OK.



not so much about size, more about the whole structure and what should and should not be in a package like nQuake (that said: wait until people start uploading their custom map textures, we'll see about the size and amount of files then ). "Monstrosity" because nQuake will be used as a workaround to an irrational restriction, meaning that it will have a lot of things which shouldn't logically be there. But whatever, ok, let's make a special build for Qcon. If this is realistic to do before 30th of April then fine, whatever will make this work.





I'll help with testing.



Are you serious? We should thank QCon for the fact that they've chosen a well-developed modern community package capable of making the game as pretty as QuakeLive if not more over a 20-year old shitty-looking QW client that is completely not optimized for modern software and hardware and will look horrible/have problems & annoy the viewers? Do you really see some gesture of good will there or maybe it's simply a calculated business move?..

I'm rude because it makes no sense to allow to bring hud custom textures with yourself but not a texture for your rockets I'm generally worked up and rude when subpar reasoning is being advocated in spite of arguments to the contrary and without any counter-arguments. But I do get tired of it sometimes so I won't call it for what it actually is. The problem is not in restrictions themselves, it's normal to have some restrictions, the problem is in the fact that they are put in a place where they really are not necessary, and whatever reasoning QCon people have for them - they've got it wrong.

The problem of changing setups quickly without messing up installation can be circumvented with very simple solutions. From the top of my head: for 64 players install nQuake once on one machine. Copy-paste the folder 64 times on the same machine. nQuake is completely portable, you can have a hundred different installations on one machine and they won't affect each other in any way. Name the folders per player and copy their settings/textures/models gathered (and checked for illegal stuff by the community itself) prior to the tournament to their respective nQuake installations (it really is as goddamn simple as just copying and pasting.). Share the network location to player machines. Every player sitting down to play accesses the location and copy-pastes his premade nQuake setup to his gaming machine from this one shared LAN location. nQuake doesn't weigh much (so far) - mine + textures has ~400 mb for example. 10 seconds and you're all set to play. You don't affect other players installations on the same machine in any way. Installing all the setups on one shared location is the biggest time-eater here, although it will be very simple as it's all copy-paste and the majority of work will be done by the community itself that will check the files of each other and package it properly so it really is just copy-paste to install. Only downloading it all may take time. A day at most for all the preparation, no setup delays at all during the tournament. And that's just one of the ways to do this...


I do understand that it's probably not just Lilie who decides this and that her decision is caused by a chain of other decisions of other people, but what we've got in the end is a very weird result.

But whatever, as you say - we need to move on. If it's decided that everything must be done through modifying nQuake/ezQuake or not at all - then it will be like this...

They will be using one main machine which will be mirrored to every other machine. When you are about to play, you will have to sit down and be ready to go within a few minutes.

The reasoning for not allowing different quakes for every player was that there's no manpower to check each and every installation of the 64. This cannot be done by the community due to money being involved, sponsors etc. Lilie clearly stated that it makes a huge difference, and they need to be sure that no unfair means are used. This is a quote from Lilie: "It is impossible to allow it all and it be a fair tournament that I can give out $25,000 of a corporate sponsors money away in. I do not have the man power or time to check out the files that all 64 players copy over to play in the tournament.".

So far, the closest to a good solution we got was to allow a pk3 package of ones necessary files that could be extracted to the current Quake folder and then wiped after the game before the next person sits down and extracts his files. There were not enough time for that either, though.

What will work however is to add as much as we can into the nQuake package (see andrestone's thread!) to get to some kind of middle ground where players do not have to adapt all too much. Once that package is as complete as can be, I advice players to simply download the package and adapt to playing on that installation.

No professional tournament will ever be the same as playing from home, for anyone.

Here's a rant

We have our own cheat protection. It should be as simple as plugging your files into the folders around PAK0 and 1 and then using said cheat protection. They want to use us for some novel entertainment, they should adapt to us

The results will be tainted if anyone actually has to play any setup than their usual

1) Disallowed: everyone uploads their desired customizations to the same online storage months prior to the tournament. They get preinstalled at QuakeCon. They are checked by community months before the tournament (who is more motivated to prevent being cheated out of money other than the players themselves?).

2) Allowed: everyone uploads their desired customizations to gfx.qw.nu and they are incorporated into nQuake installer. They get preinstalled at QuakeCon. They are checked... by community (who else is going to check what's in nQuake package? If some people at QuakeCon - what is the difference in manpower needed, then, if everyone really will upload what they need to be used in nQuake. Still the same amount of custom files, just a riskier and clumsier way of implementation).

I don't see any real difference except that 2 offers some 'official' look to the installation and is more risky at the moment because of the deadline involved. Someone might have to adapt and some people more than others.


I'm done arguing about it, though, it's pointless. People will use nQuake, then we must make nQuake ready as much as possible.

P.S. feel free to delete any 'rude' posts by me from anderstone's thread if you're worried they'll scare QCon away . I stand by what I said, but vb was right that the chance it would have been understood was slim at best.

You guys are talking like the QW tourney would be the hype of the event, but lots of people didn't realize that probably this will be the last QuakeCon and that's the reason why they added a QW tourney too (they have even mentioned that on the last QuakeCon), perhaps to show something different, or even a little appreciation for our community.

The hype and the focus for most people will still be on QL Duel, so I don't see the reason of all that rage towards them. QW unfortunately is not the center of the attention, despite the fact that is respected a lot by the whole shooting community.

Pointless to come here with those arguments like "we did so much for the community and they don't allow us to use that?", because this is clearly a business. Of course that they, as a company, have to be transparent about it, but you guys thinking that life is this wonderland and that they "own us something", just because we made the game survive and etc.

Well, deal with, they don't own us anything. You all should be happy that they are at least doing a tourney with money prize for our community, even though the team that will win is quite obvious already.

Lan tourneys nowadays are usually very strict and if you want to be part of it, you should get used to it.

Again, considering the business point of view, QW is a dead game with no profit, future or high level competition whatsoever. Be happy that we have a big event to participate.

Just to correct you here, if anyone stated to extract the .pk3's that's completely wrong. There is absolutely no need to extract the .pk3, the proposed solution was that everyone could bring their .pk3, put it in the filesystem and then just launch the client.

The next player would then just remove the .pk3 and put their file in. This is not taking up more time than copying crosshairs/configs/hud files, rather it takes less time.

In general to sum it up: The discussion exists because they have given some reasons for their decisions, while we are trying to point out that they might not have gotten all the facts straight that worked as a foundation for those decisions. What people are trying to do is to put the facts straight so a decision is based on correct facts and not wrong ones.

I disagree. They got all facts straight, by politely hearing everyone for days here in the forum and also in #qcon2016-qw.

The disscussion exists because some think that QCon's reasoning resides only in the facts that we know / care about.

(Edited 2016-04-08, 13:00)

you realize how shitty the whole discussion is?

"they wont allow my setup" go and cry about it. If you dare to use cl_idrive or a transparent shaft (you name it), you guys are giving everyone the shitz when they try to play even in friendly games - totally off any tournaments. So maybe you can relate getting your config and wanted setup wasted by some bogus old thoughts. Whats the big difference there

Just mentioning... please don´t complain about something that goes for security reasons, whilst you ALL ! yourself play 15 year old settings and won´t even discuss deviating from it for no other reason than "its been like this". muhaha. For what i see the qw community is WORSE than Qcon in adepting changes! This doesnt count for everybody. PPL like andeh are a clear difference, but sadly in minority

GGs

I didn't delete any of your posts. If someone did (I didn't notice any posts being deleted though) it wasn't me.



Yes, you're right. The pk3 isn't actually extracted into the folder, as the game can use the files within without extracting them first. Thanks for pointing that out, however that doesn't change anything. That was still the closest we came to a solution as I said, and it was unacceptable for QCON.

You are right in the regard that people say things with different agendas, some of the ones expressing themselves are definitly doing it because they want to use the setup they have used for 15 years, I won't disagree with you there.

However, what I'm trying to say is that they told me two reasons why they wanted to lock things down: 1) Cheats. 2) Make it easy to swap players.
Now if those are the problems that needs solving, there are a _few_ people who know how to do that properly, QCon does not (in the ezQuake case). QCon knows that locking things down their way atleast will limit the potential attack vectors. There are other ways to mitigate this with less user impact and that's what I've been trying to present.

If their reason not to allow you to play with your 15 year old setup is due to cheat prevention, and we (me and meag basically) can provide a solution that solves that problem, then the whole lockdown part, which is a consequence of the core problem, would go away because there's no problem left to solve. We have presented this, they are aware of it, they've made their decision and I'm fine with it even if I don't like it

(Do note that this is purely an explanation to the previous discussions and not targeted towards QCon, I'm talking to Lilie outside of this, so this is simply to explain the reasoning to others in the community.)

no-no, you misunderstand, it's not an accusation, it's a genuine offer if someone finds them offensive enough. idc, was a waste of time anyway.

Not the last Quakecon.

This not being the last QuakeCon makes me want this to be more of a success than ever. Perhaps then QuakeCon would like to host our game again in the future.

It's very important for our scene that we make the best of this.

Just curious as to what your solution was and do you have any clue as to why they rejected it?

I'll just simplify a bit: What they are most worried about (IIUC) are sounds because they won't have audio from players.
So what I did in the QCON branch is for instance that I checked every single place in the code where the Sound loading function is called, that way we can guarantee that sound wont be loaded that we don't expect. I disabled the play/playvol cmds ingame which are the only way in to play a sound manually. I also added f_modified checks for all the static sounds that lacked it. If something is missed then it's with almost all certainty nothing to care about.

This can be applied to other things too if they are worried about more things, and then the player switching problem is solved by a single .pk3 that the client loads. So every player puts in their .pk3 (and worst case removes the old players .pk3).

I mean the client will do what we tell it to do, and a lot of cheat protection is already built in since before, I've just made it even better in the qcon branch, so the likelyhood if doing a cheat that actually has any impact would get slim to none (given that the binary itself is _not_ replaceable of course).