ZDaemon turns 109 today

mandax said:

this whole thread in a nutshell:
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/2581/zd109.png

You are a pretty good artist heh. Do you draw that by hand first, or do you have one of those drafting things?

I hope you're being sarcastic because that's clearly one of those shitty 4chan meme template pictures.

Also, requiring a login account to use a multiplayer source port for Doom is pretty crappy.

lol, you are saying this in a forum where you have to log in to post...

I suppose you are the type of person who thinks that logging into anything isn't necessary? or are you just lazy? I suppose the entire planet should drop user account security because it's "pretty crappy"... I can't wait to withdraw money from an ATM out of some poor dudes bank account, then send fake emails in his name while posting insulting comments with his facebook account and then cheat using his online gaming alias, all thanks to geniuses like you! Hey, what should we call this new system? Wait, I got it! Anarchy! ... Moron.

Nice assumptions. It's almost like I'm talking to some kid on the internet. Oh wait-

You don't need an account login to play Skulltag. You don't need one for Odamex. What reason is there for requiring a login account for a source port for a game that's close to 20 years old anyways? It's not some free-to-play MMO made by a company or anything significant like that. Or is it just to let the devs say "Fuck you, you can't play our source port anymore. C:" much like they appear to handle their forums and IRC if someone disagrees with them?

Go be a fanboy elsewhere. Ad hominem attacks and senseless drivel that's got nothing to do with the statement you're responding to will get you nowhere.

You know who else wants to remain anonymous while shooting things? Terrorists.

Just remember: if you criticize ZDaemon, you're supporting terrorism.

Xeros612 said:
Or is it just to let the devs say "Fuck you, you can't play our source port anymore. C:" much like they appear to handle their forums and IRC if someone disagrees with them?

Actually, I'm pretty sure that's the real reason for it...

Xeros612 said:

Also, requiring a login account to use a multiplayer source port for Doom is pretty crappy.

You don't need an account login to play Skulltag. You don't need one for Odamex. What reason is there for requiring a login account for a source port for a game that's close to 20 years old anyways?

here, let alexmax and torr samaho explain it to you. quake live is a remake of an 11 years old game, it's free to play and yet uses logins.
this is an issue of overall design and not even as polarized as the open/closed source affair. it's just that way, deal with it. and yes, keeping away people you don't want playing your port is the main reason for logins. you can argue that it is being misused, but you should not be spouting this ignorant gibberish about it serving no purpose. wanted to jump the bandwagon with something new to look good, eh?

Typical and expected response. Hey guess what, it's not stopping anyone from playing unless they are disruptive losers or cheating. At least now when I see someone on ZDaemon I can be assured that it is the real person and not a faker. Sets up the experience point system down the road too I imagine.

dew said:

here, let alexmax and torr samaho explain it to you.

AlexMax said:

My idea of a authentication server fills the following requirements:

1. Verifies someone is who they say they are (a deterrent against aliasing, also a deterrent against cheating since someone's reputation is at stake). Also could allow for persistence on a server through the use of ACS.
2. Open source and decentralized. "Bus-proofing" Skulltag as it were.
3. Not required. People should be able to play anonymously, but they should be distinct from logged in users and thus be put under more scrutiny. Servers could perhaps disallow anonymous play.
4. Clients should not be trusted at all. Game servers should be trusted insofar as if they are caught lying their reputation is ruined, but should never handle the client's password directly. Login servers are trusted.

Is it possible to play ZDaemon without being logged in?

Gez said:

Is it possible to play ZDaemon without being logged in?

how do you think ralphis plays in idl?

Awesome, improved net code, maybe this means I'll finally be able to play Doom online from my shitty third world country. :)

dew said:

how do you think ralphis plays in idl?

Can't say the issue ever troubled my mind, but I'll accept that answer as a "yes".

The question, then, is why are people complaining about requiring a login, and why are other people responding with weird comparisons to ATMs instead of simply pointing out anonymous play is possible?

You can join a ZDaemon game with Doomseeker without logging in. In fact I don't know if there is a way to log in to ZDaemon through Doomseeker.

Gez said:

The question, then, is why are people complaining about requiring a login, and why are other people responding with weird comparisons to ATMs instead of simply pointing out anonymous play is possible?

you can't connect to the master server without logging in, so you won't get the server list. if you know the right IPs, however, you can connect to them in local mode or even directly from within the game's console. i don't know how doomseeker works, i've never used it.

and hey, there are aggressive morons on the side of accusers. it's naive to expect everyone from zdaemon to be such a charming and loveable person as me. :)

OldSparky said:

I personally believe most of these people who cry it should be open source are just bent that they cannot gain access to the new netcode from zdaemon or other impressive features from both ports. The excuse that the community's future will suffer is a poor excuse and I see right through it, as should most people.

If you really believe that, you're retarded. I am glad you're not" most people".

EDIT: I was going to reword this but everything I come up with seems to sound the same. I really think such thinking is spoiled, fascist, and shows signs of mental deficiency in said individual. Sorry.

OldSparky said:

I don't think it's critical that ZDaemon or even Skulltag be open source to keep the community thriving, not unless you think the following Open Source ports are dying or insignificant?

ZDoom, GZDoom, Doomsday, Chocolate Doom, PrBoom, CSDoom (& Odamex) etc...

Let me be clear, because you're so dense. I mean client server ports. And more specifically I mean c/s ports that host competitive doom. I personally do think a lot of those ports are less significant, especially to community development in the competitive scene.

The reason I am up in arms about ZDaemon getting it's act together is because they account (or accounted) for a large part of the online competitive community. Right now I can tell you that Skulltag is more popular than ZDaemon, by a wide margin. At 2:30pm EST on a Thursday afternoon there are 37 players and 3 bots on advertised ZDaemon servers. On ST at the same time there at 116 players and 4 bots. That is 313% for you math majors out there and more often than not the disparity is worse.

OldSparky said:

Is it really shocking to some of you that the two most popular online-multiplayer ports are closed source? When they were open source they were attacked with exploits, and cheating was rampant... Now that they are closed source they have stabilized, there are still attacks and cheating but they have effectively been reduced to the sound a mouse makes when you step on it.

It's the only two popular online-multiplayer ports to be more accurate. To that I say you can at least see where someone would be outraged that the only options for doom online with any player base are held on islands afraid the other guy will get a hold of their precious code or that some script-kiddie will write a little hack that brings their world to ashes. Yeah this is helpful to grow our community. I can't believe anyone would even make that argument. (And stop stepping on mice)

The cheating in ZDaemon is still rampant. There just isn't enough of a community to be outraged about it anymore. There is a clan called [PT] and they play daily with obvious aimbots on public zdaemon servers. Do you know why no one is up in arms about that? Because no one plays them competitively. The competitive scene inside ZDaemon is dead. No one cares if some idiots are aimbotting in a public server. Back when Strider and Natural cheated they were involved in the community that cared about it. There is no community to care about it now. Go read The Lorax, there are no trees for you to chop down anymore.

OldSparky said:I personally believe most of these people who cry it should be open source are just bent that they cannot gain access to the new netcode from zdaemon or other impressive features from both ports. The excuse that the community's future will suffer is a poor excuse and I see right through it, as should most people. [/B]

I can't speak for everyone here but I can tell you why I want ZD and ST to be open source. "Why would you want that?" you might ask instead of accusing like an idiot. Well I personally can't program, I don't cheat, I don't really care about any of the "features" added in the new versions since CTF was added to ZD in 1.06 (which was open source). Why would I want it open when by all your criteria I have no reason to? Because the community IS suffering and if you're seeing through that I beg you to stop. Making our efforts inclusive rather than exclusive is how you grow a community. Allowing new and interested people to participate is objectively positive. All of the doomsday nonsense about open source being a cheat magnet is cowardice and smokescreen to the real motives. On the contrary, you'd have more programmers working to abolish cheating programs if they were allowed access.

Sparky think out your posts please. This isn't a joke and no one is attacking you or ZDaemon or Kilgore. It's a plea to do things to make our game better and more accessible.

Nostar said:

Right now I can tell you that Skulltag is more popular than ZDaemon, by a wide margin. At 2:30pm EST on a Thursday afternoon there are 37 players and 3 bots on advertised ZDaemon servers. On ST at the same time there at 116 players and 4 bots. That is 318% for you math majors out there and more often than not the disparity is worse.

Did you remember not to count the MM8BDM ("megagame") servers in the Skulltag tally? Those are from a community that is mostly separate. There is, of course, some amount of overlap but not that much.

ZDaemon's competition would rather be found in Odamex I think. Skulltag's wealth of editing features makes it naturally more attractive to gameplay that deviates significantly from the Doom baseline. That's not to say that it isn't a valid platform for old-school gameplay, but OS is a niche where it's in competition with both ZD and Oda whereas for very different mods it holds a practical monopoly.

Lots of predictable insulting, and some cheesy statistics. The community as a whole is doing great, there are two actively developed online gaming ports, that's pretty damn good if you ask me. You put a lot of text into your reply, but you failed to make any solid points about why they should be open, pathetic. Sounds like defensive blabber to me.

Edit: I see no hacking what-so-ever, it's been quite a long time since I have seen any definitive hacking (at least in ZDaemon) and I totally disagree, ZDaemon is the most competitive multiplayer port of the two.

I think you need to fill up your half-empty glass, or up the dose on your depression medication.

OldSparky said:

I see no hacking what-so-ever, it's been quite a long time since I have seen any definitive hacking (at least in ZDaemon) and I totally disagree, ZDaemon is the most competitive multiplayer port of the two.

why oh why do i have to be on "the same side" as people claiming such stuff?

1: hacking is there, hacking is happening. if you don't believe me, well... this happened yesterday. blaze's ever-growing list of IP's is two months old, i think. i heard the notorious skulltag cheater aladdin started visiting zdaemon, wanna bet he's not going to stay clean? the high amount of cheaters among mexican and south american players is already a running joke within the zdaemon community. we will only have a (long? short?) period of peace when switching to 109 servers is completed.

2: who exactly do you disagree with re: zdaemon's competitive dominance? surely not nostar?

OldSparky said:

you failed to make any solid points about why they should be open

Maybe because it's the right thing to do? Did you ever think about that?

Edit: the "fuss" should be pretty damn obvious by now. If you don't see it, you're in denial.

I didn't say there was no hacking only that I have not seen any of it. And of course I'm talking about ZDaemon, the best competitive players play ZDaemon (be it on advertised servers or private unlisted servers). Skulltag caters to mappers and doesn't stick to the classic feel as strictly as ZDaemon does, so it's no surprise there.

If the competitive players are elsewhere, where are they? Odamex is too immature, and zdoom isn't really fit for competitive multiplayer action.

ZDaemon has the best netcode of all the ports, I think that's pretty undeniable. They have a strict holding to the classic look and feel of the game yet flexible options for new school features, which makes it so attractive to competitive players.

I don't see what the fuss is all about.

Csonicgo said:

Maybe because it's the right thing to do? Did you ever think about that?

Edit: the "fuss" should be pretty damn obvious by now. If you don't see it, you're in denial.

LOL I'd make some witty replies to your immature and poorly thought out posts, but I think they speak for themselves... I'll leave it at that.

OldSparky said:

LOL

You know you can just give up now and save yourself the embarrassment. You've already proven to me and others that Zdaemon devs and their dedicated spies and related bureaucracy will never change, and will be forever selfish.

Thanks for wasting our time.

WHAT THE FUCK.

OldSparky said:

I don't think it's critical that ZDaemon or even Skulltag be open source to keep the community thriving, not unless you think the following Open Source ports are dying or insignificant?

ZDoom, GZDoom, Doomsday, Chocolate Doom, PrBoom, CSDoom (& Odamex) etc...

False choice. Those ports don't fill the same niche as ZDaemon does, so the fact that they're open source doesn't mitigate the fact that ZDaemon isn't.

OldSparky said:

Is it really shocking to some of you that the two most popular online-multiplayer ports are closed source? When they were open source they were attacked with exploits, and cheating was rampant... Now that they are closed source they have stabilized, there are still attacks and cheating but they have effectively been reduced to the sound a mouse makes when you step on it.

Cheats and exploits are still in use. I've personally seen 2 separate, non-ZDHook cheats.

OldSparky said:

I personally believe most of these people who cry it should be open source are just bent that they cannot gain access to the new netcode from zdaemon or other impressive features from both ports.

You're sort of right, at least for me personally. I like ZDaemon because of its features, and I'd like to play ZDaemon without having to censor myself on ZDaemon's forums and IRC (by "censor" I mean not say anything about Ralphis or IDL), and without worrying that someone I want to play with might be banned for reasons I don't care about. If ZDaemon were open source, I could fork it and continue on. This is not the case, however, and as a result the most successful Doom CTF league ever is "underground", hurting both ZDaemon and IDL because the ZD admins still reserve the right to ban anyone they want for any or no reason.

So yeah I'd like to play ZDaemon without being fucked around by the admins, and if it were open source I could do that.

OldSparky said:

The community as a whole is doing great.

OldSparky said:

The excuse that the community's future will suffer is a poor excuse and I see right through it, as should most people.

The community's already suffered. Kilgore himself complained that IDL and Private CTF were making ZD Public CTF into a ghost town, and the ZD playerbase itself has shrunk.

OldSparky said:

Hey guess what, it's not stopping anyone from playing unless they are disruptive losers or cheating.

Nostar's caught in my faux-cheating ban, and he wasn't a "disruptive loser" or cheating. Unless by "disruptive loser" you mean "hosted the most popular ZDaemon servers in North America for years".

OldSparky said:

you failed to make any solid points about why they should be open

Here are some:

- Easier for the community to get involved and contribute.
- Easier for the community to find bugs and exploits (and fix them).
- Encourages mods like ScoreDoom.
- If ZDaemon ever does something like break the MAP01 plasma bump or get rid of binds, we can just fork it.
- If there's ever another 5 year lull period in updates, we can fork and add features ourselves, obviating the need for hacks like ZDStack.

===

It's also worth saying that while you complain about "typical", "predictable" posts containing insults and little evidence, your posts also contain loaded language, insults, and zero evidence. If you're trying to be constructive, you're far from achieving your goal. However, if your goal is to be a hypocrite who only registered to troll this thread, you're doing alright.

dew said:

here, let alexmax and torr samaho explain it to you. quake live is a remake of an 11 years old game, it's free to play and yet uses logins.
this is an issue of overall design and not even as polarized as the open/closed source affair. it's just that way, deal with it. and yes, keeping away people you don't want playing your port is the main reason for logins. you can argue that it is being misused, but you should not be spouting this ignorant gibberish about it serving no purpose. wanted to jump the bandwagon with something new to look good, eh?

Quake Live is also kind of run by a full-scale company, has features that require payment to access, and is included in major competitive scenes such as MLG. Not much of a comparison. Oh, and "this thing does it too!" is never a good excuse. Oh, and nice attempt to waive my complaints. "hurr durr bandwagon" Fuck you buddy, I made my opinions on the matter after trying the program myself. Christ, it's almost like I'm still talking to OldSparky here. Assumptions all over the place.

If I wanted to have to make an account to play a game, I'd sign up for something made by an actual company with an actual reason for account requirement, not a community-made source port. Especially not one that insists on proving itself to be run and liked by the kind of assholes that sign up on a forum to bitch everyone out with ad hominems when they hear their project badmouthed.

Ladna said:

- If ZDaemon ever does something like break the MAP01 plasma bump or get rid of binds, we can just fork it.

as i already complained to ladna on irc, this statement is demagogic.
plasma bumps got broken on a very specific subset of dmflags, spearheaded by jkist and only used in zddl servers that became standard in north america. it's a non-oldschool set of flags that disables always switch on pickup, enables 2way wallruns (this particularly breaks the grabs in 109), longer sound curve, audible spawns, etc., YET keeps item grabs (easier even!) or sound limit for silencing the bfg. it's a schizophrenic situation, because item grabs got closer to vanilla with strict OS dmflags, but no one tested their functionality with the 2way wallrun option and at this point devs don't care, because jkist's dmflags actually mix oil and water by introducing NS stuff into the most hardcore of OS maps, doom2 map01. wait, actually that is inaccurate, it's promap01 or whatever, an edited version of map01 with lava buttons. :p
it's a shame for the NA 1on1 scene, but i can't say i'm sympathetic to their struggle, because i never liked the physics they (jkist) chose as a standard. don't put electronic air conditioning into a 1940 veteran car. :)

edit: on a second thought, i should've used a better comparison. think of something tacky in something otherwise classy.

OK let's call it the "ZDDL plasma bump", because in 109 that's what's broken (in 109 it's fine if you don't use 2-way wallrun).

It's worth saying ZDDL is the most successful duel league in North America, and perennially has prominent players from other non-NA countries do very well. I don't know why, if you're a ZDaemon developer, you wouldn't test using ZDDL's flags, but whatever I guess.

<Ladna> and if you fuck up the plasma bump for everyone who plays 1v1 in north america
<Ladna> you messed it up

dew said:

here, let alexmax and torr samaho explain it to you.

Since my name is brought up and I coincidentally noticed this, let me clarify my stance: We are thinking about a completely optional login system. In particular, the master sever will always give everybody (unless the IP is banned from the master) the player list without logging in / signing up or anything like this. Each server admin then is free to decide whether he requires players to login before allowing them to join his machine. IMHO requiring a player to sign up just to get the server list is outrageous and something that I will never support.

Xeros612 said:

Quake Live is also kind of run by a full-scale company, has features that require payment to access, and is included in major competitive scenes such as MLG. Not much of a comparison.

well, i'm going to shoot my own foot right now, but the last two seasons of zddl had prize money for the top3 players, so it's pro and the comparison stands. i'm certain jkist wouldn't want to pay to unregistered mysterious players that magically beat the most skilled veterans. anyways, be more condescending to the zdaemon competitive scene, please. it's carrying your point across wonderfully, what with it being the only viable competition in multiplayer doom.

Xeros612 said:

"hurr durr bandwagon" Fuck you buddy, I made my opinions on the matter after trying the program myself. Christ, it's almost like I'm still talking to OldSparky here. Assumptions all over the place.

i stand by my earlier opinion that you don't really know what you are talking about, single player guy.

the whole login system thing is a red herring. zdaemon allows players to grab a master server list and play on a server without having to log in. in my opinion i think that having a login service opens up a lot of neat persistence options. it's not the login service that's broken, it's the fact that zdaemon is a monolithic community with an administration team who thinks they have some moral high ground to ban somebody from every public zdaemon server just because of some dumb slight against them, against the port, against whatever.

the old zdaemon community only existed because of the people that the current admin team either banned or chased away, and oh look those very same people have proven that they can have a thriving competitive community in the IDL.

here's a hint, being 'officially sanctioned' doesn't mean a damn thing; having sane policies and attracting people who are willing to put in work to make a community successful does. not only that but the policies and people go hand in hand because you're not going to attract the kind of people you need in the numbers that you need with policies like zdaemon currently has.

in the meantime, if you want a thriving zdaemon community again it's not hard to find, it's called the IDL. oh wait, you want a thriving zdaemon.org community? here, i'll outline some simple steps:

1. tell kilgore to take his damn medication so he stops being so damn paranoid about the IDL and Skulltag boogeymen.
2. hand over control of the forums, frontpage and IRC server to the current IDL administration.
3. open the source back up under something like the CDDL or some other per-file copyleft license so it can coexist with the BUILD code and we never have to deal with this stupid bullshit again.

there, within six months you have a thriving zdaemon community again.