Confusion on behalf of the editor.

[BZDraconian]

If the editor was used for "MP abuse" Why did they have to go so far as to seperate it from the executable and create a hoot load of new problems?

They were able to prevent game.cheat bzbody or any other cheats like that to be used in multiplayer, I am sure they had the brains to do the same with the editor.

I mean, how did they go about activating the editor in multiplayer? (Don't tell really)
Why not just remove that, instead?
I think it would've been a lot better (And frankly smarter) to keep the editor where it was, and the only way to activate the editor was using game.cheat bzeditor in the console line.
I personally wouldn't mind doing just that to activate the editor.

And I am certain the people who use the command lines to activate the editor wouldn't mind just doing it through the console, instead of having a crappy seperate executable that doesn't run dlls.

I hope the final version of 1.3 at the very least has an editor that can run all the single player missions and all the dlls.
And doesn't crash when I try to load some weapon mods.

And fix the 3D sound in both executables so it is actually 3D. I can hear a pilot jumping 800 meters away the same as it it was 2 meters away. What the hell happened with that?

[Avatar]

Everyone should relax about the Editor...

When GSH comes back I'm certain he'll be able to give us a decent Editor setup, it just wasn't high on the list for 1.3.  

As to the Editor abuse in MP it's caused more stir than it should have...

Yes, there is an Editor cheat in 1.2.  (no, I don't know how to do it so don't ask and don't tell if you know).  I'm told it's not a big deal and I believe it.  GSH's concern was future exploits nobody's thought of yet.

My impression during the closed beta was that GSH did something to stop the cheat, whatever he did didn't work, so he ripped it out in bulk.

From the changelog:

- Cheat of being able to get on CPU team in MPI fixed. [NM]

- Cheat of being able to get into editor in MP fixed. [NM]
[NEEDS TESTING!]

- After much discussion pro-editing in MP, decided to leave a known AV
on trying to open the editor in MP in. Punks deserve nothing less. [NM]

- Due to continual misuse of the editor in 1.2 by some lamers (not
going to give them the courtesy of even mentioning their names),
bzone.exe has been split into two files: BZ2Edit.exe, and the
traditional bzone.exe. The first has the editor present in it, BUT NO
MULTIPLAYER capability. The second has multiplayer, BUT NO
EDITOR. [BZ2Edit.exe is also compiled differently, resulting in about
a 700Kb difference in size.] Anyone wishing to use the editor will
need to update their shortcuts, etc, to point to the new
executable. Testing or running missions requires bzone.exe in almost
all cases (as DLLs point to it). [NM]

-Av-

[PhoeniX-FlamE]

ill just say that the mp editing does not involve typing in console

[Avatar]

No need to say even that....

-Av-

[Spawn]

Im wondering...is editing im multi really that bad?  I mean, i see how it can be abused, but I havw been in some really fun games that were edited .  Couldnt you just remove the previous way of accessing it and add another, simpler way that would say something (like is you have a different mod going) but not cause bad assets.  This would allow people to still edit, but you would know it was edited before entering.  I dont see why that isnt acceptable.  But thats just my thoughts, and I guess that some sould have had really bad experiences with it though .  Just look at the good parts, not just the bad.

[Avatar]

Let me tell you why I think it's not acceptable...

I have a friend who's a semi-professional magician.  He can pull pretty much any card out of a deck of cards he wants whenever he wants to.  Well, he can when he's working. There's a certain amount of preperation needed for him to do that, and some sleight-of-hand.

Still, nobody will as much as play cribbage with this guy, no matter that he's an honorable person and wouldn't do 'card tricks' while playing a serious game of cards.  It's not that they don't trust him, it's just that he's too darn good at making cards do what he wants.  It puts the whole game in doubt.

See?

Now, no matter what cheat there is, or what's out there that nobody's seen, or what may be found in the future, ANY hint that there's a way to do extraordinary things (cheat) casts doubt on the whole game.  Most of the popular games go well out of their way to make sure there's no chance of someone cheating by way of built-in code.  They leave editors to external programs.

Still, only Nathan knows what he can do to make the Editor more fun and useful while still removing any chance of someone enabling Editor functions in an MP game.  It looks like the 'easy' stuff to stop it has failed, and you know how creative and persistant hackers can be.  

-Av-

[DarkFox]

Spawm - have you not considered the possibility, given that people found out how to use the editor in multiplayer games, that it might be a LOT easier to simply remove the 'warning, edited game' message in 1.3 than it would be to acheive multiplayer editing in 1.2?

This is an obvious one - keep the two exe's seperate, to avoid potential cheats in future.

[Tempest Storm]

IMO, I think an idea I came up with in the past would make the new seperate editor alot better, although it was deemed not worth the time it would take as the editor was pretty backburner in the private beta phase. Maybe now that its more of an issue it could go into work.

Initially my idea was basically this:

The editor works like it origionally used to work. (When it was first converted you just had a normal BZ2 shell that you could launch the various IA maps from.) Although after logging in (if you would need to anyway) you get a map list of the base maps created by the devs for the different BZ2 tilesets, creating actual blank maps to work with.

In addition to this, the editor works just like BZ2, except for the above change and no MP play available. This means that all of the bz2edit.exe command lines are off rather than on. (Except for /edit ofcourse)

From here you have a good way to start out base maps when editing, and you can also simply load up a stock map to play it like you would in 1.2 with the editor.

[Avatar]

As enhancements go the ones I'd like the most would deal with the object lists.   I'd like to have it refresh the ODF list it's using to decide if an ODF is in the Addon tree or not, and have it make that list available while editing.  

I'd also like to dump the dropping into the console every time an error is found in favor of a dedicated chat window.  I make a lot of mistakes and my control-tilde fingers are getting tired...  

-Av-

[DarkFox]

I'd also like to dump the dropping into the console every time an error is found in favor of a dedicated chat window.

God yes, I hate that console popout whenever you type and object wrongly.

[Bull Dog]

Same here.  I accidents type in ivtank\ and then start cussing at the stupid command thingy that I have to Crtl-~ to get rid of.

[Avatar]

Lol,

it's evil and must die...



-Av-

[BZDraconian]

Been busy so I haven't replied.
I see your point, and I've been patient enough to wait for 1.3
Overall 1.3 doesn't suck, but when the real non-beta version comes out, hopefully it has a much better editor.
DLL capable editor...
and that error with the console popping up is quite annoying...
I would prefer the error messages be -optional-, because I know what I am doing. I can see if an object doesn't exist if the label and name doesn't come up. I don't need an error message to tell me that.

and fix the sound!

[Tempest Storm]

The errors are gone in the latest version of 1.3 that was issued to the private beta team.

As for the sound bug. For now, you can fix it pretty easily.

Do your work in the editor. But rather than going into game DIRECTLY go to the sound options. IE, no sounds are gonna be payed aside from the "bumpity-bump" of the shell.

From there, put both of your Sound Channels and 3D sound channels at max. And go into game.

The editor seems to have my sounc channels at 16 everytime I open it, if I put them to max without going ingame first, then the sound work for me.

[Angstromicus]

I really think GSH jumped the gun (and the turkey) when he made editing online and editing in single player impossible (cept in that crappy bzedit.exe).

1) If I ever edited anything online, it was not to cheat, but to test out stuff with other people, or to simply make the game more exciting.

2) Bzedit.exe is lame, you can't run scripts in it, and as mentioned above.

3) Since when has editing online been considered major cheating? Since never. If it ever happened, it was rare, and people just left if they cheated.

4) Probably will end up in people not using 1.3, that feel like me about the change in editing, which would mean some, or most, of your efforts would be in vain.

5) 1.3 was made to ENHANCE Battlezone 2, not DISHANCE, correct? Making the editor like this dishances it, IMHO.

6) Ah crap, can't think of anything else.

Oh well, that's good enough, I hope.