Aimbot

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An aimbot (sometimes called "auto-aim") is a type of computer game bot used in multiplayer first-person shooter games to provide varying levels of target acquisition assistance to the player. Since it gives the user an advantage over unaided players, it is normally considered a cheat; however, valid use for aiming software does exist for players with physical disabilities, whom would otherwise not be able to enjoy an appropriate level of game play.

Aimbots have varying levels of effectiveness. Some aimbots can do all of the aiming and shooting, requiring the user to move into a position where the opponents are visible; this level of automation usually makes it difficult to hide an aimbot--for example, the player might make inhumanly fast turns that always end with his or her crosshairs targeting an opponent's head. Highly-skilled players are frequently accused of using such programs, and numerous anti-cheat mechanisms have been employed by companies such as Valve to prevent their use and thus avoid such accusations.

Some games, including GoldenEye 64, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, Timesplitters, and Unreal Tournament 2004, have "auto-aim" as an option in the game. This is not the same as an aimbot; it simply helps the user to aim when playing offline against computer opponents usually by allowing gunfire to hit so as long as the crosshair is within a certain area of the target. It is common for console FPS games to have this feature to balance out the lack of precision[citation needed], compared to using a mouse on a PC game, in using analogue sticks to aim. Halo 2 also uses this, although the effect is much more subtle.

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[edit] Types of Aimbots

There are several different types of aimbots at different levels of potency. Some aimbots are partially human controlled, and others operate solely on game-data using memory or packet work to produce actions. StoogeBot is an example of an aimbot (among other things) that operates solely on memory and packets. More common, however, are human controlled aimbots.

The first of these appeared with the first popular FPS games including Quake, Quake II, Counter-Strike, etc. These first aimbots were notoriously inaccurate and worked by replacing models with solid colour enhancements which displayed vibrant colours while in-game. These were generally solid yellow, green, blue, and red, and each team generally had different colour models. With these custom coloured models in place, an application began scanning the screen for the colour of said models. When it detected a coloured model, it instantly moved the mouse on top of the x and y coordinates the colour was located at and thus the player aims at the target automatically. Later versions of the colour aimbots used spots of colours on a model's head instead of a full body coloured model to enhance the potency. Many were detected using these when a player would spray his or her decal on the wall and the aimbot would aim at the wall instead of any players.

[edit] Clienthook Aimbot

In a clienthook aimbot, the aimbot is part of a clienthook, and since it is, it can find the positions of the local player, and other players in the game. Since it can find positions of other player, and can modify the view angles, or control the mouse of the local player, it can set the view onto a target player.

There are various methods to the implementation of clienthook aimbots. The most common relied on the calculation of vectors based solely on each players location, while the more accurate bone aimbots allow the local player to aim directly at a characters "bone".

A "bone" is part of the internal structure of a players model which allows advanced movement and animation as well as providing bone based damage.

Ie. A headshot will kill instantly, an arm shot will prevent a player using that arm.

[edit] Graphics Driver Based Aimbots

A step up in potency are graphic driver based aimbots. These types of hacks hijack control to the current API used to render a game's graphics to the screen to locate players and other objects. Once a player has been identified and tagged as the target, a series of calculations are performed to take the three dimensional location of a single coordinate within this model and convert it to a two dimensional set of coordinates. This pair of x and y values is then used in conjunction with some input API to move the cursor to the specified location, thus causing the player to aim at the target.

[edit] Colour Aimbots

Colour aimbots are an old and easy method to hacking - they can work in any game that supports coloured models. As colour aimbots don't hook the game or modify any file, most anti-cheats don't detect them. Despite being lower in performance than hooking aimbots, colour aimbots are fast enough to be used as cheats. They however have disadvantages - because the detection is purely colour coded, the aimbot may aim at textures that contain the colour, at dead bodies, or at team mates after switching teams.

Colour aimbots work by scanning the entire or parts of the players screen for the selected RGB value. Once a pixel of the colour is detected the aimbot will move the players mouse cursor to that pixel. As such, colour aimbots need more system resources than a standard aimbot.

There are versions that scan a smaller area around the players sight and activates this scan when the player presses a button. This type of colour aimbot does not require as much resources and is much harder to spot. It does require more skill on the part of users because they have to aim at least somewhat in the correct direction.

[edit] Aimbot use

Aimbots may technically be used in any multiplayer game that uses models, due to the different types available. Their use is, however, notorious in a number of games, such as:

[edit] See also