Increase FPS 100-200!!

[LordHavoc]

I have now added ping and packet loss reporting to the scoreboard, everything is automatic assuming the server supports the "pings" command (same command used for the purpose in QW, but this replies with a "pingplreport" command containing all the ping and pl values for all players on the server), the ping and pl are hidden if the values reported are 0 (for serverside bots for instance, and the hosting player in a listen server).

I can add support for ProQuake servers on this if someone tells me what command they send and what command to send to them to ask for pings.

I have not yet added bestweapon, iplog (need details), gameclock, say_team macros, or loc support, just the ping/packet loss on scoreboard.

[Baker]

IPLOG.DAT. This is the file that ProQuake stores the IP addresses of players. The file format itself is very simple I expect. It resides in c:\quake\id1 in ProQuake and that is also where it is queried in Qrack, which uses the same format.

Sample IPLOG.DAT

IPLOG.TXT. In ProQuake, if a player types IPDUMP in the console, it will export the file in text file format.

Sample IPLOG.TXT

LOC Files. These are simple text files. Here is one I made for Schloss yesterday:

Sample Loc, Schloss - schloss.loc

Here is that map, in case you don't have it:

Schloss.bsp, for reference

// Schloss.loc mostly perfect Baker 7/6/2006
// x,y,z

1077.8,-2221.2,475.2,560.7,-2848.2,143.7,"Chandelier Room"
494.9,-2868.8,,35.9,387.3,-2600.8,206.9,"Woodpile Stairs"
506.8,-2954.3,223.1,,13.5,-2532.1,390.1,"Mega near Woodpile"
193.2,-2514.9,228.9,507.2,-2097.9,786,"Woodpile/Pent Area"
1108.5,-2253.0,785,1414.7,-2995.9,150.1,"Graveyard"
1144.7,-2944.1,535.6,510.8,-2276.4,796.6,"Chandelier Roof"
-378.5,-2219.4,731.2,321.8,-1644,423.9,"Hitler Room"
-407.6,-2354.6,786,2.4,-3027.2,253.9,"Outside Deck"
20.3,-1971.7,472.5,213.2,-2551.0,659.1,"Yellow Armor Deck"
534.6,-2309.4,700.8,-377.8,-1654.1,1152.0,"Hitler Room Roof"
198.7,-2395.0,224.1,-178.3,-2478.3,376.8,"Woodpile to Outside Deck"
-466,-3397,634,443,-2897,588,"Trapdoor to Quad"
-281.3,-2920.4,582.4,383.8,-3010.0,839.4,"Trap Door to Quad"
713,-4010,567,-16,-3379,771,"Emblem Room Upper"
9,-4005,368,172,-3843,521,"Emblem Room Behind Stairs"
188,-3991,574,-35,-3374,344,"Emblem Room Stairs"
713,-3397,366,26,-4002,537,"Emblem Room Lower"
713,-3776,601,1157,-3364,170,"Emblem Rm Graveyard Stairs"
713,-3388,571,281,-2965,834,"Emblem Rm To TrapDoor"
244.8,-3005.2,395.5,476.9,-3393,558.5,"Swastika Nails Rm"
257.5,-3026.5,410.5,-284,-3432,536.5,"Quad Room"
712,-3360.1,140.6,1464.9,-2981.1,775.4,"Graveyard Entrance"
-290.0,-3425.7,550.7,215.8,-2987.9,504.4,"Quad Room"
703.7,-4009.3,781.4,,,7.5,-3374.6,377.7,"Flags Hall w/stairs"
743.1,-3380.1,390.2,756.4,-3401.8,610.4,"Graveyard Stairs to Flags Room"
507.8,-2082,404.5,210.4,-2958.1,209.3,"Woodpile/Pent Area"
2.4,-2522.5,-31,185.6,-2834.2,785,"Megahealth/Woodpile"
989.2,-2905.3,59,386.6,-2623.3,199.4,"Chandlier Tunnel"
1417.8,-2241.3,298,1065.9,-1868.3,608,"GraveYard Tele"
7.5,-2076.6,392,174.1,-2563.6,555.7,"Hitler Entrance to Deck"
1400.0,-1489.1,785.7,-361.4,-4063.5,-30.6,"map"

This is just a series of 3D boxes and the first match is the %L variable used in say_team "I am at %L with %A armor and %H health".

The format is

X1,Y1,Z1,X2,Y2,Z2,"Location"

Loc files reside in c:\quake\id1\locs

Both the format of iplog.dat and anything.loc are standard formats. Although the main engines supporting the format are ProQuake and QRack, there have been other engines that support these as well, such as JoeQuake 0.30x (Brazilian JoeQuake modification) and GLPRO+ and other minor derivatives.

The additional say_team variables are documented at http://proquake.planetquake.gamespy.com/features.html, but the %L, %A and %H are the most important by far.

Additionally, although there is a GL build of Linux ProQuake, there is also a non-GL build:

SQPRO Binary: sqpro Linux

SQPRO Source: ProQuake source

I'll have to do some homework on the ping command. It does work on pure Windows Quake servers (winquake.exe) somehow, although I can't find a server that runs winquake.exe, the closest thing to WinQuake is probably Yugo2Heck's squake-ihoc (quake.ihoc.net) or the standard old Unix build of Quake - unixded (like quake.dod.net).

[Baker]

A partial answer to your question about pings:

ProQuake source cl_parse.c

Around line 745, I get the impression that ProQuake sends the actual "ping" command to servers periodically (every 5 seconds?) and parses the output and displays this information in the scoreboard.

I'm not an engine programmer, so this is my interpretation of what is going on based on looking at the code in the couple of places. This would also explain why the ping in scoreboard code works on non-ProQuake servers like quake.ihoc.net or quake.dod.net and I know it worked on vanilla winquake.exe servers (although I can't find one, checked and no servers use that any longer).

[Baker]

After checking the UDP data sent between the client the server, it appears the above is what ProQuake does. It periodically sends the PING command to the server and then parses the returned data and displays it in the scoreboard, it looks like it does this in 5 second intervals.

This is why the ProQuake scoreboard pings works in even in non-ProQuake servers. (winquake.exe)

[LordHavoc]

This is just a series of 3D boxes and the first match is the %L variable used in say_team "I am at %L with %A armor and %H health".

The format is

X1,Y1,Z1,X2,Y2,Z2,"Location"

Loc files reside in c:\quake\id1\locs

Both the format of iplog.dat and anything.loc are standard formats. Although the main engines supporting the format are ProQuake and QRack, there have been other engines that support these as well, such as JoeQuake 0.30x (Brazilian JoeQuake modification) and GLPRO+ and other minor derivatives.

I've never seen that LOC format before, I'm only familiar with point-based LOC files which were originally used in old QW proxies (qizmo perhaps?), QuakeForge supported point-based LOC files way back when... Box-based is much better though. Do you know if point-based LOC files are still found in the wild?

Why is it comma separated BTW? Very annoying to parse that. My parser can deal with it, but I greatly prefer space-separated.

[LordHavoc]

Around line 745, I get the impression that ProQuake sends the actual "ping" command to servers periodically (every 5 seconds?) and parses the output and displays this information in the scoreboard.

I was going to do this but decided it was too difficult to reliably identify a ping report in the incoming reliable message stream... But it appears I was wrong, I forgot about the Client ping times: line above the ping list.

[Baker]

I've never seen that LOC format before ... do you know if point-based LOC files are still found in the wild?

Yes, I have a ton of those. In the past there were some NetQuake engines that supported them, but ProQuake came out with a more accurate format.

That being said, the point based system to me is much preferred merely because it does not require elite expertise to make them.

Here is an example of one of the numerous locs that FlintHeart created for QuakeWorld. The variable usage is "standard" in QuakeWorld, so use of that format would almost require the use of the variables.

Flintheart's QW Point-based Locs - FuhQuake style - Zip Format

3353 -5119 -319 yard$loc_name_separator$loc_name_ya
5887 -4964 -319 yard$loc_name_separator$loc_name_ya
4474 113 -831 yard$loc_name_separatorup
3178 -5760 -1727 yard$loc_name_separator$loc_name_mh
-1406 -5119 -1727 yard
9310 3772 -4031 quad
11405 1118 -2879 quad$loc_name_separatorup
3199 -5112 -1727 yard
-1407 -4716 -1727 yard
-127 13 -831 yard$loc_name_separatorup
96 -143 -1727 yard$loc_name_separatorrl
3148 255 -1727 yard
4479 -1306 -1727 yard
1965 -2477 -1727 yard
4328 -105 -1727 yard
4479 -2987 -1727 yard
-328 -1810 -1124 yard
3113 444 -831 yard$loc_name_separatorup
5031 1722 -831 yard$loc_name_separatorup
5887 164 -831 yard$loc_name_separatorup
5881 531 -831 yard$loc_name_separatorup
4300 313 -831 yard$loc_name_separatorup
10381 -2157 -575 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatortop
11985 -2359 -575 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatortop
11906 -2628 -703 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorhigh
10428 -2560 -1215 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorhigh
9497 -1014 -2367 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorhigh
10367 1322 -4031 quad
9983 -3498 -4031 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorrl
8960 -1024 -4031 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorrl
12031 -1919 -4031 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorrl
13125 -552 -2495 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatormid
12288 -2180 -2495 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatormid
9429 -711 -2495 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatormid
10423 -859 -2495 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatormid
5760 255 -2495 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorpath
6783 -1171 -2495 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorpath
11008 3967 -2879 quad$loc_name_separatorup
9266 4217 -2879 quad$loc_name_separatorup
9028 1244 -4031 quad
8706 1242 -3903 quad$loc_name_separatorstairs
7808 1920 -4031 quad
8695 1930 -4031 quad
8636 1629 -3903 quad$loc_name_separatorstairs
7850 1642 -3647 quad$loc_name_separatorstairs
6850 1952 -3007 quad$loc_name_separatorstairs
6855 2275 -2879 quad$loc_name_separatorup
9088 4864 -703 gl
6807 4286 -2879 quad$loc_name_separatorup
6821 4591 -2751 gl$loc_name_separatorstairs
9101 5769 -1343 gl$loc_name_separatorstairs
11925 5204 -575 gl
8448 2962 -575 gl
8448 2584 -575 lg
9727 2534 -575 lg
9727 2783 -575 gl
11971 519 -575 lg
11883 -136 -575 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatortop
12270 -3374 -3007 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorlow
11974 -2560 -3135 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorlow
2304 2945 -2879 air
5061 2944 -2879 air
5124 4223 -2879 air
5435 4223 -2879 quad$loc_name_separatorup
5414 2944 -2879 quad$loc_name_separatorup
4727 -1211 -703 yard$loc_name_separatorup
4780 -3494 -319 yard$loc_name_separator$loc_name_ya
11352 255 -2495 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatormid
5099 -2225 -2111 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorpath
8481 239 -2495 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorpath
8510 -767 -2495 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorpath
8688 -762 -2495 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatormid
8657 255 -2495 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatormid
4799 -2720 -319 yard$loc_name_separator$loc_name_ya
5887 -2707 -319 yard$loc_name_separator$loc_name_ya
5883 -2327 -447 yard$loc_name_separatorup
4727 -2358 -447 yard$loc_name_separatorup
2108 255 -1727 yard$loc_name_separatorrl
1228 -1202 -1727 yard$loc_name_separatorrl
1427 -1702 -1727 yard
947 -731 -854 yard
1638 462 -831 yard$loc_name_separatorup
10589 -1024 -4031 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorrl
9344 -786 -4031 quad$loc_name_separatortunnel
9338 -1024 -4031 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorrl
10367 -822 -4031 quad$loc_name_separatortunnel
9384 662 -4031 quad$loc_name_separatortunnel
10367 684 -4031 quad$loc_name_separatortunnel
10367 963 -4031 quad
9190 896 -4031 quad
9580 969 -4031 quad
9864 -808 -4031 quad$loc_name_separatortunnel
9757 -1040 -4031 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorrl
10233 -1041 -4031 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorrl
4827 -2687 -2111 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorpath
4756 -1664 -2111 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorpath
4443 -1664 -1983 yard
4461 -2687 -1983 yard
12382 -2860 -2879 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorlow
910 -425 -831 yard$loc_name_separatorup
-127 -396 -831 yard$loc_name_separatorup
-114 -727 -853 yard
1129 -1441 -1032 yard
9944 -2258 -4031 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorrl
11359 -1919 -4031 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorrl
11258 -2203 -3903 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorlow
10171 -2246 -3903 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorlow
10175 -3562 -3519 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorlow
13195 -2653 -2623 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorlow
12236 -2583 -2623 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorlow
13311 -2254 -2495 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatormid
10202 -1899 -4031 $loc_name_ra$loc_name_separatorrl
3007 -5454 -1727 yard
-1151 -5445 -1727 yard
-1322 -5760 -1727 yard$loc_name_separator$loc_name_mh
423 -5790 -1727 yard$loc_name_separator$loc_name_mh
2242 -5739 -1727 yard$loc_name_separator$loc_name_mh
-457 -5783 -1727 yard$loc_name_separator$loc_name_mh
1639 -5025 -1727 yard
156 -5024 -1727 yard
2135 -5317 -1727 yard
-414 -5422 -1727 yard
910 -5433 -1727 yard
567 -5592 -1727 yard
742 -5809 -1727 yard$loc_name_separator$loc_name_mh
1506 -5878 -1727 yard$loc_name_separator$loc_name_mh
1478 -5439 -1727 yard
1077 -113 -1727 yard$loc_name_separatorrl

// a2.loc mostly perfect Baker 7/6/2006 www.quakeone.com
// x,y,z

381.3,-653.7,-89.9,757.5,-291.4,-60.3,"yellow armor teleporter"
143.3,-120.3,-255.6,-22.7,54.1,-213.3,"rl in main"
450.3,-338.0,-148.6,902.3,49.4,-347.0,"stairs to main"
902.3,49.4,-151.3,1692.2,-94.1,-391.2,"main tunnel hall"
1648.2,6.7,-225.7,1134.6,-440,-391.2,"rl lower stairs"
1508,-489.6,-508.6,963.0,351.1,-408.5,"lower hall"
273.7,544.1,-402.1,1509.4,330.0,-414.4,"wind tunnel hall"
1345.3,340.9,-414.1,1568.1,24.7,-159.3,"back teleporter"
1510.1,-2.8,-124.5,987.8,347.8,500,"grassy - lightning"
987.8,347.8,500,1526.3,687.2,-147,"grassy - GL"
778,94,-360,1436.0,490,-533.0,"quad view"
1060.7,49.1,-373.8,1630.9,-490.1,315,"Red Armor view"
1464.6,833.2,124.6,778,531.5,-391.5,"Stairs to grass"
-185.4,-891.2,174.2,749.1,301.3,-490.7,"main area"
1478.6,564.2,-419.9,264.3,277.3,128,"Windtunnel Hall"
-284.3,-996.7,123.6,1615.8,787.7,-490.7,"a2 unknown"

Note: The ProQuake format is shorter than QW because it is defined by 3D regions vs. nearest point.

And here is Flintheart's entire readme.txt explaining the variables for the loc format typically used for FuhQuake and likewise engines:

FuhQuake Homepage : http://www.fuhquake.net/
FuhQuake Author : A Nourai aka 'fuhrer' (fuh) (#fuhquake on Quakenet irc)
.
.
.
These locs were made by flintheart for FuhQuake.
.
.
.
Put these locs in qw/locs... These locs let you customise the
armor, megahealth and separator names, but first you need to set the names like this:

set loc_name_ra "RA"
set loc_name_ya "YA"
set loc_name_ga "GA"
set loc_name_mh "MEGA"
set loc_name_separator "-" (eg "bridge-high", "bridge/high" or "bridge$.high" etc)

If you don't like "RA" you can change it to "ra", "$2$0$0" (gold numbers),
"200", or whatever else you want. The same goes for ya/ga/mh/separator.

Put the 5 set command in your configs so you dont have to set them each time.

-----------------------
MESSAGE FROM FLINTHEART
-----------------------

...

Coming locs:
* you tell me

Feel free to comment the locs - suggestions, bugreports, critics etc. Please spread them out. ...

Have Fun!
flintheart, #campbusters @ QuakeNet[/url]

Since your engine supports Quake and QuakeWorld, from a support point of view it would be better to use the QuakeWorld format. I have long pressed for the adoption of the point-based format in Quake, as past Quake engines have supported it.

That being said, however it is implemented would be great. I like the ProQuake style better, but they require such a high skill level to make that as far as I know, the 15 I've made in the last year are the only new ones since 2002. The accuracy of the ProQuake loc format is to some degree eroded by the sheer difficulty in making them.

Why is it comma separated BTW? Very annoying to parse that. My parser can deal with it, but I greatly prefer space-separated.

I guess because that is how ProQuake wants them, heh.

One thing of note, if you use the QuakeWorld format, it would be better if you put that where a QuakeWorld engine would want to find them c:\quake\qw\locs. Having a DM4.loc in c:\quake\id1\locs --- where a NetQuake engine expect to find them, but in a QW format would cause a great deal of angst for a player because ProQuake and Qrack wouldn't be happy with that format.

Regardless of the type of loc support DarkPlaces gets, I know players will be happy to have it.

I was going to do this but decided it was too difficult to reliably identify a ping report in the incoming reliable message stream... But it appears I was wrong, I forgot about the Client ping times: line above the ping list.

Heh, I have to admit I got a smile when reading the ProQuake code. Seemed like such a tough mystery (at least to me), until I saw that

[LordHavoc]

IPLOG.DAT. This is the file that ProQuake stores the IP addresses of players. The file format itself is very simple I expect. It resides in c:\quake\id1 in ProQuake and that is also where it is queried in Qrack, which uses the same format.

I've already found three problems with that .dat file format:
1. that format assumes player names are only up to 15 characters long (not true on darkplaces servers where they can be up to 63 characters, and I might expand this further in the future).

2. that format assumes IPv4 addresses, it's incompatible with IPv6 addresses (which look like [0123:4567:89AB:CDEF:0123:4567:98AB:CDEF]:26001)

3. that format omits the 4th component of the IPv4 address, which is useful to identify people on static IPs (such as me), and omitting it is not sufficient to identify people on dynamic IPs anyway (as many ISPs own multiple Class C IP blocks).

Sorting the addresses seems the best way to identify the same player(s), but this still doesn't help much on huge ISPs which may have hundreds of different players...

I may have to skip iplog support because of these deficiencies in identifying players.

[LordHavoc]

Regardless of the type of loc support DarkPlaces gets, I know players will be happy to have it.

What would make them easier to make? I vastly prefer the box-based format.

I have no intention of supporting the qw/ directory for anything at this time.

[Baker]

What would make them easier to make? I vastly prefer the box-based format.

I have no intention of supporting the qw/ directory for anything at this time.

I like the box format better, it is just very difficult to mentally dissect a map into a series of 3D regions.

It would be easier to do this if an engine has a built-in "show-pos" type of command, that identified the current position and printed it in the console ... or even better, to the clipboard.

I haven't gone thru the cmdlist to check if this exists in DarkPlaces.

I may have to skip iplog support because of these deficiencies in identifying players.

The IPLOG feature, while eventually it would be antiquated, is considered critical by most players and all server admin. It could be stored in a different format as a different filename as it would accumulate anyway.

Although there are deficiencies in it, this very same format is what is used to ban players. Although it seems unreliable and sometimes player IPs do overlap, it is very uncommon for overlap to occur (among troublemakers). Many a player in Quake has been banned due to a neighbor, a friend or someone at the same college -- there isn't a way to control that. Anyone and anywhere on the existing internet might getting banned from a site, forum or .. Quake! ... just due to someone in the proximity. Always can happen with dynamic IP. Yeah, games that use Steam have a different method to prevent that problem mostly, but Quake doesn't.

It is difficult to describe the extent of which this feature has permeated Quake. Without it an engine, you feel "naked" on a server.

I guess perhaps here is the best way to describe this feature:

In QuakeWorld, there is something called "fake nicking" where a player can use another player's name as play as that player or impersonate.

In NetQuake with IPLOG, this is not possible. I would type IDENTIFY # in the console. Someone comes on the server being a jerk using the name "LordHavoc", I could use IDENTIFY and then it prints out his other names and I see it is a known troublemaker guy "<insert name here>".

IPLOG is very ingrained into the community, here is a Google search for "+iplog +quake" and you see there are 13,000 matches.

In ProQuake, only the use of the -iplog turns on this feature, but the installers here have it by default in the Windows shortcut as no one wants to not have this feature.

It isn't perfect, but it is difficult to communicate the important of iplog. It is like having caller ID or something.

[scar3crow]

I like the box format better, it is just very difficult to mentally dissect a map into a series of 3D regions.

I find it useful to employ this abstract construct called 'rooms' for such. It goes a long way.

Please resume the actually useful thread.

[LordHavoc]

I like the box format better, it is just very difficult to mentally dissect a map into a series of 3D regions.

Worth noting the map is itself made out of regions already, try r_drawportals 1 in DarkPlaces to see them, but unfortunately they're not really related to the gameplay.

It would be easier to do this if an engine has a built-in "show-pos" type of command, that identified the current position and printed it in the console ... or even better, to the clipboard.

I haven't gone thru the cmdlist to check if this exists in DarkPlaces.

r_speeds 1.
r_speeds 2 also shows how long each renderer subsystem is taking (but it hurts framerate due to glFinish calls).

It isn't perfect, but it is difficult to communicate the important of iplog. It is like having caller ID or something.

Wouldn't it be better to have a website where people register an account ID, and servers only permit people with registered accounts to play (you could spectate without one), and those accounts can only have their player name and clan affiliation changed from the web interface? That's how QW 1.0 worked. This allows servers to ban specific account IDs.

[Baker]

Wouldn't it be better to have a website where people register an account ID, and servers only permit people with registered accounts to play (you could spectate without one), and those accounts can only have their player name and clan affiliation changed from the web interface? That's how QW 1.0 worked. This allows servers to ban specific account IDs.

Troublemakers make up a small percentage of the overall player population, but maybe someday that type of thing would be useful but then troublemakers could just re-register again with a proxy like anonymouse and it would probably just act as a deterrent to playing. There are a lot of things that control whether or not a player likes a certain server, and if an experimental server were setup with this requirement, I'm not sure how many players would feel that sacrificing convenience for the 2% of troublemakers would be a good trade-off. Some people won't even register at web sites.

The implications of IPLOG are difficult to explain. I'll do my best, but if you haven't experienced how IPLOG affects the game it is almost impossible to communicate. It is not all in running a server, most servers you can get banned for being caught cheating and that's pretty much it (nothing else will get you banned including anything you say or use for a name, except for perhaps impersonating the admin). IPLOG adds a measure of accountability. It gives a player a feeling of empowerment when having it and a feeling of vulnerability if they don't (like not using a supporting engine). It gives reassurance when a player is using an unfamiliar name and you check who it is and discover it someone who you know is a talented player, it gives a feeling of security to check the "trash talker" and discover it is someone you can beat or showing up a server and someone is named "AFK" and being able to tell it is your friend waiting for you, or to shock the newbie who just said some very nasty stuff and tell him his main player name.

I'm looking at this from an engine popularity standpoint. When Qrack added iplog and loc file support, a substantial chunk of the JoeQuake users immediately switched.

IPLOG sounds like a trivial thing and is difficult to understand it's role in Quake, but it isn't a trivial feature to a player.

Did I do a poor enough job explaining that one? It's a toughy to explain, I can't even think of good way to describe how it affects the game. We had a poll on this feature a while back, http://www.quakeone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=685 ... what was more interesting than the number of votes was the amount of discussion.

IPLOG is one of those "you love and you hate things". When you try to play anonymously, you might hate it. But when someone is rude, you love it. That being said, even the few times a player hates doesn't make them not want it. There are certain servers that are pure anonymous (they return the IP address as "private") which I think is nice, but then there are downsides to this too.

It's like someone looking at Quake and saying "eww, the graphics" and having to explain that the game is so great but they can't get past the appearance of the game. Yeah, IPLOG sounds so trivial, but if it isn't in an engine, players won't use it. Players constantly use IDENTIFY on players and if you don't have it and say something like "Phenom is that you?" the response will be the equivalent of "Duh?" (like, you don't know?)

[So very hard to explain, but if it isn't in there, just prepare for a big wave of "feedback" from players.]

[Lardarse]

It would be easier to do this if an engine has a built-in "show-pos" type of command, that identified the current position and printed it in the console ... or even better, to the clipboard.

I haven't gone thru the cmdlist to check if this exists in DarkPlaces.

r_speeds 1.
r_speeds 2 also shows how long each renderer subsystem is taking (but it hurts framerate due to glFinish calls).

Or you ask me to make another small progs.dat

One thing to note is that r_speeds displays your "eye height" which is 22.03 units higher than your origin.

[LordHavoc]

Troublemakers make up a small percentage of the overall player population, but maybe someday that type of thing would be useful but then troublemakers could just re-register again with a proxy like anonymouse and it would probably just act as a deterrent to playing. There are a lot of things that control whether or not a player likes a certain server, and if an experimental server were setup with this requirement, I'm not sure how many players would feel that sacrificing convenience for the 2% of troublemakers would be a good trade-off. Some people won't even register at web sites.

It only has to be beneficial to register, and note that only one login of a particular account would be allowed at a time, and their IPs of every login would be logged in the account, this substantially diminishes the 'ringer' problem in clanring matches (ringers = players called upon by a clan to play in place of missing clan members, who typically play AS that missing clan member, a famous use of manual IP checking back before ProQuake ever existed).

The implications of IPLOG are difficult to explain. I'll do my best, but if you haven't experienced how IPLOG affects the game it is almost impossible to communicate. It is not all in running a server, most servers you can get banned for being caught cheating and that's pretty much it. IPLOG adds a measure of accountability. It gives a player a feeling of empowerment when having it and a feeling of vulnerability if they don't (like not using a supporting engine). It gives reassurance when a player is using an unfamiliar name and you check who it is and discover it someone who you know is a talented player, it gives a feeling of security to check the "trash talker" and discover it is someone you can beat or showing up a server and someone is named "AFK" and being able to tell it is your friend waiting for you, or to shock the newbie who just said some very nasty stuff and tell him his main player name.

Accounts offer more certainty in identifying someone, and are critically useful to clans - you may not know who someone is when they use a bogus account, but you know they aren't a legitimate member of the clans participating in a match, so you don't let them play in the match.

Accounts don't tell you who someone is when they're using a bogus account, but they do tell you quite reliably who someone is when they are using their account.

IP logs don't tell you reliably who someone is under any circumstances, only a best guess or no guess at all (if the IP block differs but is on the same ISP).

These things probably work best in combination.

I still have no idea how to make IP log work well.

I understand its importance fully, I just don't see it as adequate for the purpose of identifying players.