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Xptek [message #364255] Sun, 21 December 2008 09:11 Go to next message
Spoony is currently offline  Spoony
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I'm going to make a request of you, and I'd prefer it if everyone else kept the thread relatively spam-free (unless they have something worth adding) until xptek has answered.

Consider releasing Linkup.

You said that in your opinion, the community isn't worth any effort and expense on your part. Regardless of what I think about that opinion, I can't change it for you. I can only point out that you're talking about a minority of people here, and what really matters is the players themselves. If you despised everyone who currently posts on this forum with a passion, they would probably still add up to a minority of the people who actually play the game.

Anyway, you wouldn't have to pay for it. Give it to Crimson or whoever, let TT take it from there. You could carry on being involved if you wanted, or you could just dump it in TT's lap and run, up to you.

Let me give you an example of the benefits. Null and havocide kept saying that a clan ladder through Linkup would be so much better than Clanwars.cc. I would be the first to agree that in principle, auto > manual. But that's not all there is to it. If it was, how do we explain Clanwars.cc being more successful than the "official" WOL clan ladder? See, that's why I laughed at null and havocide; it hadn't occurred to them that just because a ladder is auto, it still isn't going to do very well if it's run by someone who knows nothing about how to actually manage a clan ladder.
With all modesty aside, I think I do, more than anybody. I certainly have more experience and a better track record. So imagine how good the ladder could be if it was auto AND it was run by someone who actually knows what they're doing. It would be the best clan ladder the game has ever had. This game had an auto ladder in the past, but it was absolutely crap because it wasn't moderated and the people in charge of it didn't care. (Null and Havocide, of course, would know this if they knew a damn thing about clanning in this game) That's why people used mine; it might be manual report, but it was run much better. So imagine an auto ladder run by me, eh?

That's just one great thing that could come out of it. You probably know the other benefits better than I do.

So please consider this. Not for me, not for Crimson, not for TT, not even for you (even though you'd earn an untold amount of respect from the community, and you'd certainly be "the better man")... do it for the game. Do something really good for Renegade. Think practically; what have you got to lose?


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[Updated on: Sun, 21 December 2008 09:17]

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Re: Xptek [message #364259 is a reply to message #364255] Sun, 21 December 2008 09:54 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Goztow is currently offline  Goztow
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Ermmm :s this could have been handled by PM?

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Re: Xptek [message #364260 is a reply to message #364255] Sun, 21 December 2008 09:59 Go to previous messageGo to next message
GEORGE ZIMMER is currently offline  GEORGE ZIMMER
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Because spoony is making a statement that if Xptek refuses to read/respond/whatever, it'll be pretty clear as to what his intentions are (rather, aren't), since everyone will be able to see it.

Either that, or it's all a clever ruse to make various people lose the game. Bastard.


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Re: Xptek [message #364262 is a reply to message #364255] Sun, 21 December 2008 11:03 Go to previous messageGo to next message
reborn is currently offline  reborn
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I for one would love to get my hands on it. Both APB and Reborn would have many uses for it, both of the afore mentioned communities would benefit emmensly from it.


Re: Xptek [message #364264 is a reply to message #364260] Sun, 21 December 2008 11:04 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Spoony is currently offline  Spoony
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(replying to Cabal)
No, that statement has already been made, by xptek himself. I'm just asking him to reconsider.

By all means let him carry on thinking we're all hopeless morons. But what a great guy he'd be if, despite hating us all, he did something really great for everybody. I'll even shave my neckbeard. Dover, will you join me?

Goztow is correct, a PM would do just as well, although it wouldn't have done any better, so let's just wait for a response.


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[Updated on: Sun, 21 December 2008 11:27]

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Re: Xptek [message #364266 is a reply to message #364255] Sun, 21 December 2008 11:31 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Hitman is currently offline  Hitman
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in the meanwhile spoony can get his ass back on clanwars to adjust the ban list ATLEAST

also : wtf is linkup?

[Updated on: Sun, 21 December 2008 11:31]

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Re: Xptek [message #364268 is a reply to message #364255] Sun, 21 December 2008 12:03 Go to previous messageGo to next message
R315r4z0r is currently offline  R315r4z0r
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1. What is an Automated Ladder?
2. Why is it better for it to be automated?
3. Does it involve people who do not participate in clans?
Re: Xptek [message #364277 is a reply to message #364268] Sun, 21 December 2008 13:06 Go to previous messageGo to next message
GEORGE ZIMMER is currently offline  GEORGE ZIMMER
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R315r4z0r wrote on Sun, 21 December 2008 13:03

1. What is an Automated Ladder?

Renegade's built in ladder system which, at one point, worked.

R315r4z0r wrote on Sun, 21 December 2008 13:03

2. Why is it better for it to be automated?

So that having laddered games actually serves a purpose other than disabling extras. That, and because it puts the competitive nature of a video game back into Renegade.

R315r4z0r wrote on Sun, 21 December 2008 13:03

3. Does it involve people who do not participate in clans?

As far as I know, it should, but only for servers with the laddered option enabled.


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Re: Xptek [message #364286 is a reply to message #364277] Sun, 21 December 2008 13:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Spoony is currently offline  Spoony
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R315r4z0r wrote on Sun, 21 December 2008 13:03

1. What is an Automated Ladder?
2. Why is it better for it to be automated?
3. Does it involve people who do not participate in clans?

In ages past, WOL had two automatic ladders - a public ladder and a clan ladder. Any public server could turn on the 'laddered' option, which would then send the game results to the public ladder. As for clans, it was pretty much the same except a clan needed to register its members first, and then a clan match could be counted on the clan ladder automatically.

that answers 1 and 3. as for 2... well, this is more complicated than most people realise. Back in the old days, clanwars.cc set up a renegade ladder which drew its results from the official WOL ladder (this was long before I became involved with it). It had the advantage of a better points system, and better moderation... i.e. it was run by people who actually cared, whereas the official WOL clan ladder wasn't. For example, there were a lot of clans who would cheat or report fake games or just kick their opponents if they were about to lose - that happened all the time on the WOL clan ladder and nobody did anything about it. (Same goes for the public ladder - anyone remember Keetxx? If my memory serves correct, he won supreme commander on the public-server ladder two months in a row, just by joining servers and blazing away with final ren until he got booted) That's why most serious clans preferred clanwars.cc.

Later on, (some time before the XWIS changeover) the ladder started breaking down A LOT. Games just didn't report a lot of the time (again, at clanwars.cc that was easy to fix, on the WOL ladder there was nobody who'd add your games for you). Even worse, there was a period of a few months where the clan creation pages completely stopped working, so you couldn't even join or leave a clan. because of all these problems, clanwars.cc converted to a manual report system. Players had to report their own losses, which took a bit of getting used to, but it was still way better than the old auto ladder.

then the XWIS changeover happened (november 2005?) and that was the end of the auto ladder, for good.

so in a nutshell, the best option would be something we've never really had before; namely an auto ladder that was run by admins who really know and care what they're doing. Xptek has the chance to make that happen, and much more besides, just by releasing Linkup to TT or whoever.

(to hitman, I'll see about appointing some new admins, I guess...)


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[Updated on: Sun, 21 December 2008 13:47]

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Re: Xptek [message #364305 is a reply to message #364255] Sun, 21 December 2008 17:01 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ma1kel is currently offline  Ma1kel
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iirc they lost the source code

Re: Xptek [message #364384 is a reply to message #364255] Mon, 22 December 2008 12:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
spigot is currently offline  spigot
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The old source will not be released (seriously, the hackish nature of the code and obscene memory usage makes me cringe). The current version leaves a lot to be desired in terms of efficiency and the server-to-server protocol. I'm considering rewriting the entire project using the InspIRCd module API with a PostgreSQL backend, but I'm really not sure if there's a high demand for an XWIS alternative. If anyone has some experience with C++, APGAR encryption, or the WOL protocol, send me a PM and we'll see if we can get something started. In the end, I'd like to see the project released open source for mods that don't want to be dependent on XWIS and create a fairly decentralized network of load-balanced servers to ensure the service never goes down entirely and is fairly DDoS-resistant.

If there's a need/interest, a C++ WOL clone would be pretty interesting to work on, but I'm really not interested in developing something that brings countless DDoS attacks and drama my way.
Re: Xptek [message #364398 is a reply to message #364384] Mon, 22 December 2008 14:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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spigot wrote on Mon, 22 December 2008 12:52

The old source will not be released (seriously, the hackish nature of the code and obscene memory usage makes me cringe). The current version leaves a lot to be desired in terms of efficiency and the server-to-server protocol. I'm considering rewriting the entire project using the InspIRCd module API with a PostgreSQL backend, but I'm really not sure if there's a high demand for an XWIS alternative. If anyone has some experience with C++, APGAR encryption, or the WOL protocol, send me a PM and we'll see if we can get something started. In the end, I'd like to see the project released open source for mods that don't want to be dependent on XWIS and create a fairly decentralized network of load-balanced servers to ensure the service never goes down entirely and is fairly DDoS-resistant.

If there's a need/interest, a C++ WOL clone would be pretty interesting to work on, but I'm really not interested in developing something that brings countless DDoS attacks and drama my way.


At one point, this was being investigated by my dev. team...We were told there was no point and people wouldn't use it... <.<

EDIT: A friend of mine investigated the WOL protocol for me and then I found "XWISP" or something over here on renforums which allowed me a closer look at the protocol. It'd be interesting to do this WOL Clone especially for TC Mods. Smile Sadly though, I don't know enough C++ to even offer to help Sad

EDIT2: I was actually going to try to do this in C# tbh as, like I said above, I don't know enough about C++ to make a full-blown server application.. :/

[Updated on: Mon, 22 December 2008 14:54]

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Re: Xptek [message #364400 is a reply to message #364398] Mon, 22 December 2008 15:24 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Spoony is currently offline  Spoony
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Thanks for the reply. You lost me at InspIRCd and it went downhill for me from there, so I'll let someone else carry on from here. I'm just surprised null's thread may actually have led somewhere positive, in its wild flailing way.

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Re: Xptek [message #364401 is a reply to message #364398] Mon, 22 December 2008 15:33 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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Zack wrote on Mon, 22 December 2008 15:50

spigot wrote on Mon, 22 December 2008 12:52

The old source will not be released (seriously, the hackish nature of the code and obscene memory usage makes me cringe). The current version leaves a lot to be desired in terms of efficiency and the server-to-server protocol. I'm considering rewriting the entire project using the InspIRCd module API with a PostgreSQL backend, but I'm really not sure if there's a high demand for an XWIS alternative. If anyone has some experience with C++, APGAR encryption, or the WOL protocol, send me a PM and we'll see if we can get something started. In the end, I'd like to see the project released open source for mods that don't want to be dependent on XWIS and create a fairly decentralized network of load-balanced servers to ensure the service never goes down entirely and is fairly DDoS-resistant.

If there's a need/interest, a C++ WOL clone would be pretty interesting to work on, but I'm really not interested in developing something that brings countless DDoS attacks and drama my way.


At one point, this was being investigated by my devhttp://www.renegadeforums.com/index.php?t=post&reply_to=364398&quote= true&rid=0&SQ=&. team...We were told there was no point and people wouldn't use it... <.<

EDIT: A friend of mine investigated the WOL protocol for me and then I found "XWISP" or something over here on renforums which allowed me a closer look at the protocol. It'd be interesting to do this WOL Clone especially for TC Mods. Smile Sadly though, I don't know enough C++ to even offer to help Sad

EDIT2: I was actually going to try to do this in C# tbh as, like I said above, I don't know enough about C++ to make a full-blown server application.. :/


Eh, most of the hard stuff (select/epoll/kqueue support, the SQL abstraction layer, user handling, linking, etc.) is already done (<3 the InspIRCd development team). Our main job would be writing modules to handle WOL-specific numerics and commands and coming up with a sane user authentication system. You can see some example modules at http://svn.inspircd.org/index.py/tags/1_2_0b4_release/src/modules/.

edit: Even if players of the vanilla version didn't use something other than XWIS, it would allow total conversion mods to have more control over their players online instead of relying on XWIS.

[Updated on: Mon, 22 December 2008 15:57]

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Re: Xptek [message #368262 is a reply to message #364255] Wed, 21 January 2009 11:19 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Hitman is currently offline  Hitman
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so whats happening with this?
Re: Xptek [message #368263 is a reply to message #364401] Wed, 21 January 2009 11:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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spigot wrote on Mon, 22 December 2008 15:33

Zack wrote on Mon, 22 December 2008 15:50

spigot wrote on Mon, 22 December 2008 12:52

The old source will not be released (seriously, the hackish nature of the code and obscene memory usage makes me cringe). The current version leaves a lot to be desired in terms of efficiency and the server-to-server protocol. I'm considering rewriting the entire project using the InspIRCd module API with a PostgreSQL backend, but I'm really not sure if there's a high demand for an XWIS alternative. If anyone has some experience with C++, APGAR encryption, or the WOL protocol, send me a PM and we'll see if we can get something started. In the end, I'd like to see the project released open source for mods that don't want to be dependent on XWIS and create a fairly decentralized network of load-balanced servers to ensure the service never goes down entirely and is fairly DDoS-resistant.

If there's a need/interest, a C++ WOL clone would be pretty interesting to work on, but I'm really not interested in developing something that brings countless DDoS attacks and drama my way.


At one point, this was being investigated by my devhttp://www.renegadeforums.com/index.php?t=post&reply_to=364398&quote= true&rid=0&SQ=&. team...We were told there was no point and people wouldn't use it... <.<

EDIT: A friend of mine investigated the WOL protocol for me and then I found "XWISP" or something over here on renforums which allowed me a closer look at the protocol. It'd be interesting to do this WOL Clone especially for TC Mods. Smile Sadly though, I don't know enough C++ to even offer to help Sad

EDIT2: I was actually going to try to do this in C# tbh as, like I said above, I don't know enough about C++ to make a full-blown server application.. :/


Eh, most of the hard stuff (select/epoll/kqueue support, the SQL abstraction layer, user handling, linking, etc.) is already done (<3 the InspIRCd development team). Our main job would be writing modules to handle WOL-specific numerics and commands and coming up with a sane user authentication system. You can see some example modules at http://svn.inspircd.org/index.py/tags/1_2_0b4_release/src/modules/.

edit: Even if players of the vanilla version didn't use something other than XWIS, it would allow total conversion mods to have more control over their players online instead of relying on XWIS.



I'd be interested just fyi. I've just not had the time recently to do any work on it. Hopefully, I'd be able to possibly host a server for this WOL-Clone Wink
Re: Xptek [message #368299 is a reply to message #364255] Wed, 21 January 2009 16:19 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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I wouldn't mind helping out with the new clone. My abilities with c++ have greatly improved since we worked on Linkup. I also still have most of the stuff leftover from Linkup in a backup somewhere which would save some time on figuring out all the protocol stuff.

-Lee
Re: Xptek [message #368313 is a reply to message #364255] Wed, 21 January 2009 20:40 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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'Bout time. XWIS for Renegade is fucking terrible.
Re: Xptek [message #368337 is a reply to message #364255] Thu, 22 January 2009 03:45 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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It would actually be really nice to have. It'd get used too. I mean I would make sure all the APB players used it, and the reborn players too by making sure the next releases shipped with there clients modified to join the WOL clone.
For that reason alone it'd be worth having, but it also means there would be an alternative option for renegade server owners and players too.



Re: Xptek [message #368363 is a reply to message #368337] Thu, 22 January 2009 08:15 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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reborn wrote on Thu, 22 January 2009 11:45

It would actually be really nice to have. It'd get used too. I mean I would make sure all the APB players used it, and the reborn players too by making sure the next releases shipped with there clients modified to join the WOL clone.
For that reason alone it'd be worth having, but it also means there would be an alternative option for renegade server owners and players too.

AFAIK the XWIS protocol isn't too complicated. It's pretty much IRC with some extras. Seye has info on at least certain parts of it (serverlisting, and I think most of the player join screen)


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Re: Xptek [message #368367 is a reply to message #364255] Thu, 22 January 2009 08:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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There's no point if EA doesn't change the link. And I don't see them do any of that, really. You can say what you want about xwis but it works and is relatively stable.

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Re: Xptek [message #368379 is a reply to message #368367] Thu, 22 January 2009 10:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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EvilWhiteDragon wrote on Thu, 22 January 2009 10:15

reborn wrote on Thu, 22 January 2009 11:45

It would actually be really nice to have. It'd get used too. I mean I would make sure all the APB players used it, and the reborn players too by making sure the next releases shipped with there clients modified to join the WOL clone.
For that reason alone it'd be worth having, but it also means there would be an alternative option for renegade server owners and players too.

AFAIK the XWIS protocol isn't too complicated. It's pretty much IRC with some extras. Seye has info on at least certain parts of it (serverlisting, and I think most of the player join screen)


It's still allot of windows network coding. I'm not sure I would be up to the challenge in all honesty.

Goztow wrote on Thu, 22 January 2009 10:21

There's no point if EA doesn't change the link. And I don't see them do any of that, really. You can say what you want about xwis but it works and is relatively stable.


It might cause a split in the already limited renegade player base. However, for APB and reborn it wouldn't at all, the clients would be shipped like it. There is a real use for it.
Besides, get your renegade server on there first, and whatever players from renegade do decide to join, they'll be on your server Wink

This would be a good thing.



[Updated on: Thu, 22 January 2009 10:36]

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Re: Xptek [message #368384 is a reply to message #368367] Thu, 22 January 2009 10:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
pvtschlag is currently offline  pvtschlag
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The idea we had originally was to distribute an installer to the people who wanted to use the new clone, much like the way XWIS was before it was swapped to default. Also there would be a FDS mod that would allow server owners to have their server appear on both XWIS and the new clone at the same time.

Goztow wrote on Thu, 22 January 2009 10:21

There's no point if EA doesn't change the link. And I don't see them do any of that, really.


You could of said the same before EA switched it to XWIS, but that didn't stop people from using XWIS.

And of course mods like APB/Reborn could always use it as an alternative to XWIS.


-Lee

[Updated on: Thu, 22 January 2009 10:53]

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Re: Xptek [message #368395 is a reply to message #364255] Thu, 22 January 2009 11:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Goztow is currently offline  Goztow
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Quote:

You could of said the same before EA switched it to XWIS, but that didn't stop people from using XWIS.
There was as good as no activity on xwis at all before the link to it changed...


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Re: Xptek [message #368400 is a reply to message #364255] Thu, 22 January 2009 12:01 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
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Gozzy, I know what you're saying, but for APB and reborn, a WOL clone would be awesome. Players can't use it right now because they have no serial. This would have a real use, rather then just bragging rights.


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