Hello dear community,
this is my very first article here at Crossfire. I've been thinking about this topic for quite a long time, now, and finally decided to write an article.
I'm not sure if I will directly achieve anything, yet I'm confident that we will at least collect ideas. Therefore I hope you will participate actively in the discussion and leave arguments like "ET's dead" or "Play ETQW!" aside for a moment and instead start to think about your favorite game's future if you still haven't done so.
Actually, the idea of saving our beloved Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is anything but new. It already came up on several other occasions of which I consider this one (http://www.crossfire.nu/?x=column&mode=item&id=319) one of the most interesting.
But before we get into detail on the question how ET's got to be saved, let me just point out what we have and what we don't have so far:
We have:
- a completely free game
- probably the best first-person shooter out there being in terms of gameplay and atmosphere still unbeaten by modern games like CS:S, CoD4, ETQW, ...
- RtCW's great atmosphere
- an actual team- and objective-based shooter
- trickjumping
- too many cheaters
- still too many bugs
- many ideas for improvements
- a whole lot of maps, mods, frag movies, ...
- and, last but not least, a great community dedicated to ET.
On the other hand,
- we don't have a decent anti-cheat tool and thus no feature allowing us to identify and permanently ban / punish people,
- we haven't seen any ETPro releases for quite a long time,
- we have neither ET's complete nor ETPro's source code,
- we have seen our community shrink continuously,
- we have little to no support from SplashDamage & id Software so far as they mostly concentrate on commercial games,
- but nevertheless WE DON'T HAVE A DEAD GAME!
I often saw people limiting the whole problem to cheating. But I think we cannot just look at it from our perspective as we'd mostly focus on the competitive part of gaming. We also must have the people in mind who usually play ETPUB, JayMod and similar mods, because that's exactly the way we can ensure that ET and its competitive part won't die: Just by trying to prevent the community from shrinking and to attract new players instead.
So, what can we do to attract people and what can we do so that they will stick to ET, keep playing and switch to competitive gaming sooner or later?
In my opinion we've got to tackle that problem from different sides:
First of all, we need a decent base for the future. Since the ETPro development team neither seems to be interested in improving the competition mod any further nor it introduces new features being suggested by us, we finally have to take destiny into our own hands. I do not necessarily think of a whole new competition mod, but of a mod for, better to say a second version of Enemy Territory which could then be used as base for new community projects.
Though, the idea of a new, better Enemy Territory definitely stands and falls with the support of id Software and SplashDamage.
That's why I appeal especially to id Software to finally release the full source code of W:ET. I can't see any reasons not to do that because Enemy Territory remains an infantry-only game with - in the opinion of the masses - quite poor graphics no community project could ever do anything about as it would lack of time and probably also money. Therefore ET won't ever be a serious competitor to commercial games.
Secondly, we definitely need a better anti-cheat software. We all have seen PunkBuster increasingly losing control over cheaters. But I don't think we can just levy a fee for competitive gaming and everything will be fine. What we need are many small solutions for a big problem.
What about this: The new development team creates a new system with unique GUIDs allowing admins to generally ban players. I don't consider introducing a central system / website where you've got to buy yourself a CD-Key a real solution, because it will neither lead to acceptance of the new mod or a growth of the community nor be allowed by id Software and ET's license.
However, as it's quite hard to judge whether really unique GUIDs are actually possible, we must establish an additional system for competitive gaming which requires players to pay a fee if they want to compete in ladders and cups. I don't think those fees would present a real conflict to ET's license as nobody would actually be forced to pay. Everybody would be still able to have his own cup or play in a ladder that doesn't expect players to pay anything. Though, the community's acceptance for such competitions would be very small as long as all the big leagues and cups use our new system.
This is exactly the point where the entire community must help: We have to show that we're unwilling to support competitions any further unless they support us and our new system in return. The fees being payed by the players would then be used to improve ET and to pay people supplying the guys from ETACE with information about cheats which leads us to the question of a new anti-cheat software.
As far as I can see ETACE looks quite promising which is why we all should support them, not just by words but mainly by action forcing competition's organizers to use it.
Thirdly and most importantly, we have to pull together. That is, we would also need a central platform where everybody could find out about the projects and view their progress. So, what platform would fit better than crossfire? I mainly address myself to Tosspot now: Would you support such a project?
So, coming back to first part of my suggestion: If id Software finally released ET's full source code, are there any people who are able and willing to improve ET and join such a team I described above?
And would you as the community support the whole thing? However, this is still quite hypothetical. Don't think that I already have a team working in the background. ;)
It's a lot of work but I know we could do it if we all stick together!
this is my very first article here at Crossfire. I've been thinking about this topic for quite a long time, now, and finally decided to write an article.
I'm not sure if I will directly achieve anything, yet I'm confident that we will at least collect ideas. Therefore I hope you will participate actively in the discussion and leave arguments like "ET's dead" or "Play ETQW!" aside for a moment and instead start to think about your favorite game's future if you still haven't done so.
Actually, the idea of saving our beloved Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is anything but new. It already came up on several other occasions of which I consider this one (http://www.crossfire.nu/?x=column&mode=item&id=319) one of the most interesting.
But before we get into detail on the question how ET's got to be saved, let me just point out what we have and what we don't have so far:
We have:
- a completely free game
- probably the best first-person shooter out there being in terms of gameplay and atmosphere still unbeaten by modern games like CS:S, CoD4, ETQW, ...
- RtCW's great atmosphere
- an actual team- and objective-based shooter
- trickjumping
- too many cheaters
- still too many bugs
- many ideas for improvements
- a whole lot of maps, mods, frag movies, ...
- and, last but not least, a great community dedicated to ET.
On the other hand,
- we don't have a decent anti-cheat tool and thus no feature allowing us to identify and permanently ban / punish people,
- we haven't seen any ETPro releases for quite a long time,
- we have neither ET's complete nor ETPro's source code,
- we have seen our community shrink continuously,
- we have little to no support from SplashDamage & id Software so far as they mostly concentrate on commercial games,
- but nevertheless WE DON'T HAVE A DEAD GAME!
I often saw people limiting the whole problem to cheating. But I think we cannot just look at it from our perspective as we'd mostly focus on the competitive part of gaming. We also must have the people in mind who usually play ETPUB, JayMod and similar mods, because that's exactly the way we can ensure that ET and its competitive part won't die: Just by trying to prevent the community from shrinking and to attract new players instead.
So, what can we do to attract people and what can we do so that they will stick to ET, keep playing and switch to competitive gaming sooner or later?
In my opinion we've got to tackle that problem from different sides:
First of all, we need a decent base for the future. Since the ETPro development team neither seems to be interested in improving the competition mod any further nor it introduces new features being suggested by us, we finally have to take destiny into our own hands. I do not necessarily think of a whole new competition mod, but of a mod for, better to say a second version of Enemy Territory which could then be used as base for new community projects.
Though, the idea of a new, better Enemy Territory definitely stands and falls with the support of id Software and SplashDamage.
That's why I appeal especially to id Software to finally release the full source code of W:ET. I can't see any reasons not to do that because Enemy Territory remains an infantry-only game with - in the opinion of the masses - quite poor graphics no community project could ever do anything about as it would lack of time and probably also money. Therefore ET won't ever be a serious competitor to commercial games.
Secondly, we definitely need a better anti-cheat software. We all have seen PunkBuster increasingly losing control over cheaters. But I don't think we can just levy a fee for competitive gaming and everything will be fine. What we need are many small solutions for a big problem.
What about this: The new development team creates a new system with unique GUIDs allowing admins to generally ban players. I don't consider introducing a central system / website where you've got to buy yourself a CD-Key a real solution, because it will neither lead to acceptance of the new mod or a growth of the community nor be allowed by id Software and ET's license.
However, as it's quite hard to judge whether really unique GUIDs are actually possible, we must establish an additional system for competitive gaming which requires players to pay a fee if they want to compete in ladders and cups. I don't think those fees would present a real conflict to ET's license as nobody would actually be forced to pay. Everybody would be still able to have his own cup or play in a ladder that doesn't expect players to pay anything. Though, the community's acceptance for such competitions would be very small as long as all the big leagues and cups use our new system.
This is exactly the point where the entire community must help: We have to show that we're unwilling to support competitions any further unless they support us and our new system in return. The fees being payed by the players would then be used to improve ET and to pay people supplying the guys from ETACE with information about cheats which leads us to the question of a new anti-cheat software.
As far as I can see ETACE looks quite promising which is why we all should support them, not just by words but mainly by action forcing competition's organizers to use it.
Thirdly and most importantly, we have to pull together. That is, we would also need a central platform where everybody could find out about the projects and view their progress. So, what platform would fit better than crossfire? I mainly address myself to Tosspot now: Would you support such a project?
So, coming back to first part of my suggestion: If id Software finally released ET's full source code, are there any people who are able and willing to improve ET and join such a team I described above?
And would you as the community support the whole thing? However, this is still quite hypothetical. Don't think that I already have a team working in the background. ;)
It's a lot of work but I know we could do it if we all stick together!
but ingame bugs shouldn´t be fixed. atleast i dont know which one are annoying ingame?
learn to write your thoughts in three sentences!
1)have trusted players in competition mods: there are many solution easy to realize.
2) have a good anticheat system: I think that all anticheat systems based on scanning functions client side will be bypassed in few hours, the way could be to realize some analizyng function server side as aim tracing; I suppose all cheats have an acceleration boost when xhair aim to hitboxes and a function that analyze this boost and compare acceleration and deceleration to humans capabilities will be interesting to show.
Another check could be a function that shows how many time a player shoot to a target hidden to a clear visual ( behind walls, constructions, caves, enemies etc etc.) this value could be shown in a column added in the actual stats grid.
make it big on crossfire and on other sites so everybody knows.
then its youre own fault.
keep them coming
just lots paranoid people with the great 'once a cheater always a cheater' attitude. polaks botting in #3on3.et wars and curious(+stupid?) kids trying nexus on cybergames wont kill ET.
thats what i am saying!
- a whole new website with new ladder systems where you actually have a chance to play games on
- ladder admins that aren't RETARDED with their ego and other bullshit
- lifetime ban policy on cheaters (everything after 1-1-2007)
- ban managers that actually do something ( there is only one guy that made it happen and that person is Bulldog the rest is just asslickers that cant think for them self and make completely stupid decisions, wont mention any since i most probably will get banned)
that sums it up, hf
Why exactly is it that you need the full source code?
It would give movie makers great possibilities (assuming there are programmers willing/able to help), but mostly useless in all other aspects that I can think of.
Now, every mod maker therefore has to fix all the bugs again and generally start from scratch. Improving ET's base for mod making therefore would be huge step forward which we can't without the source. Ok, mod makers could release the full source code of their fixes, so that everybody's got a good base. Nevertheless, wouldn't it be better if a new version of ET is released? Beginners wouldn't have to install a mod at the beginning, too, but could play a clean game. Speaking of beginners, I also consider the whole installation thing a big barrier for them, too. I had to explain many people what they exactly had to do to be able to try out ET.
Furthermore, improving ET's graphics also isn't possible without access to the modified Q3 engine and integrating ETACE and making it compatible to all mods is much more difficult and a lot of work.
"wouldn't it be better if a new version of ET is released?"
You won't be able to do that legally anyway.
"Furthermore, improving ET's graphics also isn't possible without access to the modified Q3 engine"
- Why would you want to improve graphics for comp play when most players will use the ugliest possible settings anyway? (I already mentioned movie making, that's where it would be beneficial.)
- Rewriting the renderer will only do so much without also giving the maps/models a complete overhaul as well, and it would be better if mappers spent their time making new maps instead.
"and integrating ETACE and making it compatible to all mods is much more difficult and a lot of work."
That's true, but on the other hand it's a huge leap of faith to think that everyone will want to throw out PB and replace it with an anticheat that may stop being maintained tomorrow for all we know, regardless of their current ambition (like real life killed IAC).
Besides, integrating ETACE in GPL code would make it a lot easier to bypass.
Modifying the engine server side would of course also mean that they'd have to recreate ETTV from scratch.
I was still speaking of a modification, with the only difference that we integrate it with the original source, so that we could use this "new version" (ofc we wouldn't call it ET v2!) as a base for other mods more easily.
Ok, you're right with that. Though slightly improved graphics / textures would certainly attract some new players.
Well, then we could stop developing mods, maps and anti-cheat software right from the start. Besides, Punkbuster hasn't been updated for quite a long time. That's why I think many people would be quite open-minded about a new software and give it a try at least.
Who said that id Software would release it under the GPL?
Now you're just confusing; are you asking for the full source or not? There's nothing stopping you from making a better code base for modders right now (in fact it's already been done).
"Well, then we could stop developing mods, maps and anti-cheat software right from the start."
Why? There's a big difference between releasing a new ET version without PB and releasing mods with integrated anticheat that works with ET2.60b so that people can try the new anticheat without dual installations.
Maps has nothing to do with this.
"Besides, Punkbuster hasn't been updated for quite a long time."
It's true that they don't update as often as they used to, but the fact that they haven't updated the client for a long time doesn't mean they stopped updating the patterns entirely (though I can't say for sure that they didn't :).
"Who said that id Software would release it under the GPL?"
I did. If they ever release the full source then it will no doubt be under the GPL license just like Q3/Q3/Q1.
"so that people can try the new anticheat without dual installations."
Well, what if we enable to install another anti-cheat software and therefore allow people to try it out without a second installtion? But for this we'd need the source.
"Maps has nothing to do with this."
No, I was stating that nobody wouldn't even begin to create maps, mods and stuff if he only cared about whether it'd be a success or not.
"If they ever release the full source then it will no doubt be under the GPL license just like Q3/Q3/Q1."
Phuu, s'pose you have a point. (:
yea right ET beated CS:S and CoD4
CoD4 is a real tactical game which needs a lot of brain usage, not only the 'rambo' attitude as we know from ET.
I didnt like CS either.
now who in his right mind would say that
This is your opinion, definently not mine
A lot of maps? The mappool is almost the same for the last few years. You can't play ET without playing supplydepot or goldrush. If you ask me, it's getting pretty boring and every game fels some how the same cause of the overplayed maps. Next to those maps we got the lovely braundorf, which was made for lagging, leaning polaks who think they pown the world when they kill you. And ofcourse fucking cancernest, which is finished after 10 minutes (2 sw rounds), great exciting map!
BLEH!
And yes, there are a lot of maps. Of course you get bored when you always play the same maps being in the ladders' map pools. Nevertheless, there are still a lot of beautiful maps out there which are worth to be played and which aren't played in any ladders or cups. I feel sorry for you if you don't appreciate them as much as I do.
Maybe you should also read more carefully. I mentioned that I'm looking at ET from an average gamer's point of view and not from the one of a professional player.
It would be fucking great if there would be some new maps instead of the supply/grush combination.
atm I play more CoD4 than ET due to the maps and playing against the same teams over and over again. I played this fucking game for so long, don't you think I'm not fucking [hardcore].
If you switched to CoD4, I don't consider you a hardcore player (anymore). You fell in love with ET some time ago, but this love has ended for the most part because you got bored.
That map should be banned for raping the ET gameplay and breeding a whole generation of polaks that can only lean and wait.
duffe :P
I made a point on a previous article last year. Why invest time and effort in a game that will eventually come to its end? Especially when there are other games being released with much more public attention.
oh I get it alright and I'm voicing my opinion. Maybe you're one of those people that doesn't understand my comment. I read through the whole article and fully understood it as you may not have done so yourself.
I'm not saying this game should die but if it is then let it. I enjoy playing it but what's the point in playing it if it's not fun anymore. Everything good that has happened for ET has now gone.
only reason why people bought cod4 in competition was cause all the sponsors moved on too...
and you still don't get it
This whole "lets save ET" thing is to get more players to play it but no one is going to when there are other games that appeal to them more.
edit: also if my opinion does not agree with yours then it doesn't automatically mean that "i don't get it"
you are being a yerk by supposing the active ones to let their game die even though it is still running (OFC not on such a giant platform like the recent and massively promoted games).
Also I don't think you've understood what I've said either. I'm not saying I wish instant death upon ET, I just think we should let whatever will happen to it happen because all the time and effort people might put into making the game more popular will be wasted if the game doesn't benefit from it.
that's what I said...idiot
maybe if you structured your sentences in better English then you would actually make sense
its more like this game is dead bb gaming
Isn't there anyone who would like to participate in developing a good base (read mod) for the future?
(Didn't I demand you to leave those comments aside?)
totally agree..
i doubt that the sourcecode will be released in any way (any further).
we need a decent anti-cheat and not a system that is based on individuals supoorting the "scene" and putting alot of time into it. these ppl should be "cheat busters"...
How can you summ up all the activity (irc wars, some ladder wars sometimes, mostly cups) in one project?
PS: There is a continous offer of cups (1day or long-term cups; even with small prizes). We have a cup-page ready to go online and are just not seeing the need of more atm. Maybe all of us should just stop beeing smugly and playing "skilled" irc wars withmates and whining about every coincidence.
Nice article btw
no game can ever reach rtcw's atmosphere, not even et.
<3 beach,village,assault,...<3
All the oldskoolers have grown up and have important stuff in their life now, and there aren't any younger players with equal skill.
Which makes the whole competition pretty stuck, and unfortunately will be the death of ET.
ET scene doesnt need oldschoolers to stay active, theres enough players without em.
p.s. bring back railgun for competitions =D
Competitive ET may well be almost over, but as it's a free game and it's still great to play there will always be publics :)
I play more then 4 yers and stop i love this game bat i can't play to mach haxx for me and i was to angry to play :(
To sum up:
What we need is:
Life ban for cheaters, new anti-cheat tool, new ETpro mod.
What it requires:
Time, experimented guys, efficient admins, Et's community support.
klapp klapp
btw this site has started to suck bb.
pm me 4 account
Speaking of myself, I can program in PHP (including the whole web stuff - HTML, CSS and so on), but also Java, C and C++ (although I haven't got that much experience with the latter). Yet, I've just had a few short looks at ET's source so far and I don't have any Q3 experience. That's why I doubt that I might be of great help when coming to game development related questions though I'm always eager to broaden my horizon. :)
So, are there any good programmers out there who have enough time and would like to participate in such a project?
We maybe could search on flame guards website beceause they developed a unfinished ET mod for ET (they're still working on it) called eastfront ( http://eastfront.flame-guards.com/ ).Pretty good work imo you can drive in tanks and stuff.Maybe they could help to create a hole new mod for ET.So you need to start somewhere..
btw speaking about Rtcw 2 is it still about coming out yet or what? :^)
I support ur base idea, but i dont believe u can change smtg.
going to sleep gn8
<3
I was on the fusen list (I've never used a cheat @ ET), with 8 others, just because I had the same IP address with some cheater (same ISP, all of us having dynamic IP addresses). I wouldn't trust fusen's lists, since they are inaccurate and not 100% valid proof.
KDL ta geule:))
I haxx since 1997 i started hax in fifa 97` and when i hear rtcw:et is free i say i must try!! 1st what i do....OFC dowload cheat and after it DL game:D and cheating all time ;) to these day:D nobody catch me :D im so unhitable:D i got 50%ACC :)
so..:D i waiting....for new version of ET.
who knows when rtcw"2 will show up??:>