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The story behind Urban Terror 4.2
#42
Posted 31 October 2014 - 03:26 PM
Hi Guys
I've been playing Urban Terror for a very long time (on and off) and by a long time I mean, I used to play Quake 2 and when that was dying this was suggested as a replacement. These are my two favourite shoot em ups ever since I was 14 (I am now 30 lol).
I've played various other shooters like several of the CS titles, BF titles, etc, but nothing comes close to the enjoyment that both Quake 2, and then, Urban Terror gave me.
I am from New Zealand so I played a lot on the Aus/NZ communities over the years and slowly watched them get smaller over time, however, in my opinion it was 4.2 that completely killed them.
I'd love to see an Aus/NZ community be reborn and here is hoping the new HD release on the new engine will achieve that.
In any case here is a time-line of events of why 4.2 killed the Aus/NZ communities (I can't speak on behalf of other communities I was not involved in).
Also I just want to make it clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the look or feel of 4.2 in general.
*Performance Issues*
In 4.1 My FPS never dropped below 60. I tried 4.2 (well after release) and during fire fights I went below 10 FPS. I had an old Athlon X2 II 250 with a 9600GT, but still more than enough for this old game so I couldn't understand why there was a performance drop, nor did I care to look into it and just continued playing 4.1.
If I had these issues, how many other people had the same issues and did nothing about it like I did?
*Community Divided*
More and more 4.2 servers started to pop up and slowly people were trying 4.2 out and slowly servers were migrating over to 4.2 servers. Slowly the small community divided into two.
*No Servers from the Master Server*
Eventually the support for 4.1 was stopped and I could not find any servers on my list. Now there is still a work around for this, however, it doesn't work for me despite working for several players I know. Even if it did, think about how many people who just logged into the game on day, it didn't work so they were just like *Meh, the games dead, I'll just go play something else* Some of the newer players don't even know how to manually connect to a server.
After all of this occurred, I could still manually connect to servers, but what incentive did I have to keep playing? Even if I fixed the buggy 4.2 issues, there was no one left to play with.
----
In my view, if 4.2 was an automatic update to the game when you launched the 4.1 client and all the 4.1 servers had been instantly replaced then I think this game would still have a strong player base in general.
Also please don't take this post as a gripe, I am very grateful that such an amazing game was available for me to play for so many years. There is nothing else like it out there. This is simply my view on how 4.2 killed the Aus/NZ community.
I've been playing Urban Terror for a very long time (on and off) and by a long time I mean, I used to play Quake 2 and when that was dying this was suggested as a replacement. These are my two favourite shoot em ups ever since I was 14 (I am now 30 lol).
I've played various other shooters like several of the CS titles, BF titles, etc, but nothing comes close to the enjoyment that both Quake 2, and then, Urban Terror gave me.
I am from New Zealand so I played a lot on the Aus/NZ communities over the years and slowly watched them get smaller over time, however, in my opinion it was 4.2 that completely killed them.
I'd love to see an Aus/NZ community be reborn and here is hoping the new HD release on the new engine will achieve that.
In any case here is a time-line of events of why 4.2 killed the Aus/NZ communities (I can't speak on behalf of other communities I was not involved in).
Also I just want to make it clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the look or feel of 4.2 in general.
*Performance Issues*
In 4.1 My FPS never dropped below 60. I tried 4.2 (well after release) and during fire fights I went below 10 FPS. I had an old Athlon X2 II 250 with a 9600GT, but still more than enough for this old game so I couldn't understand why there was a performance drop, nor did I care to look into it and just continued playing 4.1.
If I had these issues, how many other people had the same issues and did nothing about it like I did?
*Community Divided*
More and more 4.2 servers started to pop up and slowly people were trying 4.2 out and slowly servers were migrating over to 4.2 servers. Slowly the small community divided into two.
*No Servers from the Master Server*
Eventually the support for 4.1 was stopped and I could not find any servers on my list. Now there is still a work around for this, however, it doesn't work for me despite working for several players I know. Even if it did, think about how many people who just logged into the game on day, it didn't work so they were just like *Meh, the games dead, I'll just go play something else* Some of the newer players don't even know how to manually connect to a server.
After all of this occurred, I could still manually connect to servers, but what incentive did I have to keep playing? Even if I fixed the buggy 4.2 issues, there was no one left to play with.
----
In my view, if 4.2 was an automatic update to the game when you launched the 4.1 client and all the 4.1 servers had been instantly replaced then I think this game would still have a strong player base in general.
Also please don't take this post as a gripe, I am very grateful that such an amazing game was available for me to play for so many years. There is nothing else like it out there. This is simply my view on how 4.2 killed the Aus/NZ community.
This post has been edited by sparkster: 31 October 2014 - 03:28 PM
#43
Posted 31 October 2014 - 07:44 PM
Hi spakster
First off we are aware of the differences between constructive criticism and someone just trolling so no worries there.
What was the last version you tried?
Overall we see little or no issues coming out of the QA department and the members of the QA team are more than welcome to post their impressions but there was some assets that was included that did cause performance loss that was corrected. The HD-DE for example was included as part of an update but was designed for fstech1 which was updated to make use of some of the performance enhancements in OpenGL V2. As it stands 4.2 uses, more or less, a 14 year old openGL wrapper for rendering so high detail assets can cause performance loss.
In my opinion there are way to many servers, and many being run on less than ideal hardware, but overall which version of the game players like to play I/we consider them to be part of the community as a whole. We make this game because we like to make this game and will always be free so if someone likes 4.1 over 4.2 that’s OK with us.
Yeah sorry about that but fighting server related problems on two fronts was just to much effort for a team our size and truth be told we could use a lot of help from with in the community as there is to much to do that 99% of the time we agree with.
For those looking to continue their 4.1 fun we have suggested using the Quake3 master servers and I believe that there are a few there and really our master server is focused more on supplying what we hope will be key features to our player base in the future.
Community effort wise this is a very interesting as to possibilities.
http://steamcommunit.../groups/urt-anz
Need to find a group of players one can make their own groups on Steam.
Once again as an opinion how things are run as a community in general is old school as compared to alternatives available to the community that we can't force them to take advantage of.
First off we are aware of the differences between constructive criticism and someone just trolling so no worries there.
Quote
*Performance Issues*
In 4.1 My FPS never dropped below 60. I tried 4.2 (well after release) and during fire fights I went below 10 FPS. I had an old Athlon X2 II 250 with a 9600GT, but still more than enough for this old game so I couldn't understand why there was a performance drop, nor did I care to look into it and just continued playing 4.1.
In 4.1 My FPS never dropped below 60. I tried 4.2 (well after release) and during fire fights I went below 10 FPS. I had an old Athlon X2 II 250 with a 9600GT, but still more than enough for this old game so I couldn't understand why there was a performance drop, nor did I care to look into it and just continued playing 4.1.
What was the last version you tried?
Overall we see little or no issues coming out of the QA department and the members of the QA team are more than welcome to post their impressions but there was some assets that was included that did cause performance loss that was corrected. The HD-DE for example was included as part of an update but was designed for fstech1 which was updated to make use of some of the performance enhancements in OpenGL V2. As it stands 4.2 uses, more or less, a 14 year old openGL wrapper for rendering so high detail assets can cause performance loss.
Quote
*Community Divided*
More and more 4.2 servers started to pop up and slowly people were trying 4.2 out and slowly servers were migrating over to 4.2 servers. Slowly the small community divided into two.
More and more 4.2 servers started to pop up and slowly people were trying 4.2 out and slowly servers were migrating over to 4.2 servers. Slowly the small community divided into two.
In my opinion there are way to many servers, and many being run on less than ideal hardware, but overall which version of the game players like to play I/we consider them to be part of the community as a whole. We make this game because we like to make this game and will always be free so if someone likes 4.1 over 4.2 that’s OK with us.
Quote
*No Servers from the Master Server*
Eventually the support for 4.1 was stopped and I could not find any servers on my list. Now there is still a work around for this, however, it doesn't work for me despite working for several players I know. Even if it did, think about how many people who just logged into the game on day, it didn't work so they were just like *Meh, the games dead, I'll just go play something else* Some of the newer players don't even know how to manually connect to a server.
Eventually the support for 4.1 was stopped and I could not find any servers on my list. Now there is still a work around for this, however, it doesn't work for me despite working for several players I know. Even if it did, think about how many people who just logged into the game on day, it didn't work so they were just like *Meh, the games dead, I'll just go play something else* Some of the newer players don't even know how to manually connect to a server.
Yeah sorry about that but fighting server related problems on two fronts was just to much effort for a team our size and truth be told we could use a lot of help from with in the community as there is to much to do that 99% of the time we agree with.
For those looking to continue their 4.1 fun we have suggested using the Quake3 master servers and I believe that there are a few there and really our master server is focused more on supplying what we hope will be key features to our player base in the future.
Quote
After all of this occurred, I could still manually connect to servers, but what incentive did I have to keep playing? Even if I fixed the buggy 4.2 issues, there was no one left to play with.
Community effort wise this is a very interesting as to possibilities.
http://steamcommunit.../groups/urt-anz
Need to find a group of players one can make their own groups on Steam.
Once again as an opinion how things are run as a community in general is old school as compared to alternatives available to the community that we can't force them to take advantage of.
doing "stuff" with dead things.
#44
Posted 23 December 2014 - 01:54 AM
EDIT: If there ever is a Steam version of Urban Terror based on a new 3D game engine, that is very exciting, and I would certainly be happy to pay for it (as long as you don't become like EA and charge for "Zero Day DLC") :)
Thanks for sharing your news.
I have seen so many hard drives die - it is for that reason that I keep a NAS in the basement with all my important data (files, family photos, etc) on a mirrored storage device. It's not expensive - I bought a pair of Seagate low power 2TB "green" hard drives for $59 each and the NAS itself cost about $75 (2 drive bay capacity). It's not very fast, but it's reliable.
I have had one drive in the NAS die, which I replaced. I know keep a new unopened spare identical disk sitting by ready to swap in in case another drive fails, as I don't if the same model HDD will be available in the future.
I suggest for basically anyone who uses a computer to have a NAS with mirrored (or other type of RAID) disk storage. Not only that, but also keep any files which you consider ESSENTIAL backed up at another physical location in case of theft or fire etc. Flash drives are cheap enough these days, you could backup data to a USB Flash drive and put it in a desk drawer at some other place, in addition to using a NAS with RAID.
In case your main PC becomes infected with a Virus or other Malware which encrypts your data, most likely it would not affect network storage - this is another reason to use a NAS (and not just mirrored disks on your PC itself).
Thanks for sharing your news.
Fenix, on 29 June 2014 - 02:19 PM, said:
HDD failure if I remember correctly, and no, it has never been mentioned
I have seen so many hard drives die - it is for that reason that I keep a NAS in the basement with all my important data (files, family photos, etc) on a mirrored storage device. It's not expensive - I bought a pair of Seagate low power 2TB "green" hard drives for $59 each and the NAS itself cost about $75 (2 drive bay capacity). It's not very fast, but it's reliable.
I have had one drive in the NAS die, which I replaced. I know keep a new unopened spare identical disk sitting by ready to swap in in case another drive fails, as I don't if the same model HDD will be available in the future.
I suggest for basically anyone who uses a computer to have a NAS with mirrored (or other type of RAID) disk storage. Not only that, but also keep any files which you consider ESSENTIAL backed up at another physical location in case of theft or fire etc. Flash drives are cheap enough these days, you could backup data to a USB Flash drive and put it in a desk drawer at some other place, in addition to using a NAS with RAID.
In case your main PC becomes infected with a Virus or other Malware which encrypts your data, most likely it would not affect network storage - this is another reason to use a NAS (and not just mirrored disks on your PC itself).
This post has been edited by Critofur: 23 December 2014 - 02:03 AM
#45
Posted 31 January 2015 - 04:07 AM
Barbatos! Cool story. I'm the guy that has been bothering you about openbsd patches to ioquake3-for-urbanterror-4. I'll clone the repo to my github account and send you a push request finally one day, i swear!
After some of the complaints i saw after your post, thought i'd take a chance to say thanks for all your efforts. I myself have been playing this game from around 2.5 or 2.6ish? I found it originally around 2001/2002 I believe. Anyway, it was the closest thing to Counterstrike I could find that would work on my linux machine at the time, on my voodoo3 (in a pII 300mhz no less!). Didn't think I would grow to love it not only more but completely forget about Counterstrike!
Around 2004/2005 I started the Goomba TDM server which saw myself (usually as ryan[sg]) and another ryan from southern california (Shadow, ShadowBong, HEBongTokes) helping me administer it, usually with 16-20 players. i had smaller player cap as i hosted it from home on cable. Met many friends over the years until I finally shut it down around 2010.
Spent quite some time after 4.2 release complaining like all the rest, though mostly because I couldn't get it running on my precious OS of choice ;) Clinging to 4.1.1 as long as i could until even the last couple servers that saw regulars started to be empty, I one day decided enough was enough and I had to get 4.2.whatever going. I was surprised that in the end, after getting 4.2.whatever working with a semi-recent ioq3 that didn't actually work (yay engine linkage error #31 or whatnot!) patching the ioquake3-for-urbanterror-4 codebase proved far easier in the end. Now here I am still. \o/
Keep up the good work guys, many may have left, some came back? bladekiller i seem to recall the name of from the very first version i downloaded almost 15 years ago.
Finally, I apologize for the unleashing of the Nikki. If I hadn't gone and introduced her to this game, you wouldn't all be dead at her feet. What have I done?! Cheers Nikki ;)
Big thanks to everyone altogether, look forward to seeing at least my little server come back hopefully soon :)
After some of the complaints i saw after your post, thought i'd take a chance to say thanks for all your efforts. I myself have been playing this game from around 2.5 or 2.6ish? I found it originally around 2001/2002 I believe. Anyway, it was the closest thing to Counterstrike I could find that would work on my linux machine at the time, on my voodoo3 (in a pII 300mhz no less!). Didn't think I would grow to love it not only more but completely forget about Counterstrike!
Around 2004/2005 I started the Goomba TDM server which saw myself (usually as ryan[sg]) and another ryan from southern california (Shadow, ShadowBong, HEBongTokes) helping me administer it, usually with 16-20 players. i had smaller player cap as i hosted it from home on cable. Met many friends over the years until I finally shut it down around 2010.
Spent quite some time after 4.2 release complaining like all the rest, though mostly because I couldn't get it running on my precious OS of choice ;) Clinging to 4.1.1 as long as i could until even the last couple servers that saw regulars started to be empty, I one day decided enough was enough and I had to get 4.2.whatever going. I was surprised that in the end, after getting 4.2.whatever working with a semi-recent ioq3 that didn't actually work (yay engine linkage error #31 or whatnot!) patching the ioquake3-for-urbanterror-4 codebase proved far easier in the end. Now here I am still. \o/
Keep up the good work guys, many may have left, some came back? bladekiller i seem to recall the name of from the very first version i downloaded almost 15 years ago.
Finally, I apologize for the unleashing of the Nikki. If I hadn't gone and introduced her to this game, you wouldn't all be dead at her feet. What have I done?! Cheers Nikki ;)
Big thanks to everyone altogether, look forward to seeing at least my little server come back hopefully soon :)
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