Q4 X-Battle (BattleMod) v0.04b

Post by **DRuM** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 3:07 pm

Another mod.

http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=922348

Post by **Eraser** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 3:18 pm

Yay, another OSP/CPMA mimic mod.
I bet that there's at least half a dozen of these getting released prior to the SDK release.

What we need is one mod that takes the lead instead of a fragmentation of mods that all do generally the same. Otherwise it will never work.

Post by **Foo** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 3:19 pm

Eraser wrote:Yay, another OSP/CPMA mimic mod.
I bet that there's at least half a dozen of these getting released prior to the SDK release.

What we need is one mod that takes the lead instead of a fragmentation of mods that all do generally the same. Otherwise it will never work.

You're not alone in thinking that.

http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=916377

What would be sweet in Quake is a mutator system similar to UT's. That way, people could pick and choose brightskins, CPM physics, and so on for their servers.

Post by **nightwing** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 4:26 pm

We need a standard mod like OSP. If servers will have different mods. It will be such a pain .

Post by **[TJD]Rico** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 5:06 pm

There will be loads because loads of wannabes will be scrambling for a "First!" in the belief that it will increase the length and girth of their cock, or something.

Post by **Foo** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 5:11 pm

Or maybe they want to improve the game, enjoy themselves and produce something for the community.

You know, maybe. Or maybe something about penises, yeah.

Post by **[TJD]Rico** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 5:21 pm

Well, yes, maybe, but I do think the community would be better served by people sitting back a while, and seeing if any of the established (Q2/Q3) teams start working on anything before jumping in and potentially adding to a plethora of very similar mods. arQon may come across as a bit arrogant in his ESR post, but he does have a valid point. It'd be best all round if people collaborate, rather than just release.

Post by **Foo** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 5:29 pm

Individual will can't control the direction of a free community (and other nonsense platutudes, by Foo!)

The idea of placing assets into the creative commons is great, but it's up to individuals to take that initiative up. Arq announcing his thoughts on it is great because it brings the idea to a larger audience than before.

The same drive behind that is what's behind my promotion of Wikis for quake 4 and quake 3. Collaborative work building into larger, more complete assets.

Also, for all the talk about making assets creative commons material, I didn't see anything from Arq about putting his code to open source license, or releasing it in any way.

Post by **Survivor** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 5:54 pm

The fact is that q3 has osp and cpma now because they were good. There are loads of mods that were made and aren't being played but i'm 99% certain they attributed some ideas and while the mod might have failed the idea persisted and was used in other mods. It's like evolution. Just let all the mods come, the good will survive, the bad will die but leave a reminder to be used; what arqon mentions will speed it up by quite a bit though and that was his point i thought :icon29:

Post by **Eraser** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 6:56 pm

Foo wrote:
Eraser wrote:Yay, another OSP/CPMA mimic mod.
I bet that there's at least half a dozen of these getting released prior to the SDK release.

What we need is one mod that takes the lead instead of a fragmentation of mods that all do generally the same. Otherwise it will never work.
You're not alone in thinking that.

http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=916377

What would be sweet in Quake is a mutator system similar to UT's. That way, people could pick and choose brightskins, CPM physics, and so on for their servers.

I don't wholeheartedly agree with arQon on many occasions, but right there I do. He hit the nail on the head.

Post by **Eraser** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 7:02 pm

Foo wrote:Also, for all the talk about making assets creative commons material, I didn't see anything from Arq about putting his code to open source license, or releasing it in any way.

Yeah it would make quite a powerful statement to do so. However, I'm not surprised that he doesn't do it either, especially not during the days when Q3 was at it's most popular.

The thing is that his mod will probably be ripped to shreds by the community. The code would be downloaded a gazillion times and every lil' Timmy, his brother and their nephew would create their own CPMA branch with a whopping two new features added and claim it fully as their own. The community is just not ready for something like that.

A better plan might be to keep things centralized but open for anyone to edit. arQon could have the final say in if things go out or are kept in but everyone could come with their own additions. However, I'm also fairly certain that CPMA is too much a brainchild of arQon for him to let it go like that (*insert generic statement about arQon's arrogance over CPMA here*).

I also have to say that arQon helped haste and borland with implementing CPMA's pmskins in Ultra Freeze Tag, even though it pretty much was one of the biggest competitors within the FT community against CPMA/OSP FT.

Post by **MidnightQ4** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 9:06 pm

arQon talks about assets, but says nothing about code, which is just as important if not moreso. It sounds like he doesn't expect anyone to share code and collaborate on coding, which is really stupider than it is for assets.

I think all the coders need to just get in an irc channel and get a wiki going and just start talking about what the needs are and post code that everyone can critique and add to, until there comes out of this process an OSP like mod.

Post by **Eraser** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 9:10 pm

Yeah his use of the word assets surprised me as well. I kind of assumed he included code here, but if not then that's weird.

Most mods that use custom assets really use those assets to give their own mod a unique look and feel. It's usually not the assets that need the sharing.

Post by **Oeloe** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 9:15 pm

Eraser wrote:
Foo wrote:Also, for all the talk about making assets creative commons material, I didn't see anything from Arq about putting his code to open source license, or releasing it in any way.
[...]

I think the project actually was Newborn's (one of the CPMA design team members) idea. Anyway, CPMA and OSP are more related than most people think. The mods share a lot of code. Quote from the comments on that ESR article:

Just because Rhea and I shared all the code to CPMA and OSP, it didn't stop us competing. If anything, it made us try HARDER to top each other: something that we could acheive constantly BECAUSE we could focus on improving Feature X from where it was instead of having to IMPLEMENT Feature X first and THEN improve it.

The OSP HUDs would have been either much later or much worse if they hadn't been built from CPM's HUDs. CPMA's tournament features would have taken much longer to develop if they hadn't been lifted from OSP, but because they were I had time to come up with things like topshots, and then got to tease Rhea for not thinking of it first, which prompted HIM to try and one-up me with the next set of OSP stats, and so on.

About arQon sharing code: the project is mainly focused on sharing assets (game content), at least in the beginning. arQ will be very careful. Newborn is spending a lot of thought on license formats for assets and game code (and he's preparing a site as well).

I think if executed properly, the project is a big opportunity for dev teams of the big mods to prevent a lot of duplicate efforts. At least code for HUD's and stats could perhaps be shared so that every serious mod could have the implementation available.

Post by **R00k** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 9:18 pm

It's his own selfish vision of the problems. He's a coder above all, so it's not surprising that he sees not having shared artwork to use as a problem but totally ignores the thought of open coding.

Post by **^misantropia^** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 9:47 pm

Read up on the license, people. arQon and newborn are specifically talking about the Creative Common License (in its most common incarnation) which doesn't quite apply to code. While we're on the subject, I recall arQon saying that CPMA will be open-sourced in due time. No timeline given, though.

Post by **MidnightQ4** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 10:06 pm

ya basically I read that and thought that arQon was just thinking about his own needs to have available any good artwork that he wants to lay on top of his game code. Also, if you go back and read some of the ancient threads about weapon balance etc on his forum you will find me arguing with him about things quite a bit, and winning imo. His basic theme is that good players deserve to get stacked and then never die, or something along those lines. Anyway I just think that an open source model for the next OSP mod would be a superb thing that could really evolve rapidly and deliver features and quality never before seen in a pro game mod. More brains and typing fingers are better than 1 imo.

Post by **axbaby** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 10:08 pm

raven could save a lot of headaches if they gave the sdk to osp and cpma guys.
i hate cpma though

Post by **Oeloe** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 11:00 pm

axbaby wrote:i hate cpma though

Then you hate OSP as well. And on top of that you hate actually functional netcode, accurate physics that are FPS independant, multi-view demos, not having to do map restarts while changing modes, multi-arena support, SMART bots, the ability to load different item layouts for a map. Unless you were just talking about CPM gameplay of course.

Post by **dzjepp** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 11:06 pm

That's what most people that don't play cpma hate. The cpma movement and stuff.

Post by **Eraser** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 11:07 pm

Oeloe wrote:
axbaby wrote:i hate cpma though
Then you hate OSP as well. And on top of that you hate actually functional netcode, accurate physics that are FPS independant, multi-view demos, not having to do map restarts while changing modes, multi-arena support, SMART bots, the ability to load different item layouts for a map. Unless you were just talking about CPM gameplay of course.

I think he's talking about wonky armor systems, weird movement physics, "tweaked" weapons and all that other nonsense that CPMA introduces. Nothing wrong with vQ3 OSP but promode is shit IMO as well. Overly complex.

Post by **Foo** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 11:10 pm

Oeloe wrote:
axbaby wrote:i hate cpma though
Then you hate OSP as well. And on top of that you hate actually functional netcode, accurate physics that are FPS independant, multi-view demos, not having to do map restarts while changing modes, multi-arena support, SMART bots, the ability to load different item layouts for a map. Unless you were just talking about CPM gameplay of course.

Of course he was. This post is silly.

Post by **dzjepp** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 11:10 pm

Yeah, the movement is a lot harder to get used to than standard vq3 movement. That's what the cpma beginners hate the most and what turns them away from the mod. If you can't move ala the promode physics around the map (1000mph), then you're just cannon-fodder for the experienced cpma player.

Post by **Oeloe** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 11:59 pm

Eraser wrote:Nothing wrong with vQ3 OSP but promode is shit IMO as well. Overly complex.

A typical reply of a player of a good mod that uses shabby shabby gameplay rules. Shame you just got used to the wrong things.

Back on-topic. :icon10:

About X-Battle: how many people here have played the Q3 version? I've been following and helping a little bit with the development of it and i must say Champi is a pretty good coder and he listens to what the players want. He's been giving reliable support on his mod. XB has been mostly interesting for instagib and InstaUnlagged players, as it features different instagib modes (with different railjump styles), combined with OSP/CPMA features like HUD's, stats and pmskins. Multi-arena support included too, Freeze Tag, Clan Arena, you name it.

Knowing some of Champi's potential, I hope he will get a bigger public and some more cooperation from other mod devvers.

Post by **R00k** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 12:01 am

I used to play and enjoy CPM physics sometimes, but it wasn't something I liked playing every day. It's cool to be able to fly around pro-dm6 at 50 mph without having to stop for any curves, but not all the time.

What always pissed me off though, was the people who would play CA, but didn't want to enable pmove. I played Q3 for the first 2.5 years with 60fps or lower than that, and to hear people say I couldn't get the same physics as they did, simply because they "fuckn hate pmove, GWAH!" was pretty frustrating. Most people didn't even know what it was, so it was 3 years or so before I could do bridge-to-rail jumps on my favorite servers.