hi slider

[stubert]

http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=1418984#post1418984

 

 

this is why i don't post code here

 

 

gtfo

 

 

=]

[razorace]

Because Chosen One pulled his abusive admin commands?

[MDN14]

I think he meant the part where slider used the code for the other mod in the JA+ mod and never gave any credit at all.

[LightNinja]

k..im lost :S

[yangyan]

this is pointless. WOW people are going to steal a few lines of code that you post. Big deal.

 

this deserves to be locked. You're not asking for help, your just commenting on how it's stupid to ask for help. This is a coding forum, and noone is forcing you to ask for help and post your code here. Gees

[razorace]

I'm pretty sure that Slider never "stole" any code from Chosen One. Sure, his mod has/had similar admin commands but that's because people asked for them.

 

Secondly, it's not like Chosen One had exclusive rights on anything admin related. After all, his Jedi Academy mod took many of it's concepts from the Valcanus mod from what I recall. I personally think that imitation is the best form of flattery.

[GangsterAngel]

yes, you can hardly say because someone has done it , it cant be done again.

 

just because JA+ has a grapple , FM3 cant? .

just because JA+ lets admins kick ppl , no other mod can?

 

..... exactly , its rediclus.. this thread is stupid.

[Kurgan]

The JA mods just stole the abusive commands lock stock and two smoking barrels from the similar mods from JK2. The first mod that had them should never have been made, but that's beating a dead horse, I know. Can't put the genie back into the bottle (but you can call the ghostbusters on his sorry @$$).

 

Still it is very interesting hearing CO's side of the story from almost two years ago. If things had gone differently, would 61% of servers being using JA Reloaded now(instead of JA+)? And without the abusive commands? We can only wonder...

[Kurgan]

I'm pretty sure that Slider never "stole" any code from Chosen One. Sure, his mod has/had similar admin commands but that's because people asked for them.

 

Secondly, it's not like Chosen One had exclusive rights on anything admin related. After all, his Jedi Academy mod took many of it's concepts from the Valcanus mod from what I recall. I personally think that imitation is the best form of flattery.

 

I think I'm beginning to understand what happened. The Vulcanus guy turned his code over to CO, basically giving him "control" of it. So the source code was probably floating around and somebody thought it was okay, but CO really should have "closed" the source, if such a thing were possible.

 

Either that or it's blatant copy-cattery. The whole "am" thing to me is a dead giveaway that it's copied. There's no rhyme or reason to put "am" before every command. What is it supposed to stand for anyway? Auto Matic? Amplify? Rcon stands for "Remote Control" (part of the game since at least Q3).

 

Though generally doesn't "open source" imply that you still give credit where credit is due, supply the source with your mod, etc? Not just use the source as a base for your mod and pass the whole thing off as your own work...

[GangsterAngel]

Either that or it's blatant copy-cattery. The whole "am" thing to me is a dead giveaway that it's copied. There's no rhyme or reason to put "am" before every command. What is it supposed to stand for anyway? Auto Matic? Amplify? Rcon stands for "Remote Control" (part of the game since at least Q3).

 

AMkick = Admin Mod ?

 

AMsit = Animation ?

 

anyway , the "AM" thing dosent realy meen much, thats like saying because ALL kts use " ! " , they all built from the same source.

 

and i dont belive im kinda sticking up for slider , because i hate him , i honistly hate the guy , hes a prick.

[Wudan]

Well, it seems to me that there has been little to no proof that the commands are literally stolen. Either way, it doesn't matter very much now, like Kurgan said.

 

It was extremely dissappointing that such abusive mods occurred in the first place. However, I don't think the mod is the root of this particular brand of evil.

 

In a larger sense, the gameplay of JO and JA is very open-ended, where it probably should have been more direct and narrative, instead of chaotic FFA.

 

The chaotic nature of a FFA battle, against what *should* be a semi-graceful match between light-saber weilding competitors, and there's guns thrown in, as well. CTF works quite well, but there's something about the pacing of the entire mess that doesn't sit well with me. It gets old pretty fast, and so other games build on top of this open-ended system, like RPGing and admin griefing - all of which are 'legal' in the sense that the game itself is not entertaining or challenging enough to maintain a competitive focus on the primary, most fundamental aspects of the game.

 

Have I spent a lot of time playing JA MP? No, not really. I frankly, do not care for it much. The game itself is not appealling, and I have made my own game out of it (in a sense.) The open-ended-ness of it is a wonderous thing, but as a consequence of the directionlessness of it, each player is left to his own devices to find a way to make it entertaining.

 

I would say that the best modification for JKA would be one that brings direction to multiplayer, but maintains an open-ended feel. The admin commands themselves are not the enemy, it's just that they are more entertaining than the game itself, to some.

[Wudan]

Oh and I don't hate slider, he's only said nice things to me, and about my program, Dragon, which he has used to make animations for his modification. I don't think he's the nicest guy in the world, but who among us can make such a claim?

[razorace]

I think you put your point across pretty well.

 

For me, my goals with modding JKA has always been to try to add that depth without sacrificing the opennedness. Well, and get more experience with coding

[zERoCooL2479]

This again? To be fair on Slider's behalf, I never said he stole the source code. I simply said that instead of creating his own ideas, he built a complete replica of the jk2 mod I had. I changed my mod knowing full well that the popularity would decrease dramatically but it was for the better of the community. He simply undid that when he made abuse mod 2.0. Anyway, what's done is done now, so lets just look forward into the future with hope that history will not repeat itself in future games. BTW, I'm modding again and couldn't be happier now that the mod wars are long over.

[GangsterAngel]

Oh and I don't hate slider, he's only said nice things to me, and about my program, Dragon, which he has used to make animations for his modification. I don't think he's the nicest guy in the world, but who among us can make such a claim?

 

dont meen to go of topic , but im going thru the Dragon readme. and i cant get the console to come down? ,, ,

[Kurgan]

AMkick = Admin Mod ?

 

AMsit = Animation ?

 

anyway , the "AM" thing dosent realy meen much, thats like saying because ALL kts use " ! " , they all built from the same source.

 

and i dont belive im kinda sticking up for slider , because i hate him , i honistly hate the guy , hes a prick.

 

Good ideas, I wonder which one it is? But the fact that they chose the exact same names and exact same prefix to me indicates imitation.

 

"AM" for animation doesn't really work out. Admin Mod is two words, animation is one. Why not "an" or something? Too easy to get confused? Or why not "emote_sit" or something? After all these admin mod makers coined the term "emote" to refer to these things (based on the popular "emoticons" of internet fame perhaps, though "emote" is a real word, it refers to emotional expression, not arm gestures or poses necessarily).

 

That'd be like if you had a clan tag with your game user handle and I used the exact same clan tag AND the same user handle you were using. Your first reaction would be to accuse me of copying your name, perhaps in an attempt to impersonate you or piss you off. It's a funny coincidence that these commands have the same names, same prefix AND the same effects.

 

The Killtrackers do tend to copy one another, but at least they use different names for things and like you say (assuming you're right) use different code bases from scratch. The use of ! in front of something is common in chat programs and certain types of scripting, so that's not so surprising. But I'm not familiar with the use of "am" in front of everything outside of JK2/JA admin mods. One mod starts doing it, everyone suddenly starts doing it.

 

 

Honestly while I sympathize somewhat with Chosen One, the fact is it really should have ended before it began. He never should have released his JA mod to the public, and never open sourced anything. If the mod was handed over to him as his own from the Vulcanus guy, he should have right then and there made it closed source and removed any abusive commands (if it wasn't already too late by that point). The genie was out of the bottle so to speak.

 

We had a chance for a fresh start with JA, but sadly people like slider took the intiative and brought over the "am" plague and all its trappings into the new game to ruin a sizable chunk of it and leave the stain on the rest.

 

At least if there's a new JK game it'll be on a completely different engine, buying us time from the admin mod makers. Then again if the all the stuff about admin mods in other games is true, we might not have much hope (then again the games named are all based on the Quake2 or Quake3 engine, so perhaps it might be more difficult elsewhere).

 

Do Doom3 and UT have admin mods like this? If so, we're doomed.

[Wudan]

It's the admin who abuses the command, not the mod. ChosenOne isn't the father of this brand of evil, either, it's just that in some mods there were neat commands to drop players off of cliffs, give certain people invincibility, weapons - put them in hard to reach places - all kinds of things that run against the grain of fair and decent gameplay - all because people were playing a game that was less than fair.

 

What would be really spectacular is some kind of a site that rates servers (there was one in the early days of JKA) and if the in-game server browser had some really simple filter capabilities, so you could browse to your own set of awesome servers. Well, I guess you do have a Favorites list, right? So maybe there just needs to be a 'league of good servers' list posted somewheres. There probably is, somewhere.

[Kurgan]

It's the admin who abuses the command, not the mod. ChosenOne isn't the father of this brand of evil, either, it's just that in some mods there were neat commands to drop players off of cliffs, give certain people invincibility, weapons - put them in hard to reach places - all kinds of things that run against the grain of fair and decent gameplay - all because people were playing a game that was less than fair.

 

Oh not THAT excuse again. The game was non-abusive before these mods came out. The "desire" for these mods was bourne out of a sense of "entitlement" for the whiner players. I mean the people felt that game OUGHT to be about sitting around and dueling, rather than what it was designed as, which is an FPS with lots of game modes. They took the Saber Challenge and wanted it turned into the SOLE method of gameplay, rather than the bonus feature it so obviously was made as.

 

Without the abusive commands, the massive abuse that happend would not have happened. The admin mods enabled the "honorz d00ds" (as many of us called them) to enforce their ideas of "punishment" upon "lamers" (people who didn't agree to the idea of the Saber challenge becoming the sole method of gameplay). So yes, the admin mods DID create and perpetuate this atmosphere of hostility that brought the game down.

 

You admitted you didn't experience much in the MP arena and that this type of gameplay was more interesting to you. That's the trouble. It seems that people who didn't like the game they got wanted to forcibly turn it into something it was not and never intended to be. Many of us hoped those people would take their role playing and dedicated saber fighting into games that were designed as such (like SWG, KOTOR series and ROTS the game) but that sadly didn't happen. Instead they "got their way" with the admin mods and the means to enforce it (abusive commands). It was a rather sad affair. Not having lived through it you can't know the impact it had on FPS players.

 

Speaking of "lack of direction" the "honorz codez" turned the game in the complete opposite direction, making it only possible to have a very narrow type of "gameplay" (if you could still call it that) which consisted mostly of chatting and emoting, since that's about all that was really allowed anymore. A person could expect to be "punished" if they did anything more than have the occasional duel, and even though if accused (through paranoia) of "cheating/laming/scripting" etc.

 

What was once a fun game with a lot of "open endedness" turned into a very predictable and boring game of "walking on eggshells for fear of being punished" and the occasional "coded" duel. The rest wasn't a game, just a virtual chatroom. Many of us bitterly interpreted this as a system setup by people who simply weren't skilled enough to master the game as provided, and sore losers who's egos were out of control.

 

Even after people like Chosen One removed the commands, seeing the error of their ways, people like slider stood firm with the abusive promotion. Hex's mod was never as popular as he liked, so he added BACK in the commands for the express purpose of attracting back people he thought he "lost" to abusive mods like JA+. When that failed to work, the mod pretty much died. Red Slushie, which had abusive commands also died. Then it recently seems to have come back, and apparently the abusive commands are not necessarily there (it's kind of vague from what I read on the forums... like the linux build doesn't have them anymore, but the windows version does). So it's pretty much that JA+ has "won" as the admin mod that people use. However recent developments indicate that slider is (slowly) realizing the problem and removing the abusive commands in favor of an "alternate dimension" having us come full circle.

 

Now instead of the "saber challenge" being a small area for saber purists in the midst of a FFA game, the "alternate dimension" is the area for FFA players amidst the giant 'saber challenge' area. Better than nothing I suppose.

 

Since slider refuses to give up and we have to live with his mod unfortunately on so many servers, at least this is something of an improvement. Sadly he still includes other annoying features (which may or may not change) like lowered force regeneration (which encourages spamming and laziness as opposed to skill) and modified moves from single player thrown in seemingly at random.

 

There's also the issue of course of people using older versions of JA+ that are still as abusive as the heyday of JK2 abuse, but that's the genie thing again.

 

I have nothing against modding in general in games, I love it. However in this case the admin mods's appeal was to the lowest common denominator, the sore loser with a big ego. Lacking in skill, they could take out their "revenge" on "lamers" much more easily thanks to these "helpful" mods. Without the abusive features they'd simply be kicking everyone out of their server until it was empty. So much better to "punish" people and create an Orwellian atmosphere of hostility and fear. The transparency of most admin mods (no client side install required) lead many to be confused about the nature of the product.. I almost think LucasArts or Raven should have taken some legal action, because their product was now being "misrepresentated" to the masses... people thought JA+ was THE default game itself, not a mod made by somebody unconnected with any of the developers or liscensing company.

 

Likewise the very name "admin mod" lead many to ignorantly believe that in order to have a server (in order to be an "admin") one HAD to use this mod. It's like, the mods were what was letting you admin, so everybody "had to have one." This also helps explain their initial popularity with servers. People never bothered to learn Rcon because they thought they needed the am commands.

 

The name "JA+" confused people, as CO said, because it sounds like "Jedi Academy Mod.. only better!" (JA with a + sign after it). Others may have ignorantly thought it was "Jedi Academy, the game, only better!" but the latter is merely sneaky false advertising.

 

In all admin mods did more damage to the community than good. If they had been non-abusive and less transparent perhaps they'd have been relegated to a small but devoted following these days like any other mod like MovieBattles2 or LugorMod. Instead they've taken over 60% of the populated servers, becoming the defacto "face" that the world sees of JA, being a complete distortion of the original game (and a shame to FPS games everywhere).

 

What would be really spectacular is some kind of a site that rates servers (there was one in the early days of JKA) and if the in-game server browser had some really simple filter capabilities, so you could browse to your own set of awesome servers.

 

Well, I guess you do have a Favorites list, right? So maybe there just needs to be a 'league of good servers' list posted somewheres. There probably is, somewhere.

 

If we knew about such a place... and it was publicized maybe that would help. People often talk about "boycotting" servers but nothing has ever been organized. A large number of JA servers stand empty for whatever reasons.

[razorace]

What would be really spectacular is some kind of a site that rates servers (there was one in the early days of JKA) and if the in-game server browser had some really simple filter capabilities, so you could browse to your own set of awesome servers. Well, I guess you do have a Favorites list, right? So maybe there just needs to be a 'league of good servers' list posted somewheres. There probably is, somewhere.

 

Actually I could see this being done as a dedicated "Master Server" that only advertises the servers that are "cool".

 

Personally, I don't think it's that bad of an issue. The player to server ratio is low enough that you can always just go to another server if one gives you problems.

[stubert]

speaking of master server... i heard a rumor that the list server might go down in the not too distant future... we should try and implement a replacement

[Kurgan]

You mean the Raven Masters servers for JK2 & JA? That would be bad news if it were permanent (and surprising too, for games that aren't that old, with only Q4 on the horizon for Raven).

 

Sounds like a good idea, since I assume the main one was the biggest.

[razorace]

And where did you hear that rumor?

[stubert]

amidala of chopshop

[Kurgan]

Wonder where she heard it from...

[LightNinja]

you mean in amidala forums or amidala told you??