> If people blame your mod for what a mutator does, then tell them it > was the mutator. Egads.
This is, of course, extremely easy to do since new players always tell developers why they won't give a mod another chance... ;) I'm all for customization as long as players know it's a customized server. If there was a simple indicator that a server was running plugins with their names listed (like there is for mutators), then people could look for themselves--I haven't played around with plugins for HL2 yet, so I'm not sure if this interface is already part of the SDK. I miss it in the original Half-Life engine. > If a mini mod is liked [like the high damage example] by everybody, > then yes it should be implimented by the mod team. However, if a mod is > big enough to have such a mini mod base as, say, natural selection, or any > of the other large mods [nameless..], then it's pretty much guaranteed > that the mod team won't listen to anything the community says, or, even > worse, only listen to fanboys that have a horribly retarded vision for the > good game. Thanks, Fluyra [names edited to protect the guilty]! Ouch? Actually, there are some cases of widespread plugin functionality that we're aware of and want to include in future versions (nextmap is a no-brainer). We don't (can't?) have the full picture of what mods user base is using on a day-to-day basis, but we do listen (and not just to the bad ideas). > .ctx's are already useless - I don't see how people think it's > protection :P When code is running on a computer that people have > admin / root access to, _nothing_ is unmodifyable. Encrypt and > hardcode what you like, it's just adding needless and useless > complexity for you. > Oh, and who needs a mod's source when you have a debugger :) I think this is analogous to anti-cheat on the client side. Any person with enough knowledge of how game code is layered on top of hardware drivers will admit that it's impossible to stop all cheating, but making it harder to do is still beneficial because it keeps the frequency of casual cheating down (or so the people who invest time in anti-cheat like to think). In environments where you want a level playing field across servers (i.e. competitive gaming) it's still worthwhile to at least investigate having checks to insure servers are running the unaltered mod (or the exact set of mini-mods required by the league, ladder, or tournament, for that matter). Karl _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
