Alright gentlemen.

Ms. Lilie, Quakecon 2016 Tournament Director, just informed us at #qcon2016-qw (and at this thread) that we can only bring a CFG file, a crosshair and HUD files. No other textures or files whatsoever. Not even other text files like loc files, for example.

Good news is: we got the chance to add all customization we want, if we do it until April 30th, updating and releasing:

- The latest build of ezQuake 3.0
- MVDSV (there are important security updates that are not yet implemented at nquakesv)
- KTX (some really good new stats and security updates to be implemented)
- New nQuake package, where we can fit in the most popular textures, skins and other files that aren't there yet.
- New nQuakesv, containing the new binaries.

I would suggest that we close the files / features requests in six days, 10th of April - please don't get me wrong, we can't add new untested stuff, this is only to implement on either ezQuake or nQuake things that are already working, and community should use as minimum new files as possible, based on file's popularity.

(edit)

PS: I hope we can all understand that QuakeCon made it's decision. No custom files (only CFG, crosshair and HUD).

UPDATES:

Please upload the files you want to use to http://gfx.quakeworld.nu, if they're not there already.

Requests so far:

- Skyboxes
1) nQuake / ezQuake default;

- Console backgrounds
1) nQuake / ezQuake default;

- Models
1) nQuake / ezQuake default;
2) Debug weapon models: http://gfx.quakeworld.nu/download/39/debug-3d-models-faithfull-/ (dev, mur)
3) New player.mdl: http://gfx.quakeworld.nu/download/426/new-playermdl/ (dev, carapace, blood_dog)

- Player skins
1) nQuake / ezQuake default;

- Healthbox and ammobox textures
1) nQuake / ezQuake default;
2) Fullbright: http://gfx.quakeworld.nu/download/149/brightskins/ (dev)
3) dithes simple items: http://gfx.quakeworld.nu/details/428/dithes-simple-items/ (carapace)

- Console characters
1) nQuake / ezQuake default;
2) BlooD_DoG's: missing link to gfx.quakeworld.nu (blood_dog)

- Model textures (e.g. weapons, armors, projectiles)
1) nQuake / ezQuake default;
2) Fullbright: http://gfx.quakeworld.nu/download/149/brightskins/ (dev)
3) dithes simple items: http://gfx.quakeworld.nu/details/428/dithes-simple-items/ (carapace)
4) Fullbright purple skins for projectiles (nails, grenades) http://gfx.quakeworld.nu/details/429/fullbright-projectiles/ (carapace)

- HUD and Crosshairs
1) nQuake / ezQuake default;
2) Faceicons (faithfull): http://gfx.quakeworld.nu/details/140/face-icons-faithfull-/ (dev)
3) +- Frags: http://gfx.quakeworld.nu/download/425/plusminusfrags/ (carapace)
4) epicross corsshair: http://gfx.quakeworld.nu/details/424/epicross/ (carapace)

* Adding support for HUD and Crosshairs so people don't need to bother bringing anything but CFG (even if they are allowed to bring HUD and Crosshair).

(Edited 2016-04-07, 17:47)

My request:

- New player.mdl (as an option, not mandatory).
- Fullbright skins for items (as an option to gl_usesimpleitems).

Don't know if any of these are possible.

I had spent some time putting together a pk3 that turns fresh nQuake into exactly blood_dog_Quake, see here for details. The first question I have is how it's possible to just come with a config and have it load properly. From the testing I did, nQuake does a good job of packaging lots of files into many different .pk3's to make it nice and clean and easy for noobs to get started, but it's aggressive at overwriting your attempts to replace config.cfg.

To get around this, I needed to create a "qw/pak.lst" which basically tells ezquake to not load nQuake.pk3 (and other nquake .pk3 files under /qw) and just load my pk3 instead. Thoughts on how to accomplish this without a pak.lst?

That aside, I suppose I can live without the .lit and .loc files that I use, but it seems odd not to allow any images other than a crosshair. The files that I feel are most important to me, in order, are:

1- qw/textures/wad/*, since that is my HUD and being forced to use default HUD textures is just... wrong
2- qw/textures/charsets/*, since I don't like the default charset and I don't want to be crippled by trying to get used to reading team and console messages with a font I don't like and that even makes it hard to differentiate between caps and non-caps characters (ever notice new players have trouble changing to the right team name because they can't see capital letters?)
3- qw/skins/*, because why would I need to get used to different skins after so many years
4- Would be nice if fragfile.dat was pulled out of nquake.pk3 and included directly, because it's needed for the enhanced scoreboard (wide scoreboard that shows kills/deaths/teamkills), and if a pak.lst is used to not load nquake.pk3 then you lose this functionality.
5- qw/textures/models, because I like my axe texture :S (joke, but honestly I think anything under qw/textures is harmless and should be allowed )

Anyway, I don't see anything in the .zip I created (link above) that would be a cause for concern, but if we're going to be restricted then the first 4 points above are what I would like to be included in the "official" nQuake. #1-3 are just pictures...

-BD

I am really disappointed at how QuakeCon has handled all of this. It is their tournament, however since we are a small community we have no chance what so ever of ever achieving anything like what QuakeCon is hosting right now, so it really saddens me that they aren't giving us a chance to represent the QW community the way it has been for the last 15 years.

Some major things I'm disappointed about:

• Not involving people from the scene with adequate knowledge and experience.
• Stating that it would be OK to bring your own .pk3 (after long unneccesary and wrongly focused discussions on IRC due to the point above) just to completely revoke that right now. I mean I have spent time making a special ezQuake version for QCon that added ruleset qcon, checks for every static sound loaded and fixed the things they were concerned about. Yet they spit in the face and say: hey we don't need that anymore, but can you do this instead?
• Whether they realize it or not, nor care, they do kind of lock up my abilities to do things with the client/servers etc until after QuakeCon, almost a half year from now.
• They gave two reasons for thinking of locking things down: #1 Cheats and #2 Ability to easily and quickly install a user at a computer (including reseting the old settings from prev player) . Now I gave them solutions to both of them, yet they disappear and keep radio silence for 3-4weeks (on IRC) and get back to deliver this news?

Really this decision isn't helping the scene or QuakeCon at all, in any way, it just requires us to do even more work to make things worse, I just makes me sad.

Seriously, can we please stop complaining about everything QuakeCon is doing.
Face it, QuakeWorld players are living in it's own little dreambubble for the past 15years.
This is how the rules are for every single other serious comptetitive tournament, in any game.

You don't get to play with your hello kitty painted grenades, just adapt.

The only person who I can kind of understand the frustration from is Dimman who has put in development time.

I only have one feature request and that is one I think anyone can agree on: good default fullbright skins.

(Edited 2016-04-05, 09:30)

plz allow hello kitty!

Quite frankly: they can do whatever they want, it's their tournament. However I would assume that they want to attract the best players and want the experience to be as good as possible for everyone. The current solution does not provide that. Their current solution is one of the worst possible for no really good reason, that's the core issue here. It's not complaining about random things, it's about chosing a solution that solves most problems to the smallest cost for everyone. The current solution is not that solution.

I've explained to some extent in my post above what was described to me as their issues; I provided solutions to them, even developing things and fixing bugs in the client to make sure it would work. Yet this happens without an explanation.

"Solution" - if you can even call it that... So very typical from big companies - people get to make decisions about things they have absolutely no clue about. They approach the community about the game which has lived its own life outside of their influence for 20 years and fail to listen to that community spectacularly, while even the client that will be used is not the original one. But hey - no skins!

Sure, thanks to QuakeCon for hosting our beloved beautiful game. But sorry, that doesn't excuse idiotic "decisions" (encased in quotes because decision-making involves intellectual effort which was clearly skipped here).

Drake is right, but it's gonna fall on deaf ears. At the same time I am very happy to see B fighting the good fight though

I feel kinda bad that non-AU QW seems to always bend over backward in order to please some people that may or may not enter our fold (more likely the latter), but it makes me happy to see people thinking within these constraints. More power to you sir

We are silly old farts for expecting an event engineered to exploit our perseverance and self-governance to respect the game as it exists, as opposed to how it fits within their narrow paradigm

(Edited 2016-04-05, 13:41)

- New nQuake package, where we can fit in the most popular textures, skins and other files that aren't there yet.

Doesn't this let you add fullbrights ?
And lob in a decent setup with new prettier concars etc

Ofcourse it will never look like x persons quake - but you guys must surely be able to narrow down a decent setup - try to schedule a meeting with the people going to qcon, so they can reach someform of a compromise on what is to be added to the client =)
Talk about one addition at a time, take it slow and methodically ! (but don't expect dimman to fix eeeeverything)

Maybe some andeh type setup that looks good, while at the same time is decent to play with! =)

(i dunno im not involved in this, just suggestion! =)

The lightning of models (including players) depends on the engine. You can use skins from the FB part of the palette and force them to team/enemy as I do (with gl_fb_x set to 1), but prior to 2016 I was using f_fullbrightskins 1-dependant skins as was 99/100 people

Thumbs up.

Dimman,

I really feel sorry about it. But we talked a lot about what could cause extreme decisions like this one, I always mentioned sponsors and other third-parties and how much they don't know about our old game and what they could decide considering their context, rather than ours. So it shouldn't be that unexpected, even if they let us TRY to set files for testing, it never meant that we would be able to do it. And as rio said before, it isn't a lan-party, it is a USD 25.000 prize tournament.

Anyway, we need to move on. Are you going to be able to dedicate to ezQuake development considering the deadline? Are you willing to do so? We can't miss the chance of doing as much as possible to have the most of our requests built in the final releases of both nQuake and ezQuake.

Cheers!

So it is the sponsors that has said that this has to be the solution and not QCon staff deciding it?

I/we was/were informed that user .pk3's would be OK, not to try, but actually OK. I even gave notice to Lilie about the progress of a special version of ezQuake with even more checks than default and more things disabled.



Really, I don't know. It's a moving target so how would I know what to do?

Not of my/our business.



Not a moving target, focus on the first message. Would you please help?

Say what? So you are speculating again, please stop that. You are wasting everyones time with your speculations. Stick to the facts what they have _actually_ said is the reason behind this. (I would like to know the official reason, but read on below to understand more why I need this).


Really, I have not been given an official message or reason about _why_ the lockdown has been made, so I don't know what is allowed or not allowed or for what reason. So what do you want me to do without such a statement? I acted upon what they said would be OK, now it is not ok, and I haven't been given any more information so really, in all honesty, I don't know what is ok and what isn't ok, I would need to know that before doing anything.

In reality quakecon is neither a LAN nor a tournament event: it's a trade convention, for which the aforementioned aspects are included, amongst others, to generate entertainment. To this end, neither Bethesda nor id give two shits about any one of us beyond our habits of consumption. This is exactly why any correspondence outside of the perspective of the average consumer has a high probability of being unsatisfactory.

If we want a good LAN, we will have to start organising our own again, to fulfill our own criteria.

The only one wasting time is you trying to change something that is completely out of your hands. Or our hands.



If you always put yourself in a place where you need to receive "official" answers from whomever you think you deserve to, we will never move on.

Having said that, is there anyone else in the community who can believe in my good faith rather than expect official statements from NASA or whomever else and want to help? The deadline is April 30th.

Cheers!

Hey guys, idiot deaf tournament organizer here.

So I get you can be upset that you don't get everything open or even to copy over your entire quakeworld folder. We have a tournament to run in a time constraint and with $25,000 on the line. I am making the decisions based on communication with several parties that include your community. It is not one directive saying anything specific.

I have reached out to get information about what specifically was needed from the community for customization. I found that much of what was asked for was built into ezquake and just each persons preference was something slightly different version of that. We talked about many different ways to handle this from pk3 loader to modifying the client. I never once settled on a single solution and even specifically said do not do any dev work for anything yet until a decision was made. I knew that my real world job was getting into a busy time and would not be available to continue the conversation for some weeks. This was stated to several different people in your community in several communication avenues.

You have a great community that is passionate. This is the heart of all Quake communities, passion. I think it is wonderful and I look forward to meeting so many of you in person in a few months. We just need to settle this and move on, so we can all get prepared for a great tournament. I think that since much of what you want is pretty much built into the client and installation with nquake, we can easily have what is needed pre-installed. If your client can make it accessible then we are good to go. If that isn't possible then we will have to make do with what is accessible currently in the client. We have a few months to adjust to the changes.

<3 Thanks for the feedback.

PS I love that Hello Kitty Hud, someone add that official.

I'm sorry, I don't want to come off as an asshole (again), but how is the first sentence connected to the second ? Deciding on how to set up individual installations will hardly be a time bottleneck here. There are solutions possible (much clumsier than what Dimman implemented already) that will require a day of installation prior to the tournament at most even without any changes in current nquake/ezquake whatsoever.



problem is that the degree of 'slightly' may vary a lot. Obviously, having everyone copying their entire qw folder with custom models e.t.c is probably not realistic because to make it cheat-proof everything will have to be checked extensively by people who understand what they are looking for.

But what's the problem with allowing people to at least use the texture packs and huds they are used to play with? These are just textures, but even playing with something small which is unfamiliar to you can be a huge issue and will only accomplish a drop in player's performance. This is the main cause of frustration, because the reasoning behind a decision to disallow custom textures is not only unclear: it simply cannot be correct (perhaps some restrictions that decision-maker is put into are incorrect, but then they should be addressed somehow). What can possibly be the issue here? Can someone with the knowledge on the matter explain the risks perceived by QCon organizers, so that we all may try to come up with ways to mitigate them?



So, is what andrestone said about config and crosshair being the only things allowed true or not?..

P.S. sorry for the harsh first post, that is mostly accumulated frustration from several similar things I've seen in the past already. It's somehow always like this and somehow the reasoning behind banning something is never correct when it is explained (if at all, which most of the time doesn't even happen).

We are allowing the config, the crosshairs, and now the hud files. I think this is a good compromise. We will use the latest nquake installer (one install with high def textures, one without) and of course the latest ezquake should be in that. Latest meaning latest release prior to Quakecon. I would imagine players would want to know what is possible to customize through ezquake with as much advance notice as possible, so the April 30th date is a nice suggestion if there is to be a major update. It isn't anything I am pushing or asking for, but as a community I can see that you guys want that. As a tournament we are happy with what is there now with the qcon ruleset that dimman has so graciously made.

Again, thanks for the feedback. I look forward to seeing some online cups in anticipation for the event.

Way to go folks!

Please follow the updates on the first message.

Allow anything in /qw/textures/ full stop

A side note: Support for debug models are removed from qcon build so you can definitly skip those, I won't put that back.

So, basically: it's allowed if it's a part of nQuake/ezQuake installation.

meaning in order for people to play how they are used to nQuake must be turned into a monstrosity that has everyone's different textures/models that were uploaded to gfx.qw.nu.

Even then it's unclear how people would be able to switch between their textures for projectiles, old/new player model e.t.c. Must require quite some additional development/testing. With a deadline of 30th of april. Heh.

P.S. yes, go ahead and allow 'hud' and 'cfg'. Which, since hud layout is stored in cfg, means allowing to bring custom textures with you. But only for hud. ROFL.

(Edited 2016-04-07, 11:28)

Reading the first post in this thread again, what security issues in MVDSV/KTX are so critical they need fixing before a LAN tournament?

Also, to minimise people dependency, couldn't another way of doing things be to simply use the current nQuake installer, put ezQuake 3.x and the proposed texture additions etc on top and make that available somewhere as "The proposed Quakecon setup"? I.e. make the actual installed Quake folder online. Installing it on the tournament PC's would be a copy/paste activity.

Edit: don't get me wrong - if all of the stuff in the first post can be done before 30th April then that would be awesome of course!


I think only one setup is required as enabling the 24 bit textures is done with the gl_externaltextures_world command. Think the nQuake installer gives the option to (not) download the 24bit textures due to the file size (few hundred Mb).

We'd rather find someone else who does? I know at least 10 players who uses it now, considering we are expecting 30-40 community members to join the tournament, why don't care about it? I there any technical reason that makes it impossible?

Cheers.

(Edited 2016-04-07, 13:25)

"Monstrosity" in terms of what? Size? Don't think so. Huge amount of files aren't used, so we wouldn't have to make the whole gfx.quakeworld.nu available. If even we did, it would be a installation tremendously smaller than most of the modern games.



Yeah. There are some people working on it.



Why be so rude with Quakecon people? They were nice enough to hear us and not make us play in a unknown standard setup that could even be something different from nQuake, I THANK THEM FOR THAT.

That aside, people are not crazy. They got their reasoning to restrict things and what we all should understand is that it isn't up to us to change it, because it is a privately owned operation, not a community thing at all.

I really hope we can move on the purpose of the thread, if someone would like to fight and protest against Quakecon rules please do it in some other thread.

Thank you.

(Edited 2016-04-07, 18:06)