[Fenix]

Ok, from what I see here 2 people are bitching at Barbie....I don't wanna be rude but this behavior forces me. You are spitting random sentences without even knowing the situation: but let's go step by step:

matt: In fact you are itself a user of other Open Source projects, but I don't see any collaboration with your upstream.

Frozen Sand is NOT using (and will not use) that fork of ioquake3, but it's using an older version (infact Barba's repo is not a fork, but it's a normal repository with engine source). So how Barbie is supposed to send them pull requests?

matt: Not sure why you expect people to help you on an updater and a forked engine for a closed source game with invite-only development.

As Barbatos stated already, Frozen Sand is NOT an invite only team. I myself joined Frozen Sand without having been invited. I spoke with Barbie, sent my CV to BK/RaideR (or maybe it was Decoy...don't remember), got accepted, signed documents, started working: piece of cake then...It's not hard to join FS: you just don't have to be a douchebag otherwise you can't be trusted by the team.

moonq3: Tried to help, nothing on github to do, said that, got no response.

Helping is not just bugfixing. As Barbatos said no one took the time to check the iobumpy code and tried to merge it with the current engine. What about implementing TCP Rcon? There is a thread somewhere in this forum in which a guy was asking for a remote console....well TCP Rcon would be a start.

hasufell: Open Source alone does not attract anyone.

Yes it does attract someone: people who program cheats. You guys ask for an anticheat and then you ask for open source....do you want an open source anticheat?
That would work.....

Now, we are all grown up people (I hope), so quit bitching and start doing something instead. Bitching won't solve problems: on the contrary it will make devs pissed off and demotivate them (one and probably the main reason why I'm not working on this game anymore). I truly believe that 70% of this community don't deserve anything from Frozen Sand.

This post has been edited by Fenix: 06 June 2014 - 09:13 PM

[matt]

Barbatos, on 06 June 2014 - 02:41 PM, said:

We're not a invite-only development team. Anyone can send his application by email to join the team.

Sending a CV and signing contracts to start contributing is a pretty big barrier.

Barbatos, on 06 June 2014 - 02:41 PM, said:

Stop bitching about how amateur we are.

Actually this project seems quite professionalized. You are developing this in a traditional big-business like way. Creating your own proprietary content delivery systems and using GitHub mostly as a bug tracker pretty much reminds me of https://github.com/ValveSoftware/ except that you did not publish a full SDK of your titles.

This post has been edited by matt: 06 June 2014 - 09:27 PM

[FS HappyDay]

You don't even need a CV to join. I just talked to BladeKiller, something along the lines:
Me: "Hey, I'm considering joining FS, what do I need to do?"
Blade: "I'll talk to the team".

A day or so later:
Blade: "Welcome, you need to sign this before starting."
Me: "kk".

Being known and respected in the community helps a lot I guess. We are just a bunch of guys working on this for fun. Like Blade said, the company behind this is just for the taxes.

[FS Barbatos]

matt, on 06 June 2014 - 09:21 PM, said:

Creating your own proprietary content delivery systems and using GitHub mostly as a bug tracker pretty much reminds me of https://github.com/ValveSoftware/

Kalish and Raider started working on the CMS way before they joined FS, we use it because it's freakin powerful and suits almost all our needs. It doesn't make us pros. Doing your own chocolate cake at home doesn't make you a pastry chef but it's still fun and you can at least prepare it the way you want.

We don't use Github "mostly as a bug tracker". We use Github for all our code stuff since months and it just makes sense to use it as well for bug tracking because we can link issues with commits and pieces of codes. It just makes our life easier as coders and the community can actually see in live on which issues we are working.

Quote

except that you did not publish a full SDK of your titles.

The SDK that we use has been available for long.

You have all the keys needed to help this community, but you are still here trying to find excuses.

[hasufell]

Fenix, on 06 June 2014 - 09:11 PM, said:

Yes it does attract someone: people who program cheats. You guys ask for an anticheat and then you ask for open source....do you want an open source anticheat?
That would work.....

I am not sure if I understand your argument. Proprietary software does not stop anyone from developing cheats.

Further, I can give you tons of examples of more professional proprietary multiplayer games which were affected by this. Very important international tournaments in a lot of those games are often carried out with a guy standing right behind the players.

On regular servers, it's usually just "kick that guy" and be done.

Fenix, on 06 June 2014 - 09:11 PM, said:

Now, we are all grown up people (I hope), so quit bitching and start doing something instead. Bitching won't solve problems: on the contrary it will make devs pissed off and demotivate them (one and probably the main reason why I'm not working on this game anymore). I truly believe that 70% of this community don't deserve anything from Frozen Sand.

Interesting community flair to tell everyone to stop bitching as soon as they lay out their opinion in a civilized manner.

[Fenix]

@matt: so of everything I wrote the only thing you actually understood is CV? ......... no words, really..... oh and by the way, my nephew (who is 16) got a CV.....I don't see the barrier sorry.
@hasufell: proprietary software doesn't stop anyone from developing cheats, but indeed open sourcing make life easier. After 4.2 has been released it took 8 months to create the first wallhack, and wasn't even good. FS then released an update which broke the cheat: need to recompile => need to analyze new QVM to find new hooks => takes more time than just going on github reading the code.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a really huge fan of Open Source and I contribute a lot to OS projects. Going open source for UrT imho is not an option, not because UrT can't take benefits from being OS, but because the shitty community UrT has will not produce anything good (sorry that's my personal opinion, deal with it): it will be all like: omg trolololololol, guuuuu, wtf code shitty bla bla bla! etc etc etc

[matt]

I come from an Open Source RTS development project called http://www.openra.net/ and you can probably do few against information cheating by design, because the client has to know the position of the actors although it should not render everything also for performance reasons. What I read so far http://www.reddit.co..._vac_and_trust/ how Valve does it, is essentially just hacks with detection rules that remind me of virus scanners: checking memory and installed programs for anomalies so you are always lagging behind the cheat developers.

While it is sad that gamers tend to be rude, as you pointed out: they are usually non-technical or non-interested in learning game development. That is probably what keeps cheat programs out of your community, not your closed development model. I am always astonished what the reverse engineering specialists at https://github.com/cnc-patch/ find out just with their hex editors and assembler code injections. I am not sure whether obscurity alone can be your super weapon against cheaters. If that is the major reason this is not a flourishing Open Source project, then the terrorist won. :(

This post has been edited by matt: 07 June 2014 - 08:22 AM

[Fenix]

Because the client has to know the position of the actors although it should not render everything also for performance reasons

Well more or less all the videogames work like this. In UrT every client receive the snaps of all the other players in order to compute their position, and then render the scene. While rendering the scene the OpenGL driver, other than computing shading, lightings and do 3D transformations, cuts out everything which is supposed to be not visible (objects behind other objects, objects outside the view frustum). More info on graphic pipeline here: http://en.wikipedia....aphics_pipeline

The hard thing is not displaying objects which are not supposed to be visible (this can be achieve quite easily by altering the graphic pipeline); the hard thing is "From where to get the data of the other players?". If you have the source code you can just browse the source and find it out. If you don't have the source code you would have to analyze memory meanwhile the process is running (you can also analyze the QVM not running but at least in UrT you will have some troubles). This is how wallhacks are supposed to work. Aimbots work in the very same way: once you know the position of the enemy (the other object), and obviously you know your position and in which direction you are aiming, it's just a matter of 3D transformations and you will be aiming at your target.

While it is sad that gamers tend to be rude, as you pointed out: they are usually non-technical or non-interested in learning game development


That is the whole point here: people tend to be rude while they know nothing about game development and more over they are not interested in getting into it.

I am not sure whether obscurity alone can be your super weapon against cheaters

Security through obscurity is indeed not the solution. Problem here is not "what people in FS are capable to produce", but more "what people in FS are capable to produce in their spare time". Remember that everyone got a job, go at university, and go on with personal life. So, after 8 hours of work I am supposed to sit in front of my computer and code something for UrT: that's reasonable (small amount of work every day will led to something)......but what if I sit in front of my computer and I read this very forum? My first guess: "why do I have to waste my free time for a community like this"?? I'll just go grab a beer and hang out with friends/girlfriend/wife. If FS lose motivation to work on UrT is not FS fault.....it's community fault. UrT is around since more than 10 years, why FS should lose motivation right know if not thanks to an external reason?

This post has been edited by Fenix: 07 June 2014 - 11:04 AM

[FS Frankie V]

FS has been around closer to 15 years actually, if you add Silicon Ice to the mix.

The thing about working an a project this size is you have to be prepared to contribute in a way that makes someone else life easier and give up a lot of your own ideas if they don't fit with the fabric of what has already been done. A small innocent change can and does lead to more work that needs to be done as there is no map as to how things are interconnected.

The bottom line it is what it is and one can choose, just as we have to, to either work with what you got or sit on the fence and play Captain Hindsight.

[hasufell]

Fenix, on 07 June 2014 - 12:49 AM, said:

but indeed open sourcing make life easier

For both sides, yes.

Fenix, on 07 June 2014 - 11:03 AM, said:

Security through obscurity is indeed not the solution. Problem here is not "what people in FS are capable to produce", but more "what people in FS are capable to produce in their spare time".

This is contradictory.

On the one hand you are pro obscurity (because that's the only barrier you currently have against cheaters), on the other hand you decrease the chance of random collaborators by that obscurity.

Then you say there are not enough collaborators. And because there are not enough collaborators, you have to rely on obscurity to have anything against cheaters.

err? Well, you certainly made your choice... but why wonder about the consequences then?

Fenix, on 07 June 2014 - 11:03 AM, said:

Security through obscurity is indeed not the solution. Problem here is not "what people in FS are capable to produce", but more "what people in FS are capable to produce in their spare time". Remember that everyone got a job, go at university, and go on with personal life. So, after 8 hours of work I am supposed to sit in front of my computer and code something for UrT: that's reasonable (small amount of work every day will led to something)......but what if I sit in front of my computer and I read this very forum? My first guess: "why do I have to waste my free time for a community like this"?? I'll just go grab a beer and hang out with friends/girlfriend/wife. If FS lose motivation to work on UrT is not FS fault.....it's community fault. UrT is around since more than 10 years, why FS should lose motivation right know if not thanks to an external reason?

*Shrug*

I work for an open source project with more than 200 collaborators (for free, most of the time it just sucks ass) while I study and do other coding in my free time. So?

This post has been edited by hasufell: 07 June 2014 - 10:39 PM