Servers With Several Mods Available

[Baker]

Do you have a favorite mod that isn't running anywhere?

I've done some experiments and it looks like it is possible to make singular servers that have potentially unlimited mods available via user vote.

The one catch is that the mod must be open source, which covers most but not all mods that have any level of popularity.

The reason for this is that the mod will need to be recompiled with vote-mod capability made available.

In addition, I want the servers to reset to a default mod and map if everyone leaves and that QuakeC will have to be added to the recompiled mods.

Where applicable, I might try adding vote-map capability as well using Bam's easy-to-add vote-map capability but I'm not going to promise this.

Mod list?

I'm going to try this once or maybe twice and then document how someone can do this themselves so suggestions made now are better:

The list of mods I currently think would be good fit:

Vanilla Quake FFA?
AirQuake
Slide
Qoetia
TransloQuake
Painkeep (I don't claim to have ever played this)
The Lost Chapters
Zerstorer

At the moment, those are the only mods I can think of except some minor mods.

[Baker]

Add: X-Men + Navy Seals. I have no idea how well these play or don't play in deathmatch, but that's because like most people I've never played them.

[Baker]

Frikbots on custom maps with Monsters waypoints?

[metchsteekle]

hmm can monsters use waypoints to roam with the right tweeks?

[Senban]

That would be really nice to see, one mod I'd add to the list is mon_dm09 despite seeming a bit unfinished in some respects and not ideal from a strictly competitive point of view it is a huge amount of fun. Basically you spawn as one of the monsters and fight as that till you die when you spawn as something else. Check it out!

I'd really like to see Bam's vote map plugin extended to cover the teamplay, coop and deathmatch settings. That would really beef up a server like this.

[Senban]

hmm can monsters use waypoints to roam with the right tweeks?

Nah, sadly not. Monster is a guy who posts here who did a nice set of FrikBot waypoints covering all the SP maps in the original game.

[metchsteekle]

bah!! senban ive been looking for that mod

[Senban]

mon_dm09? Very cool, there's also morph2 which is a very similar idea. This is a great site for all the first wave QuakeC stuff: http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames2/quakec/ mirrors the legendary ftp://cdrom.com site from back in the day.

[Baker]

That would be really nice to see, one mod I'd add to the list is mon_dm09 despite seeming a bit unfinished in some respects and not ideal from a strictly competitive point of view it is a huge amount of fun. Basically you spawn as one of the monsters and fight as that till you die when you spawn as something else. Check it out!

I like competitive stuff, but I like fun mods as well.

It seems like the Mt. Everest for mods is getting them on a server. RocketGuy started an AirQuake last year and I knew AirQuake just isn't fun enough to warrant it's own server.

It's such a risky business for mods and servers aren't free.

But I'm sure if I can do this that should easily find a home in the USA on the HDZ box and I have a suspicion that Polarite or one of the other European server ops would be open to reconfiguring a server to run this (Slide server or server that runs Slide + 15 other things? not a hard choice :d)

I'd really like to see Bam's vote map plugin extended to cover the teamplay, coop and deathmatch settings. That would really beef up a server like this.

This reminds me!

Deathmatch 3 needs added to vanilla 1.06. So many of us have played with weapon stay for 10 years as to not really be aware that isn't actually supported.

But yes, some method to do that would be helpful and shouldn't be hard.

Bam is a true hero for writing that code.

hmm can monsters use waypoints to roam with the right tweeks?

I'm sure someone could mess with the ai.qc and make it more like Frikbot's, but wimpy grunts running around the map isn't really a very formidable opponent.

You can make monsters have a walk-path in a map, by the way. Check out Azure Agony (E4M7) and do noclip and notarget and watch the Hell Knight's in the hall.

{
"classname" "monster_hell_knight"
"origin" "-1976 -280 -56"
"angle" "0"
"target" "t104"
"spawnflags" "256"
}

{
"origin" "-2056 -280 -56"
"classname" "path_corner" //
"targetname" "t104"
"target" "t105"
}

{
"classname" "path_corner"
"origin" "-2056 -416 -56"
"targetname" "t105"
"target" "t106"
}

etc

[Senban]

I like competitive stuff, but I like fun mods as well.
This reminds me!

Deathmatch 3 needs added to vanilla 1.06. So many of us have played with weapon stay for 10 years as to not really be aware that isn't actually supported.

Do you ever want weapon stay in FFA DM or just in teamplay? I ask because Qoetia uses teamplay to determine weapon stay, rather than deathmatch, freeing that up for other things.

You can make monsters have a walk-path in a map, by the way. Check out Azure Agony (E4M7) and do noclip and notarget and watch the Hell Knight's in the hall.

Hmmm. I think that might be better code to bastardize than using bot waypoints. There's also the jump waypoints used by the ogres at various points, it would be really cool to extend that, especially for those poor knights on e1m2, how my heart bleeds for them.

[=peg=]

intresting concept baker! but happy debugging

Do you ever want weapon stay in FFA DM or just in teamplay? I ask because Qoetia uses teamplay to determine weapon stay, rather than deathmatch, freeing that up for other things.

on the European side of the pond we prefer weaponstay [on] all the time.. but my guess is that's not the case on the USA side..

[Senban]

Is that to de-emphasise map control?

[=peg=]

map control is still a big part of the game with weapon-stay on.. (for teamplay or 1-1 that is) but it just makes the game a lot faster and more fun (less boring).

dmm1 (weapon-stay [off]) is still nice imo but its better with spawnshields on so that players can at least have a chance of finding a gun and fighting back before getting diminished to gib-size chunks..

[Senban]

Cool, I'll maybe make items and ammo respawn in deathmatch 2 then. It does seem like a pointless legacy these day's. (Has anyone ever seen i played or even wanted to play it?) Qoetia already uses deathmatch 3 as deathmatch with monsters, which is an odd game but lot's of fun for an occasional bash. (e1m7 really comes in to it's own!)

[Baker]

Do you ever want weapon stay in FFA DM or just in teamplay? I ask because Qoetia uses teamplay to determine weapon stay, rather than deathmatch, freeing that up for other things.

For an FFA server, I want to stick to the standards of expectations and use deathmatch 3 for that.

Kind of on another note:

I want to make a list of absolute essential things that a good multiplayer server must have in my book:

Must have:
MOTD explaining what mod is running that tells you about the "commands" command.
"commands" - tell you the essentials of how to use the server/mod you are playing.
Console printing explaining where to get the download so people without maps and models can find out where to get them.

Every mod must have vote-mod code.
Every mod must initiate the base-mod when all players leave and changelevel to the default map for that mod.

A mod change must:
Change the effective progs.dat (engine modification required)
Change the map to the default map for the mod (i.e. slstart for Slide, for instance)

Cvars! Since mods use those, I will need to put in a mechanism that resets them or even executes what .cfg the mod needs the server to do.

I can't think of anything else at the moment but obviously the above also requires sending aliases to the client upon connecting so the vote-commands are available and so forth.

Optional stuff, not likely to happen in the first release ...

1) observer system
2) vote-map

I'll think about those more in the future, but the initial goal will be for the prototype to be functional, not perfect.