Rivatuner or "REEVATOONA" as it is known in the depths of London, made famous by being used by RazZ and now its the flavour of the month, so once again, let me play devils advocate.
When I order the flavour of the month, that's all I want, but with Rivatuner its not all you get. Because you see Rivatuner is a rather unfortunate case of pure hypocrisy and that is somewhat unacceptable. I take my case back to into history and ask, why in gods name is this anything new, and why if it wasn't then should it now be a lifetime ban offence?
For those who dont know what RivaTuner is, its a simple video card tweak that has many purposes, it can be used to unlock pipelines and shaders on a video card, just like over clocking your card. Or it can be used to increase lobias, or up the picmip as it is commonly known to make parts of the map much clearer.
Lets go back to 2003 and the Quakecon RTCW qualifiers. Quakecon introduced a radical new config that changed the way RTCW was to be played forever. Gone are the days of the "If it aint white it aint right" Config and in comes a new, spectator and sponsor friendly config suitable for lans.
The config caused uproar, it was a farce said many as a config for the few soon effected the many as it was enforced into all competitions. However, it was eventually accepted and is now common place.
However, the config made for those clans qualifying for Quakecon was not actually used by a large majority of the clans participating in the online qualifiers. Why? Well the European side of the story goes, that the Americans introduced the European qualifiers to the program PowerStrip, used for enhancing the gamma on a monitor (this was mainly before it became a mainstream feature of video card drivers).
So in 2003 and beyond, external programs were used to avoid the PB cvars and give those using it an unfair advantage over the either nieve or honest players, but nobody batted an eye lid, not a single player or admin cared.
Now if we're going back even further, pre Quakecon 2003 and back into the days of "If it aint white, it aint right" config, then the high picmip feeling produced and replicated in so many of the PB Screenshots was also common place, and has been common place in Quake 3 history, so why its a problem in ET is also somewhat questionable.
Furthermore, the idea that features from a specific brand of graphics card can reproduce different settings is nothing new at all! Delving back into RTCW history even further and to the release of Punkbuster for RTCW, one of the first cvars to be blocked was that of r_uifullscreen. This cvar removed fog and mist from maps such as Assault and Village instantly. It was some years later re instated because the users of ATI cards were at a huge disadvantage when it was found with a few simple tweaks, nVidia users could reproduce the effect of r_uifullscreen. But nothing was ever done to those who used that tweak, they were not castrated for "enhancing" the settings of their graphics card.
If we look into ET history and the case of r_clamptoedge, we'll see history is repeating itself all over again. Back in void we played gros on radar and got an absolute ripping from the garage roof, at ranges we did not even know were possible. After the match, I was simply amazed at what just happened, I asked them how the hell it was possible, because these players had such a history that there was no way they were hacking. Gros were very upfront about what was happening, and that all the top clans who had nvidia cards were able to use this exploit, I tested it out, and bingo I was able to do things my ATI using clanmates could not.
And what of Shrug and its users? Using a bug to gain an advantage over your opponent, one so blatantly visible live on ETTV, and yet the reprecussions were minimal in comparrison, why?
So why rivatuner and why RazZ? History dictates that there will never be a level playing field forever. All RazZ has done is made famous a new example of how these things are possible and has been made an example of in what is a monumentally brave step by the leagues, but let me put forward one final challenge to the logic behind this.
Between December of 2005 and March of 2006 I played CS:S clanned with PinkGorillas. I still have that config saved on my PC. What I found refreshing about playing CS:S at that time was that it was something of a level playing field and that supposedly config'ing was not really much of an issue in the game. So when I go to play CS:S recently I put the old config onto the new installation of the game and the result is this http://images.filecloud.com/153572/css3.JPG I ask you, am I a cheater? Because these settings are caused by the video card drivers I am using (Amazingly, I'm actually worse at the game now with this current setting, than I was playing normally!)
Theres the black and white answer that Yes RazZ is a cheater, he downloaded the program, he got caught with it. But then there is the coloured answer of well, hes not doing anything new, so why is he being treated differently?
For the record the kind people at Valve were not interested in my screenshot nor the reasons why my once normal config now bears these results.
When I order the flavour of the month, that's all I want, but with Rivatuner its not all you get. Because you see Rivatuner is a rather unfortunate case of pure hypocrisy and that is somewhat unacceptable. I take my case back to into history and ask, why in gods name is this anything new, and why if it wasn't then should it now be a lifetime ban offence?
For those who dont know what RivaTuner is, its a simple video card tweak that has many purposes, it can be used to unlock pipelines and shaders on a video card, just like over clocking your card. Or it can be used to increase lobias, or up the picmip as it is commonly known to make parts of the map much clearer.
Lets go back to 2003 and the Quakecon RTCW qualifiers. Quakecon introduced a radical new config that changed the way RTCW was to be played forever. Gone are the days of the "If it aint white it aint right" Config and in comes a new, spectator and sponsor friendly config suitable for lans.
The config caused uproar, it was a farce said many as a config for the few soon effected the many as it was enforced into all competitions. However, it was eventually accepted and is now common place.
However, the config made for those clans qualifying for Quakecon was not actually used by a large majority of the clans participating in the online qualifiers. Why? Well the European side of the story goes, that the Americans introduced the European qualifiers to the program PowerStrip, used for enhancing the gamma on a monitor (this was mainly before it became a mainstream feature of video card drivers).
So in 2003 and beyond, external programs were used to avoid the PB cvars and give those using it an unfair advantage over the either nieve or honest players, but nobody batted an eye lid, not a single player or admin cared.
Now if we're going back even further, pre Quakecon 2003 and back into the days of "If it aint white, it aint right" config, then the high picmip feeling produced and replicated in so many of the PB Screenshots was also common place, and has been common place in Quake 3 history, so why its a problem in ET is also somewhat questionable.
Furthermore, the idea that features from a specific brand of graphics card can reproduce different settings is nothing new at all! Delving back into RTCW history even further and to the release of Punkbuster for RTCW, one of the first cvars to be blocked was that of r_uifullscreen. This cvar removed fog and mist from maps such as Assault and Village instantly. It was some years later re instated because the users of ATI cards were at a huge disadvantage when it was found with a few simple tweaks, nVidia users could reproduce the effect of r_uifullscreen. But nothing was ever done to those who used that tweak, they were not castrated for "enhancing" the settings of their graphics card.
If we look into ET history and the case of r_clamptoedge, we'll see history is repeating itself all over again. Back in void we played gros on radar and got an absolute ripping from the garage roof, at ranges we did not even know were possible. After the match, I was simply amazed at what just happened, I asked them how the hell it was possible, because these players had such a history that there was no way they were hacking. Gros were very upfront about what was happening, and that all the top clans who had nvidia cards were able to use this exploit, I tested it out, and bingo I was able to do things my ATI using clanmates could not.
And what of Shrug and its users? Using a bug to gain an advantage over your opponent, one so blatantly visible live on ETTV, and yet the reprecussions were minimal in comparrison, why?
So why rivatuner and why RazZ? History dictates that there will never be a level playing field forever. All RazZ has done is made famous a new example of how these things are possible and has been made an example of in what is a monumentally brave step by the leagues, but let me put forward one final challenge to the logic behind this.
Between December of 2005 and March of 2006 I played CS:S clanned with PinkGorillas. I still have that config saved on my PC. What I found refreshing about playing CS:S at that time was that it was something of a level playing field and that supposedly config'ing was not really much of an issue in the game. So when I go to play CS:S recently I put the old config onto the new installation of the game and the result is this http://images.filecloud.com/153572/css3.JPG I ask you, am I a cheater? Because these settings are caused by the video card drivers I am using (Amazingly, I'm actually worse at the game now with this current setting, than I was playing normally!)
Theres the black and white answer that Yes RazZ is a cheater, he downloaded the program, he got caught with it. But then there is the coloured answer of well, hes not doing anything new, so why is he being treated differently?
For the record the kind people at Valve were not interested in my screenshot nor the reasons why my once normal config now bears these results.
