There is a universal way to do so, and it is to provide whatever feature the "cheat" programs are offering directly in the official client (either with first-party code or by providing an API that third parties can use).
In general, the way a networked FPS works is by using the server as an authoritative source for information, but doing extrapolation on the client-side. This means that enemies which are not visible to a player must still be known by the client, since the camera and enemy may move into a position where the enemy is visible more quickly than the server can respond. So the client must know the location and velocity of some opponents which are otherwise not visible to the player (because they might become visible).
But, let’s suppose we solve latency problems, and don’t use client-side prediction.
You would need some perfect visibility algorithm for determining which opponents should be transmitted to each client. Those visibility algorithms make a tradeoff between accuracy and computational expense. They are conservative, because it is always an error to fail to draw something which is visible, but it is never an error to draw something which is occluded.
But, let’s suppose we solve visibility perfectly, and only transmit to clients the locations of models which are actually visible, and only the parts of those models which have pixels on-screen.
Consider an opponent hiding behind a wall, but with a small part of the opponent poking out. The game is going to need to draw that part poking out, but if you look inside the game’s memory, you can find that those textures and vertices belong to a model used by an opponent.
Beyond that—we are transmitting a video stream to the client. Basically, we can solve cheating if everyone uses Stadia.
Anyway, the “fancy advanced algorithms” are not really fancy or advanced. They are de rigueur in FPS games.
Every game should have instantaneous snapping of the crosshairs to the target and firing without player intervention? Doesn't sound very fun.
If the resulting game is too simplistic, slowing limitations can be added, such as limiting the maximum speed at which the crosshair can move, or making weapon fire deal little damage relative to health so the target can move out of range if near cover before they die.
Impede the gameplay however you want, in pure mechanical aspects a program will always have the benefit of perfect accuracy and near-zero reaction time (as opposed to the >200ms average of a human)
If people thought that way, nobody would ever play any real world sports. There's always somebody better out there. Yet here we are...
> "If the resulting game is too simplistic, slowing limitations can be added, such as limiting the maximum speed at which the crosshair can move, or making weapon fire deal little damage relative to health so the target can move out of range if near cover before they die."
Again, doesn't sound very fun.
It’s cheating to try and remove for yourself only that reflex-based competition from games that are built on it, and it’s draconian (and not fun) to suggest removing all reflex-based competition from all games.
this is a very reductive view of fps gameplay. in all but the twitchiest arena-style games, anticipating the opponents position is much more important than being able to do a 45 degree flick faster than the other person.
But people can and still make AI- or CV- cheat software that would still work in this situation. Any time there is any sort of user-input there is a way to exploit it for cheat purposes.