The Future of ETpro?

ETpro as a mod was the saviour of competitive ET. Without ETpro, we would still be playing RTCW =P So what am I whining about today: ETpro is not open source.



This means we, the scene, are very limited in adding to the ETpro project. Not only can we not code new features for ETpro, ETpro is not our 'brainchild': ETpro was made by Bani and much like Arqon he has his own vision of how his game should look like. A brief view at the Baniforums will show you a lot of discussion where both public and competitive ET have totally different opinions while Bani doesn't agree with either one of them :P

We cannot write code for ETpro
If reya1p would add a feature to ETpro, it would share the vision Bani had for ETpro.



So what can we do? We could write a very very simple mod for etmain, adding a few features that would not change ET as a game. Features that come to my mind are:

Demos get recorded using proper names. Somehow you could input the team name, along with your opponent. The result would be your demos could get recorded something like: ClanX_vs_ClanY_Supplydepot2_13_06_2006.dm86

A coach feature for competitive play: 7th player who could spam in teamchat, and get the same compass and fireteam info as the rest of the team. Top competition could have a rule forcing their manager to watch the game on the server as a 7th, and adding a rule only the 7th player of the team can be in the same ventrillo channel. In the current competition if any team pauses longer then a minute the manager who is watching on ETTV tells the positions. Also spawntimes get corrected once the game starts on ETTV. Its just a brainfart, but it would be a very nice feature to have for top competitive ET. Atm if you are speccing a game you are missing a lot of info like the compass and the fireteam.



I thought about adding an ammo notice to your teammates healthbar, but Bani was against it as it would weaken the covert class even more. Other features like cmd to change the spread would also never make it into ETpro no point wasting time on coding them. If we could somehow code a simple ETmain mod, just adding a few small features, there would actually be a chance ETpro could just copy most of the code. This way ETpro can keep on growing rather then getting stuck at a fase were only bugs are getting fixed.

This is just wild idea of mine, not an official statement by ETpro. ETpro would never release its code, us writing ETmain code does not mean it will be in the next etpro update. ETmain and ETpro code are different sometimes, the features should have Bani's approval, etc BUT it is the only chance we have of making ET better and maybe one day gain Bani's trust so we could have somebody writing ETpro code rather then ETmain (nice dreaming skillz ov3r)

First version. Fire away!
Tnx to Feuersturm for his comics