Why we need .asi

[Jimmy_Kane]

I've seen the .asi discussion a few times on this forums and other mta forums. And apparently the current stance of MTA to .asi plugins is just a big no to all of them, this is sad in my opinion. The .asi plugins are not just a cheat resource. When you say .asi people automatically relate it to cleo mods that lets you fly around and hack omg noob. But nowadays almost ALL good graphical improvements and tools to improve your gta:sa experience are based on .asi model.

Whan I say graphical improvements, I'm not talking about only enb (which is easy to use on MTA), I'm talking about shaders, fixers for timecycs, fixes for particles, grass, textures, shadow, distant lights, LOD and etc. There is also an amazing mod called modloader (not the MTA server mod loader) that lets you install mods on your gta without touching the original files, by installing them into a folder and letting the .asi plugin inject them in-game.

Also, it's not like people using harmful modifications are hard to notice. It is pretty obvious in fact, let each server deal with it on their own.

I'm asking this clientside, not serverside. I want to make my GTA modding easier, and not being able to use .asi is really a step back on mta. Many servers doesn't mod too much their files so players can be free to install their own favorite mods, .asi files lets us expand that freedom.

Whenever I try to allow MTA to use custom files, MTA just kicks me out of any server, even if I host a match. This really really awful, because all I want to do is to be able to make my GTA look fresh. And without .asi I cannot.

[Causeless]

Wouldn't an ASI loader change the layout of GTA SAs memory, or at least offset it? I'm not too knowledgeable about how MTA works on a low down level (or, indeed memory hacking and code injection in general), but it seems to me that alongside the obvious cheating potential that it could require the developers to start trying to add extra support for each loader, which could require a significant reworking of a large amount of the code base.

[ixjf]

Such "generosity" from the MTA team can cause huge issues to many players. Those ASI files are loaded by the game and may be used to cheat. Additionally, server owners may use the scripting API to improve the user's gameplay experience if they want to.

[Jusonex]

ASI files are nothing else than DLL libraries.

If servers were able to load DLLs on the client, you would create a beautiful malware-distribution-platform.

On the other hand if players were able to install ASI mods only for them, you would provide a great cheat interface and all the protections of MTA's anticheat were useless since this is exactly what the anticheat tries to prevent.

In conclusion it would - of course - be very nice to extend MTA's functionality in that way, but it requires lots of trust in server owners that we can't expect from them. If you are interested in a certain feature, feel free to create a feature request at the bugtracker.

[Noki]

Jusonex and ixjf are right.

On another note, almost anything you can do with an .asi modification can be done with MTA Lua scripting. Shaders can be used to improve graphics with a lot less lag than an .asi file (from my experience). HUDs can be remade with MTA's dx functions.

If you wanted the freedom of .asi mods, you'd find a lot of people abusing that for cheating. On the note of cheating, some mods may conflict with the built-in anti-cheat system.

Mantis is your friend. Use it and try your luck.

[Jimmy_Kane]

Wouldn't an ASI loader change the layout of GTA SAs memory, or at least offset it? I'm not too knowledgeable about how MTA works on a low down level (or, indeed memory hacking and code injection in general), but it seems to me that alongside the obvious cheating potential that it could require the developers to start trying to add extra support for each loader, which could require a significant reworking of a large amount of the code base.

I'm not sure. I don't understand much about the technical part, but from what I understand, the only ASI that changes the memory layout is the stream memory fix, which is built in MTA so is useless. And It wouldn't require script for all plugins, it would require only allowing asi to be injected in gta.

Such "generosity" from the MTA team can cause huge issues to many players. Those ASI files are loaded by the game and may be used to cheat. Additionally, server owners may use the scripting API to improve the user's gameplay experience if they want to.

IMO cheating can be treated individually. With all the admin tools, is not that hard to identify cheaters and ban them. And asi plugins can help us clientside. Not serversider. Specially on RP servers.

ASI files are nothing else than DLL libraries.

If servers were able to load DLLs on the client, you would create a beautiful malware-distribution-platform.

On the other hand if players were able to install ASI mods only for them, you would provide a great cheat interface and all the protections of MTA's anticheat were useless since this is exactly what the anticheat tries to prevent.

In conclusion it would - of course - be very nice to extend MTA's functionality in that way, but it requires lots of trust in server owners that we can't expect from them. If you are interested in a certain feature, feel free to create a feature request at the bugtracker.

The biggest threat on GTA cheating is sobeit, not asi. This is my experience on being a staff member from one of the biggest (I know you guys hate comparisons, I do hate it aswell) SA-MP server around. Also, you could restrict asi to clientside. Which makes sense since the LUA script can create the desired effects for servers, but not all servers uses them in the way asi can be used clientside.

Jusonex and ixjf are right.

On another note, almost anything you can do with an .asi modification can be done with MTA Lua scripting. Shaders can be used to improve graphics with a lot less lag than an .asi file (from my experience). HUDs can be remade with MTA's dx functions.

If you wanted the freedom of .asi mods, you'd find a lot of people abusing that for cheating. On the note of cheating, some mods may conflict with the built-in anti-cheat system.

Mantis is your friend. Use it and try your luck.

I've answered pretty much all of this above, and honeslty. I'm not a scripter, neither do I intend to become one. I'm a player. The far as I can go with more techinical stuff, is creating maps (which is easy on MTA) and being staff-member to ban cheaters and maintain the balance.

ASI, is not our enemy when we use it clientside. We cannot distribute malware from our computer without actual access to the server files. Also, if you try to find the number of ASI files used for improving the players experience with the ones used for cheating, I'm pretty sure the proportion is 100:1. Sobeit on the other hand is our enemy since it is built specifically to cheat. But ASI is an awesome hook for us to make GTA a more dynamic experience, just like MTA does. As I've said above, the features that I miss most on MTA are the use of nice graphic shaders and the modloader asi, that makes the proccess of installing your own mods much easier.

[ixjf]

ASI are just DLL libraries that are loaded at game startup, as Jusonex said, therefore they can access and modify the game's memory, cheat and even interfere with the server (mess with the network code, for instance). If you want graphic mods, find a server that has them.

[Woovie]

ASI will never be integrated. If we ever got DLL integration, I imagine it would be similar to that of GMod. I still don't think it would happen. The MTA devs are very anti clientside DLL for security reasons.