Re: [hlcoders] [OT] Server-side plugins and mod ownership
You can't trust clients, either. That doesn't stop us - or rather, Valve - working hard to make sure we can trust them just enough to keep cheaters out of our games. Developers of any multiplayer game have to engage in this arms race. It's nothing new. The point isn't to eradicate cheating, but to keep it to acceptably low levels by: a) making it hard, reducing the number of people who have the skill or patience to develop a cheat; and b) punishing end users for using cheats so it's not worth it. mass account bans, Blizzard style. -randomnine- Pavol Marko wrote: You would waste your time trying to make it plugin immune. If I _really_ want to and invest a lot of time into the issue, I can crack your stats system if it any public server can access it. Once someone does that your whole stats system is broken. You can't trust some public server anyway. About listing server plugins: I can patch the server so it says it's pure anyway... Same for my I as Lance described :) ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] [OT] Server-side plugins and mod ownership
So why should I make it easy for you? -randomnine- Pavol Marko wrote: About your stats-issue: You can't trust my server. The minute I have your binaries on my server, I can change their behaviour without any server plugin. I could just disassemble and patch them. I could actually not run a server at all and only pretend that I am one to your stats system. The only way to do what you described would be a list of trusted IPs/steamids/whatever in my opinion. ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] [OT] Server-side plugins and mod ownership (was: Safe way of setting weapon damages?)
Consider a mod using some kind of persistence to track stats, or reward players across games for putting in effort. This isn't so far-fetched; a mod could easily be a multiplayer persistent RPG somewhere between the instanced worlds model of Guild Wars and the more general model of shared worlds containing hundreds of people. This is purely hypothetical at the moment, I think - I haven't been following the variety of HL2 mods in the works - but it's certainly a situation in which server plugins would be as undesirable as clientside cheats, and for the same reasons. Even for a cookie cutter team-A-shoots-team-B mod which tracks and rewards play time or kills across games, like the rank system in RTCW or proposed for Battlefield 2, could presumably be hacked to effectively powerlevel every player on the server with a server plugin. It's also been impossible for a fair while to get a good casual game of TFC, since there's no filter for server contains real people, not more bloody bots. The interests of admins and of players apparently do not always coincide, and that's hurt the game. In contrast, server plugins have only improved the CS and NS experiences. These things should really be resolved in ways that are agreeable to everyone - server admins, mod authors and most of all players. At the moment, plugin authors and server admins hold all the power. I don't recall who suggested it, but a server browser filter to look for specific plugins or to look for 'pure' servers only, with the default being pure servers so that people new to the mod get the original experience by default. This alone would drive up demand for pure servers, so pure servers wouldn't simply disappear completely as they have with some mods. That would give both server admins and players a veto, but still leave mod authors out in the cold. Allowing mod authors to detect and respond to server plugins in a function in the SDK would give mod authors their own veto, or - even better - allow them to detect modified servers and simply not track statistics for them. This could also perhaps let mod authors whitelist specific plugins so servers running them show up as 'pure'; simple things like nextmap come to mind. I'm sure we can all agree that the right plugins can make a mod a better experience, so I can't imagine any mod author wanting to ban plugins outright if both they and players are able just to distinguish between pure and modified servers. Survival of the fittest applies to mods, just as it does to plugins. If a mod author's actions are unpopular with server admins, that mod will lose servers; it's not as though mod authors would be completely unaccountable, as server admins are at present. As Lance said, it doesn't have to be a war. There can be an appropriate balance of power. Just my two cents on all this. :p -randomnine- ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] sourcesdk.gcf question
I liked how the patch rolling out HL2DM stopped all Steam programs - including HL2 SP and Codename: Gordon - from working entirely for several hours for a number of users. Seemed like a good quarter or more. There's a reason why companies looking at corporate auto-patching systems always insist on the ability to roll back patches. As we know, programmers are human, and so software contains bugs. Patches are software. Hopefully Valve will be looking at an advance access program for modders in the future so we can respond to engine changes when they become necessary, or the first thing you know about a problem with your mod is when it starts segfaulting everywhere from SF to Sydney. -randomnine- tei wrote: HEe... Normal users NEED a automatic patch system. Like windowsupdate, or steam. ME, you and powers users dont need that, and hate that, but we are less than 8% of users* ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] entity limit?
Does this include logical entities? Natural Selection was bumping up against the 1024 entity limit in HL1, and now with larger maps, map scripting through logical entities and potentially much higher player limits, I could see some problems. -randomnine- Yahn Bernier wrote: The engine currently has this entity limit: // How many bits to use to encode an edict. #define MAX_EDICT_BITS 11 // # of bits needed to represent max edicts // Max # of edicts in a level (1024) #define MAX_EDICTS (1MAX_EDICT_BITS) ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] sdk release and a surprise ideas..
Hey, there it is. Didn't most people say they were still using MSVC++ 6? I know I am. Any chance of project files? If not, how about a makefile for g++? Digging the documentation so far. It's good to have something there. -randomnine- ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] So, what do you think of Half-Life2?
Aye, there were some things that have been done better by other engines, but Source is hardly weak in that regard itself. The character technology is way beyond anything out there. Though much of the scripted-sequence stuff could be considered just set-piece animation and thus nothing new - when you get in their way, you're pushed aside - the way they walk and talk generally when they're feeling more interactive is better than the animation in many games' cinematics. On top of that, the expression stuff is amazing. HL2's closed the gap between games and CGI by a couple of years. It did seem a bit odd how simple some of the level geometry was, especially when the outdoor sections were so intricate and beautiful at times. The dynamic shadows were glitchy, too, and it was kind of distracting how heavily they re-used HL1 sound effects. But then, I think HL2 is going to be remembered for physics, gameplay, characterisation and artistic style, not for cutting-edge graphics and audio. Compare it with how fun Doom 3 or FarCry was and I hope you'll agree that that isn't such a bad tradeoff. Course, the problem with playing with its weak points is that they're likely so deeply embedded the modding community may not have access to them. We'll see. -randomnine- Yes, it finally did get released. The whole steam deal yesterday was a bit frustrating along with all of the other issues that retail purchasers are faced with. But, overall, it is fun to play and I am looking forward to the full SDK release. As far as a next-generation engine, for Valve it is, but in gaming, the HL2 engine is a few years dated now. FarCry surpasses HL2 in many, many ways. Yes, including water effects, heat distortions around steam and other heat sources, true dynamic lighting (you can shoot a light to make it move and the light it shines moves at the same time), and even the AI NPCs reacted more as a team. Other things that I found kind of lame in HL2, included the lack of seeing Gordan's hands more and the inability to shoot while using the suit zoom feature. Picking up objects, I've seen in HL1 before like in voogru's entity moving modification. At least there could have been hands on the airboat handlebars. Even console games have been doing that much for years. IMO, HL2 would have rocked more if released 2 years ago, or addressed some of the issues more. The levels often felt like HL1 textured levels (flat) with a few new features like more real cables, reflective surfaces, and objects with physical properties (like the glass bottles, cement bricks, or even the unraveling cardboard boxes). Even though other engines provide superior effects, Valve still wins as they release a full SDK and not a scripted engine (like UT and FarCry). I'm looking forward to MODs that are based around the gravity gun and even airboat races. There's definitely a lot you can do to extend the HL2 SP into multiple MP mods. I have yet to finish the game, although it's still fun and looking forward to seeing the MODs come out, I wouldn't quite classify it as the first, unique, or best implementation on what many gamers call next-generation gaming features. The story is fun to go through and I like how it's all organized into chapters. But, I'd like to just point out that there are features that were better implemented by other games along with other games having features that HL2 lacks. We'll just have to wait to see what this coding community can do to extend and fill in the gaps. - HoundDawg ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] So, what do you think of Half-Life2?
Technically you're in the Mark 5 now, not the Mark IV. :p There were a lot more sound effects that were recycled, though - weapons, doors, machinery, enemies - and to me they kinda sounded out of place against the new sounds and visuals. -randomnine- They had to reuse the sound tracks, you're still in the old HEV suit. One thing I don't get is, at the end of HL1 you got to keep your HEV, yet it was stored in the doc's lab? o.O Since I finished it yesterday, it's really hard not to talk about some parts of the game that you only see near the end when giving my opinion :/ -- - Bruce Bahamut Andrews ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] Congrats Valve!
I definitely remember a bandwidth test on CS vs CS:S when the latter first came out. They were about even. -randomnine- tei wrote: Inversion for cybercafes can be too high, has HL1 still ran well on existing hardware. A new engine may need a huge investement on new hardware (mostly a new 3d card 200$ by station, and maybe +256 MB), and cybercafes are always short of money. Also I suspect the dedicated version of HL2 will need much more memory and better cpu, maybe even a hiperthread or a dual one board. Will be phisic for all players emulated on the server? We dont know how will ran the server on old hardware. This mean a enormeous group of people will continue, because can't afford he new game + the hardware enhancements. Anyway because HL1 is that old, I suspect this problem will be surprising smaller. HL1 will abe still a huge userbase worldwide, Its only USA, UK, etc users that will swich globally, west countrys. Its also important to check if HL2 need more bandwidth per player, some countrys (Brasil, Rusia and Aus) still has lots of users, but bad wires, still a lot *cough* modem *cough* users. Bandwidth can be optimized for modwise, I suspect, but latency its critical, will be interesting to check if player prediction its better on HL2. I am not a expert, trough. :I ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] What MSVC version do you use/have?
Steven Guy wrote: or you could setup a custom build in VC6 to use a batch file that builds the files using the vs.net compile tools ...and give up debugging functionality in the process. -randomnine- ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
[hlcoders] HL2 Gold
*VIVENDI UNIVERSAL GAMES ANNOUNCES PLANS TO LAUNCH THE MOST ANTICIPATED PC ACTION GAME OF 2004* /Half-Life/ /2/ to Ship to Retail Outlets Globally This Holiday Season *LOS ANGELES (October 18, 2004)* Vivendi Universal Games (VU Games) today announced that /Half-Life/ ,/2/, the sequel to one of the most critically acclaimed PC titles in gaming history, will ship to retail outlets around the world in November. The Company confirmed that /Half-Life 2/, developed by Valve Software, has gone gold with a planned retail street date of November 16, 2004... http://www.vugames.com/news_story.do?storyId=1963 -- so, Valve... ...when's the SDK? -randomnine- ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
Re: [hlcoders] HL2 Gold
Jeffrey botman Broome wrote: Alfred already said... It should be soon (weeks, not months), we are working on it right now. righto - just curious really as to whether it'd be along before or simultaneously with the game. I'm feeling a bit impatient, I guess. :p -randomnine- ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
