[ANY] Name Change Punisher (Updated 2011-07-13)
 

My servers have had an influx of spammers who use name changing scripts as of recently.

Therefore, I wrote a quick script to help get rid of them.

What it does is track name changes, and if X name changes happen within Y seconds of each other, it kicks or bans them.

This plugin was tested on Team Fortress 2.

On games that support sv_namechange_cooldown_seconds (HL2:DM, DoD:S, CS:S, TF2, and possibly others):
You should adjust the ncp_detectiontime based on the values you use for sv_namechange_cooldown_seconds. For instance, if sv_namechange_cooldown_seconds is 20 (the default), ncp_detectiontime should be somewhere between 25 and 30.

The above should be considered mandatory to block LMAOBox.

Changelog:

• 1.1 - SourceBans will now be used if present.
• 1.0.2 - Fixed ban not working properly because of a mistake in the translation handling.
• 1.0.1 - Added ban source of "ncp" so that the OnBanClient hook fires.
• 1.0 - Initial release.

Installation:

1. Copy namechangepunisher.phrases.txt into addons/sourcemod/translations/ (possibly updated with translations later)
2. Copy namechangepunisher.smx into addons/sourcemod/plugins/

Configuration:

This plugin creates a configuration file: cfg/sourcemod/namechangepunisher.cfg
The following convars exist in this plugin:

• ncp_detections [val] (min 3, max 20, def 5) - Number of detections before taking action
• ncp_detectiontime [val] (min 5. max 60, def 10) - Max length of time in seconds between detections before counter resets
• ncp_punishmode [0/1] (def 1) - 0 = Kick, 1 = Ban.
• ncp_banlength [val] (def 60) - If ncp_punishmode is 1, how many minutes to ban for? 0 means indefinitely.
• ncp_debug [0/1] (def 0) - Show debug information when names are changed. This may disappear in later versions, it's mainly present in case there are problems with the plugin, server admins can see what's going on and report any strange behavior they see.
• ncp_version [val] (def 1.0) - Name Change Punisher version

Commands: There are none.

At present there is no cvar to disable the plugin.

FAQ:
Q. Why is it amount of time between detections and not the number of detections in a certain amount of time?
A. That would add a lot of complexity to the plugin, mainly with having to track ncp_detections -1 timestamps for each user that has changed their names. For performance reasons, it's recommended in SourcePawn that you don't re-index arrays.

Get Plugin link does not work because this plugin requires SourceBans include file sourcebans.inc.

Re: [ANY] Name Change Punisher
 

Min 5...what? 5 seconds? 5 minutes? Might help if you directly identified the time unit in use here. I can infer that it's in seconds myself, but someone else might not be able to figure that out themselves.

Anyways, installing this myself; I heard about what happened on OCR from Gamemaster, and I'm glad you've made this to combat the problem.
I'll report back with feedback if I find anything.

Re: [ANY] Name Change Punisher
 

Seconds. Sorry, I apparently dropped that from the description of that cvar at some point. Whoops.

The cvar description in the plugin will be fixed in the next release as well.

It wasn't the first time this had happened. I thought about writing a plugin to detect when they use the same nick as someone else on the server, but I was under the impression that the server already supports that, so they are using non-printable characters in their names to pad it.

Re: [ANY] Name Change Punisher
 

The percent symbol trick, I take it?

Re: [Any] Name Change Punisher
 

Been running fine for some time now without running into any problems. Haven't hit it kicking anyone incorrectly as of yet.

Re: [Any] Name Change Punisher
 

I need to investigate the interaction between this plugin and SourceBans. I have a feeling SourceBans isn't catching bans set by this.

Re: [Any] Name Change Punisher
 

Updated to version 1.0.1

I updated the plugin to have a command source for bans.

Unfortunately, my understanding of SourceBans is that it doesn't catch bans set using BanClient or BanIdentity. Sadly, this plugin uses BanClient.

However, this update will make the OnBanClient hook work so other plugins can catch when this ban occurs.

Edit: SourceBans expects plugins to send bans to it via its own native. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Then again, SourceBans is in desperate need of a rewrite now that nearly everything uses SourceMod 1.3 or newer.

Re: [ANY] Name Change Punisher (Updated 2011-07-08)
 

I've written a version that uses SourceBans if it's present, but I need to do some testing tonight to make sure it works.

I've attached it to this post (it reports as version 1.1), but the main post won't be updated until I make sure it works.

Also, it likely won't compile using the web compiler because it uses sourcebans.inc, so I also included the .smx file.

Re: [ANY] Name Change Punisher (Updated 2011-07-08)
 

OK, I tested the SourceBans version post #8 (1.1) and I get the following errors:

1. No Ban
2. Spams the client console & chat with: #Name_change_limit_exceded
3. Reports as version: "Name Change Punisher" (1.0.1) by Powerlord - (Not Version 1.1)
4. Sourcemod error log:
Running:
Metamod:Source version 1.9.0-dev - Build ID: 758:caf7d6dd8b80-dev
SourceMod Version: 1.4.0-dev - Build ID: 3307:88825dc19d2b-dev

This plugin will be very useful to us. Let me know if you need any other info, testing or help.

Request: Can you have it warn the player after X times before ban? (We do have some pubbers who like to change their names a lot.)

Re: [ANY] Name Change Punisher (Updated 2011-07-08)
 

Hmm, not good. I think it's related to #4.

That's actually part of TF2 itself. TF2 refers to its translation phrases as #TranslationPhrase in various messages.

Unfortunately, as you can see, TF2 isn't actually translating that message. It could (in theory) be caused by me hooking the name change event. I'll have to test it on a server without my plugin loaded to find out.

That's my fault. I meant to update the version number and didn't.

This is likely the cause of #1 above.

I had to check the SourceMod translations wiki to see what was wrong with it. Turns out I had the last two arguments backwards. I've attached a new version that should be fixed (and actually report as 1.1).

One of the reasons I didn't do this initially is because I thought the spammers would just disable their name change script, or just use it less, rather than being dealt with.