What a good title for this thread. Thanks claw for posting definitive proof of your build macro hacking.
Sorry this is a long post, feel free to TL;DR it if you have no brain and just want to hate - I really don't care.
I have known Claw for quite a few years. I have had many conversations with him - in channel, in private games, via PMs and email. It was actually his idea to make my chop mad bot, which was an interesting experiment. AFAIK its the only external AI (albeit a very simple one) that can play wc2. To build it has a list of tasks that need to be completed then selects peons to perform the various tasks, moving on to the next task when pre-defined trigger points are reached, i.e. when fort upgrade starts -> kill mound.. etc. It also prepares for upcoming tasks by moving building and repairing peons to the required spot to wait for the next trigger. The same command list works for all 6 spots on the map, inverting the layout when necessary. It can do neat stuff like build 9 roosts simultaneously and overload a powermine auto-correcting any stuck peons instantly.
It was a fun project, but it's far from perfect. Peons can occasionally get stuck, and if they are blocking a trigger action then the entire thing stalls. This could be corrected but I have never bothered. The the attack algorithm is very simple, it sort of tries to out-flank the opponent, but again I never really bothered perfecting it. A decent player will still beat it. But it's an AI, not really a macro as such. If this is news to anyone I have posted a full description and video on this forum before. I made the name "bottest" or something and told people what it was when they joined.
Claw is a build macro hacker, I am well aware of this and he knows that I am. I'm sure most of the "pros" know what this means from "back in the day" when they were busy totally destroying the custom maps with this stuff - or at least knew a few people who did, but for anyone seriously out of the loop enough not to know what this means, it works like this:
The simplest kind of macro maker simply records all the keystrokes/mouse actions that are made, so in this way the hacker can make a game on a very slow speed and very slowly and carefully make a very efficient build, wasting no time in building/training/upgrading everything perfectly. Then when they get into a real game they get an automation type program to replay the exact same actions at 2x or 4x (or wvr) the speed ... depending on how slow they recorded it and just like magic they have a super fast perfect build. Claw actually sent me the link to some macro recorder app in like 2014 or something, I've never used it, I have no time for such noobish stuff, but I'm sure its on a backup HDD somewhere...
So for KOTR claw has 8 macros pre-recorded, one for each spot. He has an entire library of this stuff which he has been making and updating for years... (bgh, archers obviously, chop bases/fast towers/hops etc) .... Probably they are set to hotkeys, IDK probably the numpad would be my guess, so as soon as the game starts and he see which spot he has he presses the corresponding key and the script starts. He uses AutoIt for that stuff - the same macro scripting language that was used in conjunction with stealthbot to write the old hostbot (source is on the server website).
So for once the main build has finished he also has 1 or more training macros defined, that simply click each rax and press 'O' to build an ogre. These will just be assigned to another hotkeys so he can rack ogres with one keypress. There's a couple of them to mix it up and hide his tracks, but its easy to see the fingerprints (more on that later).
I have no build macros, unless you count the mad bot, but certainly I have no kotr build macros*. In this game my base is built the old fashioned way, that is easy to spot - for starters because I miss place my first hall - eww not a PM how noobish. That's why I put a smith below the hall, normally I do smiths next to the unused corner mine and another hall below the first one, but it is 1 space too low so I corrected with the smith. Also you can see all the peons standing around while I am frantically building rax and farms. I repair build my mound with 6 peons after claw already has ogres in droids base.
*Actually now I think of it the mad bot actually started out as a kotr bot but I never really got past the first scout grunt and peons kept getting stuck building farms - it was really terrible first attempt that I never finished and I actually changed/rewrote the code into the mad bot - not really relevant, but had I ever finished it would not be starting to build a mound while it's opponent was already attacking with ogres.Anyway, it looks like the initial build part of this macro only lasts until about 2:30 or so when he starts making ogres. After that he just slowly finishes off building the remaining rax probably by hand idk.What is pretty clear is that he keeps using macros to train ogres.
--> The easiest way to spot this is to look for the mistakes from when he recorded them, because the same mistakes will keep repeating every time he uses them. The most obvious one in this game can be seen by watching these 2 barracks:
When he recorded this particular rax macro he got a bit greedy and clicked the second one and pressed 'O' too fast (remember he is recording it at a slower speed), as a result when the macro input is played back into the wc2 client at a much faster speed these 2 events glitch together and occur on the same game cycle, and the ogres build simultaneously. If you look at the insight replay, y
ou can clearly see these 2 rax - and only these 2 rax - glitch together at 2:35, 2:50, 3:20, 3:35, 4:35, 6:55, 7:15, 9:50 and 10:05. There is also at least another 7 times that the 2 rax are almost synchronized but the one on the left is very slightly ahead - which will be the order that they were initially recorded in, but where they haven't glitched.
Putting aside the fact that building simultaneous units is exactly what he is accusing me of, and even assuming that this could randomly happen when playing on fastest speed,
there is absolutely no possible explanation for this happening on the same 2 rax out of 20+ rax over and over again all game except for the fact that the exact same mouse/keyboard input is being repeatedly pushed into the client from an external source.Yes there are also a few times these rax aren't in sync, if you run out of gold or if one is already training etc the macro input wont have any effect, also there is nothing to stop a hacker from manually racking the odd ogre to mix things up, or run a second macro, but none of that changes the facts outlined above. Look for yourself.
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I guess I should put in a small explanation for the odd genuine newb out there who really doesn't know this stuff exists and wants to know OMG what does this mean for gow or other bne/ef games? The answer is: a bit, but nowhere near as much as for customs. For starters there's the obvious fact that in most customs you start with a crapload of res which means you can set up your entire base as fast as you can physically build it (big advantage to hackers like claw), also when the game is on fastest it greatly increases the speed differential advantage.
In bne/ef style games there is much more interaction earlier in the game (well earlier in the tech tree). Basically if an opponent is using a build macro and you enter their base or tower them or whatever and cause them to react to your presence then they have changed their build and at that point any pre-recorded input won't line up with the actual game state so their macro breaks and they have to start playing by hand. Just another reason to scout early!
I'm sure there will be players around who have macros for say pstop rushes at 2, and maybe for duals when playing 1v1 etc.... who knows? But they can only be useful effective as long as you leave them alone. Scout early!
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So let's look at the 2 players. Claw is one of the most renowned hackers in the game. He calls himself "invincible" and goes around yelling in ALL CAPS about how good he is, calling everyone else a whore and spewing nazi hate-speech. He constantly macro hacks in games then brags loudly about it and puts down the people who he just cheated.
Then there's me, who has never claimed to be a particularly good player, I have negative stats on all of my accounts, and I think most people know that I am usually friendly until someone assholish starts shooting their mouth off at me, when I will usually lol at them or occasionally - if they have annoyed me enough - give them a mouthful back. You will almost never hear me brag about winning and you will never hear me blaming my pards for a loss (unless they start trying to blame me).
So do I go around build macro hacking in games? No. Do I go around bragging and claiming to be "invincible". No I don't. Do I have the skills to pump out a crap load of units when playing against this serial hacker just so I can laugh really hard at his loudmouth nazi ass and rub his nose in it - well of course I do.
its gooder to hax hard and NEVER get caught!
Are you really trying to convince all the people you showed your hacks to that somehow that was just in private and you don't hack all day every day?
yes
So this shit is what happens when you give him a smack for being a racist asshole. Someone who goes around all day screaming the N word then pulls this shit when you call him white trash cracker spawn, isn't a funny troll, just a petulant biggot.
It is also worth mentioning that he seriously tried to blackmail me for $15 to not make this thread
ffs seriously. I told the sad little man that if he needed it that badly I would have sent it to him if he just asked, but under the circumstances he could go fuck himself
damn, that looks pretty conclusive to me. that really sucks. ;( good to catch a cheater though.
Very glad you feel that way. Have to admit I always assumed you knew he was a hacker, but if you're actually serious don't just skim this post. Read it.i don't think claw made a post to call out his own hacks 
No, he made a post because he's two-faced sneaky little asshole and they took his N word away, proving his own hacks was just a byproduct.
I went into that game knowing full well he would be hacking his ass off as per usual, at the end we had around the same number of units, is anyone seriously suggesting that he doesn't hack at this point?... more to the point hack all the time for years and call himself "invincible" and everyone else a "whore" or worse.
