Coop server questions

[gopostal]

I've modded for years in UT, player since the Unreal days. Most of you if you know me it's because of the monsterhunt work I've banged together or the (failed) attempts at server security modding.

I had a catastrophic desktop meltdown a bit back and lost my main gaming rig. I don't miss playing UT nearly as much as I thought I would but I do miss playing on my UT coop server.

I'd like to make the jump back to Unreal coop server running but I'm a little out of the loop. Could someone spare a few minutes and tell me the current situation on 'best controller' and 'best secure setup'? I have a private teamspeak server if that's easiest for you. Ideally I'd like to import a chunk of the stuff I've already made in my UT coop controller so preference is given to modders that allow me to version forward (with full credits ofc).

If you dev and you could spare a few minutes I'd really appreciate it. I'm currently undecided if I'm going to purchase another gaming desktop and rebuild again but I would if the coop scene for Unreal was vibrant and welcome to another iron in the fire.

[bob]

Are you refering to jumping back to the original unreal , or ut?

[gopostal]

Original unreal. I've been working on and off with a UT coop controller but it's just crap. I'd like to retire completely back to Unreal (where it all started for me) and run a server that I can enjoy all the SP maps on. I generally code with an emphasis on exploration versus trying to make the maps hard.

In the end it's just too tough to try to make things work in UT. The controller I was using has about 3000 lines of replacements, fixes, etc and that's just a dumb way of doing things. It needs to be simpler so I can just play and enjoy with some light coding if I see something I'd change.

I'll be honest, I don't play well with others so setting up and enjoying a coop server probably suits me best and it's the best thing for the community at large.

[bob]

in unreal theres isnt so much these 'controlers' like in ut,
alot in unreal depends on what gametype your using to run the content in and you probably want to consider that first,
If you planning on importing your own advanced fixes/ mods or improving a existing game type the only thing I can recommend l is to use jgrass or xcoop they are are the main if not only open source gametypes available for u1 . Every other game type in unreal such as jcoopz , akcoop jcoop4, uteamfix is basicly closedsource.
Those 2 game types have mutatorplus type features and handlers that will allow you to regain some functionality you lost moving back to a older platform. Judging by what you setup on your UT server it would be easy to setup freeplay/ allow additional public commands/ additions just by modifing serverside files.

If you dont care about being locked into somone elses work that you cant change , you can use the very popular jcoopz1.

You can use 227h and you technically dont need to bother with additional security as it has built in anticheat etc. witch is probably what you going to want to use as it can run alot more stuff your used to if you work at it, more model formats etc., Unless you care more about compatibility then features that is then mabye you will choose 225f to host. if 225 is the case it gets a but more complex and that a whole nother road to travel down.

Thats some helpful stuff to think about...

while there seems to be alot of players around , dont be surprised if you hardy ever get anyone joining your servers,imo it a very hard sell for new servers (or even older servers) unless you have a following or clan.
i host 4! servers and it usually dead as night almost all the time.

Look foward to seeing you around helping another small community or seeing what you have to offer. ..or somthing like that.

edit:
even with unreal 1 you may have the same mapfix issues ,

I have a large serverside mapfix mutator that's currently at 3050+ lines just for 'improvments' to custom maps that arnt covered under the standard mapfix mutators, such as translation and serverside spawns.so i can share your frustrations. The first time i tried to make a sort of "serverside controller" type thing for coop ie ,
maptimer/spawner/checkpoints/dwk /swapreplacer/endblocker/autologin/security/urlrouting/ serverside command interface etc it ended in 4732 line spaghetti thats still running to this day but i dont dare touch for fear of breaking it.

[gopostal]

Ah, ok now it connected! You're 'bob', I read your blog and actually was going to contact you directly over this a little while back. What actually stopped me was your observance of the current problems I was having with HoF and their map renaming. I think you might have had a wrong idea about the core issue there but that's a discussion for another day. Anyway I enjoy your postings and I'm glad I provide you with plenty to write about

I'm going to collect these controllers and see what's good before I decide what to use. As to the 'closed' controllers can you point me towards the authors? I'd like permission to open the code if I see something I want to import. Also how do you feel about your own work? Here's the deal, I know Unreal stuff is dead. Your line about "200 players with 1/3 being devs" was entirely spot-on and it's pretty much why I'm here. I've made monsters and ran crazy invasion servers for 2k4, done everything and more in monsterhunt that I wanted to do, but now I'm ready to spend 6 months to a year doing nothing but something for myself. I want to craft a controller to play all these incredible Unreal maps the way I want to play them and truthfully I don't care if not one player ever joins the server. I'm doing it for me and that's all. There will be no forum, no 'release', and no group. I'm sick and tired of drama, I just want to spend a few evenings in Illhaven and Na Pali and if someone wants to tag along that's great. The true artistry of the Unreal series still remains in the user made map packs of the original game, nothing else ever came close in any of the later iterations.

-Jack

[Kew]

"I just want to spend a few evenings in Illhaven and Na Pali and if someone wants to tag along that's great. The true artistry of the Unreal series still remains in the user made map packs of the original game, nothing else ever came close in any of the later iterations."

Thanks, Jack. Kew

[bob]

As to the 'closed' controllers can you point me towards the authors? I'd like permission to open the code if I see something I want to import.

Good luck with that , for example the popular jcoopz1 game i mentioned (maintained by zombie) , is not only closed source , The author decided that due to potential security reasons , that encrypting the scripts would be better for him and has stated that he will never release the source code , so you can look all day at the code and you will get nothing except minimum tidbits that he left to allow hud and player pawns to be potentially replaced. just barly enough to create a subclass of hud/pp and alow it compile

jcoop4 may be a good place to look if you just want ideas, since joopz1 was based on jcoop4 , as the code in jcoop4-5 is less protected. Its outdated by most standards and only works wit 225/226 so it also a bad example because some methods are no longer the same. Joss hasn't been seen since pre jcoopz1 so there's nobody to even ask for source code. You cant built off of it since it mostly been striped as well.There are interesting things to see there (using utpt) like the use of SSF and that fact that he has thought of everything tho , That gametype was built like a tank and it shows.But there is not really a point unleass you plan of using the ssf architechure and want a example.

Thats why i suggested what i did...
half my servers run a seriously modified version of xcoop that is layed out more like jcoop , with serverside instruction and waaaayy more entry points for mods . kinda suks that I spent all that time tho , since jgrass is capable of most of that and more from the start( well not quite all).

As for mapfixes , you can probably get away with using dzmapmutator , That covers alot of issues by itself and adds a lot of features like map routing , pawn replacement coop fixes , etc , but its closed source as well....Go figure

There is a alternative similar mod called icmutate witch is sort of marketed as a open alternative to dzmapmut, that might be a good place to look if you looking to build onto a fix mutator. etc

A lot of the fixes i did relate to issues involved with mods that I am running , notably samspawn, and tweaks to the maps game play to make them less annoying and a insane amount of map decorating and a crap ton of sort of translated messages for various maps to make them English, yeah i can share it , but it wouldn't be a huge help to you unfortinity...

The other thing I mentioned is a trainwreck from years ago and while if i ever cleaned it up is might be awsome , it not in any shape to be distibuted as is in any form.I do have other usfull stuff but its unknown if thats needed. im open to sharing anything i have/did as long as it dosnt compromise security. although i sort of doubt anything i made has any significant value ( at least in my eyes).


There isn't nearly the amount of hack-fixes needed in unreal as is in ut , so you don't need to worry to much. generally everything will run , the only major issue is coop changes in some maps, or course and the teleports at the ending between packs. any Game type worth its salt will have a simple url swapper built in.

Pretty much all the maps can run on any gametype , so that eliminates the need for a custom gametype that has workarounds for each gamtypes changes.


what exactly are you trying to come up with , or control tho. you want commands to do somthing , or you want fixes , or you want a all-in-one solution to problems you dont have yet , or do you just want the most generic control over every aspect of the game. in not getting it completely here...

[gopostal]

Thanks for the detailed response bob, and YW Kew.

Here's the long and short of it. I'm not really interested in playing crazy coop like Loathesome's server. I can see the appeal but it's just not for me. Ideally I'd like a simplistic controller that gives me mostly fixes, a nice security front-end, and some light modding that I would choose to add. For example in my controller I set it to identify translator events by a spinning "!" symbol and you could then walk up and the translator would auto-open when you looked directly at the event spot. Also I built in forced door opening (mover cycle) on user command if a map had a bad spot or you were just stuck. I even added a modded portalgun to access the areas not really meant for play. I like to explore maps and finding "what's behind" is at the top of my list.

I haven't had a chance to even look at the stuff you have listed because of RL commitments (summer classes in web design), not to mention my good gaming rig's mobo took a crap on me. Probably this weekend I'm going to order a better video card and new tower so it can be ready for me to work on when I get some free time. By this time next month I'd like to be fully involved in this to prepare for the rainy season in the fall. I'm itching bad to get back to Illhaven.

Lastly, I've had my issues with people in various forums and mostly I'd like to just put all that behind me. Yeah I fought rather strenuously with some clans over renaming maps (which btw I've now sorted out how to lock them down solidly) but I'm just done with all that. If admins cannot see the damage that dumping so many duplicates does then that's on them I guess. I tried.

As for the obfuscation, I'm not worried about that. I'm confident I can bypass it with what I've learned. So far I've not found anything I can't get open and decompiled but let's be clear about something: I will not use something without permissions. That's why I asked about the authors. All they need to do is say "Sure, use some of it if you like" and I'll take care of the rest. I'm not looking to extend their mods, instead I want to take the best from everything and incorporate it into my specific desires, much the same thing I did with MH2. If certain mods are abandoned or unsupported I'll make full attempts to get permissions via mail and here before opening them up. In short I'm all about respect of authorship and if you read my forum disagreements it most often falls into this category (KAAL for example). I just believe with incredible certainty that if someone takes the time to make something then they automatically earn the right to have say over it's use.

So, Zombie, do you read this forum? How about it bro? I'd be happy to meet you on TS and discuss it. I don't need a thing from you except "Sure" but I'd be happy to put your fears to rest. I've coded for years and never been accused of stealing the first line. In fact you will find every major dev has been contacted by me at one time or another for various permissions and I have a pretty high positive return because I respect people's work.

[bob]

no zombie probably don't read this forum sorry , should have just givin yo the authers contacts like you asked instead of me explaining why the earth turns

jcoopz1 E-mail: unrzombie at yahoo.com
jcoop4 Email j88oss at yahoo.com

Is sounds tho like everything you want to do there is easily done without touching the gametype really tho..

also both those things already exist in other reincarnations.
MML log has icons and auto actives the messages
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2450

there is also a such inventory item that when activated , triggers nearby movers /triggers as well. the mods name is yleisavain ( masterkey in english)

.

[redeye]

"I'm not really interested in playing crazy coop like Loathesome's server"

What ? who.... whatta, did you say something aaaaaaarg,, you hackers just can't hack it.

[gopostal]

I'm a huge fan actually of Loathe. He helped me out of a critical replication spot once I just couldn't overcome, his work is really cool (with the bonus source code always included no less, and he's crafted a well-running server. The weapons lying all over the place, the >500 health, it's all just a bit too much for me. I tried playing attacked and a skaarj sniper repeatedly nailed me with headshots as soon as I came into it's view.

I'm old. My fingers are a wreck on my right paw from years of slamming mailbox lids (and a couple of bad dog bites) so a more plodding pace is where I want to go with this. I enjoyed the hell out of 3's server setup, though it was a bit hard for one person on some maps. My version will take this into consideration and aid the player on a sliding scale depending on his performance within the map itself. I have my own summon commands setup so I'll make that available for the player depending on how they want to play that particular series.

Thank you bob for posting the emails. I sent them out and I'll let you know what happens. I glanced at zombie's obfuscation method and yeah, I can decompile it. One of the best things I've ever done is spend three weeks learning UEngine at the hex level. Anthrax helped greatly with this (damn does that guy know his stuff) and when you pull several posted guides and references together it all makes wonderful sense. Eventually I'm going to write a deobfuscator that will spit out source regardless of the method used to hide it. I know one exists already but it's very protected and never discussed openly.

Added: I looked at the translator mod you referenced and it's somewhat like mine. I don't like the idea of voiceovers though, keep it simple and just autodisplay the text in a floating screen that is see-through. I'll probably end up rewriting the translator and event to compensate for the ones that are not visible and to allow for some scrolling of past messages. There is no reason that there can't be a running log of them that you can read when you like or when it is safe to do so. PCube was on the right track but it missed the entire feel of Unreal. Having multiple voice actors for the same player is suck too, too confusing.

[MrLoathsome]

I'm a huge fan actually of Loathe. He helped me out of a critical replication spot once I just couldn't overcome, his work is really cool (with the bonus source code always included no less, and he's crafted a well-running server. The weapons lying all over the place, the >500 health, it's all just a bit too much for me. I tried playing attacked and a skaarj sniper repeatedly nailed me with headshots as soon as I came into it's view.

Actually that craziness is only on the AKCoop/ECoop server.
I do run 2nd "OldSkool" ECoop server, where the only extra gun is an ASMD, and no
extra monsters or anything are added to the maps.

[Shivaxi]

Personally I wouldn't go with JCoopZ1 only due to the fact it writes crap to players system folder and ini settings...or maybe that's just zombie's server I'm not sure...all I know is every time I play on zombies with jcoopz i have to go through my unreal or user ini (cant remember) and change some of the settings back which screws up my client.

If anything, stock coop game with 227 would work ideally for you...and you could run dzmapm which impliments fixes for both stock and RTNP maps. I run my own mutator with my own fixes...it's easy enough to do as a lot of the bugs online with stock maps are a result of faulty movers that weren't designed for coop play in mind.

JGrass though is at the top of my list. Allows you to do so much more while keeping things simplified. It does take some knowledge to know how to run though however, and it's currently unfinished...but check it out if you want.

http://udhq.org/udhq/index.php