Devlog KAG February Plans, plus Modded Server Feedback and Submissions

Hey Folks,

Now that the official modded server is (fairly) stable, we're looking to expand the mod library, increase mod cycle times (from 2 to 6 hours for now) and look at getting proper fair warning to anyone ON the server when it's about to go down. Existing issues with the mods (apparently there's some problems with laser wars) will be looked at as well.

As such - please post suggested mods in this thread!

Ideal mods are non-persistent (round based), smaller than 10mb, contain any required instructions in-game, and if they are a KAG gamemode, compatible with the PlayerHeads mod. I need them in zip format and I'm not super happy for any mods to contain "dev hacks"; you can do that stuff on your own server but it's not really appropriate for officials.

I'm happy to help with minor porting to make things compatible if needed. Major compatibility ports will need to be handled by the community though. If you'd like help or are interested in getting started developing mods, the modding forums here and the #thd.modding IRC channel on quakenet are both great resources.

Even if you're not interested in getting involved with modding, you can still help out. Please voice your support for any mods that you'd like to see included on the official modded server!


Also on the menu this week, I'm looking at fixing a few "bugs" in the new TDM maps, a couple of new and old bug reports from the forums, and starting to dig into how the current resource loading actually works (MM wrote it many moons ago), to look at a possible replacement.

If I can make purchase on that last one, there's a whole class of bugs that should just "go away" - bugs like can't load maps after creating them from imagedata without a reset, cant create or modify textures, name conflicts in mods, pixel offsets getting broken by mods, and many more. I'll also be able to formalise how mod loading "really" works, but I've got a sneaking suspicion it's not going to be a walk-in walk-out fix. That one might take a couple more weeks to really dig into; I'll let you guys know if it's full steam ahead or if there are any road-blocks after sinking some time into it.

Have Fun!
Max

 

Good luck getting through all my bug reports.

 

A couple of modded server updates:

• Upped rotation time to 6 hours
  Please let me know if this is too long/short. There's still no warning message cause I'm waiting on updates to the gshost API, they should be coming soon.
  
• Added Custom Heads CTF mode
  (normal CTF, with just custom heads mod for people who want to play normal KAG with their own head)
• Fixed some config issues with Laser Wars
  Issues involved respawn time, warmup time, and number of players required to start the game (@Aphelion you might want to check the fw config you've got in the API-side mod, since I didn't edit these, they looked like "dev mode" configs)

Bit disappointed with the turnout WRT mod suggestions/submissions fwiw. Seems the other thread had a lot, but now I'm specifically after them noone has anything they want to see on the server?

 

The Waste Kind.

 

I'll see if I can get it integrated tonight, haven't tried hosting it before.

Sweet as, let me know when it's available.

 

Yeah both of those mods are awesome.

Maybe also Diprog's FunCTF mod? You get to play as a wizard.

You get to play as a better wizard in Wizard Wars, but I don't know who makes that mod. Usually when people host that mod they use maps that suck an unbelievable amount of ass, so if you just use normal maps then it will be even more fun than usual!
I like wizards.

Edit: Also please never ever take the original shiprekt off of the server, I missed it so much. Maybe even bump up the player count a little!

 

As far as I've heard Fun CTF crashes a lot? Agree about the maps though, haha.

Got the waste kind working, theres a few janky things but I fixed the major fuckup (Item Spawner could be picked up). It'll be in the rotation soon now.

Speaking of the rotation, I've dropped the time to 3 hours so that more of the mods get through, since populations are low enough that I don't feel bad about the disruption and it's likely more interesting to have a faster turnaround - I'm wondering if dropping it even lower would be a good idea.

Full Roster as of 17 Feb:

• The Waste Kind
• Attack and Defence
• Custom Heads CTF
• Shiprekt
• Laser Wars

Going to use this post as a roundup to avoid churn in the announcements forum:

Doesn't look like I'm going to get a build out this week folks - so I guess you can abuse the dirt vuln on pressurecooker for another 2 weeks. This week did make good progress but it hasn't been extensively tested enough.

Things that did get done this week:

• [fixed] knight attacks around very-close doors (can still be blocked potentially more than they should but not by much) (needs lots of testing)
• [fixed] pressurecooker dirt camping vulnerability
• [added] vehicle.max_cooldown_time for anything implementing the custom firing methods + using vehicle gui
• [fixed] catapult ignoring cooldown
• [added] can right-click (action2) to cancel vehicle shot charge and incur half-second cooldown
• [added] sync for chest open/closed on join
• [fixed] fall damage "eating" spike damage (colliding with terrain took away the velocity before the spikes could read it)
• [added] semitransparent sky border using new map border binds
• [added] tdm has tdm_vars.cfg control for mapcycle scramble or not (defaults to letting autoconfig decide if missing from cfg, but value in default config is 1)

About the precache/file loading - it looks like quite a mission to replace. I'll see if there's any clever tricks I can pull to make it more appealing. The main problem is that scripts can be running when the cache is flushed, which (since they're running out of the cache) causes massive problems. Sanest course of action there is to make scripts independent of the cache, defer cache flushing til a later point in time, and have some kind of garbage collection for stale scripts, but it's easier said than done. It'll definitely be a whole week of work at the very least, so I'm leaving it for the moment; it's staying on the TODO though.

 

When will modded servers be hosted in other continents? I'm really excited to play some new mods (for me), especially The Waste Kind.
I feel like this has been asked several times before and I've just forgotten the answer :/

 

Tiny Update - I've incorporated the Red Barrier fixes from @Verrazano into Attack and Defence on the modded server as of yesterday.

Yep, I'll make a task for it now.

"Soon" - I'd like to get things to a point where I don't have to upload thousands of individual files over SFTP before that happens, and that needs some subtle changes to my access to the hosting platform, or to the gshost API. Joe is kind of swamped with "life stuff" at the moment so things aren't quite as fast as I'd hoped. That said, most of the mods are "ok" with lag - the waste kind is unfortunately probably the worst of the bunch there though.


E: does anyone have a "favourite" zombies mod? Seems strange to have a modded server without one. Needs to work out of the box though as I don't have time for debugging and patching it this week I'm afraid.

 

Looks pretty rad and definitely in the spirit of the server - I'll get it uploaded when I can, it might be tomorrow if the mod "just works". Joe's still quite busy with other stuff so it's just me working on this currently.

 

I'd consider it more if you linked to the mod and I could check if it was compatible :)

 

i remember the mod was actually quite fun. i looked through my only hard drive and found Ship'n'SailV3RaftWarfare

 

they cant be server-side only because scripts run on client and server

 

Ah, i remember this controversy :)

@FunATuns if you'd like it to be hosted on the official modded server(s) then a touch up is most welcome!

I'm happy to credit the proper developer(s), I actually got jrgp to extend the allowed sv_info so I could put more names in as appropriate. Most mods I've looked at have had credits in their resource page. I wont host anything the creator doesn't want me to, in case there's any worry about that.