reply intermingled below... ----- Original Message ----- From: "tei" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Phil" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 2:33 PM Subject: Re[2]: [hlcoders] Open Letter To Hacker Community
> P> How have they done any of that? That is just your personal experience. It > P> hasn't changed the way that authentication is done, it hasn't introduced any > P> new DRM, it hasn't restricted anything that you couldn't do before. > P> All it is, is a new way to deliver Valve's content, authenticate to the servers > P> (which were WON until Steam) and update the games. > > I dont want to comments the negative points, but... > > Not true: > > You have to use the same tool (Steam), you can't use 3th party > tools, better tools than Steam. Bye Bye GameSpy, QTracker,... I hate to point out to you the flaw in this but you can already use ASE to run HL based games to connect to steam servers, yes you have to have steam running in the background to log you in but as it autoruns and autologs you in i hardly see this as an issue. So in effect you can just leave it running in the background and forget about it. If Gamespy, QTracker etc dont update their software to work with Steam then its not Valve's fault. And remember, Steam is going to be used for HL2, so really updating their software would be needed anyways if only because of a new game to be released. > You can't still LAN or SP offline (will be fixed soon). > You can't hack files into cache, but you can hack files into pak > files. Ok, only power users and hackers care about, but the letter > was address to this people... > > Everything is now imprisioned and buried inside Steam. The tool that > access/able everything IF valve want.... Hopefully you can still > directly access the hl.exe executable to lauch games :] Again, i dont see the issue here, ANY game with an online component which talks to a master server can access ANYTHING on your system could be viewed like this, hell for all you know Gamespy could be sending back your username/password files and cookies everytime you run it to Gamespy, but you have to trust these things are doing only what they need to do and not anything else. > This is somewhat like these TCPA .doc files. If Valve want to forbid > "Mod Bart Simpson" can remake a new version that disable that mod, and > "withouth consent" download to all users computers. By allowing Steam to update files as/when needed you are giving them explicate consent to do what you just described, as to if thats right or wrong or not is another matter, but remember you can disable automatic updates. > >> Valve as work dirty in the past. Unable Quake1 developpers to use > >> both tools and some media into Quake1. > > P> When you take the Q1 engine, mix in stuff from Q2 and your own custom > P> modifications, I'd love to see you do anything like backwards compatability > P> with Q1. Valve licensed the Q1 engine fair and square and had no obligation, > P> need or want to make it backwards compatable. > > Had not obligation other than be fair and make friends. Soo If you > remove Q1 compatibility from Worldcraft... you gain enemys!.. not > good. Ooops... maybe compatibility is droooped ? maybe... but is > forbid at the license AND people as discovered a way to workaround > (HACK HACK HACK) the problem to still use Worldcraft. q1rad is a > quake1 tool to light maps with rendersity... maybe a illegal tool, but > exist. You can also make Q1 maps with Hammer, but Valve forbit it... This is the first time i've seen ANYONE complain about HL2 not supporting Quake1 maps (and i know alot of mappers). End of the day this is Valve's product, so you either play by their rules or dont play at all. As was mentioned they was under no obligation, moneytry or otherwise, to support a game by another company in their product. Its a bit like complaining that you cant make Quake1 map for UT, different products and different map formats. > I not like that, but I not blame Valve. I list stuff that hackers > disagree and hate. This is a well know example. Worldcraft, a Q1 map > tool, generate BSP maps, Valve disable that (or drop) and forbid, also > create is own "incompatible" BSP format. But this is also "fake" as is > very easy to enable support for HL maps for Quake1. A lot of Q1 > engines support HL maps. Valve forbid *me*, to upload cs_siege.bsp to > my homepage and share with other files with instructions to copy this > file at /quake/cstrike-ish-mod/maps I'm guessing the reason for the 'incompatible' BSP format was needed for engine enhancements in HL, which is like complaining that your newly created WordXP document is no longer openable in Word3.0 and there is no reason it should be. The Quake1 engines you speak of have been written from the Opensource code and known HL BSP format loaders, and although they can load HL maps (and i dare say if you created your own HL format BSP files you are allowed to create and use with whatever you want) Valve are allowed to limit the useage of THEIR official maps as its their product, if you dont agree then go play else where. > Maybe this was a bussines decision, made to have more profit. Cool!. > But you gain more enemys. More people will become angry. As I said above, this is the first time I've even seen this as an issue. > > >> Abducting good mods inside > >> (like Counter-Strike). Valve overload the market with his product, > >> that unable oportunitys for other developers. Valve write nazi > >> Licenses. > > P> Abducting? I'm assuming that gooseman agreed to having his MOD commercialised, > P> otherwise Valve faces some serious charges. > > Microsoft Abducting. > > Lotus 1-2-3 => Excel > Wordperfect => Word > Mosaic => IE (builtin) > Winzip => Explorer (builtin) > ftp => Explorer (builtin) > Winamp => Windows Media Player > > Valve Abducting > > Counter-Strike > TeamFortress > ... > (more?) The MS examples you've listed are no abducting, for the first two you have competion (sp?) which is perfectly acceptable plus these forms of programs have been written by others, including Opensource versions, would you say that was also abducting? Same with IE, this is also a good thing for the customer (as well as bad) as you have a web browser from the go and dont have to fiddle about getting a new one, however you can replace it, and as mentioned above, many others have made web browsers is this too abducting? Impliementing the Zip compression scheme and the ftp protocol into windows is another conviniance thing, and as they are both publicaly avalible there was nuffin to stop 'em doing it, and if you want to get technical about it Winzip 'abducted' the zip/unzip programs we had before. Winamp in its orignal incarnation was just an mp3 player, WMP on the other hand was a video/audio player, so it could be argued that Winamp 'abducted' the video playing portion of their application from MS and as it uses all the built in codacs it can do the same job as WMP. As for Valve, TFC was a mod released to map HL mp better than standard DM and i belive they paid for CS so thats hardly abducting is it? > Good or Bad? I am not sure. Maybe enhance the mods itself. Good to the > community. But its harder to make other mods. Its a tradeoff. If that was the case how come we have so many mods around for HL? > >> If you think now the target is Valve. Please re-think. Its not cool to > >> fuck a lot of people that where triing to get his fun from this. And > >> Its not cool to fuck people doing fun games for all of us. If you have > >> fun hacking, download Uplink game. > > P> Might want to address that one to the CRACKER community. > > :] > > yes, but for the public consume the word hacker is more common But, surely if this email was to the ppl who know what the term 'cracker' and 'hacker' really mean this isnt an issue, and you did say this email was directed at them and then things they found wrong, so surely it doesnt matter if the term isnt known by the public or not? :) > But not too fast, but slowly, to make > posible to play withouth the need to download big files everyday. > Etc..ETc.. Etc... I've not experianced that with Steam, every so often it seems to grab an update of some sort, however most days it just loads, logs in and is ready to use right away. _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
