From admin point of view the first few things I see before running any mod is:
Does it generate its own etkey? I don’t want hassle of telling new players how to get etkey. Mod based etkey most welcome.
How easy is to set up admin levels? I normally run 21 admin level system.
Is it easy to ban cheaters? How easy can cheaters bypass ban?
Can it handle appx 32 players? Does it lag like crazy with 32 players? Players normally whine for lag no matter what you but if mod is lag that whine would increase by 5x fold. That would turn out nightmare.
How big is the mod size? I normally avoid anything greater then 20Mb even though my redirect runs on 1Gbps port which can handle 50 players downloading same time with 1MB/s.
QQ: What are the available admin / back end side features? If you can share the list of available features we can suggest/share our needs and you can accommodate accordingly.
I need to think this through in near future. I have no admin system currently, but i will add basic support soon.
Got me here again, will thiink about the usual stuff, like IP/MAC or bans based on guid (but these are too easy bypassable anyway, only hardware based guid may help there, but even there this can be bypassed, there is no best system, all can be broken). But it is also on my list.
That will need to be tested. I can only dream of 32 players currently. The skin system demands some memory of course, so this will be the main cause of lag from my mod. Will be interesting to see.
It is small, only the new menu pics did cost alot. So the mod is currently about 5 MB. The skins are loaded in extra pk3s, so this depends on admin, what skins he wants and how much of them he wants to make players download. If you make a full skinpack with the maximum amount of skins, then you will reach something up to 15 MB. So this is 5 + [0,15], something like that.
QQ: only the skinsystem? That will be the most fun for admins, they have huge freedom in creating a unique server, and can create policies. There will also be soon awards, which admins can configure. So only an awarded player will be able to wear a certain skin. This is pretty big feature by itself. No clue if people actually realized yet how unique and awesome this is
But then there is notthing much. That is why i asked? You have turned my attention to banning now. But the rest will be up to admins. I have pretty much no clue at all and never wanted, if i am honest haha
First the disclaimer: I have not modded or run servers under ET, so I might be completely wrong, but I do have some experience with this from ETQW.
Files are not referenced by their names, but by their checksums (i.e. ‘the content’ of a file.) If you have two files with the same name (look aside for a moment from the fact that you can’t have two files with the same name in the same directory,) but different content, they will have different checksums. If you have two files with different names, but the same content, they will share the same checksum.
So applying this logic to your example above, you would get the correct skinpack, since the checksum has not changed (or it will download the file with the correct checksum from the server, if not present on the client.) You don’t really have to care about the checksum stuff, since it is the burden of the server admin setting up the mods. Just know that it works.
But again, I am talking from my experience with ETQW and I don’t know if the same concept applies to ET (but I would think it would, as the sourcecode contains the U.S. cryptology export warnings.)
The practise of referincing files by their content (checksum) instead of their filename, aside from having tangible practical benefits as in the example above, was implemented as an anticheat meassure. This way you can’t f. ex. exchange a map the server runs with your own map which has invisible walls, so you can see through them.
(So basicly, what Thunder_13th said, just explained.)
PS. Are you really serious about this mod or is it just a sarcastic statement to SD and Nexon about Xt and the F2P model? Both perhaps?
The way i understand it is that there is checksum on file, and the name influences what pack is actually loaded last. My concern when asking that question is when admin A decides to screw over skinpack of admin B. So he prepares a download overriding the skinpack of admin B, then client sees wrong skins on server. So lets say admin A has server A and he does not like admin B of server B. He decides to screw him over by offering the clients who connect to his server (server A) a skinpack, which overrides the skinpack of server B. That is all i am concerned about.
Skinpacks will be located in mod folder. If modfolder is always loaded last, then admin A can not, for example, place a pack in etmain folder to override data. Also, from what i understand, if there is a .pk3, and this .pk3 has only one file with name “file.cfg”, then there can be multiple .pk3 in modfolder, which all have the same file “file.cfg”. When client joins server, the client will load only the .pk3 which the server also references. So these .pk3s can co-exist. Hopefully i have not overseen something in this regard.
I think that the game automatically assign a new filenames to files, if files with identical filenames (but different content) are downloaded from different servers. In any case, the ‘worst case’ scenario (if that is not the case) would be that the client would have to automatically redownload the file when connecting to the server.
In your example, server admin A can not screw over server admin B, since server admin B is responsible for setting up the checksums used on his own (B’s) server, and the client can only use the checksums referenced by the active server connection. But it might be possible for admin A (and B) to screw up the clients offline experience (but who cares about that in an online game.)
Reiterating, server admins refer to their files by content (hash,) not by filename.
Well, let’s hope it works, because if not, then only solution is static skins shipped with the mod itself, and that would be stupid. What i now pretty much have is a system, which is plugin capable. So it is actually a mod with mod support for skins ^^
I kinda forgot. There is basic XP save support and GC save support via sqlite database. There is also omnibots, etpro mapscripting support and i plan to make a new Lua interface, which will have a bit more features. There is basic Lua support already in, but i will change the interface sometime after open beta release.
That looks really great acQu!
Will this be the new limbo-menu? (because of the option to choose the team). If yes I would not display the skinpack name, as you have only one set of skins to choose from anyway . I would rather replace the top panel with player alias and the medals/stars that are normally in the limbo menu underneath your name. Also you would have to get the weapon choice in there somehow. Maybe a dropdown menu when you choose the class.
Also place a small preview of the command-map as a small square in the lower-left corner of the player view. Clicking it allows you to change to the commandmap with objective display and so on. In the commandmap-view there would be a small preview of the player which would allow you to switch back into player view again.more or less, like here
I think that would be a great allround version of a limbo-menu. Having team/class/player specific things in one dock, and the map/objective specific things in the other one.
No, this is the barracks menu There is still the old limbo menu existing. Classes and team are skin specific in the barracks menu, so you do not select a team or class to play, but rather you modify your character this way ^^
No worries, all will be clearer when you got your hands on it and tried it out for once. I think most stuff is done, i pretty much need to just write database support for it and fix the one or other things, go through a first testing phase with some “volunteers ^^” and then i will just throw it out there.
Some cool stuff: it has one feature noone knows about yet, and i really think this will be liked by more competetive oriented people. But must see this first, if the mods gets played anyway (because we all know, ET is pretty much dying).
Just a side-note on this: i am not going to make this open beta, rather, i will throw it out as open alpha. This means: it will not have all features in i plan to do, but rather a reduced set of features. Also: bugs might still be present. So i will probably have to rethink my strategy on publishing this mod, maybe just a semi-open alpha (with server binaries to a few people) will be the case. Nevertheless, it will probably stay a long time in open (semi-open) alpha. I hope to get a first version going this or next month, then i will entirely focus on the last part of my studies; (this means the dev will be even slower). But i think with the skins and the extra feature, this mod might be already worth a try. Well, let us see. As said, there are also some concerns i have about that one; and even if the worst case happens, i still see this as success (the worst case would be bad performance because of too much skin variety AKA this would blow the cache hierarchy).
Anyway, so far on that one. I don’t take this too serious; and foremost, i do not plan this to be the next best mod or anything; you have your silent or nitmod or jaymod or no quarter or etpro for that one already. After all, i might decide to never fully publish this anyway (you mad?). I just do not attempt to make this too serious; i have already learned alot from this, and that is what counts to me the most. So do not expect me to do too much work on it AKA improve this or that; i just won’t give a sh!t probably; depends; but i will focus on other stuff after open alpha. When beta is done, of course i will release a final version of it; but there will be a 1.0.0. for sure.
Just a side-note on this: i am not going to make this open beta, rather, i will throw it out as open alpha. This means: it will not have all features in i plan to do, but rather a reduced set of features. Also: bugs might still be present. So i will probably have to rethink my strategy on publishing this mod, maybe just a semi-open alpha (with server binaries to a few people) will be the case. Nevertheless, it will probably stay a long time in open (semi-open) alpha. I hope to get a first version going this or next month, then i will entirely focus on the last part of my studies; (this means the dev will be even slower). But i think with the skins and the extra feature, this mod might be already worth a try. Well, let us see. As said, there are also some concerns i have about that one; and even if the worst case happens, i still see this as success (the worst case would be bad performance because of too much skin variety AKA this would blow the cache hierarchy).
Anyway, so far on that one. I don’t take this too serious; and foremost, i do not plan this to be the next best mod or anything; you have your silent or nitmod or jaymod or no quarter or etpro or etpub for that one already. After all, i might decide to never fully publish this anyway (you mad?). I just do not attempt to make this too serious; i have already learned alot from this, and that is what counts to me the most. So do not expect me to do too much work on it AKA improve this or that; i just won’t give a sh!t probably; depends; but i will focus on other stuff after open alpha. When beta is done, of course i will release a final version of it; but there will be a 1.0.0. for sure.
I do not guarantee for stable experience, it is an alpha.
If it asks you for a password, type in “hq open alpha” without the quotes.
There are some known issues. Out of my head:
covert ops disguise handling (non functional)
undressed corpse model skin bug(s)
if you catch the wrong time, your barracks menu might not get intialized. Reconnect in this case and it should be fixed
bots do not shoot
For the moment please play fair, sv_cheats is on. I will remove it tomorrow or at some time later. This is so you can watch skins in third person with cg_thirdperson 1.
Thanks! Will remove sv_cheats and try michas lua script.
Today some new maps also i hope
EDIT hm the lua script does not work on my mod. Micha: do you know if forcecvar command is etpub specific or is it in etpro as well. When it is in etpro, i might add it to sdk-plus then, if not, then this won’t happen for sdk-plus, but maybe this mod. I may pack it on my “way too long” todo list, when i rework the Lua interface in C code for this mod.
Well, to give you a little feedback: this mod is now up and online in open alpha for about a week. There was just 5 people connecting in total; and this is although the potential quality of this mod is actually quite good; even if it is just an alpha so far.
If still no people connect, i will put it down and develop just for a few cycles, with private password and only interested people. So i know that i don’t bother you with my posts here. I do this just for you, just so you know.
