If im not mistaken, iDrive was originally a movement-script?
"edit: Mistaken: "There was a movement script that did the same thing, it's been blocked since 3.0.1"
edit again: I was not mistaken. its a movement script.



I posted a video a year or so ago where I showed the potential of exploiting this cvar along with cl_rollangle, which I guess is partly why "Thunderdome" ruleset is not allowed in ie Hammertime anymore.
You can spot your enemy before he turns the corner. It just takes some practice to have two buttons binded to "cl_rollangle xxx". Similar to viewheigt -x / +x.





Rollalpha combined with rollangle and shaftalpha made the game ALOT easier.

(Edited 2020-09-17, 21:34)

I think you will struggle to convince quite a few players on this one. Rocket jumping is a skill and it can separate good players from better ones. The argument that it doesn't change a players intention I don't think is sufficient, because QW skill is about both intention and execution. My movement is pretty mediocre relative to the majority I play with/against in tournaments and there are times when I will fail certain moves (e.g. RJ from stairs to tele-exit on dm2, even dm3 lifts to window on occasion). In fact my confidence in execution is sometimes low enough to actually influence my intention (in other words I may opt not to execute a move if for my skill level it is relatively high risk). If someone else puts in the hours to practice moves (or otherwise becomes more proficient than I then shouldn't they get some advantage from that?

When you say "the angle of your mouse doesn't fundamentally change the player's intention when using it" we could apply that to aiming - the angling of a mouse with the intention of shooting their opponent, which does not change based on how successful their execution is.

Before RJ scripts were banned i used to use them and it made me slightly more effective (in fact there was a brief period where forward rj was banned but normal rj was not - i think an oversight in the rules wording - and I got some criticism for using a bind to rj to YA on e1m2 during an official match) but that doesn't mean once they were banned people were no longer fighting my best. Arguably before that they were fighting a smaller cut down part of my game as the execution of rjs was effectively no longer being put on show.

If RJ scripts were allowed again I would probably benefit because it would dumb-down an area of the game that I am relatively weak in, but I don't think that it would be good for QW overall.

There's a few reasons why RJ scripts are bad:

1.
Playing QW can become tiring and after several games, especially if you do lots of manual rocket jumps. After several games our ability to do clean rocket jumps starts to diminish. And yet if our opponent is using RJ scripts then they'll still be rocket jumping like they're fresh, even after an hour..

2.
When under pressure we can rush the manual RJ and mess up. RJ scripts never mess up under pressure.

3.
When doing a scripted RJ you only need to take your crosshair off your target for a hundredth of second.

4.
Using RJ scripts means you can use a lower mouse sensitivity to improve your LG and movement. You don't need to compromise and use a medium sensitivity in order to be able to rocket jump quickly and reliably.


After coming back to QW from a 10 year break I was shocked that movement scripts were still allowed and I had been tempted to ask why on the forums. But I came to the conclusion that it's because Quake developers are afraid to remove them for fear that people will refuse to use the updated client.

That's definitely not the case... have you reported this to us? If you know of a movement script that ezQuake + ruleset doesn't block, you can report it and we'll do our best to block it. (or is this the argument to make +attack a movement command?)

f_ruleset only dictates the settings for your own client. And I never use f_ruleset because I don't care about most of the trivial stuff that it blocks. I just use f_scripts to see if my opponent is using movement scripts.

f_ruleset could be useful if it actually enforced the rules on all connected clients. So the client with the most restrictive rules dictates the settings for all connected clients. Although I could imagine many heated arguments and lots of players being kicked off the server in a 4 vs 4 standby. haha

Ok you can check for them any way you like, I'm asking what movement script you have found that gets throught the block-movement-scripts functionality in ezquake.

The block works fine. You can block/disable movement scripts on your own client but you're still left having to ask your opponent to block them on their client. Ideally they shouldn't even be in the client but I totally understand why there's a reluctance to remove them.

I haven't read the whole discussion... only dust0r's initial post and I just would like to chime in on the colored backpacks issue. I think there's a good reason why that crosses the line. If you play TDM and you want to bore your backpack to a teammate, you usually look for a dark corner and bore there. Now with your fullbright pink backpack the enemy can actually see it easily and go pick it up. So, it does make a difference and is not just cosmetic. At least for TDM. Not so much for duel though. So, subtle changes might appear harmless to some people when they are actually not.

TLDR

ban /default and /thunderdome

friendly games allow /smackdown

tournament games only allow /qcon

Ezquake 3.6 allows this, another thing to think of.

gl_custom_lgpack_color
gl_custom_rlpack_color

Also, v_viewheight should be blocked for changes during match.

This is the way to go.

Isn't this demo/QTV-only?

Regarding backpacks, I play with drawflat 1 and backpacks show up perfectly fine regardless. Yes, a fullbright simple item will be easier to see in a few situations, but but it's not going to have that dramatic of an effect on the game... at least not as much as fullbright player skins/projectiles/items already do.

Regarding the possibility of abusing rollAlpha/rollAngle, why not simply set a reasonable limit to cl_rollangle? Like max 15? 10?

I don't believe shaftalpha provides any significant advantage that can't be overcome with a few minutes of getting used to. The bolt used to be important to see before antilag and when pings were higher, but now LG is a hitscan weapon and fakeshaft is already allowed. If I can hide or customize rocket and grenade trails (and explosions), then why can't I hide or customize the bolt?

Regardless of which side you fall on, I feel like the settings above are the least controversial of the "restricted" features, and pose the least amount of risk in their incorporation into tournament play. Considering we currently have no way of verifying or enforcing any rules to begin with, why not be a little more permissive?

Yes, and safe to implement as the information isn't sent to players (they're told they dropped a RL, but not the entity#).
(This is why teaminfo isn't implemented as a ruleset - if teaminfo is disabled server-side then the clients simply don't have the information)

And how will you do this without a ruleset when you are asking to remove all rules?

Checkmate!!!

Ahah you got me Most of these little hacks, even in aggregate, appear to degrade the player's own experience equally as quickly as they might give him a very slight advantage in certain edge cases. And, again, you can't actually verify/enforce any rules, so we might as well let players use whatever customizations they want, and any blatant wall hacking or assisted aim cheaters will be discovered and dealt with on their own.

Try to play with cl_rollangle 999 and cl_rollalpha 0.
I tried and I have cl_rollalpha 5 now. High values are unplayeable.

And one more: you show different screenshots created not at same time/position.