Define What You Think Is Cheating

[Baker]

gl_textureless seems to work in real time without restarting the map, what if the feature were left in the client but disabled in CAx the same way r_wateralpha and chase_active are?

Mod authors/server operators (RuneQuake, etc.) could decide if they want to disable the feature since it works in real time.

I raised the issue for discussion, but I am not trying to "mandate" anything, except I don't ...

a) ... want Quake ruined like Quakeworld is, with all the cheats becoming normal.
b) ... want cheated out of a fair game myself.

It REALLY burned me up when I found out that Shao was using gl_textureless. The feature is very unfair to other clients and if it were ever to be prevalent would be a horrendously bad thing and we would all be better off playing some other game.

And gl_textureless isn't eyecandy. No one would want to use that except to have an (unfair) advantage in game.

[Baker]

Update: since just about every feature in question works in real-time, all of this stuff can be disabled at a server operators discretion, so basically ....

Case closed!

Add: I've IM'ed with Rook, and I know that this stuff doesn't make anyone feel the greatest, and it certainly wasn't my intent to make anyone feel bad.

Had I realized early on -- and no one was thinking about this angle -- that servers can simply disable these features I would have taken a whole different approach. Which gets back to this ...

I make mistakes like everyone else.

... my mistake being that the best solution didn't occur to me early on.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

Shao is trash,he gets pounded on daily at Rage.

Quake engines like Qrack are avalilible to the public,through public sources like Quakeone.com .... with that being said, you cant point the finger at anyone who does their homework on what an engine has to offer,regaurdless of what it is thats being offered.Your talking about things that are downloaded from the WWW , not shit that is passed from clan-mate to clan-mate like the whole zero.exe in the CQL's...

I find these "Wah,your engine has this and that support and mine dont" complaints and trying to call them cheats just absolutely pathetic attempts at reasonings for being slapped a few times.Just because you can see someone easier doesnt mean jack shit in online gameplay in my opinion. 24bit texture suggestion by r00k is very valid.If yours and anyone elses nagging and bitching about the Qrack features making it easier for players to be seen does get server-side disabling,anyone who wants to use custom textures that makes people easier to see will do so,and there isnt shit you can do about it unless you want to cry more.You cant have engines like Qrack and DarkPlaces making advancements in Online-NQ Engines and then bitch about it when you think something is not-fair. Eventually ProQuake will lose its steam as the No.1 downloaded and used engine,its that natural way of things.
I chose to use ProQuake because I want to, and I can care less that some douchebag using Qrack has some "Qrack Feature" that gives them a tiny advantage,because in the end its boiling down to who has the better aim,and I'll pit my ProQuake vs Qrack+Qrack Features any day,and I wont cry about any Qrack Features being used.

I cant believe how ridiculous this shit I've read is,its fucking hilarious.
http://filesbox.info/969Pak2examples.rar <- those are cheats.

Any of this riff-raff thats been mentioned inside/about Qrack "cheats" pales by comparison,and I cant believe there has been this much debate over Qrack's features being considered cheat's.

For example, not everyone knows about pq_fullpitch , it is defaulted to OFF. Should Rage disable it because some people use it,and the ones that dont more than likely dont know about it? It's a distinct advantage in aim, to say otherwise or contest its being considered a cheat just like Qrack is in this post is a fuckface who wont admit its extreme alikeness to the whole "They dont know about it" arguement.No it shouldnt be, how about you newbs do something constructive and make a informational wiki type thing about Qrack and its features,and do the same for DarkPlaces.

god,fucking ridiculous

[Mindf!3ldzX]

... my mistake being that the best solution didn't occur to me early on.

I have failed to see the problem,and since I dont see a problem,I dont see why we need a solution.

[Phenom]

I "can't" use Qrack in Linux

[Mindf!3ldzX]

Winhoes > Linux

[Baker]

For example, not everyone knows about pq_fullpitch , it is defaulted to OFF. Should Rage disable it because some people use it,and the ones that dont more than likely dont know about it? It's a distinct advantage in aim, to say otherwise or contest its being considered a cheat just like Qrack is in this post is a fuckface who wont admit its extreme alikeness to the whole "They dont know about it" arguement.No it shouldnt be, how about you newbs do something constructive and make a informational wiki type thing about Qrack and its features,and do the same for DarkPlaces.

god,fucking ridiculous

I had no idea cl_fullpitch wasn't disabled in CAx. It is disabled on a lot of different servers and I guess I had assumed it was disabled at Rage and other CAx servers. It has been a few years since I used cl_fullpitch 1 because most servers disabled it and I always thought of it as a cheat.

The fact that you are worried about the most blatent cheats like wallhacks/modified player models/aim assist/etc doesn't mean I or anyone else should be less worried about inherently unfair options in engines, which has the effect of "normalizing" something.

Mindzy, if you think just because you have lately been worried about pak2 that the things mentioned in this thread aren't important then it is you that is not thinking clearly.

/And yes, like you said, cl_fullpitch 1 and equivalent settings rank up there with the most unfair of options. Probably worse than any other feature listed in this thread.

[Alc]

A level playing field is the ultimate goal of any competitive game, making steps towards it should be encouraged rather than bitched at. I don't have enough experience to know exactly how much of a difference these things actually make, but if they provide an unfair advantage, however small, they should be disabled as default. You can't account for people's monitor size or mouse, but you can and should account for their software.

[tical]

i use d_mipcap 3 and i can see the players better, how could it be cheating if it is a console command?

[Baker]

i use d_mipcap 3 and i can see the players better, how could it be cheating if it is a console command?

Just random stuff on this:

1. A very strong argument can be made that is a totally fair way to play because it is a command provided by id Software.

2. d_mipcap, a WinQuake command, makes everything look really terrible and it isn't solid color, not unlike id Software's implementation of gl_picmip. This is in sharp contrast with some modded engines' -- JoeQuake, Qrack, DarkPlaces, some single player engines -- implementation of gl_picmip where things look largely, but not completely, nice and 100% solid colors. And is sharply different than the Qrack-only gl_textureless implementation where everything looks nice except the solid colors used in the map.

3. Mod developers/server operators could, if they wanted to, disable the use of d_mipcap because it takes effect in real-time and really was intended to help old 75 Mhz clunker computers that struggled to run Quake a decade ago.

But again, that feature has always been around and was made by id Software, although some would argue that transparent water -- which a lot of WinQuake/wqpro feel rightfully is a cheat -- and chase_active (which can let you see thru walls in many places) -- were included by id Software.

[PapaSmurf]

I used d_mipcap 3 on winquake as well, and I was using winquake up until 2002. On my old 200 mhz computer d_mpicap 3 significantly helped my framerate, when I was using it on my 1400 mhz computer it wasn't necessarily a framerate issue, but I felt it made the game run smoother. Default software quake at 320x240 is very grainy, d_mipcap smooths this out, and it's a much cleaner look, albeit blocky. I always felt that that analoguos command in glquake was gl_picmip, so I have used that in the past, and recently I've gone to using gl_picmip 4. It has a similar affect that d_mipcap has: it makes the textures smoother and blockier, even at higher resolutions. I'm in a very gray areas when it comes to the gl_textureless command being a cheat. Yes, it wasn't in the original quake, but gl_polyblend wasn't either and what does gl_polyblend do, it allows you to see things more clearly (ie, underwater or with the ring powerup), and this is the same thing gl_textureless is doing, allowing the player to see things more clearly-not to see more (glowing models, seeing things in shadows), but just more clearly. Now, I never used gl_polyblend (I didn't like not being able to tell visually that I was being hit), but with proquake and the newer clients, you can now adjust the pallette shifting of each effect, eg pq_quadblend, pq_waterblend, v_quadshift, etc. The only purpose of this was to see more clearly, the same purpose of gl_texturless.

I would like to also point out that back in 1997 (maybe even in 1996), there was a modded dm3 map created that was textureless. This map was approved for official competitions involving the top clans at the time (DR, U4, etc.) I know for a fact that the DR guys used it. Now, I'm not saying this was right or wasn't a cheat, but it was used, and there wasn't too much opposition to it (possibly because of framerate issues with the current hardware of the time).

[tical]

when i use winquake mipcap 3, but when im on gl i use picmip 3....the area looks smaller but the player is perfectly visible which is nice...

and i have one of the best gamma fixer uppers fuck the console commands...


gapa.exe msg me on aim tical909 and ill send u it.

[Baker]

I used d_mipcap 3 on winquake as well, and I was using winquake up until 2002. On my old 200 mhz computer d_mpicap 3 significantly helped my framerate, when I was using it on my 1400 mhz computer it wasn't necessarily a framerate issue, but I felt it made the game run smoother. Default software quake at 320x240 is very grainy, d_mipcap smooths this out, and it's a much cleaner look, albeit blocky. I always felt that that analoguos command in glquake was gl_picmip, so I have used that in the past, and recently I've gone to using gl_picmip 4. It has a similar affect that d_mipcap has: it makes the textures smoother and blockier, even at higher resolutions. I'm in a very gray areas when it comes to the gl_textureless command being a cheat. Yes, it wasn't in the original quake, but gl_polyblend wasn't either and what does gl_polyblend do, it allows you to see things more clearly (ie, underwater or with the ring powerup), and this is the same thing gl_textureless is doing, allowing the player to see things more clearly-not to see more (glowing models, seeing things in shadows), but just more clearly. Now, I never used gl_polyblend (I didn't like not being able to tell visually that I was being hit), but with proquake and the newer clients, you can now adjust the pallette shifting of each effect, eg pq_quadblend, pq_waterblend, v_quadshift, etc. The only purpose of this was to see more clearly, the same purpose of gl_texturless.

I would like to also point out that back in 1997 (maybe even in 1996), there was a modded dm3 map created that was textureless. This map was approved for official competitions involving the top clans at the time (DR, U4, etc.) I know for a fact that the DR guys used it. Now, I'm not saying this was right or wasn't a cheat, but it was used, and there wasn't too much opposition to it (possibly because of framerate issues with the current hardware of the time).

You have a lot of good points in there, but I just wanted to point out that gl_polyblend is a GLQuake command, not something added to ProQuake or any other engine after the fact.

http://console.planetquake.gamespy.c...nds/quake.html

gl_polyblend

Game: GLQuake

Type: Toggle

Default: 1

Description: Toggle the use of pallet color blending and flashing effects.

Note: When this toggle is enabled the player's screen will change color when the player is hurt or when he's submersed in water. If you wish to disable the color changing effects you can disable this toggle. If you disable this toggle you might find it hard to notice when you are being hurt because your screen will not change color to the usual red to alert you.

[Baker]

Since everyone is talking about all of these not necessarily commonly known things, I'll add 2 scripts I used to use as an HPB and 1 other one that exists:

1. I used to have an FOV 170 key. If I was waiting for armor to respawn or waiting for a health box to respawn in a hall way, I'd hold the key down and if I turned sideways I could more or less see any activity from either side and if I saw a player I'd let go of the key and either fight/run.

I stopped using this years ago.

2. A script that could fire a rocket behind me. I was of the mentality at the time that anything that worked was "ok" and of course it worked on cheat-free servers too. Too many players thought it was really cheap so I ditched it; I didn't need it anyway.

3. Although I've never used it, some players have used an instant 180 degree turn bind, which is particularly useful on DM6 to use 2 teleporters back-to-back without being vulnerable to being shot.

[R00k]

I had no idea cl_fullpitch wasn't disabled in CAx. It is disabled on a lot of different servers and I guess I had assumed it was disabled at Rage and other CAx servers. It has been a few years since I used cl_fullpitch 1 because most servers disabled it and I always thought of it as a cheat.

pq_fullpitch is a SERVER variable not a MOD variable. Admins must set pq_fullpitch 1 in the autoexec.cfg on the server to enable it, otherwise its disabled by default. I dont think its much of a cheat if 99% of players use proquake compatible clients. But hey, I guess we arent talking about Q3.

As Baker suggests, in leu of the fact that pic_mip 10 is a bug in standard quake and that modern engines have fixed this, I will add a server-side feature to CAx to disable gl_textureless and limit picmip to a max 4. In the glquake code there is not a line that has a condition if (gl_picmip.value > 4) then call the cops.. (the engine just crashes instead). Also, if its a 1024x1024 texture or its a 128x128 texture picmip 4 will have different levels of detail. The 128x128 texture will almost look flat while the 1024x1024 texture will simply be at the detail of 256x256.