Half-life Petition

BOZO · March 2003

<div class="IPBDescription">Sign it!</div> Lets make NS better by petitioning Valve. This is not my petition but I found it on the Sven Co-OP pages.
This is from their front page:
</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Update: Want bigger, more complex maps? Want to see the end of the "Out of sfx_t" error? Not just for SvenCo-op... for all Half-Life mods. If so, have a look at this petition (it's not ours, but we support it).

Regarding the system requirements changing from what's on the box: Setting the limits could be left up to individual modmakers... there are already plenty of things modmakers can do to make their mods unplayable with 24meg RAM (I'm pretty sure it was 16mb originally, but it's 24 on the new boxes)... might as well let them make bigger, better mods at the same time. How many of you are still on 24mb of RAM, anyway? A lot of people have 128meg of RAM just in their video cards, nowadays.
If you're of the same mind, might be worthwhile spreading the word...</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

Sign here: <a href='http://www.petitiononline.com/limitshl/petition.html' target='_blank'>http://www.petitiononline.com/limitshl/petition.html</a>

Duck_King · March 2003

This is amazing! A petition from petitiononline.com that is well written, concise, and has nothing to do with MTV and/or Slipknot!

I shall sign.

KungFuSquirrel · March 2003

This has already been mentioned in off-topic. It's pointless and a waste of time, and it's petitiononline, so you know it'll be taken about as seriously as my left shoe. :-\

While we're at it, let's petition id and Epic for updates to Quake and original Unreal engines. You may think it's a different situation, but it's really not.

BOZO · March 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (KungFuSquirrel @ Mar 30 2003, 10:29 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> This has already been mentioned in off-topic. It's pointless and a waste of time, and it's petitiononline, so you know it'll be taken about as seriously as my left shoe. :-\

While we're at it, let's petition id and Epic for updates to Quake and original Unreal engines. You may think it's a different situation, but it's really not.  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
First of all we know that Valve listens to the community, Qake is dead, and UT dosent have the same restrictions that HL has.

KungFuSquirrel · March 2003

Why is Quake 'dead,' might I ask? (It actually isn't - still has a decent community.) Quake 2. Quake 3. Why is Unreal no longer appealing? UT. UT2K3. U2. Don't think that HL will be an exception, regardless of whatever the next title might be.

Valve isn't going to give a **** if a few hundred or even a few thousand out of the 6+ million playerbase sign a petition to make some engine upgrade. Why the hell should they? Here they're being attacked because their 80+ employees are obviously doing nothing but "milking HL" and producing vaporware, and now <b>those same people come begging to them to waste their time doing just that!</b> Epic's just as supportive if not moreso than Valve, and they'd also laugh this idea back to whatever cave it crawled from.

If the limits are really -<b><u>that</u></b>- restrictive to what a mod team is doing, then maybe they should either a) be more creative in overcoming them or b) realize that HL might in fact not be the engine of choice for their project. The limits will change with a new title, not on a whim from the developers based on some list of goofy nicknames.

pardzh · March 2003

KFS slashes Your Idea with mortifying power! (99999)
Your Idea has been slain by KFS!

Elrond · March 2003

crikey!! harsh words from KungFuSquirrel, but valid i feel. people are quick to knock VALVe for any reason, and whilst i understand a lot of mod makers have gone in for HL because the source is free, there are a few others out there. i understand you can buy a copy of the Tribes 2 source code for about $100?

anyway i signed it, not as a protest but to support the option. in other words, i wouldn't be on VALVe's back if they did up the limits.

KungFuSquirrel · March 2003

I will admit I'm unusually bitter today, and for that I apologize.

Reality's bitter, too, though... :X

Fantasmo · March 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (KungFuSquirrel @ Mar 30 2003, 06:00 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Reality's bitter, too, though... :X  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
Reality is what you make of it.

Life is <i>all</i> about <b>perspective</b>.

<img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'>

boberto · March 2003

really, if they find themselves running into severe limitations to their creativity, they should find a different engine to bring their mod to.

Wheeee · March 2003

Er, do you think this would actually work? I don't recall any petitiononline petitions that actually had an effect :\

Talesin · March 2003

Third-person, using one-point perspective. <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'> <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'>

Dr_Awkward · March 2003

I was just thinking earlier today, wouldn't it be nice if they released a Half-Life 2? They could include the same great mod-friendly design on a newer, more modern game engine. They could make the engine backwards-compatible with previously released mods, so you could, for example, play Natural Selection on it and it would look like the original half-life engine. Developers could issue a patch for their mods to update the models and textures (where appropriate) to make the games HL2 compatible.

The best part for Sierra & Valve is that they'd have a market that would buy the game for the engine alone, regardless of what kind of game they make. I don't doubt HL2 would be fun, but that's not why I'd buy it. I'd buy it to improve the mods I already play, if they design the new system to support old mods.

Dream along with me...

Eshock · March 2003

Really though, it's about time for them to release the HL source. Let us mod it on our own, and it's not like it's really going to hurt the retail sales anyway, and it wouldn't require any work on Valve's part. The only people who are still buying HL retail wouldn't know how to compile the source anyway.

KungFuSquirrel · March 2003

If Valve released the source now, Half-Life would die almost instantaneously. Engine-level cheats would be impossible to combat. You think it's a bad situation now...

LazerMane · March 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (boberto @ Mar 30 2003, 11:18 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> really, if they find themselves running into severe limitations to their creativity, they should find a different engine to bring their mod to.  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
Like er.r..... uhmm... err... do i have to say it?

UNREAL TWO-THOUSAND AND THREE! WHEEEEEHEHEHEHEHEHEE

*runs around swinging his stupid-trout wildly*

LM

Trojan2 · March 2003

Tribes 2 for 100, hmm. There are genrally as many ppl playing NS as there is playing Tribes2. Tribes 2 was a missirable failure of a game and a crappy follow up to T1

Stoneburg · March 2003

There was an online petition against the release of a driver for ASUS mobo's that would make wallhacking a simple option in the vid card settings. I signed it and sent an e-mail to them, the driver was withdrawn and I got an apology, so it works sometimes.

The only valid opinion against this would be that you want to protect the people that have low-end (really really low-end... like 32mb RAM). I bet 99.9% of the HL players have PC's that could handle it though. I mean, it doesn't <b>cost</b> anything to sign a petition, so if you're for it, there's no reason to not do it.

Do I think it will make a difference? No. I don't think I will win on the lottery either but I still buy one once in a while, and that actually costs money :o

DOOManiac · March 2003

If you really think that them withdrawling the asus cheats was due to your petition, well I guess it must be nice in your world.

EVERYBODY hated them for that, and they were getting bad press left and right. Developers were going to release patches for their games not letting any people w/ asus drivers play their games. Hell, there were talks of lawsuits against them and who knows what else. The little petition you did probably was not even noticed, what with every gamer on the face of the planet earth (except the cheaters) trying to hunt them down and kill them.

Stoneburg · March 2003

And the online petition (which had 25k signers when I signed up) was a part of that, as was the e-mails that people (like me) sent. If it had *nothing* to do with it I wouldn't have recieved a reply, would I?

Being cynical is ok, being stupid is not. Of course it was not *due* to the petition, but it was a part of the reason. How big or small, neither you nor I know.

And, which was my argument, it couldn't hurt.

wlibaers · March 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (DOOManiac @ Mar 31 2003, 04:03 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> If you really think that them withdrawling the asus cheats was due to your petition, well I guess it must be nice in your world.

EVERYBODY hated them for that, and they were getting bad press left and right. Developers were going to release patches for their games not letting any people w/ asus drivers play their games. Hell, there were talks of lawsuits against them and who knows what else. The little petition you did probably was not even noticed, what with every gamer on the face of the planet earth (except the cheaters) trying to hunt them down and kill them.  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
A competent graphics programmer can make his own version of such a cheat, without needing access to driver or game source code, just needs to get his code between the game and driver, and on most operating systems that can be done. Besides, developer or debug versions sometimes do include that functionality. The problem with Asus was that every single incompetent gamer who would usually have trouble just downloading a patch would have it available easily.

Oh, and to those who wrote quake is dead, Quake has been modded to have lighting similar to the next Doom <a href='http://tenebrae.sourceforge.net/' target='_blank'>http://tenebrae.sourceforge.net/</a>

Ego · March 2003

duff-man, you play everquest dont you...

/sigh.

, reet none the less

afte readong kungfu's post, i feel like killing myself <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'>
thanks buddy <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'>

Ego

[FACT] - <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='asrifle.gif'> <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/pudgy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='pudgy.gif'>

Scum_of_the_Universe · March 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (KungFuSquirrel @ Mar 30 2003, 11:59 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> If Valve released the source now, Half-Life would die almost instantaneously. Engine-level cheats would be impossible to combat. You think it's a bad situation now...  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
<a href='http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/quake-cheats.html' target='_blank'>Read this</a>.

Eshock · March 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (KungFuSquirrel @ Mar 30 2003, 06:59 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> If Valve released the source now, Half-Life would die almost instantaneously. Engine-level cheats would be impossible to combat. You think it's a bad situation now...  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
"Thus Carmack's suggestion of a closed-source Quake-launcher program that would take a checksum of the client binary, communicate with the server to make sure the binary is on an approved list, and then handle communication with the server over a cryptographically-secured channel." --From the article that Scum of the Universe posted.

I was going to suggest a similar method, but it seems he beat me to it. Opening the HL source would allow clever programmers on more ambitious mods such as NS to fix a lot of the problems inherent in HL that are condusive to cheating. Modders that don't want to mess with the engine source can just enforce checksum consistency across all clients playing the game.

Scum_of_the_Universe · March 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>
</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (KungFuSquirrel @ Mar 30 2003, 06:59 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> If Valve released the source now, Half-Life would die almost instantaneously. Engine-level cheats would be impossible to combat. You think it's a bad situation now... </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
"Thus Carmack's suggestion of a closed-source Quake-launcher program that would take a checksum of the client binary, communicate with the server to make sure the binary is on an approved list, and then handle communication with the server over a cryptographically-secured channel." --From the article that Scum of the Universe posted.

I was going to suggest a similar method, but it seems he beat me to it.
Opening the HL source would allow clever programmers on more ambitious mods such as NS to fix a lot of the problems inherent in HL that are condusive to cheating. Modders that don't want to mess with the engine source can just enforce checksum consistency across all clients playing the game.
</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
I presume punkbuster, VAC and CD all already use the checksum idea (amongst others) - it's just an update race between the coders updating their anti-cheat code and anti-anti-cheat code respectively. Releasing the source-code <i>might</i> make the anti-cheat coders jobs harder (for vac anyway) but it won't change (or create) the problem.

I think valve can (and will) remove any arbitrary limits that don't require significant effort. (might as well as they still release updates).

I don't think valve will release their grip on half-life any time soon unless they have another popular game on their hands - they want it for pushing steam. <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'>

BlueTorpeedo · March 2003

I signed... but it wont happen...

Assuming that HL2 or TF2 may be on the way, they may not want to limit their market by allowing its predessessor to rival it.

It will also cost sierra (or valve) money, probably a good amount. Your asking them to rewrite the the engine it seems to me, which is alot to do. They may not feel that its a financially sound idea, as it may take them alot of sales to pay for it. It almost doesnt sound like a good idea from their standpoint to me, even though Id prefer it.

I am not, however, ans expert, but this has happened before in other games and it either failed miserably or someone got the source from the developer and "tried" to make said changes and had only limited success before giving up. Your best bet is to work the SDK yourself.

BTW, isnt the Engine part of the game not available as source in the SDK, only the clienty and game dll or something, right?

Aaron · March 2003

I signed the petition...but boy, I don't think some folks realize that when you sign a petition you should sign your REAL NAME. DUH. <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'> I'm sure Valve is really going to take the opinion of ""elite" g4mer d00d"

Eclipse · March 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>understand you can buy a copy of the Tribes 2 source code for about $100?</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

Woah...I totally forgot about garage games, and I followed it for a long time...

Damn...NS in a T2 setting woulda been bitchin...DAMN!

TenSix · March 2003

T2 did interior enviorments very ghetto. And as for mapping, don't expect something as easy as Worldcraft lol. $100, cheap yes, but it would take another year of effort, plus the engine change isnt really needed, HL does whats needed (mapping wise) just dandy.

Theres also the whole thing of licensing, if the HL engine went open source then what would id's stance be? HL contains pieces of Quake 1 and Quake 2, and since Quake 2 hasn't been released under the GPL there could be legal problems I would think.

Eshock · March 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (TenSix @ Mar 31 2003, 09:05 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Theres also the whole thing of licensing, if the HL engine went open source then what would id's stance be? HL contains pieces of Quake 1 and Quake 2, and since Quake 2 hasn't been released under the GPL there could be legal problems I would think.  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
I believe Q2 has now been released under the GPL. I have the source code...I'm pretty sure it's under GPL.

idolminds · March 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>And as for mapping, don't expect something as easy as Worldcraft lol.</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

Acctualy, you can (and most do) use Worldcraft for making the interiors. Terrain editing is simple as hell and all in-engine. Use the brush to alter height/paint textures down, relight and you're set. Torque is quite a bit better than what was used in Tribes 2. But I dont suggest that NS move to it...just saying.

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> I believe Q2 has now been released under the GPL. I have the source code...I'm pretty sure it's under GPL.</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

You are correct.

Half-life Petition

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