Why* are** all the** marginal** clans dying?*

[jamz]

This thread has now gone off-topic, but I suppose it won't hurt to try to address Dade's points.

...lack of important features - such as decide how much time you want a map to be played...

Currently in the process of being implemented. It's been discussed, RR said it had been committed, but I've just looked and I couldn't see it.

...warm up time for cm...

This is the first time I've seen this request, that I can remember. I'm not a competitive player, but when I've played matches I don't remember ever having a problem deciding when to start playing properly. Is this really a big issue?

...a real/official AC regular competition...

This is really something that should be coming from the clans. Lucas and aerkefiend are the closest the dev team have to clan players and they're not active enough to dedicate time to organise competitions. If a competition looks like it's well-organised and presented, there's nothing stopping discussion between the dev team and the organiser to get it an 'official' tag.

...fresh ideas are taken more as an attack to AC than, at least, a test to see if they are good or bad ideas

This simply isn't true. Most of the 'fresh' ideas presented are simply re-workings of ideas that are currently implemented in other FPSes. These features probably existed at the time AC was conceived and if they weren't included then, it's probably because they weren't wanted (IDK for certain - I wasn't around). As the development team has progressed, its ideals have remained much the same as the original game goal - to produce a simple, unbloated, arcade style FPS in a quasi-realistic setting. The two most important factors in that, for me, have always been 'simple' (not too many weapons, not too many features), and 'arcade style' (easy controls,drop in, play, drop out - no levelling).

Not all ideas are going to be good for the game but, specially in the case of an OpenSource game as AC, they should at least be implemented to see 'what if' instead of not giving them a chance.

The big problem here is how we go about testing the new ideas. We could keep it in SVN, but then we struggle to get the numbers for testing as not everyone can, or wants to, use the SVN files. Or we could push a new, minor release every few weeks, but then you either have different clients playing in the same server, or you have to force everyone to update, possibly needlessly, with a protocol change.
It's not as if no new features ever get implemented. I'm always receptive if someone has a real need for something and suggest it to the coders when I see them. I leave the implementation up to someone who knows what they're doing, and the coders do what they do in their spare time, not to any schedule.

...I've recently tried to give an help to the AC Project ...benefits of more than 100 euros monthly ... and I've got very surprised when I received an answer stating "none of these are worth the work required to action them".

This is not, and never has been, a money-making excercise. I'm sure that if that were the goal of the project, the orignal team members would certainly have gone about things in a different way.
I'm still, slowly, learning about the details of hosting this project, but as long as the donations and ad-revenue cover my costs, that's enough for me. In fact, I'd rather get rid of ads if the donations covered it completely. So, please don't be offended by a rejection in this case; the site is here for the good of the people who want to use it, not the good of the people who run it.

...there is - at least apparently - too much confrontation between dev team (and inside dev team itself) and the overall community.

Sometimes it appears this way to me too. Sometimes I'm the one being confrontational, but I also consider myself to be a very fair person and will always give time to someone who is (and always has been) fair with me. I hope I'm making myself clear here ;) .

Probably - this is a very personal opinion - due to a lack of communication and leadership from the dev team...

That may be the crux of the situation; there is no leadership. The dev team is currently in limbo as far as this goes. flowtron, long-time contributor and most-recent de facto project leader, is stepping away from the project; I've taken over the hosting, but I'm not a leader (personality-wise) and I'm not a coder and I believe the person at the top should have both these qualities. The rest of the development team have their input, to a certain degree, but their time is precious to them and there's only so much time that they can afford to spend on this project. Hell, when it's 10pm and I've had a hard day at work, I'd much rather be fragging than checking logs or fixing glitches - I do that for a job. I'm sure this is true for everyone.

...kick out any member of the dev team that is not doing/able-to-do their job in the crew...

This needs a defninition for "not doing/able-to-do their job". Those appointed to the development team are more than capable, but if you expect them to be putting in 2-3 hours a day, you are expecting too much.

Give stability to the project. Aka give a near-to-definitive balance to weapons...

This *is* being worked on, but it's a (very?) slow process for the reasons stated above.

Reach FPS industry standard features.

Why? Because it's 'standard'? What if we want to be different? What if people like AC because it's different?

...Team Damage on/off...

No. I haven't talked to other devs before posting this, but I think team damage should stay, permanantly. As Habluka says, it's an AC feature.

...dedicated server package...

I've seen this discussed, and, whilst it should be available, I don't believe it's a major priority. Firstly, as explained, coding time is limited. Secondly, we have, on average, one server for every AC player on-line (obviously this fluctuates through the day); we're not short of servers.

...server administration tools...

More specifically...? I never had a problem administering a server.

...more user-friendly UI...

I agree, but I'm not a coder or a designer and I have no idea a) how this would be implemented or b) how much the package-size would be increased. Download size is a big part of AC, since it's engine is designed to accomodate low bandwidth connections. Also, it sounds like something which would require dedicated time, something the coding devs don't have.

...box to type password for private servers...

Absolutely! I've seen a script for this (but I don't have it to hand) so I know it's something that could be done easily. In fact, it wouldn't suprise me if it already has been...

...and a big large etc.

Hmm. Your English is excellent, but you've used 'large' as a noun here. A big large what?

...extend this part to 'Reach FPS eSports features standards', f.e. warm up, auto time based side switch, shoutcast view, FPS limits, and another large etc.

I think this is beyond my experience as an extremely casual gamer.

Build a PR (Public Relations) Department

This seems like a good idea, but maybe for a bigger game. We have a maximum of c.350 players on-line at once and for a lot of the day it's < 100.

Make a huge opinion poll...

On the face of it, this seems like a good idea, but this sort of public opinion poll always seems to degenerate into the public mud-slinging you talked about earlier, whether it be between dev team and everyone else, or between players with different ideas.

...for example, make a blog section dedicated to clans...

I don't get this. What's wrong with the 'Clans & Wars' forum? Or are you talking about some kind of live feed?

Ease accessibility to the site. As multi-language interface seems to be considered as a taboo subject, I'd ask to enable Facebook Connect as soon as possible

I'm not the best person to comment on this, being an English-speaking Englishman. I don't think it would make sense to have sub-forums for each major AC language, with much duplication, but I don't get to see the other perspective - the one where everything is impenetrable. As for Facebook, I'm not a user, but I understand we have a presence there, and that FB is a well-populated service :P; aerke is the man to talk to about that.

...more visits (and time in the site) means more incomes...

As stated, this is not a project objective.

I hope I've helped answer some of your questions Dade. This is not a busy project; it's a hobby thing for the people involved, something we do for fun. Some of the devs have very limited hours in which they can contribute. I'm lucky that I sit in front of a computer screen for the majority of the day. It's taken me ages to write all this.
tl;dr stop being lazy and read it.

[Dade]

Habluka, if I had to listen to you it seems like you are talking about a near-to-mature gaming project that has millions of players day by day.

I'm not complaining about the release times, but regarding why those releases are lasting. I also run a free project called STALKERHispano, but that is not a reason to don't listen my users or give them support/adequate answers. As in almost any free project, you don't need to be a part of the dev team to improve the code, that's why there is a role named 'collaborators'. Dev team MUST be a group of people that can give at least 30-60 minutes per day to the project, however their main goal is to assure the continuity and stability of the project (game in this case).

About stability, I may have not explained it well. I was proposing to give a strong communicate to the community like: "guys this is how we think the game is better, please stop popping around with balance anytime you get pwned by a certain weapon and brain storm new ideas for the game".

Regarding features discussion... you see? If it where from you, we won't even test them to see if there are positive feedback or not, how will the project improve then? How we will ever know what features works best and which works worse if we don't even try them? Are we wizards? If a Team Damage on/off is on next release for server owners you will surely have were to choose playing, hence, where's the problem? Same with 'eSports features', make them, then we see if they were worth it or not.

About PR, by your purpose there are high chances to listen two far different opinions of the project regarding who you are talking with, which you must agree with me can create confusion and lack of credibility regarding the project. Moreover, the game will benefit to have someone specialized on give media coverage, by reaching more potential users.

As you said, fans are - I might say they use to be - subjective, that's why you have to make a polls (not a forum one, but serious targeted poll/survey/opinion poll), to recognizes the general opinion about a certain matter.

The idea of helping communications between clans, it's just to create a sensation of movement in the game. The closest number of players is exactly what AC have to exploit so they can use the players/clan activities to show newcomers how things are going. Just about people not having to see the same exact homepage from month to month. Remember, activity raise activity.

On the last part, which belongs to site discussion, what about giving a reason for 'no'? What's worse on people navigating the site in their own language or able to register with their Facebook account (or Google PlusOne, Twitter, etc.)? And regarding ads, again, why 'no' ads? What if we can bring enough money from ads to sponsor a CDN network, a server in each continent/country or perhaps make T-Shirts that later can be sold again on the behalf of the game? Is that so bad? Warsow even have ads into its own maps :) As a free project, I can't understand why any won't support the project by just having Google Adwords on the bottom of your site... it's just an egoistic behaviour.

Regarding some other stuff pointed by Jamz that I couldn't fill on my previous post for Habluka:
- In-Game warm up is needed to prevent good pc players to spawn much before than users with low pcs (of course, this applies for matchmode only, in public there is no a real need of it). Plus, it can be useful to introduce limited breaks during the clan matches in order to sort disconnections or other urgencies of people playing (yes, people use to stop playing and wait but time is still running).
- Regarding SVN and testing, I personally don't participate just because I have not the feeling that my efforts are going to be worth it (due to stuff already commented about devs and community feelings). I can't speak for other, but it may be not only me.
- About money, I've never said any dev have to become rich from the game. As my grandpa said when he was living: "Money is much easier to spend than to earn". I am more than sure that we can find 'where to spend' the money if the project has an adequate budget (i.e. prizes for contests and/or competitions, better infrastructure, extra services, etc.)
- I don't think the 'leader' should be a coder, so it can best allocate his time to manage, administrate and motivate the team, as by the nature of the project common objectives/decisions should still be taken by the overall team. Similar as our structure at ED, I'm the higher ranked member, but I can't take decisions on my own that affects all the Clan, and even less that can affect a certain department, however I'm in charge to verify that things are been done well.
- Standardization allowed Ford to step from creating 10 cars per month to 10000 cars per month, that's why it has become important to accomplish certain standards. In the case of software, it approach to newcomers to something they should already know with great returns in terms of players acceptance. Having or not having the possibility for server owners to switch on and off team damage, is not differentiating a game from another excepting from the possibilities and flexibility that it offers. As for the servers tools, think on an application as RCon for CoD, by which you don't need to be in the server to admin it (In case it already exists, it should be packed within the package or at least in the same section of downloads).
- Exactly, I was referring to live feeds :) but of course it can be extended.
- I was referring to multilingual interface not subforums. This means, for example in Spanish 'Previsualizar Post' instead of 'Preview Post' if I wish to navigate the site in Spanish, simply that.


Anyway, despite our different opinions, thanks to Habluka and Jamz to join this interesting discussion, I really appreciate to be able to discuss this matters with the rest of AC folks.

GGz!

[V-Man]

I'm not complaining about the release times, but regarding why those releases are lasting.

It is a good thing to have a release stable enough to last a long time.

that is not a reason to don't listen my users or give them support/adequate answers.

I wish you'd get out of the assumption that the devs don't listen to others. They do.

As in almost any free project, you don't need to be a part of the dev team to improve the code, that's why there is a role named 'collaborators'. Dev team MUST be a group of people that can give at least 30-60 minutes per day to the project

Who made these rules?

About stability, I may have not explained it well. I was proposing to give a strong communicate to the community like: "guys this is how we think the game is better, please stop popping around with balance anytime you get pwned by a certain weapon and brain storm new ideas for the game".

Here's a 20-page thread where the devs have invited community input about the weapon balance.

Regarding features discussion... you see? If it where from you, we won't even test them to see if there are positive feedback or not, how will the project improve then?

Dude. Have you even looked at the SVN? It is exactly the proving ground you are asking for but staying aloof from. So many features requested by the community are being tested there simultaneously. And if a feature doesn't work, it is either fixed or removed -- exactly as you have proposed, thinking it isn't that way already.

About PR, ...

Here are some official PR sources:
http://assault.cubers.net/
http://assault.cubers.net/irc.html
http://forum.cubers.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/actionga...e/download

[you have to make polls] to recognizes the general opinion about a certain matter.

The forum has a poll feature.

I can't understand why any won't support the project by just having Google Adwords on the bottom of your site

I can see them there. Do you have an ad blocker?

In-Game warm up

Any clans meeting for a match can warm up as long as they want. Where is the issue?

Regarding SVN and testing, I personally don't participate just because I have not the feeling that my efforts are going to be worth it

If you participated in SVN testing, you'd see that half your complaints are moot, which means that your efforts of putting up walls of text to address perceived "problems" were the efforts that weren't worth it.

if the project has an adequate budget

"if" implying that it doesn't already.
Rather, "if" the project didn't have an adequate budget, the devs would do other things to bring in more money. I find it odd that you feel able to judge the needs of this project. I am quite sure the devs would be more equipped to make assessments of that.

I don't think the 'leader' should be a coder

And I think the leader should be a coder.

Standardization

AssaultCube is its own standard. It does not need to emulate any other game in order to be great. And by "great" I do not mean your definition, which includes commercial gains and sales conquests. I mean enjoyable for individual players. And comparing an FPS game to a car in terms of a need for standardization is a bit of a stretch. If AssaultCube were to meet market standards for other FPS games, it would have to ditch the Cube engine in favor of a more graphics-intensive one, adopt the octree map engine as mentioned elsewhere, and basically have a complete makeover of every element of gameplay -- which, in such a case, would make it Sauerbraten. Perhaps if you talked to the folks at Sauerbraten, they would be more inclined to steer their project toward your favorite FPS?

Perhaps the main reason you're getting rigid feedback is that you aren't just making some simple suggestions. You're making sweeping criticisms of every element of the game, its community, and its development (and here I might add that most of the opposition to your sentiments comes from community members, not devs). You're pushing for measures which would change it into a completely different game and which would turn aside the main basis for its development: to provide a simple game for simple computers. It's not that change is of itself abhorrent; the SVN will prove that -- if you'd be willing to glance at it. The problem is that changing everything about the game might as well make it a copy of some other game. If you dislike all the things about AssaultCube that make it what it is, then it'll be easier for you to do one of two things rather than criticize, hoping that you goad the entire community into migrating:
1) Learn to code and make a fork of AssaultCube that suits your personal interests, or
2) Find a game that more closely approximates your fine taste in gaming, since AssaultCube obviously doesn't cut it for you.

For the topic:

Answer is very simple, a game intended for casual gaming will make life harder for clans.

This is true, and is not to be treated like a problem that needs to be solved. "Casual gaming" should be considered an oxymoron, no?
The problem that does need to be solved is when clans don't last long, and that is up to the individual clans and their members -- not the developers of AssaultCube.

[Ronald_Reagan]

Yes, I read these last three walls of text, but I will refrain from making my own. My responses here could have quotes, but I am too lazy to make them as I feel you are intelligent enough to see where they fit in.

This may help you figure out how much AC gets played.
http://pbclan.tk/serverstats/index.html
Specifically:
http://pbclan.tk/serverstats/masterserver.html

My bad, probably saw this: http://assault.cubers.net/docs/reference...bottimeout

[Roflcopter]

It is a good thing to have a release stable enough to last a long time.

They clearly aren't "stable". My game crashes from time to time and I have major hit-reg bugs from time-to-time that make the game unplayable. Not just that when I do complain about it I am mocked and not taken seriously even by moderators.

Ok, bye. You wanted attention, you got it. Can't believe you registered for this...
BTW how can you tell that you don't miss? /accuracy 1? Do you count the hitsounds?

his crosshairs touch the target! Obviously that means a direct hit.

The fact some people can't meaningfully play on certain servers fragments the community and causes conflicts. It's also the single biggest bar to serious competitive play. Jason and I introduced a competitive Urban Terror player to AC a while ago and one of the first things he noticed was, as he put it, "unhits".

It's also still not fixed in SVN (serverevents.h) sadly:

[SELECT ALL] Code:

wait<gs.gunwait[e.gun] ||

Literally all that needs doing is removing that line of code. Jason's server has had the fix for 6 months and has been stable for all of it. Similar but less naive tests can be added to the anticheat if they aren't already coded.

[Ronald_Reagan]

You really dont know how much Brahma has been bogged down by work have you?

Every time I have talked with him he is in a short break where he doesn't have to grade papers or such.

That issue needs time so they can test the way that line interacts with anticheat.

[Apollo{TyD}]

@moderators:

There is a feature to split a thread. It seems to be necessary cause this thread is offtopic now (how surprising). Let some people discuss about clans and others about game features and devs...

[Roflcopter]

@moderators:

There is a feature to split a thread. It seems to be necessary cause this thread is offtopic now (how surprising). Let some people discuss about clans and others about game features and devs...

I made that point because it highlights two things. Firstly that it was handled in a way that was destructive to the community (simply dismissing me as an idiot). Secondly that the bug itself is actually a show-stopper for competitive play to gain momentum and clans stick around.

I have a feeling that why many of the old good players of 1.04 left was in part due to them being put at a disadvantage by this bug. I know a few of the BC players had these issues for instance.

You really dont know how much Brahma has been bogged down by work have you?

Every time I have talked with him he is in a short break where he doesn't have to grade papers or such.

That issue needs time so they can test the way that line interacts with anticheat.

Well it's good to hear it hasn't been forgotten about and of course I'm appreciative that you guys are volunteers doing this in your spare time.

[jAcKRoCk*]

I love AC even with those bugs, I've made some friends IRL and in here also, on topic, clans will die in time, nothing last forever :)

[V-Man]

I sincerely apologize for my flippant attitude back then. I had little understanding of how AC is run so differently by different machines. I hope to see the problem fixed soon as well.

[XFA]

I have a feeling that why many of the old good players of 1.04 left was in part due to them being put at a disadvantage by this bug. I know a few of the BC players had these issues for instance.

I found the transition from 1.0 to 1.1 extremely hard. I really wanted to keep on playing ac but i found the 1.1 pub so incredibly boring compared to 1.0 pubs. Everything in 1.1 moved so much slower then in 1.0. I quit ac for several months before i could play 1.1 without getting board and not playing after 5min..

[Hellspell]

My 2 cents is it's because the game just plain aint fun any more. Once one person leaves because of it, so the rest of the dominoes fall. That's my theory anyway. Personally I don't think this is anything like the fun 1.04 was.

[Shorty]

I found the transition from 1.0 to 1.1 extremely hard. I really wanted to keep on playing ac but i found the 1.1 pub so incredibly boring compared to 1.0 pubs. Everything in 1.1 moved so much slower then in 1.0. I quit ac for several months before i could play 1.1 without getting board and not playing after 5min..

+1

[Dade]

V-Man, I believe you are getting some sentences out of context as:

- I'm not inventing any rule but stating what have been made from 20 years of free software development. Just check Mumble Project Development Wiki and see where it says you must be from the dev team to send patches.

- I looked to the SVN but I still have not seen what features I should check from it except if I feel that shotty (and other weapons) fits my requirements; if there is anything else to test I haven't had the opportunity of read about it. But I must thanks you, you just pointed a clear example of what I was talking about. Also I think this answers you about your other concerns about me and the SVN testing of AC.

- Public Relations are far more than an IRC or a Forum. Just check this Wiki to see what it is.

- I already explained what polls I was referring to (opinion polls / surveys)

- I can see AC ads correctly, that was an answer to Habluka that was not comfortable with using ads to finance the project (as he have an ads blocker he can't see they were already there xD)

- I already specified which is the objective of warm-up times when answering to Jamz

- If this is a real 'community-driven' game I don't see why I can't make judgments about it (and even if it weren't community driven - aka freedom of speech)

- My 'if' was implying that 'if' there is more money you can spend more money (or save for the future of course). If you want to see it as an economic degree point of view, production functions works around two factors labor and capital, if you raise one of them you raise production (quality/efficiency if you want to see it in other words). In a more practical view - with other words, if you have money to buy a good PC with better FPS than the previous you technically will 'produce' (frag) more

- Why it should be a coder? Does a manager needs to know C++ to allocate a coder to coding and an artist to textures creation? I know it's a simple/silly example, but I think (and hope) you can get the idea

- Regarding standards, isn't AssaultCube an FPS? Does adding features like turning team damage on/off for server owners or warm up times for match modes is going to change anything about the game except more flexibility and versatility?

- If from 'with great returns in terms of players acceptance' you realise 'your definition, which includes commercial gains and sales conquests' you are probably hoping people is stupid enough to blindly trust your words

- I hope you can explain me and other readers where I ever talked about graphics on my features discussion and also where I talk about a complete change of the game

- Continuing with features, how does adding those I mention would decrease performance for slow pc players?

- I don't criticize, I just share my own analysis referring to a question that has been made by another community member

- I've never been discussing the game itself but the way it has been managed and developed

- Regarding casual gaming, just figure why there is no REAL competition environment on consoles apart from FIFA and PES (if you don't see it, compare skill levels that viewers can see from a match played with ppl with pads and ppl with keyboards+mouse)


@RR and other members that think like him, I like to post 'walls' when I think there is something to post about. I believe it's more positive for the game/community than bulling people or fulfilling the OffTopic section of the forum.


@Apollo you may don't see or don't want to see it, but we are exactly talking about why clans are more prone to dye in this game than in others.


@Hellspell you have given a nice summary of my analysis: "Clans are still lasting because of relationship with each member but not because of the game itself, which even promote the failing of clans". Appreciate that some people have understood my message :)


@RoflCopter thanks for reinforce my concepts by sharing your personal experience with the game.


GGz!

[V-Man]

- I hope you can explain me and other readers where I ever talked about graphics on my features discussion and also where I talk about a complete change of the game

I seem to have confused you with another forum member. Please disregard that part of my post.

[Ronald_Reagan]

I'm not saying posting walls of text is bad (I can do that as well), I'm just saying that I was refraining to do so.

:|

[tempest]

It's also still not fixed in SVN (serverevents.h) sadly:

[SELECT ALL] Code:

wait<gs.gunwait[e.gun] ||

That's a feature, not a bug.

Literally all that needs doing is removing that line of code.

May I add "... to enable cheaters to choose any firing rate they wish, for any weapon." Please try to understand what a certain piece of code does before you call it a bug.

Just check Mumble Project Development Wiki and see where it says you must be from the dev team to send patches.

Sorry, but where does it say that? All I read is

You can then submit the patches to us and we will gladly review them and probably accept them.

Same goes for AC: feel free to send patches, and if they do their job, are somewhat well-written and aren't contrary to AC's way of doing things, they'll probably be included.

Public Relations are far more than an IRC or a Forum. Just check this Wiki to see what it is.

To oversimplify: we don't need PR because we don't have anything to sell, and we don't have to sell anything.

- My 'if' was implying that 'if' there is more money you can spend more money

Okay, but what would that money be spent on?

- Why it should be a coder? Does a manager needs to know C++ to allocate a coder to coding and an artist to textures creation?

I say again, this is an open-source project developed by a rather loose team of volunteers. As everyone else here (server hosters, people organizing tournaments etc.), we develop in our spare time. No one likes being bossed around by some guy who has no idea of what he's ordering people to do - we get enough of that outside of AC. Now, it doesn't need to be a coder - an artist or a server administrator would be fine as well, provided he has the necessary experience and technical understanding.

- I've never been discussing the game itself but the way it has been managed and developed

Well, you see, there is actually no directed "way this game is being managed and developed". I know I'm repeating myself, but again, we do it for fun. That's the way it works, but things might work differently if you were to pay us... ;)

@Hellspell you have given a nice summary of my analysis: "Clans are still lasting because of relationship with each member but not because of the game itself, which even promote the failing of clans"

I just love how you seem to think that AC is the only game where clans ever fall apart. It's exactly the same in most other games, and in some, it's much worse. The average age of the players also matters here - AC is a rather "young" game, compared to ARMA and the likes.

TL;DR: meh, whatever.

[Roflcopter]

That's a feature, not a bug.

There is a bug with that "feature" though. It assumes naively that there is absolutely no jitter on UDP packets over the internet.

May I add "... to enable cheaters to choose any firing rate they wish, for any weapon." Please try to understand what a certain piece of code does before you call it a bug.

I understand fully the code and its intended purpose. But it doesn't just stop cheaters modifying their fire rates, it also introduces a bug for completely legitimate players where their bullets are dropped. It's maddening to suggest there is no issue with that code when it has been verified that this does in fact result in "unhits" by Lucas.

If you really need I can make a demo of me shooting exactly five bullets, verifiable by seeing I have exactly 15 bullets in my clip when I stop firing, against a playing standing still and at very close range where there is no question the bullets should all have hit, even considering spread, and only three to five bullets hit.

Those comments reinforce my point that the issue isn't being well handled.

[flowtron]

*cough* .. tempest has been very helpful & concise in his earlier post .. I haven't read this whole thread, just picked up on it now actually ... sad to see the big divide though.
The cube-engine is built on ENet and eihrul wrote it, using UDP to mimick TCP; the whole game is basically totally built on the knowledge of the un-state-liness of UDP. That's the major cause of the ease with which cheats can be built into the game - cube1 (from which AC was branched off of) assumes that local games are synchronized by a mulitplexing server .. which does nothing else. AC has (more or less) recently moved a lot of the game-logic server-side - which negates the speed-/bandwidth-uninhibitedness (if that's a word) of ENet .. basically, LAG now really is becoming an issue, it wasn't before.

Dropped shots is most probably caused by the AntiCheat-Code; where I've had extensive discussions with Brahma about avoiding false-positives .. but he's been unable to spend time on the project for almost a year now and the latest I heard it's not going to be soon when he will again.

So, to reiterate: On one side there's the inherent local-game VS local-game concept of the core cubeengine - just because you "think" (locally) you hit someone, doesn't mean the network-game will grant you that hit - the remote game will decide that - and on the other side (the AntiCheat side) the server might be dropping your shots even then.

[Roflcopter]

...

I agree the anticheat plays its part, but clearly so does this bug. If you changed the code to log every time a bullet is denied because of the wait<gs.gunwait[e.gun] portion you will see that bullets are dropped. Am I to take from your reply that you do not consider this a bug and will not be fixing it?

With regards to the anticheat, why should any cheat detection measures deny bullets? Instead it would be better to either ban a player if the anticheat sees enough suspicious behaviour or do nothing if not. Subtly dropping bullets is not compatible with competitive play. I'd rather an otherwise good game was not made bad for the sake of an easily circumventable anticheat; at the least give an option to disable it.

[Hellspell]

Well if it's dropped shots that's causing clans to split up then it seems to me that the only logical solution is that every clan moves to runescape. I've heard it has clan support now, too. Christ I've got some good ideas.

[Ronald_Reagan]

I understand fully the code and its intended purpose. But it doesn't just stop cheaters modifying their fire rates, it also introduces a bug for completely legitimate players where their bullets are dropped.

Er, look at the code again. If the the shots come too close together, they get dropped. Hence, it makes it so no one sees that the shots getting shot. Resulting in "unhits" for the client. Sorry to say, but you ought to reread the code in that section before making any claims of knowledge. Note that it is serverside, that may help you.

[flowtron]

The code-discussion is indeed Off-Topic; the posts - which I haven't followed back to the beginning of the divergence TBH - seem to be too much intertwined with on-topic ones for the forum-software to make a technical split possible.
If at all it should simply be a new thread that makes a reference to the beginning of the off-topic postings in here .. if it actually does get discussed any longer.

[Dade]

@Tempest, I think Roflcopter and Flowtron (which I'm glad that him joined the discussion) are reaching somehow of an understanding about this. If I had to check a solution, I prefer if the game just logs those 'modified rates of fire' instead of directly dropping bullets of legitimate players. Cheaters would be caught the same way just not in real time.

- Regarding Mumble, dasit, there's nowhere it says you must be of the dev team to collaborate into the project. If I'm still wrong, I can assure you this is not well specified on AC sites nor perceived somehow by the community.

- About PR, indeed you have something to sell. You have a philosophy of development, a particular game with his own differences with others and most important, much more competitors than other Free Software games (as FPS is 'teh big genre' on games). At STALKERHispano we don't sell anything, but that haven't been a reason for not building a PR Department (Directed by me) that promote the community and find media partnerships, and of course, conserve and manage those relationships.

- I've already said where it can be spent, but just to repeat it in case people got lost here are some examples: give prizes on (map) contests and (clans) competitions (hell, imagine an official competition with money prizes... roflmao), help clans, improve servers, improve hosting, improve security, contract professional dedicated services, get static content in a GeoIP Content Delivery Network, and I don't still follow because I can really type a wall for this xD

- That's why I never talked of a boss rather than a leader. IMO, a good leader would pick people from the different sections of the game (development) to get better information and improve decision making process.

- You may agree with me that if there were a minimal organization we won't be developing this discussion. Moreover, you may realize that with a minimal organization you, and other devs, would be able to get a better management of your tasks hence a reduction of 'dead times' when you are able to develop which result on an overall improvement of the project.

- I'm with you, AC development is not the only cause and probably is not even a cause, it's a enhancer of this process of closing clans. Like Roflcopter said: "Once one person leaves because of it, so the rest of the dominoes fall", and you may agree with me that it's not common on much other games that indeed provide people a reason to still play.

@RoflCopter... f**k I now understand how I hit much more on 'a fork of this game' rather than on AC... xD +1 to your petition to fix it here anyway.

@Flowtron Again, thanks for joining the discussion and for your technical explanations :)

GGz!

[Roflcopter]

I understand fully the code and its intended purpose. But it doesn't just stop cheaters modifying their fire rates, it also introduces a bug for completely legitimate players where their bullets are dropped.

Er, look at the code again. If the the shots come too close together, they get dropped. Hence, it makes it so no one sees that the shots getting shot. Resulting in "unhits" for the client. Sorry to say, but you ought to reread the code in that section before making any claims of knowledge. Note that it is serverside, that may help you.

I agree with everything you said but it doesn't refute my point. The problem is internet jitter can cause (and often does cause) bullets that were fired x milliseconds apart to be seen by the server less than x milliseconds apart. The will then discard them as being fired too close together. That is, packets have a habit of bunching up on the internet; a normal client can trigger this cheat detection and have their bullets lost.

I think it's well worth these technical discussions because I think they're very pertinent to competitive play. As I hinted at before, I find it odd that very many old good players felt unable to adapt to the new AC.

[tempest]

- Regarding Mumble, dasit, there's nowhere it says you must be of the dev team to collaborate into the project. If I'm still wrong, I can assure you this is not well specified on AC sites nor perceived somehow by the community.

You're right, we should probably state that somewhere.

give prizes on (map) contests and (clans) competitions (hell, imagine an official competition with money prizes... roflmao)

I don't know, I don't feel good about such things involving money. That's my personal concerns though.

help clans

Out of the question. Can you imagine what would happen if the AC project gave money to, say, TyD? Uh-oh :D

improve servers, improve hosting, improve security, contract professional dedicated services, get static content in a GeoIP Content Delivery Network

improve servers: As someone (Flowtron?) already said, there's usually one server for every player online, and there are many high-quality ones among them.
improve hosting, improve security: Are there any problems with this site?
contract professional dedicated services: Which? For all I can tell, the tools we have are sufficient. Otherwise, we could even get free open-source project licenses for professional tools/services (e.g. Atlassian stuff)
Content Delivery Network: that would require a lot of money, and IMO CDNs are still one of the worst rip-offs in the history of the internet.

Moreover, you may realize that with a minimal organization you, and other devs, would be able to get a better management of your tasks hence a reduction of 'dead times' when you are able to develop which result on an overall improvement of the project.

I think there's still a misunderstanding here. I can't talk for others, but I personally would be so happy to have "dead times" once in a while. Just to give you an example: I'm typing this during a break in preparing some exercises for uni, which I have to hand in before midnight and which have already taken me ~15 hours and will probably take another 5. And once I'm done with that, I can start doing the next one right away.
No management can help there.

[Ronald_Reagan]

Who says patches dont get used?
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=det...tid=697091
:>

[Dade]

@Tempest really appreciate your time debating :)

- Even if you don't feel good with money-prized competitions, you think they would give a boost to AC clanning or in your opinion it will only give problems? In other words, you consider it would be worth it? I said money prizes, but it can even be simpler by giving a domain name or similar things.

- By helping clans I was meaning stuff like domain names, hosting, etc. Again based on my own experience, at STALKERHispano we had a Program to Incentively Clans and related Spanish sites for STALKER where people can get for free a hosting with MySQL and PHP, FTP accounts, mail, subdomain, etc. Unfortunately, you wont be able to see all the previous requests of this program because we had a problem with our database in the past; but it had great acceptance in a game which bugs where killing MP activity.

- By improvements of infrastructure I was meaning more capability of AC Project infrastructure.

- There shouldn't have to be problems with hosting or security to invest on them. It's better to prevent than health.

- Professional services as, for example, a fully Search Engine Optimization program managed by professionals which would save us time that can be used on other related stuff of the game site. Of course, I can tell you more.

- I already made a declaration that I can be able to generate at least 100 euros per month in no more that 3-6 months. MaxCDN sells the first Terabyte at 39,95 American Dollars which is very cheap. Moreover, you can sign with even greater services such as Incapsula or CloudFlare which gives both CDN and security covering.

- Dead times are not 'breaks'. Dead times are moments during a particular tasks where you must have to stop your work/task because of lack of management. If you had to stop doing your exercise for uni because you forgot to get a book from the library, here's a dead time to go for it :)

@RR I guess no one?

GGz!

[V-Man]

http://forum.cubers.net/thread-4078.html

[Cemer]

I will work in the anticheats... in the next eclipse.