Introduction

As mentioned previously in my other concept point, Valve have disabled the networking of dormant players in CSGO. Dormant meaning the players who your client should not be rendering as they are invisible to you by occlusion of objects or are outside the visibility leaf in the BSP tree. More in-depth information about these concepts can be found below:

• https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/PVS
• https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Visibility_optimization

These systems are utilized on Valve official servers however there are other techniques 3rd parties use to extend the functionality such as the anti-wall feature in SMAC which is used by leagues use to prevent people wall hacking. The concept presented in this post looks at another way of bypassing this and allowing the user to see the enemy players from anywhere on the map.

!!!Note I’m not going to reveal how this works just yet. This is a concept point only!!!

The Source Dedicated Server (SRCDS)

Although we are going to be looking at Valve’s own instances of srcds they deploy in match-making this should work on any other server too.

Concept

There is a way, well rather various ways to interact with the game server and receive information that is not suppose to be disclosed to you. I’m going to be utilizing one of those ways in this demonstration. There are limitations to this method as you will soon see but it works fine so far.

A usual competitive game in CSGO has 5 players on each team. One of the players we use as a relay who captures the enemy player information (eg. position data/health/current weapon) and relays that information to the other connected players. To make the connection easier a server is utilized. Here is a diagram:

Our 5th player (modified spectator client) is receiving data from the game server for all connected players (friendly/enemy). This information is then sent to the relay server which then broadcasts it to each of the other four connected clients. Information can be received and either drawn on a mini-map radar or can be drawn as an ESP.

Advantages/Disadvantages

The advantages and disadvantages are pretty obvious. You get the information you need about the enemy team but you pay the price of a fifth player being absent.

Further work

This concept could be improved drastically if the requirement of a 5th connected player was removed. Maybe have an external client connected somehow? Any questions contact me.