Admins: Try OJP Basic beta on your server!

[Kurgan]

RazorAce really could use some more servers running OJP Basic beta for testing purposes (and it's a great mod too).

 

Here's a thread I made about the lastest file you can download:

 

http://lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=1758362#post1758362

[razorace]

I second that.

[Kurgan]

New mirror for the latest file (010) posted on my downloads page at Strategic Academy!

[Kramerika]

I'd love to switch to a better mod than Reloaded 1.2, but we need to have some basic functions because straight rcon doesn't cut it for us. The main reason that we use Reloaded is because it extends our admin capability a bit, particularly with how we assign admin, and because mods like Xmod that may have more features tend to crash the server, most likely because we use bots. Does this mod support these functions?

 

the ability to assign different levels of admin that include different available commands?

setting custom vstr aliases to change server settings and/or maps via admin?

muting player's chat via admin?

changing player's names via admin?

chatting with other admins privately?

warning player's with centered text as the server via admin?

warning player's with private chat via admin?

kicking players by name via admin?

banning players by IP address through their name via admin?

 

 

other features that would be useful

 

automatic word/name filter that allows for exact and loose matches and "*"'s out the word or syllable while warning the player

 

limit what type of voting is available

 

map voting tied to vstr aliases so that you could control what maps were available for voting and what server settings would get set with each map

 

fast downloads of maps

 

menu-driven GUI for admin

 

adding reasons to kicks and bans and displaying this to the disconnected client

 

an admin log that includes only chat and admin functions as well as IP addresses in tandem with client names

[razorace]

I'd love to switch to a better mod than Reloaded 1.2, but we need to have some basic functions because straight rcon doesn't cut it for us. The main reason that we use Reloaded is because it extends our admin capability a bit, particularly with how we assign admin, and because mods like Xmod that may have more features tend to crash the server, most likely because we use bots. Does this mod support these functions?

 

I'm pretty sure that OJP Basic has had more features than Xmod for a while now. Xmod hasn't been in development for a long time.

 

Anyway, OJP doesn't have a multi-tiered admin system. We only use rcon. I've been relucent to change that since admin systems tend to make things more abusive towards players and it makes the game way more complicated. However, to get around that we filled out the ingame voting system so that players can police themselves better.

 

1. There's now team votes which team members can use to bump players that are tking or just being abusive.
   
2. Servers can specifically set the type of voting that players can do.
   

 

map voting tied to vstr aliases so that you could control what maps were available for voting and what server settings would get set with each map

We haven't done that but it might be something to do in the future. I agree that it's a hassle to not be able to randomize/customize the map cycle.

 

fast downloads of maps

Unfortunately you really have to hack the game to make this possible. Plus, all the players have to be running the mod client side for it to work.

 

an admin log that includes only chat and admin functions as well as IP addresses in tandem with client names

I beleive there are filtering programs out there that do this for you. Having the actual mod do it would be redundant. Anyway, OJP does store the IP addresses of clients so you can ban abusers after the fact.

[Kurgan]

Yeah on that last point you can set a cvar in basejka to log ip info as clients join. There is an external program called "QuakeChat" that can filter log files of everything except chat (and color code team chats if you wish). At any time you can do a "condump <filename>" in the console and it will dump everything in there to a text file in your JA folder. Rename it to a doc and you can open it in word!

"clear" clears the buffer. You can type \rcon status in order to display names and IP's and then condump to store them.

 

We have an IP ban list in a seperate text file so that you can ban a lot more IP's than in basejka and look at them later too.

[Kurgan]

muting player's chat via admin?

 

Nope. This could be abusable, too.

 

changing player's names via admin?

 

Nope. Could be abusable. About the only time you'd "need" it is if there was somebody impersonating another just to piss them off or with naughty words in their name. But with the case of identical names, the admin can always tell who's who via status (since their IP's will be different).

 

chatting with other admins privately?

 

Nope, but you can always private chat with people in basejka anyway if you know the command. Also, did you know that Spectators are considered on the same "team"? You can spectate and private chat so that only other spectators can see what you write!

 

warning player's with centered text as the server via admin?

 

Nope. But that's a good idea! To add to this, the "big text notification" like the Siege objectives thing, really disappears fast. You can make chat text stay on the screen longer with con_notifytime, but I don't know of any command to make the big text notification stay on screen longer. I think that would be something to do... and let the server set it, so that way warnings won't be just ignored because somebody didn't take the split second to read it.

 

warning player's with private chat via admin?

 

Again, private chat is already part of basejka, but few people realize it's there, and so rarely use it!

 

kicking players by name via admin?

 

You can already do that, but it's much easier to kick them via client number in rcon. Why is this considered more difficult? Rcon status, clientkick #. Done! Kicking by name just takes longer because most people's names are more than one character long...

 

banning players by IP address through their name via admin?

 

Nope, but it's really not that tough to ban an ip, if you can type out their number. Addip ###.###.###.###, clientkick #. They won't be back (without a new IP! and you can ban their range by removing more numbers from the right hand side)

 

automatic word/name filter that allows for exact and loose matches and "*"'s out the word or syllable while warning the player

 

Nope, there's no language/name filtering of any kind. I suppose a swear filter with an editable external file would be a neat idea. I don't particularly care about text swearing in games since I can just ignore it and we already have a spam filter, but if somebody did, this might be a neat idea for them.

 

menu-driven GUI for admin

 

There already is, but only for listen (non-dedicated) servers. That's a nice idea, but still, rcon is not that hard to learn. A handful of commands all most admins will ever need anyway.

 

adding reasons to kicks and bans and displaying this to the disconnected client

 

A great idea. We don't have this, but I wish we did! A lot of times people get disconnected and have no idea why, but assume the worst.

[razorace]

Just figured this out....cg_centertime controls the amount of time that a center printed message stays on the screen. I've gone ahead and increased that time in OJP. I figure 7 seconds is plenty of time.

[razorace]

BTW, I discovered a bug while investigating the issue. I fixed it and now center print text wrap like it's supposed to.

 

Also, I added /centersay as per your request.

[Kurgan]

Awesome! How soon will that go up on the server/downloads?

[razorace]

Whenever I feel that there's been enough changes to warent a new release. So far I've only made....7 changes so far, and none of them are major changes either. Let me try to get some more stuff in there first.

[Kramerika]

Thanks for the replies, but at the most basic level, we still need to be able to assign levels of admin beyond basic rcon. We don't want every single admin (we have at least 80 people with access to it) to be able to change the most critical server settings, and we need to have varying levels of admin access to our servers less than full rcon which only our server administrators have. The basic commands we need are status, centered warnings, change map (but with vstr since we tie custom settings to our map changes), change name, mute, kick, and ban. We need to be able to assign each admin command separately because we don't give the ability to kick and ban to everyone, so ultimately we need to be able to assign commands to 2 levels of admin.

 

There is a difference in philosophy in terms of offensive language and names. We don't want that sort of thing on our servers and using an automatic word filter that *'s out or blocks offending syllables from chat and names, a mute command, or a name change command are not abusing anyone but simply enforcing our rules that players agree to when they click the connect button to our servers. If they don't agree with that and don't respect that, there are plenty of other servers out there. None of those commands/features prevents the player from playing the game, just from offending others with text. It would also be nice to have an automatic spam filter to prevent someone from spamming the chat, whether it would automatically mute them or kick them when they reached the threshold (messages per so many seconds).

 

I would agree that commands such as slap, slay, etc. that go beyond muting, kicking, and banning are unnecessary as they are used to demean and embarrass the other person which is not the objective. If it comes to the point of using one of those commands, kicking is the better option for the sake of everyone involved.

 

The fast downloads is something that would have to be via an optional client. That's how it has been done with other mods.

 

I wish your mod would have a few more admin features to it as I listed above because we would consider switching to it. I think what you have so far is great. It's too bad that you can't incorporate multiple mods into your server with this game as you can with Half-life and Half-life 2. Thanks again for the responses.

[razorace]

80 admins?! Are you like just handing out admin to every player on your server?!

 

Anyway, with OJP, I'm not directly against admin systems. They take a lot of effort to come up with a fair, well rounded system that's easy to use, practical, and not abusible. And I've just not been interested enough in them to do that.

 

To get around that I've made an effort to make the non-admin level voting abilities customizable and useful enough to remove most of the needs of an admin partitioning system by giving that control directly to the players.

[Kramerika]

80 admins?! Are you like just handing out admin to every player on your server?!

We have an exclusive community of almost 300 members and give admin access to those of our members who contribute financially to the cause of keeping our servers colocated each quarter. It's too bad that virtually none of them play this game regularly. We keep the server around mostly for nostalgia because the few of us that established our community are Star Wars junkies and started with Jedi Knight.

[Kurgan]

So you're doing it as a "reward" rather than an actual function where they are needed. I see. That sounds fine, but not a good reason to change the mod for the sake of your reward system methinks... no offense of course.

 

Why not just have a function so you can add a little "VIP" graphic/Icon next to somebody's name that you can't get any other way and give that out to your donators instead?

[Kramerika]

So you're doing it as a "reward" rather than an actual function where they are needed. I see. That sounds fine, but not a good reason to change the mod for the sake of your reward system methinks... no offense of course.

 

Why not just have a function so you can add a little "VIP" graphic/Icon next to somebody's name that you can't get any other way and give that out to your donators instead?

Each to his own! We've been doing this for going on 7 years, so we have a pretty good idea of what works the best for us and have been successful with it. Without tangible incentive (beyond just having a server to play on, you'd think that would be enough, but in our experience, that is being naive ), we have no funds to colocate the servers that we have.

 

Whether you change the mod or not based on my suggestions is up to you and certainly should have nothing to do with the way that we conduct our own business. If your focus is simply what you find necessary personally, that's what you should stick to. If your focus is making it attractive to a wider audience of server administrators, that would take you in a different direction.

 

If you incorporate things that meet our needs, we'll likely try your mod. Otherwise, we'll stand pat with what we have because even though it's not the perfect system, it does what we need it to do. It comes down to needs, and your own needs are different than our's obviously. There is nothing wrong with that.

[Kurgan]

Not to get too political but maybe this helps explain some of the problems inherent in the admin community today. Not singling you out as an example (your people may all be perfectly honest and benevolent for all I know), but if other admins are giving their admin powers away like candy, as a "reward" for people who contribute, not necessarily for people who are qualified to admin a server and care about making sure it runs smoothly, this might help explain the widespread abuse. It's sort of like President Ulyssey's S. Grant. He was a good guy apparently (war hero) who stuffed his cabinet with friends of his and people who had helped him get elected. In other words he picked people for his administration whom he liked, rather than who had any qualifications to be good advisors and ministers. As a result he had what was regarded as one of the most corrupt administrations in US history.

 

So yeah, it may work for you but I see a danger in it, and since so many admin mods basically already have the ability to grant "sub admin" power to as many random people as you like, this may have lead to a lot of underqualified people having power to abuse it and cause problems.

 

I mean yeah, there's nothing stopping admins themselves from being abusive per se. But it's that they've already invested the time and money of setting up a server, that you'd think they'd want to not waste their time in creating a server that nobody wanted to play on due to a hostile atmosphere or strange rules.

 

But even somebody who donated $10 and got an admin position isn't necessarily going to have that deep committment that the person who setup the server in the first place did. He may feel he's entitled to be there, rather than having an obligation to the server, since he just bought his way into the system. And if he ruins it for everyone and tarnishes the good name of the server? No big deal, he only paid 10 bucks and had his "fun."

 

Even if you give out admin and these guys just disappear into the mist no problem. But what if they come back someday and somebody you didn't even know that well to begin with starts asserting his "rights" as an admin? And what if you don't like the way he does things? He can argue he "paid for his ticket"...

 

I understand your desire to keep funds flowing in, I wouldn't blame you at all, but maybe it's this kind of "system" that's lead to the widespread corruption we see? It may not be the case that every server becomes corrupt due to handing out admin to people based on payments rather than qualifications and "heart" but in some cases it very well could lead to that sort of thing.

 

So it's up to Razor I guess. I can see pros and cons of adding in a "subadmin" system.

 

On our server we have the owner (RazorAce) and three admins. Myself, and OnlyOneCannoli and Lathain Valtiel. Razor chose me because he knew I cared about the mod, loved the game, and would keep things tight without turning into a power mad script kiddie. I chose Lath and Cannoli because they shared similar qualities (plus they are both better players than I am!). None of us get paid, and that's fine. We do it for love of the game (and the mod).

 

We're not saying we're better than you, we just have a different system. But I guess you could say it makes us a little bit biased towards "our way."

 

I confess I've only been at this for a little over two years, not six!

[Kramerika]

I gave background on our community merely to explain further why we needed to be able to create sublevels of admins and nothing beyond that. I certainly didn't post in this thread to be criticized or to get into a debate on things beyond the mod in question. I was only looking for an alternative to the mod that we use now because it (Reloaded) comes up short in a few areas, and seeing the opportunity, I wanted to suggest things that would make this mod (the topic of this thread) more attractive to server administrators similar to myself. I wasn't criticizing how you do things nor was I trying to force my ideas on you. It was simply take it or leave it.

 

You make a lot of assumptions about us (and a lot of other communities and servers out there for that matter), and not knowing the details of what we've been through or where we are at now, you aren't quite in a position to critique us and tell us how we should do business. We do, in fact, have an intricate system of oversight, accountability, and eligibility with our admins and our members in general that does a good job at preventing issues. It works for us. I respect what works well for you. My last post on the topic. Good luck with the mod.