Wednesday, November 25, 2015

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: Everyone tells me mouse accel is bad, why should I believe you?

A: Because every other form of mouse accel out there IS bad, and most people aren't familiar with linear acceleration with a sensitivity cap.  See this post for my take on other types of accel versus this driver.  As for why you should believe me, I guess that's up to you.  I've mentioned elsewhere that more pro players in Quake3/QuakeLive use acceleration than not.  They have among the best aim in the world, and it clearly works for them.  The driver talked about in this blog does the same thing as the acceleration options from those games, and a number of those Quake players (including ClampOK and Noctis) have made the switch to this driver so that they can be at home in other games too.

Q: Does the driver work with direct input?  Raw input?

A: Yes, and yes.  The only games that I've had issues with were Farcry 3 and Farcry: Blood Dragon.  They have some silly settings that clip mouse input when it is too high (effectively a built in negative accel).  Fortunately, there's a fix for that issue.

Q: What's the deal with signed/unsigned drivers?  Why do I have to jump through so many hoops to install your driver?

A: This discussion is no longer relevant.  The current version of the driver doesn't need to be signed (it uses the interception library, which isn't kernel-level).  The old response to this question is as follows:

Every computer hardware manufacturer out there makes drivers that allows their devices to communicate with computers.  Drivers are tested by the software engineers in Windows Test mode, and once they have a working product, they get them signed.

Microsoft explicitly doesn't allow unsigned kernel-level drivers to run on machines under normal circumstances since these drivers have more permission than a typical application/exe.  When malware finds a way around this protection, it's a bad thing.  That said, povohat's driver (and my GUI) have the source code included in the zip files.  Feel free to audit it and compile it yourself - we have nothing to hide.

In order to get a driver signed, Microsoft has a list of certificate authorities (CAs) that they trust, and companies who make drivers will purchase a signing certificate from a CA.  Typically it costs a few hundred dollars to have a signing certificate, and it lasts for one year.  Luckily, once you sign a version of a driver, it stays signed even if your signing certificate expires after the first year.

Simply put, we haven't coughed up the money to get a signing certificate.  See also: "When will the driver be signed?"

Q: Does the driver work play nice with anticheat?

A: For the interception driver - Yes, but argh.

To date, (6/16/16 as of writing), not a single anticheat vendor has responded to my attempts to contact them.  I've addressed VAC, Punkbuster, Fairfight, Blizzard/Warden, and ESEA in various emails, forum posts, and "contact us" type things.  Also to date, not a single person has been kicked, banned, or harassed for using this driver under any of these anticheat vendors.  There was one instance of an ESEA employee suggesting that you shouldn't use this driver, as it could be used to cheat (wtf?), but he only responded to someone on a forum's direct message, and didn't speak to me.

If you are using the old driver, the requirement of Windows Test mode will block you from using ESEA anticheat.

Q: Would I be able to use this on LAN?

A: Depends on whether the tournament organizers will help you get the driver installed.  Since you need administrator privileges to install it, you'd definitely need to coordinate it with them.  When I was planning on attending Quakecon 2016, I contacted a tournament organizer, and they were fully on-board with having it installed on all tournament machines.  (I ended up deciding to not go though)



Got any more questions?  Let me know in the comments, and I'll add to this post!

33 comments:

  1. If you use raw input/direct input would this driver still work?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tested in QL using in_input -1 (win32), 1 (DirectInput), and 2 (win32 Raw), the accel driver functions in all modes after doing an in_restart. I believe it's safe to say yes.

      Delete
  2. Thanks for the info Kovaak! Question: have you ever used this driver with a trackball, or even your Steam controller? Note: i have used a 1.75 inch trackball (now optical guts of a logitech g400s mouse) to aim in fps games since 1996

    ReplyDelete
  3. Seems like the steam controller isn't showing up as a mouse/pointing device under device manager, so I don't think the current driver would work for it. Trackballs should be fine.

    That aside, povohat has been working on an alternate method for mouse accel (one that won't require a kernel level driver with test mode), and that should work with any pointing device.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks again! Interesting that povo is working on another method, i assumed he was not pursuing mouse accel anymore.

    Do you know if the new method plans to have the same functionality as the current version? (I assume hes working on it to avoid the unsigned drivers stuff?)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It has all of the same variables. You literally copy/paste the settings into a settings.txt file, and it feels the exact same. We're just testing it now, but I also need to write a GUI for it.

      Delete
    2. Holy Cow! Incredible news! Last two questions (for now): 1. Does the text file work globally in windows, or do you put it in your game directories ( i assume is similar to an autoexec.cfg or something when you launch a game)

      2. Do you have a approximate completion timeline for the gui/new version rollout?

      Btw, not for nothin, but i would pay for a method like this, -f'in love it!!! Thanks for the work Kovaak & Povohat!!!

      Delete
    3. It's global for Windows, but if you want to give different settings per game, the old GUI options are available.

      I actually got the GUI reconfigured for this new method today, and I have 3-4 people testing it now.

      If you want to test it, shoot me a message on Steam (http://steamcommunity.com/id/KovaaK). Be warned that the intercept driver *might* looks suspicious to anti-cheat vendors (I could see it being used in an aimbot). I've drafted up an email I plan on sending to ESEA, PB, VAC, and FF to hopefully get it white-listed, but I want to get more testing done before so that I can pass along the exes to them.

      Delete
  5. Wow, you guys are blowin it out!

    Recently i bailed my job of 15 years at a huge vidja game corp & unfortunately, my game rig was "corporate property". So im building my new rig now. Should be done in a week or so.

    Thanks for the test offer, when my rigs up & im not rockin the cell phone on your blog, ill hit you up on steam.

    Thanks again, NEZ-Ferox (steam handle)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hey, not the best question, so I apologize but here's a two-parter with regards to quality-of-life settings: is there a way for, when the software starts, for it to have 'Auto-Profile Switching' checked by default? And as well, is there a way for the software to start minimized to tray.

    I know there's a Windows Start shortcut option to start 'Minimized', but it doesn't seem to work for your software.

    Not sure if you get notifications on these, but I'll be watching here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The auto profile switching should save when you close the program manually, but I think there might be a bug where it fails to do so if you let something like Windows shutdown force it closed. So if you turn auto switching on, close the program, then restart it, it should be on.

      As for minimized, you can run "intergui.exe -m" and it should start in the tray.

      Delete
    2. Hey, you beautiful man, it all worked fine. Thanks for the tips.

      I'm loving your software, by-the-by. Once I got it tweaked to where I want it, and the muscle memory adapted, it was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for all your hard work.

      Delete
  7. Hello, i hope you are still checking this site. I found that sometimes while intergui.exe is minimized, and i play Overwatch, accel is bugged. It is randomly increasing acceleration for 1 second, and mouse became uncontrolable, and sometimes it looks like crosshair is sleeping for a moment, and after teleports somewhere around starting position. No programs or services are run on background, except of 23 windows processes. I m using windows 7 and logitech g pro. Tried to switch usb port, checked polling rate with mouserate.exe - it is stable(not going higher than 1000hz). MarkC mouse fix installed. Hope for your advice and that we will figure out how to fix it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've heard of this happening before, and it's usually something to do with your CPU not giving enough resources to interaccel.exe. Either there is another process running that is starving it, or you should increase in the priority of interaccel.exe. First thing I'd do is run task manager on my second monitor while playing the game, sort it by CPU usage, and try to see if anything spikes up in usage when the mouse gets laggy. If there is nothing apparent, you can try to increase the priority of interaccel.exe by doing what is shown here: http://mywindowshub.com/set-cpu-priority-level-processes-windows-8-1/

      Delete
    2. thank you very much for answer, i ll try and give a feedback. But i dont have second monitor, so might be hard to catch that moment exactly.

      Delete
    3. Looks like switching priority of Overwatch.exe from "High" to "Low" fixed the problem. However, Source games(TF2, CS, L4D) dont cause this problem even with "High" priority. I'll test it for few days - week, and write again, if this bug still occurs.

      Delete
  8. How can i uninstall the driver? Clicking the bat file doesn't work

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You will need to run a command prompt (possibly with admin privs, but it might not matter) and go to the folder with the batch files, then type "install-interception.exe /uninstall".
      I'm not sure why the uninstall batch file doesn't work sometimes - sorry about that. Also for what it's worth, if you aren't running the interaccel or intergui programs, no acceleration is being applied.

      Delete
  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  10. does the mouse accel intercept normally work from windows startup? because in my case I can only make it work only after opening the GUI and pressing "save changes" after a reboot or shutdown.
    am I doing something wrong? or do I need something else to make it work at startup?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. nevermind, the accel interception now works just after opening interGUI, so I just created a bat file to start the program during boot and minimize it (adding -m to the shortcut argument)

      Delete
  11. Hi there!

    I am trying to set auto-key profile switch on following buttons, but don't know how to properly set the buttons for:

    Mwheeldown
    Mwheelup
    Mouse button 4
    Mouse button 5

    Could you post the exact string that I have to put into the trigger field please ?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Is this really anticheat proof? Because somebody told me this would ban me in overwatch faceit. Is it still true that you did not get any report from player that getting banned. I rlly want to use this but dont wont to get banned.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Faceit anticheat recently blocks the intercept driver, I really hope it isn't permanent =(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yeah can Kovaak please look into this? thank you kovaak!

      Delete
  14. If I decide to remove the driver and tool, do all the registry values go back to how it was before? (aka no acceleration at all)
    I dont want too mess with my current setting if I dont like a custom acceleration after all :P

    ReplyDelete
  15. How do you make it lunch when windows start?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. this tiny url will tell you https://tinyurl.com/ktju2jo

      Delete
  16. How can i change it so that the mouse acceleration begins at a certain speed and not begin when i start moving my mouse?

    ReplyDelete
  17. how to make it such that it launches at startup?

    ReplyDelete
  18. Is this bannable on ESEA?

    ReplyDelete
  19. How can i use it on valorant? every time i open valorant it turns off (the intercel app), when i quit valorant it gets back on, any idea?

    ReplyDelete