kemon

Hi there, I was just on a walk and had time to think about the rather heated discussion from this morning. First of all, let me stress that we are not implying F|A is using any malicious pk3 files. The problem is that our attempt at providing our players with security clashes with your attempt at providing your players with convenience. Neither party is either good or bad in this, we are both trying to simplify the lives of players by the means we have. Now, I realize I should have started with this post this morning, because it might have prevented some reactions on both sides. What is the deal of those pk3 and why are we so worried about them? Why the tilde [~] character? When you start the game, it goes through all the pk3 it can find in its directory starting with game (etmain) and then the loaded mod (e.g. legacy, nq, jaymod,...) and loads them alphabetically. So, pak0, pak1, pak2 (the standard etmain pk3) are loaded before pak3 (our legacy pk3). This is causing some servers to enter an outright war over which pk3 gets loaded last, because the content of that pk3 overrides content from all previously loaded pk3. Whichever is the last loaded pk3 containing UI files for the main menu is the one that gets to display what the player sees in their main menu. The tilde [~] and other ASCII characters are in the alphabetical list after alphanumerical characters, making them popular choices for titles for those pk3. Why are we worried about pk3 using those characters? By itself, this is not necessarily bad, like you can see at the example of F|A. Your menu is intended as additional convenience to the player. However, there are several servers that for example remove all content from the main menu except for a connect button to their server. This leaves the player with no choice and options. Some even go as far as immediately connecting to a server without previous action needed by the player. Imagine you start your game and it automatically connects you to a server you do not want to play on, because it executes that main menu file on startup. Once on the server you disconnect, because you want to play on another server. You disconnect to the main menu and immediately connect to that server again, because the main menu file gets executed. This is a loop that a player not necessarily knows how to exit, so they might uninstall. Isn't all of that going to move the war to zzz_* pk3? Not necessarily. There are two different kinds of reasons for those pk3. For the sake of argument, let's call them 'good' and 'bad'. Good is your menu file that wants to increase player convenience and be loaded last to prevent other potentially malicious files to be loaded after it. Bad are pk3 that need to be loaded last to maliciously tamper with the player's main menu in ways outlined above to bring as many players as possible to their servers. It's likely (not safe) that those server admins won't also stop using tilde [~], because ET: Legacy has a few other exploit fixes (e.g. global server redirect from last summer) that they might not want. Also ET: Legacy is by no means the new standard (yet), so other servers on 2.60b will still use tilde to drive players to their server. So if one of the bad servers switches they are losing to the other bad servers who still use tilde. What is going to happen now? The easiest way for server admins to prevent any issues with ET: Legacy is to only use alphanumerical characters in pk3 names. If F|A renames their menu pk3 to z_*, they are immediately compatible with ET: Legacy. Players do need to redownload that pk3, but don't need to do anything else. By using z_* your menu file is loaded after the original game paks, ensuring that your players will have your convenience again. All clients using ET: Legacy will not be vulnerable to the potentially malicious tilde pk3 from bad servers. All vanilla clients would need to be instructed to not blindly connect to servers they don't know. As far as I understand it from reading your messages is that most of you play exclusively on F|A. This means they never even connect to those bad servers, which removes the need for F|A to enter the war of the tilde pk3. Some of you also play on other communities like for example ETc. What could be possible is that you enter some sort of partnership with a z_FA_ETC menu file, that has two buttons in the main menu, one for a sub-menu with all FA servers and one with all ETc servers. By doing this, you also prevent a civil war of last loaded pk3 among 'good' servers. What's planned in the long run? Now, to make it two official statements: "We are not planning on removing that ban in future versions, for reasons outlined above." "We won't be extending the ban to alphanumerical characters (zzz_)." This ban was intended to provide additional security to players. It was always clear that by doing so we are not completely fixing this issue. However, this ban has at least moved that exploit problem in the center of discussion. Players are now aware and server admins are confronted with their decisions. By having that discussion we do hope that the community can actually come together and agree on common practices. Maybe even form partnerships. Change is not happening if we ignore issues. Why are we not blacklisting servers or whitelisting pk3? This is a very slippery slope! We now have been accused of misconduct and exploitation of power with a simple attempt at providing security to players by blocking both good and bad. Good and bad are always relative constructs and a handful of people should not have the power to decide to blacklist servers, nor be vulnerable to allegations of corruption for whitelisting pk3 from servers that donate. Conclusion Server admins can simply rename their pk3 to z_* or anything else that is loaded after the official game files and are immediately compatible. Server admins could enter partnerships with other communities to prevent civil war of menu files among good servers. If server admins rename their pk3 now, ET: Legacy clients will still be safe from potentially malicious files from other servers using the tilde character. Vanilla clients would need to be instructed to not blindly connect to servers.

Uhm....you can /connect, you can use the server browser, you can connect to your favourite selection in the server browser, you can connect to IP from the server browser.

That is strange. We didn't alter the weapon properties whatsoever. Fire rate should be the same. I mean we do have several old ETPro players now doing quite frequent scrims on ET: Legacy and they didn't report that. They did report the delay when starting to fire feels longer, however after some tests they said it was due to sounds and switching to OpenAL sound source normalized it. That you are not hitting the head might be due to adjusted hitboxes. The vanilla body hitbox extends all the way to the top of the head hitbox, so when you are aiming for the head and you miss to the left or right you still get bodyshots. This is ludicrous for any shooter that wants to be proper for esports. It's like aiming with training wheels :D I would still be very interested in having the Jaymod hitboxes (first post in that ticket). They seem to be really accurate, but this is highly argumentative and not very well accepted by ETPro players. Understandably.

The problem is the degree of 'potentially malicious'. Sure, every file on the internet could be bad, you never know. However, it's not the same. You don't go to random sites on the internet and start downloading .exe files. You only download .exe (hopefully) from sites that you trust, because exe has a higher potential of being malicious. The main menu files are the exe. They get executed whenever the player enters the main menu. Like I said, we can't check for their content to be 'good' or 'bad', so we have to assume that it is bad. Because again, you wouldn't execute an exe file that you were forced to download from a site/server that you just connected to to see how it is. This is roughly the same. I don't know if you remember the horrible redirect exploits last summer. ET: Legacy was exempt from that, because we fixed that exploit on the engine level. But how are these exploits accepted behaviour? I'm not implying F|A is doing anything malicious! By no means! I'm just saying that we can't scan the files for 'good' or 'bad' and therefore need to assume they are bad.

Blocking pk3 starting with the tilde [~] was never about completely fixing it. The only fix would be to rework the entire UI system in ET, which is a mammut task. Backstory These pk3 are used for only one thing. To alter the main menu of the player. This can range from simple support, over suggested servers all the way to completely breaking the game of the player. There were occasions last summer, where players were directed to servers without their consent. Everytime you enter the main menu, you would be reconnected to a server by force. This is a virus. ET needs new players to survive and new players will immediately uninstall the game when stuff like that happens. Why? There are several communities that are running perfectly fine without forcing their menu onto the player. The logic is that server admins need to understand that it is absolutely not acceptable to ship potentially maliscious files to the player. You wouldn't play any other game out there that would do sth like this. You only accept it because you have a connection to ET, but new players don't have that. If you need these pk3 then you're expecting your players to also play on other servers and you don't want that. However, it's their free choice. They can enter your server into their favourites. If you don't manage to retain your players by quality of the server, then that is not a reason to screw up their menu. If you can retain them, then you don't need a menu. Logic behind blocking the tilde [~] Like I said, we never intended to **fix** this issue by blockig the tilde. It was a warning sign to server admins. Obviously, this warning sign was pretty successful because we now are having a discussion about this. Feel free to go back to zzz_, but do it with the conscious decision that you want to tamper with the player's game. We are only blocking the tilde, to show the community that potentially maliscious files are not acceptable. You wouldn't accept them from any other program or game, so why ET? Please note that from our side we will leave your Discord in our #communities list and will not take up any means to 'retaliate'. We are one ET community. We do not condone tampering with the game of players, but we are not blacklisting any communities out there. You still have our full support, just like any other community does. I, personally, hope that you will make the decision to stop tampering with menus and try out ET: Legacy. There have been substantial improvements that should make up for not being able to force your decisions onto others. Apparently by protecting the player we have started a community war. I do apologize for this. Our only intention is to protect players. Thank you Then you might also want to report pk3 from clans as viusses for altering the player's game. Or vanilla ET for allowing the redirect exploits of last summer to happen. The one from F|A might have been good, but since we can't properly check for the content in them before starting the game, we need to work with the worst case. That is that as soon as you enter the main menu you get forced redirected to a server (or even webserver). So whenever you start the game or leave from the server, you get redirected again. You would play no other game that redirects you to a website without your consent. You wouldn't trust any website that you navigate to that would redirect you to another website. To me, this is the definition of a virus. //EDIT: To be fair, I was not aware that we are simply deleting files without asking first. I do need to confirm that with the others, but even antivirus programs ask before they delete.

Dear ET community, We hope all of you have thoroughly enjoyed your Christmas break and have endured a pleasant start into 2019. I'm sure most of you have gained a few pounds from all the delicious Christmas food and are trying to cut it down but before you get up and start jogging around we ask that you hold onto your seats a little longer as we've got one more present for you! It's been a while since our last release, but today's the day! Before going any further, we would first like to thank francis for spearheading, hazz, bystry and seeD for their guidance and TeamMuppet for providing server infrastructure for the evolving competitive scene. So, a warm welcome to all competitive players. What's new? * VM_Create on UI error is resolved so no more manual work-arounds are necessary. * Bayesian skill rating is implemented allowing for global comparison of skill among players. * WolfAdmin is now the default game manager, providing many useful admin commands. * Our own master server is up and running, so even if id master goes down you're good to go. * Renderer2 + assets will be available in a bit, bringing you the best graphics for ET yet (experimental). -> complete changelog What's next? 'The enemy is weakened!' is by far our most comprehensive release yet. This means, that before anything else, we first need to take a step back and check if everything is running as intended. All pending tickets (nearly 200!) have been moved to 2.78 and 2.77 is now reserved for non-breaking quality of life improvements and smaller issues. There are three overarching focuses: #1 - Smoothing out the game experience to ease the transition of the competitive scene to ET: Legacy. #2 - Further improving our new renderer to make the game more attractive for new players. #3 - Supporting Android and Raspberry PI devices to simplify server management and test mobile gaming. The ET: Legacy development is open to anyone. If you would like to be a part of it, we'd be glad to have you. Simply join our Discord and start chatting with us. 3D Modeller Recently, InspirationTuts finished and provided us with their first weapon model, the iconic Kar98 For that, we are in need of a 3D Modeller, acting as a bridge between InspirationTuts (modelling) and Zimuus (animations) and finally bringing the weapons in-game. If you would like to assist in the implementation of new weapons, then please, let us know. UI Designer One big aspect of any gaming experience is the User Interface, which in ET is riddled with difficult to navigate server browsers, limbo menus etc. There already are some very nice UI concepts by mAus in our Discord, should you need inspiration. ET: Legacy now comes with Bayesian skill rating and IRC functionality, which also opens the gates for implementing some kind of social system. If you would like to create a user-friendly first front to the player, then please, let us know. Mac Maintainer/Developer With every OS X update from Apple they break support for things. Currently, we have no Mac developer/maintainer in the team, which is always a problem when wanting to release a new version. We have no real possibility to test the Mac build, let alone people who continuously keep it working. In order for ET: Legacy to remain playable on Mac in the future, we are in need of a Mac maintainer. If you have a Mac and knowledge about development (maybe even Mac developer status), it would be very helpful if you could reach out to us. Translators The ET community has always been incredibly diverse so in order to show our appreciation for our world wide player base, ET: Legacy now comes with translations for multiple languages. Translating the game is done entirely by community members. All we require is that you are fluent in English and your native language, so if anyone at all is interested in helping out with these translations, don't be shy, hit us up! Any and all help is very much appreciated. If you want to get started, please let us know or simply have a look at Transifex. Wiki Maintainers In order to help new players get started, a comprehensive community driven wiki is desirable, containing all necessary and useful information. This includes information regarding the general installation of the game, tweaking cvars to achieve the best possible experience as well as general tips, tricks, strategies and tutorials. The foundation is already layed out, but we need the community to populate it. If you have some DO's and DONT's to share, please let us know or directly dive into the wiki and complete it with your knowledge. If you feel like you can contribute in any other way, be it overhauling assets or proven competitive maps, advancing the new renderer or any other contribution, don't hesitate to join our Discord and chat with us. ET: Legacy is an open, community driven development and every helping hand counts.

Hm, I need to check my notification settings, I don't think I received an email on that. Anyway, did you have any particular map in mind that you want overhauled or were you rather aiming at creating new maps @daredevil?

@daredevil I'm very sorry about that. I rushed the release along with ice b2 to get it ready for the tournament by francis. I will make sure to do the next release with a bit more care. In the meantime, if any of you have any reports or would like things implemented/changed to improve (or test) gameplay, feel free to let me know.

That is very weird. This is the first time I'm hearing about this and the map is running on other servers as well. Are you running "etl_bergen_v3.bsp"? I noticed that there is also an "etl_bergen.bsp" in the pk3, which is an unfortunate remnant of the testing process.

Can't edit my prrvious post, but I think I misunderstood you. You were talking about the door in the underground tunnel system in oasis SW, right? I've had a quick chat with @Smileyyy on Discord yesterday. The approach of implementing new routes was preferred in comparison to shortening the existing routes. Partly because the perceived changes are too drastic and partly because the workload would be too broad otherwise. After all, this approach would require a new command map, an overhauled structural mesh and for example completely new fireteam locations to be set. However, I have found an old model for the tunnel system I made years ago when I had plans for a new oasis version. Since the model is of no use for anyone, if it's just collecting dust in my mapping directory, I have sent it to Smiley. This tunnel model includes a connection between the two separate sections. However, to properly (and realistically) implement this into the map, we talked about a few things that could be tested. I'm looking forward to the results Smiley comes up with. It definitely sounds like he is very motivated and has great plans. I haven't actively played competitively in months, but if you still need another person for testing, I guess I could try to give feedback around level design and leave gameplay feedback to the active playerbase.

Why would it kill the covert ops? There are still both team-doors. The upper and the lower one. The upper one actually is blocking regular walljumpers from just proceeding. In the original the upper teamdoor was just blocking the guardhouse, but people jumping over the wall were not blocked by it.

Also tried to show the changes in the command map. The whole red box would be removed. This will result in significant shorter distances for the attacking team. With unchanged spawntimes, this means that the attacking team receives a constant wave of new soldiers, because the time spent running to the battlefield is reduced in favour of time fighting on the battlefield. Not changing the actual position of any spawns means that all original routes remain viable choices. Moving the attacker spawn forward, means that the player either has to run backwards to the tunnel or the spawnwave is split into two groups. Basically, you have to decide which attacking route you want to choose *before* you spawn. If you want to change your route after a very short respawn time where you haven't had the chance to change the spawnpoint, you will have to run the distance again. That is why I'm not a fan of moving spawns around too much. Plus, each additional spawn means additional entities, which is not improving performance. If you look at proper competitive maps, then most of them have not more than 3 attack routes, because it makes it too hard to defend otherwise. It's not fun if you can't calculate the probability of when and where attackers pop up. Good defenders know when to start ticking the nade so it lands perfectly on the approaching enemy team. With too many routes (aka turning the map into swiss cheese) there is no way of saying where people will come from. In the command map you see marked in blue the original attack points. You notice that they are on one level. Once the attacker pushed past the blue line they are "in". I'm not a fan of routes that just put you into the back of the defender, when there originally clearly was an intended line of defense. It undermines all level design decisions.

I already had some thoughts about Oasis, since for Legacy at some point we are going to overhaul all maps like we did with Frostbite, Bergen and Radar. The latter two haven't been released yet. I'm happy to share my thoughts on a few layout changes, since that already provides some gameplay feedback for me if you choose to implement it In my opinion the biggest downside of Oasis is the long distance between the Old City and the objectives, so I thought about way to shorten that. I'm not a big fan of the CP in the small corridor between Old City and Garrison that some map scripts have added, since that puts the spawn into a very narrow place and also shuts down the tunnel and lower corridor route, which gives the defending team too much power in shutting down the spawn exit. My thoughts then were to move the entire last stage of the map closer to the Old City. I have attached 2 layout overviews and 3 shots in this imgur album, where I quickly moved the respective sections around, so it's more understandable what I propose. The existing upper teamdoor in the guardhouse can be removed to allow both teams to access that balcony. Allies already can with trickjumps anyway. The teamdoor is now moved to the upper corridor. The oasis wall is replaced with the wooden gate from the lower corridor. Having the doors this way completely prevents walljumping over the still standing oasis wall. There needs to be a staircase somewhere allowing access to the upper balcony though. It should be placed so that respawning Allies can easily choose to use the upper corridor when leaving the Old City, so I would suggest placing it on the left of the existing guardhouse. Inbetween guardhouse and old city wall. Since the whole last section is moved closer, the tunnel is also shortened. Overall the distance is not shortened too much, but I think it still makes a significant gameplay improvement, since the Allies are faster at the battlefield without making the whole map a swiss cheese, like Goldrush GA, etc. There is no need for more than 3 attack routes, just for shorter attack routes. Let me know what you think. Imgur album: https://imgur.com/a/whWq3Jd

In case you missed it, Titeuf from 85-Productions created an anniversary trailer and also promoting the upcoming 2.76 Legacy release: Did you think the anniversary event was over with the fantastic trailer yesterday? I know I definitely did, but @TITEUF-85 keeps on giving: "We have more candies for you today – a real-time comparison video footage, showing the evolution of the game's textures in the next version of this wonderful mod, in the Goldrush map, right below!More comparison videos will come in due time, dedicated to the rest of the maps, so please stay-tuned!" - 85-Productions (Twitter)

Happy birthday, WolfET. Titeuf from 85-Productions created an anniversary trailer to also celebrate the upcoming Legacy 2.76 release.