Skulltag 97D Beta 4.2 Released

Beta 4.1 had a very serious issue which allowed for the remote crashing of servers and clients. The issue didn't rear its head until a couple days ago, but it forced the team into making an emergency hotfix which fixes the problem. This fixes a couple other minor things too, but the big changes won't come until 97D final, which should hopefully be just around the corner. See the full changelog and download 97D 4.2 here.

About time!

I had a blast annoying the shit out of the hacker, though. He couldn't seem to crash me for some reason. :---)

hopefully the next will bring Linux client support.

Huzzah! I'm glad we have such a punctual dev team <3

punctual would have been patching it immediately, instead of waiting until it "rears its ugly head" ;-)

Zeroth - it had already been fixed in the internal build for quite some time. We just didn't deem it necessary to release a hotfix for it as everybody was playing nice and not abusing it. That changed a couple days ago as an idiot with a dynamic ip decided to play with his e-peen. So we were forced to port the fix from the latest internal build over to 4.1. Not a big deal but annoying to be sure. We would've rather just included it in 97D final.

I see your closed-source model is doing a nice job of keeping out abuse.

guys you know we aren't supposed to mention the fact that skulltag is closed source in every thread no matter how controversial it is, all it does is create drama, it doesn't change anything etc. etc.

John Smith said:

guys you know we aren't supposed to mention the fact that skulltag is closed source in every thread no matter how controversial it is, all it does is create drama, it doesn't change anything etc. etc.

We aren't supposed to?

EDIT: fuck you, hobbs

it's a derivative work of GPL'd source. if skulltag were closed source, that would be down-right illegal.

John Smith said:
guys you know we aren't supposed to mention the fact that skulltag is closed source in every thread no matter how controversial it is, all it does is create drama, it doesn't change anything etc. etc.

In his defense, kraileth and Mechadon started with that subject on the thread linked to on the main post.

Zeroth said:
it's a derivative work of GPL'd source. if skulltag were closed source, that would be down-right illegal.

Skulltag? Who said? There's a source available?

exp(x) said:

I see your closed-source model is doing a nice job of keeping out abuse.

Actually it did. That bug has existed for a long time but we didn't have to hotfix it until now, so yes - it helped.

This incident only shows that there are some malicious people out there who want to ruin other people's fun for some reason. It proves that we need as much security as we can possibly muster and yes, that includes security through obscurity among several other things.

I spent *hours* discussing this topic with you guys last night in a reasonable manner. I was up until 2:20am talking with Alexmax even in private messages after the discussion left #zdoom. With the exception of Hobbs who I had to ignore because he really is 100% troll, most of you were more or less calm and somewhat reasonable too.

The bottom line really is that we're not going to agree on this. It's not my decision anyways so it's a bit academic to begin with. Let's just agree to disagree and have some fun playing Doom! There's no reason why we can't get along. I implore you to stop harassing every post I make with this stuff. It's pointless.

In other news, linux binaries are up for:

Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, Knoppix, Fedora, and Slackware

Get them while they're hot!

We apologize to our FreeBSD users as you'll have to run it in Linux compatibility mode for now. We had to make some major changes to get Skulltag to compile on FreeBSD during development. It works post build 564 however this binary is based off 4.1 so the changes aren't there. We promise a native FreeBSD binary for 97D Final.

With the exception of Hobbs who I had to ignore because he really is 100% troll, most of you were more or less calm and somewhat reasonable too.

Trolling? Is that like what you're doing right now?

Aabra said:

Actually it did. That bug has existed for a long time but we didn't have to hotfix it until now, so yes - it helped.

it hurt the project by retarding it. if there were a reason to patch the bug, the code would have matured much more quickly. moreover, it only helped the programmers better get away with laziness.

Zeroth said:

it only helped the programmers better get away with laziness.

Wait until you see the 97D changelog.... then I dare you to call our coders lazy. :) But don't take my word for it. Ask our internal testers how lazy Rive, Carn, and Torr are.

Aabra said:
It proves that we need as much security as we can possibly muster and yes, that includes security through obscurity among several other things.

No it doesn't, since malicious people like to play with security measures in the first place. It proves instead that once you consider defensive security measures the main way to combat abuse, you will have to rely on them progressively more and more.

I spent *hours* discussing this topic with you guys last night in a reasonable manner. I was up until 2:20am talking with Alexmax even in private messages after the discussion left #zdoom.

This isn't #zdoom, it's the Doomworld forums News section.

I implore you to stop harassing every post I make with this stuff. It's pointless.

This is moot, because skulltaggers brought the discussion about first in your forum thread linked on the news. It's also not pointless to discuss such things beside incidents like this one, as such discussions allow people to make decisions regarding the matter (whether they prefer open or closed models, or what they think of Skulltag in this respect). This is primarily a place to discuss opions about the news, and not a servile promotional site. And you're forgetting this.

Aabra said:

This incident only shows that there are some malicious people out there who want to ruin other people's fun for some reason. It proves that we need as much security as we can possibly muster and yes, that includes security through obscurity among several other things.

Sigh...

There we go again.

History should tell you that there is no security through obscurity. It doesn't work in Doom as well as anywhere else.

All it might do is delay the inevitable, but that's it. Remember CSS copy protection for DVDs? The movie industry thought it was smart to use a proprietary system that cost them a lot of money and in the end it was worth shit.

On the downside though you are cutting yourself off from valuable feedback that might help plug these holes long before they become critical.

Your coding practices are you're own; but to consciously violate it's license is unethical, disrespectful, and, as previously stated, illegal.

forshame.

Zeroth said:

Your coding practices are you're own; but to consciously violate it's license is unethical, disrespectful, and, as previously stated, illegal.

forshame.

Unfortunately, skulltag (and zdaemon) takes advantage of the fact that zdoom uses the earlier license, not the gpl, so there is no legal requirement for source disclosure. This doesn't mean that they shouldn't do it anyway, though.

exp(x) said:

Unfortunately, skulltag (and zdaemon) takes advantage of the fact that zdoom uses the earlier license, not the gpl, so there is no legal requirement for source disclosure. This doesn't mean that they shouldn't do it anyway, though.

oh. well thats interesting.

but certainly it would benefit the whole (dwindling?) community to have the source open.