Attn Mod Teams: what do you need? suggestions thread.

(SCDS_reyalP) #21

One thing I’d love to see is for the tools source (editor, map compiler, custom maya plugins etc) to be part of the SDK. Documentation is nice but code is better.

Assuming there are patches/updates, getting established mods in the loop before release can smooth the transition for everyone.

Making it easy for users to obtain and play mods is critical. ET did this pretty well once the various download and profile bugs were worked out. So err… more of the same :slight_smile:

edit:
Failing #2, at keep the delay between game point releases and SDK releases fairly short.

(TinMan) #22

SDK acess to the persistant stats system.
Allowing modders their own database on the offical server would open up a lot of interesting possibilities.
This could obviously be a lot of headaches for you. You wouldn’t want to give acess to the vanilla games rankings system. And you’d want to have some limit on the data size.

Like TTK-Bandit said, acess to game browser.

I guess what us coders are asking is give us acess to as much as you possible can, and then some more.

(kamikazee) #23

The tool source would be a pretty nice add-on. (Still, I like some docs.) Especially for the model plugins, it would sure help to modify it for recent apps.

So in short: you want mods to have parallel binaries, allowing the player to select which version gets loaded?
The idea might be nice, but you can already “select” the binary by correctly managing your Pak files on the server.
Separated downloads wouldn’t work, seeing how the game checks for purity. This might also allow non-pk4 files to be transferred, like executables.

So imo, it’s pretty redundant.

(Mr.Mxyzptlk) #24

The current ET mechanism limits your binary distribution to 1 type per platform. You cannot select 1 of N linux client binaries available for play on a single server while another linux client connecting to same server uses another linux binary.

(Strogg) #25

If I put this in the wrong area I apoligize

if they implement auto switching in the game that would really mess up the game big time thats why I dont play 2142 anymore thats why Im selling it What a load of cr@@. It really ticks me off to no end when you were on a team and working as a team then out of left field the server would auto switch to the other team, That’s really messed up. I played Tribes 2 for 5 years never had to go thru all the BS in the game. I pray they do not implement auto switching. All they have to do is implement one on one team balancing thats it. Dont make it difficult it’s a no brainer.

This is how one on one team balancing works:

Red team has 13 guys playing
Blue Team has13 guys playing

2 players leave red team

Teams are now Red 11 to Blue 13

2 ways to fix this

  1. Somebody switches to Red Team if the want.
  2. Red team is just out of luck till someone joins the server to even teams up. Now you may say “Well That Sucks” Blue team has more players and now has an advantage over Red Team… Well T.S.!!! Get Over It!! It just means you have to work a little harder till someone joins the server… so get over it!

That means that any new players that joins the game will be forced to join the red team. NOT BLUE TEAM, and no team switching is allowed when teams are even. In Tribes when a player was try’n to change teams when the team were even it would say in the chat hud box “JOE BLOW WAS TRYING TO UNBALANCE THE TEAMS” and would not let the user switch teams.

Well thats what one on one team balancing is all about. I hope they use this type of concept in Quake Wars.

Cya

(zeh) #26

If I put this in the wrong area I apoligize

Can we agree on keeping this thread ontopic and related to suggestions to help modding and mod teams? I don’t think posting requests related to gameplay or generic game features would help (that can be posted anywhere else on the forum instead).

(Mr.Mxyzptlk) #27

Another feature for modding that would help is raw-byte counters for UDP payload both client and server-side. Would love to be able to make a graph to sample this, give rates, and on server-side we could then total it up and offer accurate advice on server traffic profiles. This would also make it possible for us modders to see when we add something to a game which inadvertently causes much more network traffic than anticipated. For obvious reasons, I’m not asking for visibility into the protocol, just raw byte counters, per connection, up/downstream, both client and server ends. Oh that would be great!

(JJeep) #28

Wiki
Yes, I think this is a definite must, from what I’ve read of the iddev site something along the lines of that or like modwiki (which, correct me if I’m wrong, I believe is run by id) would be good. Detailing everything that’s plausible in the greatest detail that’s possible.

From what I know you have a private wiki that you use at the moment, if you can’t create a new wiki or it’d be a waste of time/resources transferring it all over. Then opening that private wiki up to the public for viewing at the least would be magnificent.

Such a wiki wouldn’t necessarily have to be very specific, but the more specific the better. Some basic tutorials would be very useful, for example how to add a custom static prop to a map from the various modelling programs. Some more technical information would be very useful, for example, documenting what can be achieved by using just map scripts and what would need code modifications would be extremely useful in saving effort/time.

If you do decide to open the private wiki for viewing only, then somewhere for the more established/progressed mods to create tutorials and promote discussion within the community would be good. Talking between mod teams can only lead to more improvement across the board and more innovation. Something akin to the bf2 editor forums would be useful, but perhaps a more disciplined/policed.

Torrents/Distribution
For the large stuff, like mega textures, having an official tracker would be awesome. Understand that it might not be possible to actually host the files, but a tracker that has an official “stamp” would be great along side more traditional means of delivering files.

Speaking along these lines, then some sort of way to deliver files over a steam like system like Vapour would be good, but in saying that I don’t know how much would be down to them and how much would be needed by you to input. Talking at least should be considered. Perhaps even creating a custom sd client to do this sort of thing could be considered.

News/Patches
Some forewarning to mod teams of when a patch is going to come out and what exactly what changes have been made and where would be useful. This could be covered by an NDA like agreement if necessary to prevent news sites knowing something they shouldn’t. In order that mods can prepare to be ready to fix any issues that might become apparent rather than being surprised by a patch. Keeping mod teams informed of what’s being changed, as I’m sure you appreciate, is very important.

Updates
As previously mentioned by myself (Distribution), and others, it would be useful if the end user could easily receive notification that there’s an update to a mod/map/whatever and then grab it would be good. There’d have to be some co-operation between mod-teams, file mirrors and sd here, but I think it’d be well worth it for convenience for the end-user.

Stats
The dreaded s word. Would be useful if mod teams could access the global statistics for whomever and for whatever reason. I can also perceive it’d be good for a mod team to include their own stats for their mod only, so perhaps setting aside a limited set of custom, per mod sections would be awesome, but constraints of resources could prohibit this to some extent. However, allowing mods access to change the core game statistics would be a potential disaster, but allowing them access to view the stats and manipulate them according to their needs would be great.

Another useful thing would be to access stats from a situation outside of the game environment to parse/present in say a mod’s web page, presenting a players statistics for that mod only. Grouping players by say key-hash or something similar.

Most Important
Ship the SDK with the game, or simultaneously over the internet, at least make it very shortly after the game so that we can get tinkering as soon as possible. Also keeping it, and the tools up to date would be awesome. <insert grumble about bf2>

–
Long post I know, but I had to get my ideas down, no doubt I wasn’t clear on some points, or overly clear on others. No doubt that I’ve also forgotten something.

Great to see that you are asking for input on what we would like to see/do with the engine, hope that everything is on track development wise and we see the game asap to tinker with and maybe play :stuck_out_tongue:

(kamikazee) #29

Sorry, but aren’t there tools for just that? :?

Correction, it is run by iceheart, a member of the Doom 3 World community/forum.
All on modwiki is either documented from experience or from references like iddevnet.com. (Depends on the page, normally it should be marked.)

You can read rich’s thoughts on the wiki on Doom 3 World, maybe he’ll post it here before we know it. (rich is one of the main contributors on modwiki, btw.)

(ayatollah) #30

Play W:ET, realise this is in effect, stop comparing ET:QW to other games like Tribes and BF, the end.

(AnarchyAngel) #31

Video How to Tutorials would also be an advantage much like the UT 2004 ones that came bundled with the game, these were the best asset for that game and was the most handy tool Ive used while modding for that engine.

(TTK-Bandit) #32

  • a more stable editor than the q4 one (it’s crashing very often), with better mouse aiming… I hate the old q2 radiant style mouse aiming… bring me something like the GTK style aiming…

  • possibility to view every model in the modelviewer… in q4, you could only see some of them for some reason.
    and being able to switch skins & add shaderparms in the modelviewer would be cool too.

  • better support for demo playback and avi recording… I’m working on a camera pathing addition for q4 atm, and I can’t use the existing avidemo, because its not constant in time, and doesnt even accept netdemos.
    so I have to use the nettimedemo (because normal netdemo command skips frames if the previous ones took too long)
    and the nettimedemo command does not support serverdemos…
    so if you could add a buildin avinetdemo command with support for server netdemos that would help a lot.

  • debugging is a mess, you never know what is crashing… could you add an exception dialog like prey had ? that would be nice :slight_smile:

+possibility to run multiple instances of et:qw like it was possible in q3… in q4 you can do it too, but only if you make every instance run with different savepaths.

  • possibility to add own definitions (in the .def files) … for example: in q4, there are entityDef, model, playermodel, skin, … but there was no way to create new ones.
(ayatollah) #33

Strange seeing that you could do it with the Q3 editor

(malarky) #34

His comment is valid; If there’s something out there that already does a similar job, there would be no point in us replicating it just to put our name on the top. We would like to be a one-stop shop for ETQW modders, but we have to support the community, not dictate to it. There’s plenty of things we can do aside from hosting a wiki.

(DerSaidin) #35

In support of some important ones people have already said:

  • Model conversion tools (thats models AND THEIR TEXTURES/SHADERS)
  • Map/scripts/etc samples
  • Tutorials
(Mr.Mxyzptlk) #36

And what tools would you suggest to do the job or are you just guessing that there must be some tools out there which allow a client without networking knowledge to monitor UDP payload counters?

(Diecast5) #37

Play W:ET, realise this is in effect, stop comparing ET:QW to other games like Tribes and BF, the end.[/quote]

I see no comparing to what Strogg was say he is making sence , there is a problem and it can be fixed , also is it not that if the server is full whan a GDF dies and a Strogg is near by can change the GDF to a strogg and the sides will be uneven unless the GDF can change the strogg to a GDF to balance it out in some way right or worng , so I kinda agree with Strogg on what he is saying .

(malarky) #38

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I think this gameplay stuff is a little off topic, let’s keep this to modding suggestions please :slight_smile: :cyclops:

(ayatollah) #39

The point I make is that everything that he said is already done in W:ET, if a team are down some players it is down to players on the team with more players to decide whether they want to jump over to the other team.

Server side cvars are used to do balance teams, etc, and some servers have extra scripts running to do the auto-switching, like was mentioned but this is all server side options.

So if you understand me now, W:ET already has these options so I don’t see why ET:QW would not, if people bother to play W:ET they will realise this…

(jaybird) #40

Agreed, these are gameplay issues that do not have anything to do with the topic.