Mail from Epic

[ProAsm]

This was my return email to Joe Wilcox:

Hi Joe,

I have been consulting with my Team with regards to the whitelist problem and they together with others have a fair argument which I would like to bounce off you if you dont mind.

Firstly let me state that the SkinBrights and HitSounds in UT2Vote are NOT Clientside but 100% Serverside and although the Client has the Option, if the Server Admin sets them off Serverside then regardless of what the Client does, his/hers remains off.
As for being able to disable view shaking events, this is something that is supplied in the game by Epic.
In the UT2004.ini file there is a bWeaponShouldViewShake=True and all that UT2Vote does on request is set that to False - no other shaking events are disabled.

The general feeling would seem to be that the moment we remove the SkinBrights and the HitSounds from UT2Vote, we will be opening the floodgates for UTComp to take over the Servers like TTM did with UT2003 and many people left the game.
Currently the SkinBrights in UT2Vote are suttle compared to UTComp's skins and the HitSounds again is basically to keep out UTComp.

Regarding the size of UT2Vote being 1.2 megs which compresses down to 208k, the general feeling is this takes 45 seconds to downlaod on a 56k modem and 90% of servers these days use re-directs anyway.
Even removing a hell of a lot of stuff which will reduce UT2Vote to rubble, it still ends up at 950k odd and the amount of work involved in starting again is just not worth the trouble.

Having said that would you re-consider putting UT2Vote back on the Whitelist and we will do our best to reduce the size and if its of paramount importance that we remove things like the HitSounds then so be it.

Regards Ben
ProAsm - http://www.unreal.co.za/proasm

 

[ProAsm]

I have just received an answer to my email:

It doesn't matter if bright skins and hit sounds are client or server side.
They alter game play in a way that we do not consider standard.
In a nutshell, a mutator that offers this ability would never be added to the white list.
Just as a radar or on screen hud tracker would never be white listed.

But let me point out, we are not asking you to remove these features from UT2Vote.
We are asking that you restructure UT2Vote so that these features are separated from the rest.
This shouldn't be that hard of a task.

By doing this, you lose nothing.
People who use UT2Vote and want to remain standard can add the voting mutator.
Those that want hit sounds/etc can apply the rest.
It should be fairly trivial to set that up.

Also, breaking it up will most likely reduce the download size of the standard portions.

Another misconception is that most admins use redirect.
I do not believe this is the case.
Most people would be downloading the 1.2 meg version.
Now there are other things you can do to help.
You can strip out the source which would probably reduce the size considerably.
You can also supply the .uz version in your install zip (that should be auto-picked up and sent).

J.

 

[tdw-socke]

well i don't know any frequented ffa-server without redirect...

and afair, you took out the source since the first version

but adding the uz-file to the archive is no problem, and taking out bs, hs, stats and noweaponshake, and therefor making a separate tournament-mod is imho not a bad idea...

but personally i dont care for the standard-stuff, as our servers will nearly never ever be standard-compatible...

if doing such an tournament-mod, maybe it's possible, to make ut2vote detect it and integrate it's features?

 

[De$TiNY]

i can only agree with pow, for me it sounds all like they are jealous. and if i read this email..omg " Another misconception is that most admins use redirect.
I do not believe this is the case" <--- lol he really knows a lot

i think if you would remove so many things from ut2vote then it isn't ut2vote anymore all this extra features, they make it to that what it is today.
i think many people are to lazy to install 3 different things..that means stuff like hitsounds, brightskins and weaponshaking would be missing. and for me itis a bad server without these things. in my openion many people will not like such an simple ut2vote. the admins who use ut2vote are used to the features, to remove it could cause some trouble..like that many admins won't use it anymore and use the crap ingame vote system.

 

[PoW]

Epic goes presently through the effort to floor UT2Vote to spruce their own ingame vote up again.

Even if Ben is able to fragment UT2Vote to 250K uncompressed, no admin will install this voting system as it has the same or less features than the crap Mapvote.

UT2Vote will be then again in the Whitelist, but as soon as the other parts (which never will be whitelisted by Epic) are added, the server is no standard server anyway.
Well, where is the advantage?

Epic squeezes all the breath out of us presently

Why couldn't the players have a look in the server details to see if the server is standard or which mods are installed?

Perhaps we should inform the community how important that Whitelist Story really is! The people who want to use the UT2Vote are certainly not very interested if it is whitelisted or not.

Me imho stand behind you, Ben, and the original UT2Vote!

 

[tdw-socke]

hmm, just thinking...

a ut2vote without hitsounds, brightskinns, stats, noworldshake -> whitelist -> standard-server-compatible.

an extra tournament-mod, which integrates into ut2vote and makes it like before -> no whitelist -> not standard-server-compatible, means no change at all...

i don't see any disadvantages, only advantages...

epic won't whitelist ut2vote as it is now, we may whine about the reasons for that, also personally i don't like blaming people i don't evan know, only by reading one or two postings of them... but that's ot... we have to deal with the situation and get the best out of it, so if stripping ut2vote only by the things we mentioned now makes it whitelisted again, we imho should do it, to satisfy those admins, who seem to need a standard-server in first place. For all others we should make a tournament-mod which maybe integrates in ut2vote, making the server a nonstandard-server, but all tournament-mods do so...

and imho the bs and hs still are buggy / not perfect, and for a real tournament-mod there are still things missing...

my 2 cent

 

[ProAsm]

Well I have basically decided to leave things as they are for a while.
UT2Vote45 will be identical to UT2Vote44 except with the bugs repaired and a few small items added.

Later I will remove the ClanMatch stuff, SkinBright, Shake, WeaponStats, HitSounds, Chatlogs ans a few other stuff.
This stuff that we remove can go in a HIGHLY ILLEGAL mod where we can have PlayerClasses, ControlClasses.... you name it, so when the new mod is running it will make your server sweat

What is left will be UT2VoteLite

 

[sh0V3l]

good choice ben but then i never doubted it anyway =D

 

[Imaginos]

ooh.. I love it when you talk all dirty like that

 

[ProAsm]

Still have not heard from Epic
Is there anyone here who can contact say Steve Plodge or someone as I dont want to be seen as going behind Joe's back but we need a friggin decision and we need it soon as I have mods standing on edge here atm.
Imaginos possibly - we need acceptance for say 550k uncompressed and 190k compressed.
Hell that is more than a 50% improvement.

If you carefully read the emails sent to me, never is there a mention of an actual size and in all cases its on the lines of:

It has also grown to a size that makes it an unrealistic download to modem users

Most people would be downloading the 1.2 meg version.
Now there are other things you can do to help.
You can strip out the source which would probably reduce the size considerably.

Now it all boils down to what he means by considerably.
Now nowhere is it possible for any ripping etc to reduce any package from 1.2 megs to 250k - it is humanly impossible and they friggin well know that.
They also know that UT2Vote was 475k long when it was first released in January 2003, they also know it was over 900k long when they Whitelisted it so to come and use double standards now is not acceptable, underhanded and very unprofessional.

 

[tuco[HaH]]

Well, screw them and just rename it UT2Vote45.MutBigHead?

Easiest way to get back on the whitelist

 

[ProAsm]

Do ServerActors also need to be accepted by the WhiteList I wonder....

 

[tuco[HaH]]

No, information about ServerActors is not sent to the master server.

Edit: Seriously, changing the class name to (Mut)BigHead will work, because only the class name is sent, not the package name

And then, we will soon see an announcement from EPIC that a "new and improved patch is out now, that fixes tons of Onslaught bugs noone ever had, and that the day after, all servers will have to run the patch, else they won't appear in the server browser any more"

 

[ProAsm]

Yeah I think you might be right there as Joe said to me I must rename it to UT2Vote2 and I said to him that UT2004 does not allow a numeric number at the end of a Class Suffix and he agreed and said I should add a B, mmm.
This weekend we will do something like that and give it a bash.

Another thing I also found, if you remember quite a while back Joe Wilcox made a big noise on Irc about the Author of UT2Vote using Cache Exempt on his Mutator UT2Vote - thats how I got UT2Vote41 to be hidden and accepted as SS.
In 42 and on I took it out.... mmm maybe time to put it back
FM1 also used Cache Exempt, he also stopped using it in FM2

 

[tuco[HaH]]

I also fired up Ethereal and looked at the packets that get sent to the master server. That's why I'm so sure what they send

 

[tdw-socke]

agreed

 

[ProAsm]

From: "Joe Wilcox" <Joe.Wilcox@epicgames.com>
To: "ProAsm" <proasm@stormnet.co.za>
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 5:35 PM
Subject: RE: UT2Vote has been removed from the white-list.

I've Added UT2VoteX back to the white list.

I will release UT2Vote45 very soon.

 

[ProAsm]

Another mail just in

Sure, thanks for making the changes. And feel free to release a
brightskins/hitsounds mutator to go with it. You can even include the
features in the same package. Just make sure it's a different mutator
that makes them active.

 

[tdw-socke]

so no monsters from hell on the other side of the internet?

nice to hear that also epic is using their brains

 

[Imaginos]

I wouldn't recommend letting this version out. Fed up tho we may be, we still have a reputation of integrity to maintain.

Not to mention we wouldn't want this trick to get widespread use.