I want to draw attention to the following extract from the recent Viewer 3.1 release notes.

This release changes the default mouse behavior. Clicking on most surfaces will make your avatar walk there, and dragging the mouse around your avatar works differently from older releases. If you prefer the old mouse behavior, pick Me>Preferences from the top menu, click on the Move & View tab, then change the Single click on land: setting to No action.


If you try to do CCS melee in Viewer 3.1 without making the change in Preferences mentioned, some or all of the mouse up and down clicks that you use to activate melee will be eaten by the viewer. This appears to me based on a quick test to completely wreck scripted handling of the mouse button, so that you end up in melee even though the left mouse button is up and in addition you slide around unexpectedly.

The solution is simple enough: switch the 'single click' action to no action as above.

So its come to my attention that theres a TON of people screaming about "meter bugs" during combat lately and I've been wondering what it was about as the reports weren't all that clear. Finally today someone sent me an actual log which showed the problem and I'm sort of just doing a /facepalm here.

Heres the bug:

[14:05] ?ady ?hibari (alegria.vita) shouts: [14:00] ?ady ?hibari (alegria.vita) grita: ((!!!CCS - MTR - 1.0.3: !!!CCS - MTR - 1.0.3 [script:*CCS_MTR_Menu_Engine] Script run-time error
!!!CCS - MTR - 1.0.3: Stack-Heap Collision >>> MTR Bug!!)) >>> BACK! ))

Now look at the script thats erroring. MTR_Menu_Engine...what does MTR_Menu_Engine do? It populates TARGETS to menus allowing you to use your CCS against people you are fighting.

What does it not do? It doesn't accept non-standard characters. Ergo all these UTF-8 characters people are using as "display names" to make themselves look "elite", they're basically retarding their own ability to use CCS. The CCS Targeting menu doesn't accept anything but standard characters A through Z, 1 through 0...thats it.

So your "meter bug" is basically people doing something silly with a Linden feature added with Viewer 2...and then blaming CCS for being "buggy" when CCS isn't designed to recognize UTF-8 characters. If you don't want to deal with "meter bugs" then stop spelling your name as: ??????? ???????

CCS wasn't designed to interpret Latin people. Seriously. LOL even the website can't intepret the Latin and UTF-8 characters people are using, anyways the question marks are all non-standard UTF-8/Latin characters. Stop using them and you stop getting "Meter bugs".

Today in Second Life I released a new GM administration tool HUD that was designed by Varen Designs in conjunction with the CCS Development Team.

This new HUD that GM's have access to, (copies of it can be obtained via the CCS Sim Alliance group or the GM Consulting Alliance Group or the Hispanic Consulting Alliance Group as of this time), literally allows the GM to see exactly how many weapons are sending API commands when the weapons are being used in combat.

And for those of you that have been creating personal API enhancements that no one else has by using an API module dropped into a loose prim from a licensed 3rd Party Developer, and created your own enhancement "script" to give yourself an advantage? You'd better watch out cause this system can see those in use too. When you use them. If you are found using a completely illegitimate API device by log report from this system, you will immediately be blacklisted from the API entirely, meaning every API enabled device you've bought will no longer work in its CCS mode, period, you, as a user, will no longer be able to even use legitimate enhanced weapons.

The primary need for this tool is to accurately be able to catch weapon stacking cheaters without forcing further development security strictures on our third party developers which already work damn hard to try to keep their weapons as hard to exploit with as possible in most cases, but when you've got a user base as large as CCS has there is always someone looking for a way to buck the system and beat other people at the game without having to do so in an honest fashion.

The major problem has been the introduction of expanded.attachment points, released with a recent Second Life Viewer 2 update that has of course made its way, from there, into all the major Third Party Viewers. This has allowed for multiple methods of enhanced weapon stacking that were unforeseen when the API was developed, and I do not believe our third party developers should have to pay with more sweat and frustration on their part to have to try to stop the exploiters from finding new ways to exploit in combat.

So from here on out, the exploiters will pay for exploiting. The HUD is able to scan single users or do 20m area scans to get API command data from all people fighting in a certain area, this information is presented to the GM via system message, so only they see it. But to ensure that there is no argument as to whether the data is real, or not (the old false/edited logs defense), we do not accept direct note card log data showing scan reports of stacking claims, the HUD system itself has the ability to send reports directly and securely to the CCS Web Server where they are unalterable in any manner.

So there is no defense, there is no excuse and there is no way to say "They just don't like me and are accusing me falsely". If you stack multiple API enhanced weapons and use them in CCS and a GM sends a report to the central server that undeniably proves you were the following actions will be taken:

Exploiters logged as cheating by stacking multiple API Weapons or Items and abusing their effects or exploiting using unauthorized/self created API devices will suffer the following penalties:

• You will immediately be banned from CCS for a period of no less than 72 hours there will be no argument on the matter. Depending on the nature of disciplinary actions on your record you may be banned for longer periods of 7 days, 14 days, 30 days or perhaps, permanently.
  
• You will be API Blacklisted for a period of no less than 30 days. No CCS GM or Global GM can reverse an individual user API blacklist, only a CCS Administrator can. So even with the CCS ban, you will be unable to use enhanced weapons at all for an entire 30 days, even once you are unbanned, forcing you to defend yourself in CCS with out enhanced weapons and items for an entire 30 day period to ensure you get the ass kicking you deserve for having exploited and cheated the other players around you.
  

Thats the deal with the new detection system, and don't even try to make something that can defeat it, you can't defeat it, not without disabling your API enhanced items altogether or just not using them. Play fair, or go somewhere else. Cause I really don't care if you want to go exploit somewhere else cause you think its okay to cheat to win on the internet. Its not okay CCS. And its never been okay and we can now prove, undeniably, that you are doing it, if you do it.

For everyone thats played fair and never exploited in combat in CCS, thank you for playing straight and not exploiting as well, simply because others were exploiting to win against you.