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?
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-
ill just say that the mp editing does not involve typing in console
No need to say even that....
-Av-
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 :D . 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.
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-
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.
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.
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-
QuoteI'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.
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.
Lol,
it's evil and must die...
:)
-Av-
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!
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.
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.
"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."
And what you would do is most definately what everyone else would do.
"2) Bzedit.exe is lame, you can't run scripts in it, and as mentioned above."
Yep, what a massive problem. I can't make a super huge base for myself in IA anymore..the editor sucks now! Despite the fact that this could be fixed, it just sucks instead. Good way to get it changed...
"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."
This is coming from the guy that said that 1,3 would msot definately eliminate all bugs, as it was its mission...
"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."
Once again, giving it no chance whatsoever is definately helping.
"5) 1.3 was made to ENHANCE Battlezone 2, not DISHANCE, correct? Making the editor like this dishances it, IMHO."
Game balance and playability come first, modding comes second, what only a small fraction of the community will use is not to be considered high priority. And 1.3 is already having enough trouble with what is high priority already. :/
The editor can have a big effect on playability.
It can make the game a lot more fun, and, If I'm not mistaken, it can really help in mod testing.
I just use my dll, I just input whatever odf I want it to load (for example) into a cvar, set an ivar saying create it in front of me, I just raise the ivar each time I want it to create another. The editor is not always neceessary for testing, plus this way is much faster.
oh, ok, I've just never been good at dll scripting (it just looks like a bunch of random charachters to me).
players (and modders) have a right to an EASY TO USE system, dll scripting is a damned sight harder than the old editor
Why not just have one exe for MP STRAT, and one for *everything* else...mp DM, mpI etc etc......and have the second one with a 1.2 style editor.
nay! have the second actually have editor even 'easier' to have than 1.2....
No body...and i mean nobody minds if an MP DM or MPI or Single player or IA is edited.....
MP STRAT is the strat is the *only* place where MP editing is considered bad.
So why not make the solution TARGET SPECIFIC, instead of the currently simple and ineffective attempt at a solution.
One important error. We dont have any rights at all.
To say that we have a right to get this and that in a patch is no true. Why do you think you can dictate what another person is doing without paying for it?
And I do mind edited MPI. lots of gamestats, synchs.
Plus newbie come into an edited game and see that something is wrong. = very bad first impression to a game where every newbie counts!
Not being able to run dlls in the editor?
What would be the reasons to run a dll in editor?
The only reason I see is that you cannot test aips.
but you can test them with bzone.exe
whats the big deal here?
I havn't had a need to run the dll in the editor, some others have but I make the dll's not the maps so I cannot really say. I still like the idea that we all pitch in $20 or so to GSH, then he would be compensated and would be a heck of a lot more willing to put in any option we so desire...
i agree with you completely. There are over 400 members here, and if everyone just pitches in 5 dollars, thats 2000 at least...but i think the problem is that many people are young, thus either have no nomey, or their parents wont let them send cash to some random person (to the parents at least).
bzone.exe and bz2edit.exe will never be reunited. Security comes over "features." If an edited map is so "fun" to play, then learn how to save it. Then people who are interested can play it.
And, I don't like the idea of strings attached to money. Some joker will say "here's $20, make 1.3 run on a gameboy." Or any of a million things way beyond my time or interest.
-- GSH
@OvermindDL1...
Ah, but not everyone can do that, or have the means to achieving anything of the like. I get the feeling that it took a while before you could work with DLLs with such high confidence.
@Total Oblivion Omnis... (Post #15)
Those are some valid points, Oblivion, though I have a hunch that some folks who don't need naming would disagree with them zealously. There is also a whole other side to the matter that isn't so positive, and as human nature would have it, that which irks most gets the most attention. You see, online testing aside, even though MP games could potentially be enhanced somewut, not everyone would put up a notice that a game has been edited, either because of forgetfulness or they just want to trick some people into an unwinnable sitch just to get that little stroke for their ego. I would guess sore losers or the less-than-honorable anonymous players who hide behind multiple nicknames would be among such @$$holes would stoop to such a level, but don't take my word on that, since I've had no bad experiences with edited games.
As for my opinion on the present 1.3 editor, the one word I'd use to describe it is castrated. I applaude the effort to eliminate the less-than-rampant editor-based cheating going on, but come on... was it really necessary to throw the baby out with the bath-water? Jwk definitely is correct in asserting an easy-to-use system is necessary, otherwise with the way good people like Lizard are leaving, new blood could diminish, and BZ2 modders could become an endagered species. I'm just glad repair of the editor will be considered.
@Fishbone...
Well, people like me, whose modding ventures often don't go far beyond weapons, ODFs, and the odd cut&paste addon, depend heavily on the 1.2 editor to be able to test the fruits of our labor. Not many would be adept to more specialized editing styles like your own, and even fewer would have the fortitude to learn approaches to editing that require too much more than a simple click-type-&-drop. Frustration is an excellent deterrent to expansion of one's skills.
@GSH...
Perhaps, but wut of the people who paid the retail price of $70 (tax not included) for the game? Are you just going to tell them you don't give a rat's @$$ about wut they think should or shouldn't be done to enhance Battlezone II? No, it is not the offering of money I think should be given a little extra consideration, but rather, one of the things it symbolizes: the gift of trust.
Oh, and while I still have your attention, I would like to point out that my original question regarding your intentions (http://bzuniverse.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2132&start=20) still stands, "Tell us please, GSH, in the bigger picture, wut do you want to get out of Battlezone II 1.3 ultimately?"
lol, I got the game for 12$ (not including shipping)
£40 for me. And i got it from *Ammo*ing 'dixons'. I never want to by something from them again!..I asked them time and time again if they had it, they said flat out 'no'...and then i found it under a pile of some action shooter that had 30 copys on the shelf.
ooo, i was angry...
I order my games usually.
I actually got it for free. A long time ago when we bought our Gateway computer, there was a misunderstanding about the software packages we wanted. First we wanted the games package and then we chose the encyclopedia package. The guy at the counter got confused and put both down, although he didn't realize he was only charging for one. When we got the receipt, it showed both packages but only one price. We told the guy but it was too late to change it, the order was already sent.
So we got 5 games for free over a stupid little mistake. That silly mistake got me bz2: my favorite game of all time!
it would require too much specific work on the executable.
Why not simply duplicate bzone.exe as bz2edit.exe then break a critical piece of the multi code?
Using the editor for missions was a good way to find out how things work, not to mention being the most fun cheat there is; I would give away all other cheats (stealth,radar,body,tnt) for the editor back, so I can move myself out of harms way one second before I die 45 minuites into a mission. If the editor didnt exist at least for SP, I probably wouldve gave up FE my first time through because of the (then) insane difficulty.
Heck, i've even used the editor in MP a few time (private game) just to find out how things ticked or to test a new unit in an MP environment (with a friend who I sent the unit to)
In the two and a half years that i've been playing BZ2, competitive strat editing has never, ever, ever been an issue. I'm not sure what DF, PF, TV, WD, Jwk, Aeg or anyone else who actually plays MP Strat (on a regular basis) thinks, I can only speak for myself.
But yeah, i'm sure a lot of people would be okay with the bz2edit.exe thing if the bugs were fixed (sound DOES matter when creating and testing units, weapons, buildings) and it could run DLLs and other scripts.
i my self have never been in a competitive edited MP game.
However, if the editor does not function as well (if not better) than what it did in 1.2 (and atm it really is crap) then Rebalencing the FE single player campaine (with 1.3 AI!)
wiill...be...a....*nightmare*.
Its going to be a massive undertaking as it is, but without a fully functioning editor (1.2 or >) then it will be beyond the man-hours available from the community, imo.
I played a lot of the single player missions, and I found them easier in 1.3 for some reason. I don't know why, but completing "Into the Fire" in 1.3 wasn't hard at all when I was testing the FE Save Game AV during 1.3 beta testing. I loaded FE because there was a change in 1.3 that fixed FE's save game AV.
1.3 FE was a little harder for me, because the AI aims accurately, so the old send like 20 xypos at you and you still live tactic in 1.2 FE is a noticably harder in 1.3 FE.
If I wanted to have a go at rebalancing for 1.3 FE, one of the first things i'd do is adjust enemy craft to fight very evasively, aim somewhat human-like (overswing when target changes direction, then slowly catch up to an accurate lead, to prevent wobbling and predictable strafing in one direction as being valid tactics) then i'd have 'em send fewer AI units at you, because obviously fighting a horde (which was probably set up that way to make up for poor AI) would be near-impossible with the better AI. It would actually take a lot of dogging skill to kill 2 cerberi fast-movers who double-team on you.
just wanted to say, on my last post, for some reason the other day I wasnt able to see posts past a certain point and that was the second time I posted like a DAY late.
...ugh
Sadly whenever GSH says something, it's usually said in unbendable, indestrctible charachters.
Just because the files are staying seperate doesnt mean there is not a solution to the problem.
Quote from: Jwk the Hemp MonkeyJust because the files are staying seperate doesnt mean there is not a solution to the problem.
Thats right, now all we have to do to solve that problem is to find a/some programming guru(s) that would be willing to smash bz2edit and bzone together.
Without the source? Good luck.
People are starting to sound whiny again. It's not gonna happen guys. Deal with it. I would much rather be assured the the guy I'm playing against is not cheating than make my modding life (at best) marginally easier.
Bah, youre probably right (tho I did hear somewhere that flying was added to 1.3).
Not only do the respective executables not include runnable code to do either the mp, or the editor, they are compilied differently as well, it is essentially *impossible* to ever get them to coexist without recompiling from source.