Let's start with this example. You can hear here same situation twice. Somebody picks megahealth. In the first example a modified pickup sound is used. After a pause the same situation is played again, this time with the original sound.

In the first case the megahealth pickup is a bit easier to notice than in the second. Perhaps somebody will not find this difference important.

The general question I'd like to ask is - is it really OK to only check the length of the sound, but not it's content (volume, frequency, tone)?

no, the volume should be checked also

I had to play 3 times to hear the second pick up... :E

That modified sound was in nQuake by default at least some years ago. :/

Perhaps the volume and length could be automatically capped? That way the user doesn't have to replace any files.

Well, "check volume", but what does that mean? Peak volume? Then I will still be able to create a sound on some annoying high frequency, with max allowed volume level through the whole playback time. This would still make the sound easier to hear than the original sound which has some peak somewhere in the first half and in the rest is mostly silent.

I don't think there's any other (non-obscure) solution to this than to check the whole file (checksum).

Also, you could lower the volume of all other sounds to effectively increase it on one. :/

I don't understand why we are considering allowing any modification to it in the first place? By the sounds of it there'd need to be some technical work done to make it more complicated than the current CRC check or whatever is used, and I'd much rather that effort went into bug fixing or adding real features than allowing people to 'cheat'.

What's next, hacked player.mdl is fine as long as it's the same size as the original?

Isn't this the case with FTE (allowed in EQL)?

Seems like nobody would like to defend the case that alternative pickup sounds should be allowed. I think I will not allow custom megahealth pickup sounds in 2.2. That means those two that were allowed for 2.1 will be disabled in 2.2.

I don't object to new sounds as long as they're fair (after all, isn't customisation at the heart of what qw is?) but what's fair? Would there have to be approved replacement sounds? Who would make them?

Many of the old sounds are goddamned horrible to the point of giving me a headache if I turn them up too much, but it seems like the effort required would exceed the returns. As HangTime said, I'm sure you have more important things to do with your time.

I have no problem adding some approved sets of allowed sounds to the code, that costs minimum of time. I am just not going to "force" the community to establish this approval process. If nobody is interested, cool. But please don't complain after 2.2 is released and you find out you don't pass f_modified check

Also there's the issue that FTE has much more lenient policy towards these sounds, so using it can give you some advantage. I leave that up to league admins to cope with this.

How should people need to defend it?
Personally, I think that you shouldn't check megahealth sound at all.

JohnNy_cz, we had talk few weeks ago about mega sound. And I send it for u.
And now I see than "nobody would like to defend". LOL?

Well you and B1aze do not bother to present any actual arguments for why no checking is ok.

I have presented here an example of how modified sound can give advantage.
Not checking for length can still help you time next mega in some circumstances.

But you guys do not seem to care for any arguments, you just state "I use the sound, I think no checking is ok". That is NOT enough.

I'm just wondering to myself why now? I started qw in 2006 using a custom sound for megahealth and only now people (WHO?) are concerned about it. We're not the developers of the client after all but it seems like you're looking for community input and I've seen more people kind of against this change than for it. Maybe we need a poll if there already isn't one (sorry too lazy to search)

I would most definitely like my sound to be added to the check though if you go through with this.

I would love to see some sort of a example video with demos of custom sounds for megahealth on some of TB5 maps in different locations using exaggerated sounds to see if it really does give a player that much of an advantage. I'm not familiar enough with how sound works in quakeworld to picture this without a video.

My only defense of my custom sound for mh is that I've been using the sound since I've started quakeworld. I've tried other custom sound packs that replace all or some sounds and I always end up going back to the normal sounds + my mh sound just because it sounds "right" to my ears. If the change does go through it means extra work for me to train myself to recognize that sound from different locations on all the maps I play on. Kind of a bitch.

Thankfully I don't play in any leagues (yet) so this really doesn't have much of an affect on me at the moment but I thought I would throw my post in before 2.2.

JohnNy_cz, add my, B1aze's and fenris's mega sounds checksum in permitted list. And all will be glad.

Seems like mega sound (r_item2.wav) wasn't included in the check before because of an oversight. 15h (r_item1.wav) wasn't checked either while 25h (health1.wav) was.

Example in OP shows an obvious advantage. You can't reasonably argue against this. Louder and clearer, it's easier to hear.

You could try to argue that it makes the game better when mega sound is like that. But why just mega then? And then everyone would have to go modified to keep it fair.

QW is all about customization.
And it is really nice that you are able to create a game which you will really like.

One guy created a custom sound for moving grid and he really won a duel tournament because he heard that grid on dm2 ya-tele closed (he didn't heard a spawn and ya took sound before and enemy decided to just hide before the match end).

Another created a custom sound for moving platform on dm2 and he don't need to look up for checking where is the platform atm before rocket jump.

Third created a sound with timer for gl and became a pro gl-jumper.

> Example in OP shows an obvious advantage.

Obvious advantage . Do you want to try this gl sound?
Is it an obvious advantage that a person can do gl-jump much easier than you?
But in real game it will be obvious disadvantage. Because he will do one gljump in a match, but will create 20 mins of tick sound spam from any pine on a map.

Same for platform sound or moving grid sound.

You can decide will you use it or not.

And if everyone can decide to use this mega sound or not, it will not be an advantage for anyone.

I started to play QW with this custom mega sound and played 9 years with it.
I didn't even know that it was a custom sound .

And I don't want to use original one now. It will ruin my feelings of maps and I do not have ability to build a new way of playing because NA-QW scene is really dead.

So, the simplest decision from my pov is just allow these sounds and advertise it enough, so everyone can use them.

"And if everyone can decide to use this mega sound or not, it will not be an advantage for anyone." that's the point. removing an advantage. also with aimbot autospeedjump/movement scripts wallhacking etc.. if u decide to remove thoose they aren't an advantage for anyone either.

You missed the point.

/me me totally agrees with B1aze.
C'mon, stop this nonsense. Even if any customization would give +0,005% advantage, it always comes down to player skill; not defined by settings.

Cheat is a cheat, whether it's big or small.

The mega sound that came/comes with nQuake is such that it doesn't drown out other sounds, so there isn't the disadvantage like in the examples B1aze gives. Those examples sound like poor implementations of devious ideas.

Who decides what cheating is and what is simple customization/cfg hax0ring? That discussion is as old as Quake itself. Remember when Methos was furious when he realised some evil Euros use a fov > 90? Some time ago movement scripts were defined as evil and been banned. Long before that, timers and tooktriggers were removed. Little custom sounds that have been used for more than a decade are next?
All that seems a bit exaggerated considering those cheaty boomstick scripts are still standard, fullbright skins, custom crosshair etc pp and basically hundreds of settings that change the game.

Agreed, remove weaponscripts for starters! Some people use them and some don't, its unfair (cheating).

Who decided that aimbot and wallhack are cheats and not just simple customizations of the game code? Even if they'd give you 50% advantage, it always comes down to player skill. Or not. I don't know if there is any thumb rule or is it more about a case by case general consensus. Aliases and fullbrights are part of the client, modified sounds aren't (at the moment). It would definately be better if all allowed customizations would be possible to set from the in-game settings so they'd really be easily available to anyone. At least to me QW isn't at all about customization, but it's all about fair competition.

Well, a custom mh sound that isn't louder or longer couldn't be cheating. I don't see how that would negatively affect competition, unless you think not having to put up with the shitty original 11khz Quake sounds gives you a clear advantage.

However, I think most of the things listed in B1aze's examples of custom sounds are horrible bullshit cheats. Any sound changed to aid with timing or to give an increased knowledge of your surroundings gives you a clear advantage over your opponents, and I don't think "but it would be annoying" is a sufficient deterrent, especially in something like a duel tournament where every sound has the potential to change the outcome of the game.

I suppose we need to open this discussion once again after this game: http://eql.quakeworld.nu/eql14/matches/172

If you don't want read the whole ~50 comments here's a summary:

One player had modified sounds in f_modified before our EQL game. He claimed then and still that they're just Q3 sounds. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7561386/ezquake008.jpg
I couldn't find Q3 sound pack that would include all of these wavs though.

To me most bothering are:

Damage.wav - really easy to make quad timer even if it's the enemy who takes Quad.
Protection.wav - Same thing with pent
Inv1.wav - Same with ring
Inv3.wav - This is the fuzz ring makes, so by editing this you can hear where enemy ring is.
Outwater.wav - Pretty obvious - you can hear when somebody gets out of water, ie. dm3 pent.
Plrjump.wav - You can hear better where enemies are/jumping
Pickup.wav - Easier to hear if somebody picks something up.

Not sure why it's you who feels the discussion should be opened again. The way I see it is that too large part of the players do not want to allow custom sounds, volume matters and length does too. Everything would be fine except for admins not doing anything about FTEQW only checking length of the sound and nothing else. Or has anything changed there?

Just to chime in here real quick, I've added Mindgrid:audio high-resolution Quake 1 faithful sounds to ezQuake's list of permitted sounds a few weeks back. They are pretty faithful to the original sounds (just sound better imo), so there shouldn't be a problem but I thought everyone should know for the sake of the discussion.

My ezQuake commit update (changes in fmod.c):

Download the high-resolution sound pack (highly recommend!)