We intend to it possible for community server operators to opt into SDR if they
want. Hopefully we'll have some more information on that soon.
There are no plans to *require* SDR. There's really no upside for us to
eliminate ordinary direct UDP access.
-----Original Message-----
From: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com <hlds@list.valvesoftware.com> On Behalf Of
Tohru Adachi
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2021 3:40 PM
To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com
Subject: [External Mail] Re: [hlds] Mandatory Team Fortress 2 update released
From my own findings re. disconnect messages, the client still accepts the
buffer from the server on net_disconnect, it just overrides the reason
regardless. It's a bit of a hack job considering that there's non-user
disconnect behaviour that uses that function (eg srcds quit) to display a
different disconnect reason.
I'm not sure why there isn't a convar check in there to see if the server is
part of the MM pool - I'm fairly sure there's similar checks for some client
behaviour such as activating contracts on the client.
It is true that most SrcDS games are, to a degree, somewhat dependent on Steam
servers eg. master server for server browser, GC/items and so forth. On the
flipside, those can be mitigated to an extent by serverside mods and some
convar changes, although you could also argue that with virtually all
gameserver traffic directed at Valve through the use of Casual MM, it doesn't
really matter much either way in regards to the current atmosphere and image of
community-run game servers.
That's a whole other topic though, so I won't delve into that...
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-------- Original Message --------
From: sigsegv [mailto:sigs...@sigpipe.info]
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2021, 11:24 PM
To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com
Subject: [hlds] Mandatory Team Fortress 2 update released
A quick devil’s advocate argument (more of a food for thought thing, than an
attempt to push any particular position really):
One could perhaps reasonably argue that you’re already reliant on Steam’s
servers being up anyway, even as an independent TF2 community
server: if the TF2 GC is down, items don’t function properly; and since the
scope of items covers not just cosmetics but large swaths of weapons, it has a
pretty significantly deleterious impact on gameplay.
So—arguably—you’re sorta already in the dependent-on-Steam-servers situation
you’re saying you don’t want to be in; and it wouldn’t necessarily be a
substantially different situation in the event that all community servers were
required to use SDR.
(It’s true though that the GC being up, and the SDR servers being up, aren’t
exactly equivalent in impact: items not loading is less impactful than possibly
being unable to connect to, or stay connected to, a server. And since these
servers are distinct from the GC servers, it’s in reality an additional point
of failure / degree of freedom that expands the potential outage “shadow” so to
speak, rather than lining up perfectly such that there’s no difference.)
Anyway… I just figured that was worth bringing up. Of course, all of this is
moot if SDR does not in fact end up being mandatory.
I believe CS:GO has been quite a bit ahead of TF2 in adopting SDR; so perhaps
surveying the community server situation over there (such as it
is) might be a useful exercise.
(Incidentally: Now I want to look into the server disconnect reason thing more
thoroughly. There’s no doubt the chat messages were being abused; but I’m
wondering now if maybe there’s a legitimate reason for removing the rest of it
too. (Not giving a convar to revert to the old behavior does seem ill-advised;
maybe there were also client-side changes which made that infeasible…? Maybe
not, dunno.) Anyhow… time to go dumpster diving into publicly available cheat
source code and dig thru all the game-disconnect-related crap…)
Justin / sigsegv
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