Decision on Whitelist

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ProAsm

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Mar 20, 2002
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Guys I have been basically working around the clock and have achieved nothing

The way UT2Vote is designed where everything is so 'intertwined' I cannot get rid of anything except maybe the Hitsounds and WeaponStats.

I have made a post to our findings etc in both Atari and here at BU and I'm standing by that.

I am currently in the process of writing to Joe Wilcox with the following reasoning.

It is a fact that TTM2003 destroyed the Gameplay of UT2003 and that was because of the dark skins and lack of hitsounds mainly.
It is just that TTM thought of this before anyone else and is the reason why it was so popular.

In UT2004, we got in first with UT2Vote's SkinBright and HitSounds and this helped by at least 50% to keep mods like UTComp at bay (out).
If however we now remove the SkinBright and HitSounds this will open the doors very wide for UTComp and others to step in and takeover and we will end up with another TTM2003 situation.

As for the other things like shaking and filesize, well that is just plain childish and rediculious.

My Forum posting regarding this:

Whitelisting

As you know Epic have removed UT2Vote from the Whitelist (Standard Server) due to:
Email from Epic
UT2Vote alters the core game play mechanics by adding client-side hit sounds as well as being able to disable view shaking events.
It has also grown to a size that makes it an unrealistic download to modem users.
1. UT2Vote does NOT alter the core game play mechanics as the HitSounds are NOT Clientside but are Serverside.
The Client does have the option to use them but if the Admin has disabled them Serverside then the Clients Hitsounds will always be off regardless of his setting.

2. Disable view shaking events
This is something that is supplied by Epic themselves.
If you look in the UT2004.ini file you will see:

[Engine.GameInfo]
bWeaponShouldViewShake=True


All UT2Vote does is set that to False if the Admin so wishes by setting UT2Votes bNoWeapShake=True
Removing this is just plain rediculious.

3. Filesize
In this day and age... this is friggin rediculious.
UT2Vote44 is currently 1.2 megs and compresses down to 208k and as most Admin and players download from a re-direct these days 208k on a 56k modem takes 45 seconds
To date we have never had a complaint about this, in fact currently there have been several posts of the oposite.
The UT2Vote Team is currently negotiating with Epic regarding getting UT2Vote back on the Whitelist.

Alternate
The UT2Vote Team have however agreed on a possible UT2VoteLite which will have most the features removed and will be on similar lines to what UT2VoteSim5 was for UT2003.
There is no release date for UT2VoteLite at this stage and is currently still in the planning stages.

The UT2Vote Team
 

ProAsm

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Ok this is what I have done as an experiment and if Epic dont luck it then it will get dumped.

I have created a UT2VoteLite which we need to change its name if it works out ok and Epic accept it.

The following stuff has been removed.

Removed all ini section
Basically there is no longer an ini file as everything now relys on the UT2004.ini file - same as UT2VoteMulti.

Removed all weaponstats

Removed all hitsounds

Removed all clan stuff
Everything to do with a ClanMatch including all menus etc was removed.

Removed all SkinBright

Removed all shaking

Removed several other minor things.

Rebuilt most menus

There is very little else that can be removed without starting to totally destroy the mod, the Chatlogs could be next but they only use up 10K which is nothing.

With all the above removed and a lot of the code re-written to try and compact it, the mod is still sitting at 850k.

I will have a Beta ready maybe later tonight or tomorrow night for you guys to checkout.

So at the moment we will have two UT2Vote's, the standard UT2Vote45 that we already have a Beta of and the new UT2VoteLite1

If Epic still reject the UT2VoteLite1 at 850k which can only be based on size as it meets all the other criteria set out by them, then UT2VoteLite will get dumped and have no support whatsoever and we will continue expanding UT2Vote45 and to hell with the Whitelist.

If however, Epic accept UT2VoteLite1 on the Whitelist and not penalise us in future if it grows a bit more, then it will get renamed to UT2Vote50.
In this case UT2Vote45 will get dumped and a new mod designed for ClanMatch, Skins, HitSounds etc etc....

I will write to Joe on Tuesday as I'm expecting another mail from him with regard to the criteria etc.
If he however rejects UT2VoteLite and says its too big, then I wont even bother about a release and we just continue developing and supporting UT2Vote45-> as it is atm, maybe we create a PlayerClass and really go to town :)
 

tdw-socke

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Nov 21, 2003
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sounds good... just a question: how big is the clanmatch part? imho that one gets used quite often, and if it's too big to stay in the mod, maybe offering as a seperate mod which can be integrated to ut2vote, but which also can standalone and will be whitelisted would be an idea for the whitelist-lovers?
 

ProAsm

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The ClanMatch part is about 200k on its own and yes the idea is to have it as a standalone mod, but it will take a hell of a lot of work putting together because its "brains" is now missing and would have to be rebuilt.
 

ProAsm

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Ok it looks like we may be lucky and have UT2VoteLite above back in the Whitelist very soon and it will probably be renamed to UT2Vote50.
Epic sent me the information on how to completely rip the code out of the .U file and boy of boy does it do a good job.
The above 850k file gets reduced down to 427k once all the code is ripped out.
I can then also rip out the Textures and Sounds and that brings it down even further.

With the UT2Vote45B1 that you guys have which is 1.2 megs in size, after ripping everything out it is reduced to 550k :)
 

CVROY

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Mar 8, 2003
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F those guys... lets be real, how many modem players are there out there? Secondly, their winXP bonus maps which are much larger than ut2vote?... what about the modem players now Bi-yatches!!!

At any rate, do what you must... I'll always have Ut2vote on the WGS server:)
 

tdw-socke

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Nov 21, 2003
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hmm, how can we rip out the code and such things? i would be interested on such information too ;)
 

ProAsm

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The DataRip only removes the Textures, Sounds and Music.
I tried that and we no longer had Menu borders, several Announcer sounds were missing, so what use the DataRip is, I'm not sure.

Well i dont know whats happened to Epic.
Yesterday we exchanged several emails and today they have fallen off the earth.
All they wanted to know is the size I got it down to as everything else now passes the criteria.
Currently it is:
With ClanSetup - 528k uncompressed - 190k compressed
Without ClanSetup - 420k uncompressed - 150k compressed

I asked for the first one as I dont feel like rebuilding the ClanSetup from scratch again, its just far to much work at this stage.

All that has been removed is :
SkinBright / HitSounds / WeaponStats / WeaponShake / TallyOverlay / Adrenaline Disable.
The TallyOverlay is now permanently on and cannot be disabled.
 

frogger187

eat. sleep. frag.
May 2, 2003
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ProAsm said:
Currently it is:
With ClanSetup - 528k uncompressed - 190k compressed
Without ClanSetup - 420k uncompressed - 150k compressed

do you have any indication Joe will accept this? He specifically said UNcompressed size of <200k..
 

sh0V3l

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Oct 23, 2003
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i found this message from steve

The hitsounds/bright skins are the reasons why UT2Vote was removed.
We'd also like to see it be smaller, but those two features are what
absolutely prevents it from being whitelisted.

- Steve

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ut2004servers@udn.epicgames.com
 

frogger187

eat. sleep. frag.
May 2, 2003
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this is what i was using as reference from Joe...

">250K is compressed or uncompressed size?

Total period. "
 

ProAsm

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do you have any indication Joe will accept this? He specifically said UNcompressed size of <200k..
The original from Epic in general was that UT2Vote had to be smaller, no-one ever said how small.
It was only when people started demanding a size on the forum that figures of 250k and 200k came into play.
My arguement is that if that is the case, then all non standard .ut2 (maps) must also be banned as even the smallest map starts around 3 megs in size.

With a hell of a lot of hard work, dumping stuff, squeezing etc, I have managed to reduce UT2Vote by as much as 50%

To get it below 250k is impossible and totally out of the question.
We have to get Epic to accept a size of 528k as also I'm not keen on dumping the ClanSetup as it will take a long time and lots of coding to get a standalone ClanMatch mod going and to be honest then I'd rather just dump UT2004 as I dont play the game anyway and just have a small sideline support for UT2Vote45 which will be blacklisted and fast loose popularity to a point where I wont need to support that anymore either.

Also I have now written to Epic twice in the last 48 hours about the new sizes of UT2Vote which is all they wanted as the rest complies and still I have heard nothing.
I got up very early this morning especially to check my email if a mail had arrived because if it had and was favourable I was prepared to take a day off work and get UT2Vote50 out there but at this rate Epic can go to hell.
They go from being extremely co-operative to no co-operation at all.
 
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tdw-socke

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Nov 21, 2003
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hmm, i would be very happy, if i also could get some information on something that works, besides the very interesting information on what doesn't work ;)

and regarding epic, that's the reason, why i don't like complaining about people only by reading 1 or 2 mails ;) I don't think, they want to suppress us or something else bad, they just do their job, and sometimes they are busy, and sometimes not. We may live with that situation or capitulate on that situation, but it's nothing really new... IMHO :)
 

ProAsm

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Yes Socke, I have to agree with you here as I too have all along had the feeling that Epic has something against UT2Vote, right from the beginning in UT99 with ProVote3 and somehow BDB plays a roll in it especially now after they gave him the contract for his Mapvote addition in UT2004.
I see even on his own forum he gives no advice or support or even a suggestion to frustrated players about the internal mapvote, so either they paid him a a lot of money to keep his mouth shut or he has just lost all interest in UT2004 in general because of Epic's attitude and I'm willing to bet its the latter.

If I dont here from Epic by Saturday I'm gonna release UT2Vote45 as it is now with the few fixes and hopefully the Password fix also if possible.
I will also make an announcement that UT2Vote45 is NOT on the Whitelist so the players can decide what to do thereafter.

Another thing that crosses my mind is why is Epic releasing so many patches for the game when there really isn't anything wrong.... the reason is to patch cracks that us modders do to our Mods for the Standard Server crap and to keep things like FoolMaster out.
So why dont Admin just go back to the patch that allows all again because the patches are all supposed to be compatible with each other.
 

tdw-socke

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Nov 21, 2003
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well, epic announced, that within a few days, all servers, which are not at the newes patch, won't be listed by the masterserver anymore, so if you search by ingame-browser, you won't find them... the server may be standard, but still inviseble :(
 

ProAsm

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Yes and the whole release of the "Editors Edition" is a coverup to patch the servers and clients for what I said above - only this way they not only get their way but even make money out of it.
 

Imaginos

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Not sure I can agree that nothing is wrong. I can see reasons to patch.. hell, I play with the betas as they let them out. And there's still bugs. One that's been a thorn in my ass lately is Stats... I still have random invisible players that the built-in stats has no tracking for. I tried OLStats and now the spectators aren't tracked either.. wth?! I'm already looking forward to the next patch in hopes they fix things.

As for the games that Epic plays.. no pun intended, I don't know what they did with/to BDB. Seems that Bruce was on as a contractor for that one time hitch and that's it? I really wish Epic would take the best of his voting code, and with your permission of course, the best of UT2Vote and make that the standard out-of-box voting system. I'm not so sure they aren't actually planning that either.. especially in demanding you shrink the code too.