aryan era the introduction of reflection/injection that has lasted until the current day. OpenGL & DirectX interception are in a class of their own also, as is the absolute veteran method: color/screen reading bots.

With that being said there's nothing revolutionary about TRiBot. Improved anti-ban is just an upgrade to a bot to keep it under the radar; it does not define an era in the RS cheating scene. Nothing against his work but I have the same opinion about their anti-ban upgrade as I have about RiD's Genesis: Good luck, hope it prevents bans.

I don't see any revolutionary features in any of the other bots. The new revolution begins when the NXT client is released. Then we'll truly see who survives and who doesn't.

From: Brandon
I don't see any revolutionary features in any of the other bots. The new revolution begins when the NXT client is released. Then we'll truly see who survives and who doesn't.

What is the NXT client?

From: Brotein
What is the NXT client?

It's the upcoming C++ client for Runescape. It's likely to break current botting scene if the java client is taken away.

It might be revolutionary for RiD and Tribot, but not for the botting scene. 'Recording yourself play' is very cool, but it is definitely not needed, currently anyway. The botting scene is very competitive and I simply see these new 'features' as a strategy to for both of those communities to make more money (and therefore survive) whereas SRL is not for profit and will most likely always be around.

srl and scar/simba have been "being left behind" for what 15 years now.. and are still relevant, and someone from this learning community is usually STILL the first person to do something new. I can't think of one method to ever spawn, EVER, that wasn't from a person around here or a sister community (which mostly have died, but used to thrive years ago)

Because someone takes ideas and source, sells them for money and focuses on making it dumb proof + advertising doesn't mean we're any closer to being left behind than we were 10+ years ago

From: The Mayor
It might be revolutionary for RiD and Tribot, but not for the botting scene. 'Recording yourself play' is very cool, but it is definitely not needed, currently anyway. The botting scene is very competitive and I simply see these new 'features' as a strategy to for both of those communities to make more money (and therefore survive) whereas SRL is not for profit and will most likely always be around.

and this record yourself play is just completely worthless and not slightly thought about or targeted in my post.

From: Brandon
I don't see any revolutionary features in any of the other bots. The new revolution begins when the NXT client is released. Then we'll truly see who survives and who doesn't.

I'm gonna go really off-topic right now. Why would Jagex do that? Why would they cut their profits by more than half, with the only reason behind it being better graphics and eliminating bots (for a while, atleast). Wouldn't that lead to a faster death of Runescape?

From: 3Garrett3
lot of text..

I've ran level 3 D'hide tanners for 24/7 for a 2 weeks straight (on OSRS) even though I should've been banned in less than an hour. I even botted in botworlds to show I didn't give a f*ck, and neither did Jagex. The script was my first one ever, full of bugs and very little antiban.
I'm 99% sure there's something with SRL that's special, but the only thing I could think of was the fact that we don't have as many users, thus making it harder for Jagex to analyze our movements.

From: The Mayor
It might be revolutionary for RiD and Tribot, but not for the botting scene. 'Recording yourself play' is very cool, but it is definitely not needed, currently anyway. The botting scene is very competitive and I simply see these new 'features' as a strategy to for both of those communities to make more money (and therefore survive) whereas SRL is not for profit and will most likely always be around.

I've always tought about how SRL would change if it were to become more user friendly. Would this lead to more people joining us, more people learning and experiencing and thus resulting to more experienced programmers? Or would it lead to a leeching community like OSBot and TRiBot?
As grats said, we're usually the first to implement something new. More experienced programmers would mean more new features, better botting experience, and more, right?

I see talk about analyzing mouse movements.

I use MoveMouse for almost everything now. I am sure they don't look at the mouse movement, just clicks.

From: Annonymus
As grats said, we're usually the first to implement something new. More experienced programmers would mean more new features, better botting experience, and more, right?

Not really, because more experienced programmers generally have less time, and there isn't any monetary reward for the time put into developing SRL (unlike other communities).

From: Camel
I see talk about analyzing mouse movements.

I use MoveMouse for almost everything now. I am sure they don't look at the mouse movement, just clicks.

Yup, same here. All of my scripts are impossibly fast and accurate with no antiban and no breaks. Never been banned.

From: Annonymus
I'm gonna go really off-topic right now. Why would Jagex do that? Why would they cut their profits by more than half, with the only reason behind it being better graphics and eliminating bots (for a while, atleast). Wouldn't that lead to a faster death of Runescape?

We don't know what proportion of players are bots in RS3, and OSR will not change.

Jagex are probably prepared to (temporarily) lose most RS3 bots in exchange for a game that is graphically attractive in 2015. They don't want to rely on bots for revenue, and they don't need to. They make a large amount of money from MTX (which almost no bots buy) and I'm fairly sure bots make up a small amount of their player base.

From: evilcitrus
Yup, same here. All of my scripts are impossibly fast and accurate with no antiban and no breaks. Never been banned.

To add to the risky business; I've made a few scripts to simulate AHK, using relative movemouse and clickmouse for speed. Started using them in February and haven't been banned yet. I just figured Weath(OSRS) only has time to deal with big operations so a couple of accounts here and there probably won't get checked as long as you aren't picked up by what seems to be a pretty lax automated system.

For this reason, in OSRS at least, I don't think fancy new antiban methods are necessary, just solid code.

I'd just like to mention that @_Rick; did attaching to the browser in 2009/2010 and I'm quite sure at one stage Benland did as well. It's nothing new and a marking idea.

We're not usually the first to implement something new, I didn't say that.. we're the last to implement stuff developed HERE, usually… because everyones so busy etc.
single peoples develop stuff for the first time.. benland = reflection, some guy =opengl (and obviously brandon exploded the development of that) but 2-3 other places took that and did something with it before we did, lol.

From: grats
We're not usually the first to implement something new, I didn't say that.. we're the last to implement stuff developed HERE, usually… because everyones so busy etc.
single peoples develop stuff for the first time.. benland = reflection, some guy =opengl (and obviously brandon exploded the development of that) but 2-3 other places took that and did something with it before we did, lol.

And reflection wasn't even developed with SRL for a while after we started using it. The community booted reflection out to KYAB and then accepted it later with SMART. It was a while before people at SRL just accepted reflection as another option. But we weren't the first reflection folks around. We might have been first OGL, I vaguely remember reading about how neat it was when it was first being worked on here but I can't remember who it was.

From: 3Garrett3
And reflection wasn't even developed with SRL for a while after we started using it. The community booted reflection out to KYAB and then accepted it later with SMART. It was a while before people at SRL just accepted reflection as another option. But we weren't the first reflection folks around. We might have been first OGL, I vaguely remember reading about how neat it was when it was first being worked on here but I can't remember who it was.

https://villavu.com/forum/showthread.php?t=54447 bam early 2010 :p

As others have said, I don't see anything revolutionary about these so-called "looking-glass" clients or "mirror" clients.

What is being done right now is what bot developers have always done as long as the scene has been alive: play the game, stay alive, don't let the cat catch the mouse.

I strongly agree with @Flight;'s point about exactly what was revolutionary. AutoRune was revolutionary. SCAR was revolutionary. The introduction of reflection/injection (and later, OGL/DX) as an interaction method was revolutionary.

A step down from revolutionary, we have "golden ages." AutoRune spawned a golden age. NeXus did the same, and early versions of RSBot/RSBuddy carried the torch as well.

These semi-major updates to existing clients, utilizing existing technologies is far from revolutionary. They're not prompting a golden age, either. They should be defined as a "pretty good, but nothing to write home about" age.

Also, more to @Brandon;'s point, the release of the NXT client will be the next true test for the scene. We'll see who's really in the game, and NXT will separate the men from the boys. Then we'll see who's truly revolutionary … and who's hanging by a thread.

Bottom line: these wimpy ban waves and ain't nothin'. BotWatch ain't nothin'. Jagex's crackdown on cheaters ain't nothin'. Claiming that technology which circumvents these things is "revolutionary" is pure folly.

From: 3Garrett3
And reflection wasn't even developed with SRL for a while after we started using it. The community booted reflection out to KYAB and then accepted it later with SMART. It was a while before people at SRL just accepted reflection as another option. But we weren't the first reflection folks around. We might have been first OGL, I vaguely remember reading about how neat it was when it was first being worked on here but I can't remember who it was.

well my point was people around here were the firsts to do pretty much everything

benland brought reflection to rs botting community as a whole. but yea we didn't really do anything with it for a while until smart etc was around, obviously.. because we couldn't. Back then we just used a browser lol

From: grats
well my point was people around here were the firsts to do pretty much everything

benland brought reflection to rs botting community as a whole. but yea we didn't really do anything with it for a while until smart etc was around, obviously.. because we couldn't. Back then we just used a browser lol

Well, we had KYAB (developed at SRL) but they ended up going to their own forums for lots of reasons. IIRC that in turn led to SMART. My history is rusty.

Either way, I stand by the fact that I mentioned before and that people have mentioned above. These new features in bots are not revolutionary and it's not a golden age of botting. They're just trying to drum up more money talking about how great they are, when in reality they're not doing anything necessarily special.

Can confirm that at the basic level of Botwatch, mouse movements are irrelevant. Obscurity and I have run scripts for months with no movements, only clicking. No bans.

This is why I stopped work on my biometrics include. There's no point unless we want to futureproof from a Botwatch upgrade to behavior analysis. Which I suppose couldn't hurt.

If reported however, anecdotal evidence suggests they take a more thorough examination into the account and will be able to check for SMART, and possibly mouse movements. Popular gold farming spots like swamp lizards also seem to have heightened Botwatch levels, but I'm pretty sure this is just client detection as opposed to detecting mouse movements. Why bother anayzing when they can just detect a client. We can circumvent this anyway by selecting the official client as our target.

SMART is just a convenience. If it came down to it, we wouldn't have to use it at all. We do however because it's less work than setting up VMs. With Olly's drawing layer we can even paint on the official client now.

The biometrics war is cool, mathematically, and a good way of attracting uninformed customers, but not needed at this time. It's amusing that bot clients are claiming superiority because of better mouse movements when they have nothing to do with bans in the first place.

—-

Beyond client detection, which is a separate issue altogether, Botwatch most definitely works by detecting patterns. This is why, typically, the more the users, the more chance of bans, depending on the randomization of the script. Biometrics ultimately create a unique pattern for each user, which renders this useless. The key thing here is, that you don't need biometrics to avoid patterns. You just need a script that behaves somewhat differently every script run…something simple like that. This isn't overly complex. My mud runes script was made before I knew that mouse movements weren't tracked. Now that I have a better understanding through experience, my antiban in OGL scripts is simplistic, perhaps five lines added to the script as a whole. Just as effective :)

From: 3Garrett3
Well, we had KYAB (developed at SRL) but they ended up going to their own forums for lots of reasons. IIRC that in turn led to SMART. My history is rusty.

Either way, I stand by the fact that I mentioned before and that people have mentioned above. These new features in bots are not revolutionary and it's not a golden age of botting. They're just trying to drum up more money talking about how great they are, when in reality they're not doing anything necessarily special.

oh yea I agree, these new things are near worthless.. the only thing useful to come around in the past few years is opengl usage and.. maybe directX (but not really)

Color botting does always have a significant advantage by only being able to do as much as any human player. We can only see what is in our inventory by changing to the inventory tab, the only tree's we are able to detect are on our screen, etc.

Injection and Reflection API's provide much more information - and I'd say it increases banrates. Not every scripter thoroughly thinks about the side-effects of every written line of code. If Jagex really wanted a lot of botters could be banned by detection scripted behaviour.

I'm eager to see how the NXT Client will turn out.

Basically +1 to everything that has already been said, with the addition that I think Jagex has just stopped giving a f%&k about botting and is focussed on keeping the game alive.