Littlewhitey's VC-MP Server Rules

[Hanney]

Littlewhitey's VC-MP Server Rules

The following is the current rules that all players of the server are required to follow. Failure in doing so may result in a punishment depending on the circumstances the rule was broken under.

High – Rules that are broken under this category are considered serious and will result in severe punishment if broken. May result in long ban times.
Medium – These rules are not considered serious but are also not considered as unimportant matters. May result in moderate ban times. Players should be warned first in most cases.
Low – Rules under this category are considered to be petty. However, this does not mean that players breaking these rules may go unpunished. May result in a mute, kick or temporary ban. Warnings should be issued first in most cases.


In-depth overview of server rules:
The following section is intended to provide a more in-depth explanation of each of the rules for players playing on the server:

High Severity Rules:

Attack of Server Resources
This would include attempting to cause some form of damage to the functionality of the server’s hardware or software. For example, attempting to take the server offline whether it be via an exploit in the server itself or another method such as a denial of service attack.
This is a very serious matter and any players caught carrying out attacks on the server will be permanently banned from the server.

This includes attacks on:

• Littlewhitey’s server
• Project Apollo Community
• Littlewhitey’s server forum

Trainers / Performance Altering Game Modifications
Trainers are 3rd party pieces of software which inject themselves into the game. These can be much like cheats and provide the user with a range of features to alter the behavior of the player’s game. Trainers may provide features such as but not limited to: infinite health, speed hacks, supplication of weapons and other miscellaneous features. These tools can be used to provide advantageous game behaviors over other players in game therefore they should not be used. This is considered as hacking and any players using these tools will be banned for a period of 30 days.

Likewise, performance altering game modifications also fall under this category and are treated in a similar manner. Game modifications may include altered game files which provide “performance” enhancing properties to a player’s game. This may include but is not limited to – Map modifications, weapon behavior modifications, vehicle handling modifications, gravity modifications, game speed modifications, and alterations of in game player animations.

CLEO/ASI mods on vc-mp are blocked by the vc-mp client for a reason! Any attempt to by pass this block will result in a ban! This also includes 'widescreen' fix.

Cosmetic mods on the other hand are permitted. These mods do not provide advantages over players and are visual only. These mods are generally client side meaning only you can see them therefore they should not have any impact on the game play for other players. These may include for example: vehicle model modifications, weapon model modifications, weather mods, and texture mods.
If you are unsure if a modification is allowed or not please contact an admin either in game in the server or on the forum for more assistance.

Unauthorized Access to Staff Accounts
Players caught attempting to enter the server with moderator or administrator accounts of the server will be punished. Players who successfully intrude into an administrator or moderator account will also be severely punished. This is a serious matter as players are not only attempting to enter an account which they do not own but also an account with higher permission levels which a player could potentially cause a lot of disruption in the server and for other players playing in the server if misused.

Unauthorized Access to a Player Accounts
Likewise, players should also not intrude into the accounts of other players which they do not own or have permission to access:

• Any players unsuccessfully attempting to log into another players account which they do not own or have permission to access will be punished.
• Any players successfully attempting to log into another players account which they do not own or have permission to access will be punished.
• Players caught causing damage to another players account integrity will also be punished. This could be accomplished through: stealing money from another players account or stealing a vehicle. Those who steal from other accounts will have their account stripped of ownership from items such as money and vehicles will be reset as well as a lengthy ban time.

Please note that if you give your password to another player we do not take any responsibility for any loss or damage done to your account. It is your responsibility to make sure that you keep your password secure. The Project Apollo Community system encrypts these passwords automatically on our server using SHA-512 encryption.

Ban Evasion
This includes players who have been banned who attempt to play on the server during their allocated ban period. Players caught trying to conceal their identity and evading will be punished. The punishment will be delivered as an extended period of ban time. The overall ban time of the player will be doubled.
For example, if a player was banned for 3 days then evades their ban within that set period of time their new ban time will be 6 days. If the player evades again for a 2nd time their ban period will be 12 days and so on. If a player continues to constantly evade they may be permanently banned.


Medium Severity Rules:

Scamming
Players attempting to scam players out of their cash in game will be punished. This means no pretending to sell a player a vehicle, no pretending to give a player something "cool" if they give you cash. Basically, no tricking other players into giving you cash.

Stats Padding
Stats padding is when two or more players group together and one player agrees to allow the other player to kill them on purpose without any resistance. This could be either to enhance stats such as number of kills or more likely to gain money by exploiting the “Killing Spree” system on the server. For example, each time a player makes a kill in a server they are awarded with cash. Every time a player makes 5 consecutive kills they are awarded with a cash spree bonus. Players exploiting this feature of the server may be able to gain a large amount of profit in cash by gaining lots of money.
Players caught doing this will be banned from the server for a period of time and will be stripped of any money that was gained during the stats pad. Players may also have their stats or vehicles reset depending on the situation.

Death Evading
Death evading can occur in many situations:

 - One situation that occurs is when a player is engaged in combat or is about to die. The player opens the chat box and types /q to quit the game thus avoiding their death and their “Death” count does not rise on their account stats. The player doing the damage is not awarded with the kill.

- Another situation occurs when a player is near death and before the player is about to die they open the chat box and type the suicide command /kill. As a result, the kill is not awarded to the player doing the damage and instead what appears in the chatbox is “x died. (Commited Suicide)” Again, players may type this out of spite so that the other player is not awarded with a kill.

- A player may also be engaged in combat or about to die when they pause their game and quickly quit through the pause menu. Alternatively they may also minimize their game and end the process by task manager or manually unplug wires needed to maintain internet connection from their computer.. Instead of a player quitting they will instead cause their client to hang and “Timeout” causing themselves to be disconnected from the server.

- Another occurrence can happen if a player is low on health and they on purposely kill themselves so that the kill cannot be rewarded. This can happen by fall damage from high heights or jumping into the water.

- Pausing the game and clicking the "Reconnect" button on the main menu while in combat is not allowed.

- And finally when a player is about to drown, fall, explode or burn to death (or any other "natural" cause of death) and type /q to avoid dying. Do note that it makes no difference whether there is combat involved or not, death evading is still a punishable rule violation, even if you do it in your own privacy while stunting or just generally freeroaming.

Staff / Player Impersonation
Players should not try to replicate the names of other players in purpose in order to impersonate either a member of staff or another player.

Firstly, impersonating a member of staff is not allowed. This could be a player using the name very similar of that to a member of staff. This could also include joining with a name such as “admin” or “administrator”. It may also include a player telling other players that you are admin when you are not and threatening to ban them. This is considered “back seat moderation” which can result in a player being punished.

Players should also not attempt to replicate account names or existing players on purpose as this can cause grief. Many more serious situations can also come of this. Such as impersonating another player and framing them for an illegal rule breaking action they did not do then trying to get that player into serious trouble with the server.

Map Exploitation

Teleport Glitch
Certain areas of the map can be exploited to allow players to teleport other places in the map such as the Golf course or Little Havana police department. Exploiting areas such as these to teleport to other places of the map is forbidden. Sometimes teleportation bugs occur accidentally these are forgiven. If any player is caught exploiting these areas of the map to teleport they will be punished.

Ghost world abuse/Map glitches
Players shouldn't glitch out of the map, glitch inside buildings or objects by any means. Players should not be under the map in unintended areas and should not attempt to kill other players from underneath the map. Accidents will be pardoned.

Glitching:

Wall Glitching
This occurs when a player stands too near a thin object such as a wall or a window then fires their weapon. As a result of this the collision system in Grand Theft Auto Vice City bugs up and the player model and the weapon being fired, as well as the bullets go through the object and fire through.

This is disallowed as this was clearly not intended as an original feature of Vice City. Some cases may be accidental where as others may be on purpose.
A potential accidental example of wall glitching can be seen in this image, notice how the players weapon is behind the wall which is higher than the weapon being held at chest height yet the weapon still fires through:

For new players and even regular players this can occur sometimes without players even noticing due to the perspective of the camera on the players screen it may seem like they are firing over the wall. In other more severe cases we can see that the occurrence of wall glitching can be on purpose and not done accidentally. An example of this is shown in the screen shot below:

Notice how that in this screen a window is dividing the two players physically yet the player at the window still manages to fire a stubby shotgun through. In this case, it is very hard to do this accidentally.

Please note that 0.4 has an anti-wall glitch feature in place to prevent wall glitches from occurring most of the time.

Flamethrowers are NO LONGER ALLOWED to be used to wall glitch. Any players caught using a flamethrower to wall glitch will be punished.
Snipers are not to be used to wall glitch. Any players caught using a sniper to wall glitch will be punished.

Regarding VEHICLES, you can use vehicles' explosion to blast players through collision but you are not allowed to stuck your vehicles inside walls. You are not allowed to shoot through vehicles.

Crouch Glitching
Crouch glitching is a variant of fast switching except the only difference is that a player crouches when doing so. Crouch glitching happens when a player crouches and fires a shotgun then quickly sprints away.

Unlike fast switching after firing a weapon the player is unable to move for roughly 0.5-1 second. However, crouch switching is different. After a player fires a weapon when crouched and changes weapon to sprint there is no delay before that they have to wait before they can run again. This means that players can stack up a lot of fast movements and shots in a very very small period of time. Players can then spam a large amount of imprecise shots in a small amount of time and manage to successfully hit their target. This kind of glitch removes any of the skill elements of having to aim precisely and pick and choose shots carefully.

Due to the large amount of fast movement in a short period of time this also adds a lot of desync between players. This is not so bad when it is two low ping players fighting each other but when two high ping players are fighting each other this causes A LOT of desync between the clients making it harder to fight.

The crouch glitching rule applies to ALL WEAPONS. This means, no crouch glitching with shotguns, no crouch glitching with mp5s/uzis, no crouch glitching with Pythons.

There are many other glitches and variations of glitches. The ones listed above are the main ones to be highlighted and that players must be aware of when playing in the server. For more information on Vice City Multiplayer glitches please visit this topic below: http://forum.littlewhiteys.co.uk/index.php/topic,16931.0.html

[Ryz]

Low Severity Rules:

Racism / Discrimination
Racism or any form of discrimination on a group of people is not allowed on the server.

This may include characteristics such as a players:

• Ethnicity / Skin Colour
• Religious beliefs
• Country / City / Region etc.

The server allows other players to blow off steam at each other by general insults. However, insults considered to be “stepping over the line” such as insults targeting a specific player’s background or identity of a group of people is disallowed. If an administrator or moderator believes that the player is breaking this rule then they will most likely be muted or kicked from the server.

Any player who joins the server with a racial and/or discriminating nickname will be punished with a kick and will be requested to change the nickname. Any further joins to the server could result in a temporary or permanent ban.

Spawn Killing
Spawn killing occurs when one player stands at the spawn of another player and repeatedly fires at the spot (XYZ coordinate) that they spawn on.

As a result the player spawns, and is automatically placed in the line of fire of the player standing near the spawn, firing the weapon. This results in the player being rendered immobile and, in most cases, killed defenselessly.

The server has an automatic spawn protection system implemented, which grants the player several seconds of invincibility which does the job for the most part, but still is too young of a concept to be considered fail-safe.

Players caught knocking over players that have spawned at their spawn coordinate without any movement* will be considered to have committed spawn killing and will be reprimanded accordingly.
If, for some reason, a player is constantly being spawn killed in the absence of staff, we advise that the player take another team, as well as report the spawn killer.

Spamming
Players should use the chatbox carefully by being careful not to abuse it. Players repeating the same sentence or spamming useless garbage into the chatbox over and over in a short period of time will be muted. This can range from players spamming somewhat reasonable messages such as:
“Who wants to buy my car for x” or “All players come to x for a race”

To stupid messages such as

“aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa” or “asdasdsdfsdfjksdfjksjdfj”

Depending on the situation admins may choose to either mute a player or temporarily ban them if they continue to spam after several warnings.

If you wish to repeat a message which is the same as before then please wait for a short period of time so that your message can no longer be seen in chat then enter it again. An auto-mute system is in place to take care of this problem. If you spam you will be automatically muted and each iteration of a mute your the amount of time that you will be muted for is doubled. The initial mute time is 30 seconds.

This applies to all chats – Global chat, team chat, commands and private messages.

Heli-Killing
As part of the server rules the amount of times a player can helikill another player has been reduced to 3 times. Each time a player helikills they are automatically drowned and given a warning. After 3 helikills the player is kicked from the server.

Heli killing intentionally will result in a ban now, that means if a player intentionally attempts to kill another player to end his spree or waste his weapons purchased, will result in a ban.

Reporters are hereby requested to post a video of the intentional heli killers, the ban will be issued upon the admins decision.

NOTE: Latest updates to the server lead to the point where you can't heli kill a player anymore so that means this rule is obsolete.



Advertising
The advertisement of other servers by players is not permitted.

This involves:

• Joining the server with the IP address of another server.
• Telling other players to go to another server.
• Spamming in the chat box advertising a server’s website.
• Offering players hacks (Could lead to a ban dependent on situation)

Players caught doing so will most likely be kicked or muted. If the player persists and continues to advertise then they will be temporarily banned from the server. If you wish to go to another server with a friend please private message them.

Teamkilling / Team abusing
Players must not attempt to team kill other players or interfere with their game. This may include, blowing up team mates vehicles, running over team mates with vehicles, heli-killing team mates, knocking players over with melee, shooting on purposely at team mates, blocking team mates from gaining kills by standing in front of enemies.

Punishments can vary from drowns to kicks to temporary bans.

Blocking Team Spawn Points and Bank Entrance with Vehicles
Players should not spawn their vehicles on top of important areas such as spawn points for teams or the entrance to the bank. This can cause problems for players spawning as it can cause damage to the players health as they spawn. The bank entrance should also be kept clear allowing players to enter and exit the bank with no problems.

13/8/2018(details added to the rule):
Players should not block any closed spaces, interiors and their entrances such as the pharmacy, army towers, malibu, mansion etc. If the place is big enough you can spawn your vehicle but players should be able to move around freely without any obstacles.

The vehicles of players caught doing this will be removed from the spot it’s thought to be blocking and the player will be given a verbal warning. If the player continues they will be punished even more so which may lead to their vehicle ownership being revoked.

Lag Related Issues: High Pings / Inconsistent Latency / Extremely Low Average FPS
Players with an average ping of 500ms and above will be automatically kicked by the server after a period of time.
If a player’s ping is inconsistent e.g a lot of jitter and variation in end to end delay between the player and server occurs such as pings spiking with large ranges from 100ms to 500ms this may cause a very bad lag warps and inconsistency in the player’s sync. If the admin deems this as inadequate for others players on the server then the player may be told to fix their connection and kicked from the game.

Likewise, if a player has unplayable graphical lag with an average of roughly less than 10 FPS the admin may decide whether or not the players game is suitable or not to be playing. This can affect the gameplay of other players as it may be easier to kill a player with a ping of 500ms who would have been kicked than to kill a player with less than 10 fps. Such players with very bad graphics lag do not see a lot of other player’s shots and require the player to stand still holding the fire button for a few seconds before the animation has enough time to play out on the slow game. Admins may kick or temporarily ban players with awful lag that return.

Event Disruption

Admins in the server may occasionally want to organize events to be held for players in the server. Examples of common past events are Derby's, races, kill the boss and general 1v1's. Players should not interfere with the organization of events or the events themselves. Interference of events such as causing disruption, spamming to admins to teleport them, shooting at players or not listening to admin instructions may result in a drown/kick/ban. If an event is running admins should frequently be monitoring the situation and attempt to inform all players that an event is going underway and not too shoot. This may be achieved through communication of the chat box or announcement messages directed to a specific player/all players.

False Reports
Players should not abuse the report system. The report system is for genuine reports only. Players should not purposely report players for false reasons in order to get another player into trouble. False reports can be a waste of administrator’s time. An exception to this is if a player is under the false influence that another player is breaking the rules when they are not. This may be accidental and therefore can be forgiven.

Idling
Players who idle in the server will be kicked, this is because of the server player limit and those idling are not allowing new players join if the server is busy.


Mute/shun evading
If an admin mutes/shuns you so that you cannot type in the chatbox they did it for a reason. Most likely you were spamming or being a nuisance. Players who leave the server and rejoin or rejoin with different nicknames to unmute themselves will be punished. 

Insulting Staff
Players who insult staff will be muted and temporarily banned from the server if they continue. We expect that players joining the server should have respect towards the staff managing the server. This is not something which should be taught by our server, we expect that if a player wants to play on the server they should at a minimum join the server with basic manners. players should not swear at admins/insult admins if they disagree with an admins decision or action. Players should also follow the instructions of admins at all times.

Equally so, admins should not insult players and should treat players with respect. If a player requires to be punished the admin should perform their duties in the most professional manner possible without cussing or swearing at the player(s) in question.

Doxing
Respect privacy!

Players who post someone's private information as in real life name, address, picture etc. without their consent will be warned/muted/shunned and eventually banned in case of repetitive offenses.


The rules listed above are not final. These may be modified on a regular basis and updated.

Punishments for breaking each rule may vary on a number of different factors such as:

• How many times the rule was broken
• If the player has been previously banned/kicked/warned
• Whether or not multiple rules were broken
• General player/behavior attitude towards staff and other players
• Intentions behind the players actions

Last updated: 1/12/2020

[Ryz]

Important Rule Changes:

18/06/2014

Medium Severity Rules:

• GLITCHING: Flamethrowers are NO LONGER ALLOWED to be used to wall glitch. Any players caught using a flamethrower to wall glitch will be punished.
• SCAMMING: Any players who attempt to sell unowned vehicles just to gain a profit will be punished.
• BANK KILLING: Spawning vehicles in the bank is allowed, however using the vehicles to kill players is against the rules.
• OWNERSHIP OF MULTIPLE VEHICLES: Due to the limited amount of vehicles available on the server for players to purchase, we do not provide players the ability to own more than 1 vehicle per IP. (http://forum.littlewhiteys.co.uk/index.php/topic,19504.0.html)

Low Severity Rules:

• RACISM/DISCRIMATION: Any player who joins the server with a racial and/or discriminating nickname will be kicked and requested to change the nickname. Continuous breaking of this rule may result in a ban

[Ryz]

Important Rule Changes:

02/09/2014

Medium Severity Rules:

• CROUCHING: Crouching is now strictly forbidden, anyone caught crouching will be punished. (read more)

[Ryz]

Important Rule Changes:

24/05/2015

Low Severity Rules:

• SPAWN CAMPING: Spawn campers will be warned and kicked/tempbanned if repeated.
• IDLING: Idlers will be kicked from the server.
  

[Ryz]

Important Rule Changes:

01/06/2015

Medium Severity Rules:

• CROUCHING: Crouching is now once again allowed in the server with any weapon apart from shotguns - crouching has been disabled for shotguns only.
• OWNERSHIP OF MULTIPLE VEHICLES: Due to changes in our vehicle system, this rule has now been rendered obsolete. - more info here

[Ryz]

Important Rule Changes:

02/06/2015

Medium Severity Rules:

• CROUCHING: The M4 and the Ruger can no longer be used with crouching.

[Darfy]

Important Rule Update:

22/12/2015

Medium Severity Rules:

• DEATH EVADING: Added a fourth section to clarify the meaning of the term "Death Evading" in a slightly more comprehensive way.

[Usmanulamin]

Important Rule Change:

16-01-2016

Low Severity Rules:

Intentional Heli Killing: Heli killing intentionally will result in a ban now, that means if a player intentionally attempts to kill another player to end his spree or waste his weapons purchased, will result in a ban.

Reporters are hereby requested to post a video of the intentional heli killers, the ban will be issued upon the admins decision.

[Hanney]

Updated the rules to be more relevant to 0.4, some rules have been updated to be more relevant and no longer relevant rules have been removed.

E.g some removed rules such as:

Rapid-fire glitch (fixed in 0.4)
Ghost world glitch (isn't possible in 0.4)
Killing players in bank (bank is it's own world, so no other players)
Spawning vehicles in bank to kill other players (again, no longer possible)

Updates to other rules as well such as:

Wall glitching (as it's partially fixed in 0.4, added snipers to the no wall glitch rule)
More types of death evading (reconnect, purposely killing self)
Updated the ping limit in rules (from 750ms to 500ms).
Updated teamkilling to include (helikilling, melee knockovers, general shooting at players, blocking teammates.)
Advertising: (Advertising/offering hacks to other players)
Updated definition of spam rule (auto-mute)
Spawn camping (for high volumes of players in one area)

[Darfy]

Important Rule Changes:

09-03-2016

Low Severity Rules:

Spawn Camping: Spawn camping rule has been removed but spawn killing rule still applies.

[AEO]

What about using VPN?

[Hanney]

A VPN is allowed, however, if it's gonna be having a huge effect on the players ping or stability of the ping the player may be kicked. Aswell as this, obviously if a player uses a VPN to evade an IP ban then they will be punished for ban evading.

[Hanney]

Updated rules to add the following section:

Insulting Staff
Players who insult staff will be muted and temporarily banned from the server if they continue. We expect that players joining the server should have respect towards the staff managing the server. This is not something which should be taught by our server, we expect that if a player wants to play on the server they should at a minimum join the server with basic manners. players should not swear at admins/insult admins if they disagree with an admins decision or action. Players should also follow the instructions of admins at all times.

Equally so, admins should not insult players and should treat players with respect. If a player requires to be punished the admin should perform their duties in the most professional manner possible without cussing or swearing at the player(s) in question.

[Hanney]

03/06/2016

Crouch glitching rule updated to be more specific. Note this line:

The crouch glitching rule applies to ALL WEAPONS. This means, no crouch glitching with shotguns, no crouch glitching with mp5s/uzis, no crouch glitching with Pythons.