NAB622

Not that we are replacing the renderer at this very moment, but that is something else we've discussed. On windows 7, ShaderED will not render anything for me. Instead I get errors galore. When I was able to use it on windows XP, it would not add or edit more than 6 stages per shader, even though the game supported 8. Editing was clunky and the frame rate was always low (HOW!?!?). The colored background feature was nearly useless for checking alpha blending because it was always wrong. Tcmod rotate and tcmod scroll did not play nice with each other, even though the game handled them just fine. The debugging tool was inaccurate and complained about nonsense that didn't matter. I could go on but you get the idea. And yeah, that's why most people in the know type them by hand - but that's the point. ShaderED is supposed to handle that, and it doesn't. When everything is added together.....it's just time for a replacement. Even if nothing else is accomplished here, I personally would like a new one. Will have to check this out.Edit: It's a python console application so it doesn't look particularly useful, but at least it's something to know about.

"Milkshit 3D." Seen that nickname all over the Filefront forums. XD As far as I know, ShaderED doesn't work correctly beyond Windows XP. Could be wrong on that, it's just my personal experience. Also, writing shaders by hand is perfectly fine, but a live visual editor is invaluable. Otherwise you have to fire up the game and reload the level until your shader looks right. Unless I was doing something wrong, EffectsED orients the effects in the wrong direction, in addition to a few other small bugs. Overall it isn't bad and I've used it many times. ShaderED is the bad one.

Some small updates are being made to ParaTracker. They're all related to the admin tools, so nothing will visibly change on the front end. It's all small stuff, intended to help with community promotion across multiple games. The version number was incremented to 1.4.1 to indicate the change.

I sure hope nobody is using milkshape. I haven't forgotten the nickname it was given. But I have been absent from this community for some time so my info will be spotty and dated. Re-using shaderED and EffectsED is a bad idea too. They are both a buggy mess. Granted, EffectsED isn't half bad, but still relatively useless. What all can be edited in-game? If it's just shaders, I'm sure that's an easy one. If you're referring to maps.....I'm not sure that's even possible with how Q3 is set up. A total rewrite of the map code does not sound appealing.

After intense discussion, many other things we would like to implement have been hashed out. We are (Well, I am) not certain about the workload yet, other than the fact that it is huge and will likely take more than a year. The sad fact is that this community has very very outdated, and in some cases, non-functional tools (Radiant, ShaderED, BehavED, Milkshape). If we are going to continue with our project, we will need good tools. I personally want to create many more maps to include with this project, but working in Radiant has become extremely tedious for me, especially when I think about how much easier it could be with just a few basic/easy features and bug fixes. So basically....we may be quiet for a while, depending on how long this takes to hash out. But we are far from giving up. Side note: Does anyone know if darth_G can still be contacted? We would like to update his entities.def file for our own uses.

Our host is migrating our web server to a new datacenter. The process is supposed to take about 10 minutes for our server, but in case something goes wrong, it will take longer. Just wanted to be clear that this is planned downtime and not ParaTracker disappearing just after it got off the ground. I'll probably start the migration some time in the next 24 hours. It may also be HTTPS related. Hard to say. I still haven't thought of a workable fix, unfortunately.

You don't just need areaportal and hint. You need to make structural walls to hide what's inside the building. On top of which, unless things have changed in the years I've been gone, building something that large out of models is a very bad idea in any Quake 3 game. The part of the original question I was addressing is, there is a hard-coded limit of 256 entities that can be in the same visible area as the player. They don't have to be in front of the player - they can be anywhere. In most cases, good vis practice will fix the issue. I was merely pointing out that it is beneficial to put target_ entities outside in a completely sealed place, because they are invisible but still count toward that limit. (Except target_speaker and target_position obviously. Those need to stay.)

There is an important distinction to be made between the maximum entity limit, and the maximum number that can be rendered in one area. They are completely unrelated. When you are referring to the number of entities than can be rendered in a single area, misc_model and misc_model_static do count, as I've had many issues with them in the past. Target_ entities also count. If you want to be safe, you should move as many target_ entities as possible outside the map and surround them with a hollow box of caulk. To check your map against the maximum entity limit, just bind a key to spawn mutant rancors and count how many you can spawn before the game crashes. For lack of a better tool, at least it works.

Edit: Just noticed this was answered elsewhere. Ignore me plx

After thinking on it a bit, I'm not sure it can be fixed satisfactorily. ParaTracker parses the CSS twice during load. The first time, it parses the levelshot animations and adds them to a list for use later. This part can easily be fixed. The second time, it finds the width of the player table, and sets the "Name Score Ping" headers bar to match. This part cannot be fixed reliably. I can add the default width to the CSS skins, but it will cause the labels to misalign under certain conditions. Given this, it will always be slightly broken in firefox, I'm afraid. On a side note, firefox has been in a massive decline for many years.

No idea. All I can tell you for certain is that I have no intention of generating any ghoul2 assets.

Cagelight and I talked some more, and he liked the idea of incorporating an element from Morrowind. So disregard my post above; this is far more interesting. We still need something to replace Drain. if anyone has any ideas I'm all ears. Also, any user can choose any force power they want. There is no limit on light side or dark side abilities. There is also no force point system. Force powers will now have several casting types. I know this is complicated, but we would like to simplify this with a special menu and several default binds, to make it far less intimidating. Self will apply to the user only, and uses the least energy. (Yes, you will be able to lightning yourself.) Touch will affect anything the player touches. It will use the energy equivalent of self. Cone will affect a small area in front of the player, facing forward. It will use a moderate amount of energy. Area will force the user to put away their lightsaber or gun, and both hands will be used to cast the power. It will use a large amount of energy. Projectile will use a huge amount of energy and will be fired toward the player's crosshairs. The effect will diminish greatly over range. The distance will likely be a server side Cvar, so it can be changed on a per-server basis. Toggle powers can be used indefinitely, as long as the user has force energy left to cast with. Multiple toggle powers can be used simultaneously. Also, force energy will continue to recharge while a toggle power is being used, but it will be diminished. Neutral powers Light Side Powers Dark Side Powers

I forgot to mention - there will be no restriction between dark side and light side powers. Users will allowed whatever powers they want. They will be labeled for light side, dark side, and neutral, but it is of no consequence. Saber throw is not going anywhere. I love saber throw. Speed is hard to control and honestly kind of useless in JAMP. If you have suggestions for making it less useless, I am all ears. I would *much* rather have levitate over speed, though, if I had a choice. Edit: honestly I would rather have a 'force slow' attack than force speed. Levitate will have the ability to throw objects at every level. Levitate will interact with push and pull. So if you want to throw something, just levitate it and push it. Kind of like how the movies always do it. And if you see an object coming toward you, you can push back on it. Again, just like the movies. If you see someone throwing their light saber, pull on it to make them drop it. The goal here is to make the force abilities as organic as possible, to give players creative freedom to use or misuse them however they see fit. Heal and drain pose a bit of an issue for gameplay. Both of them are simply too powerful, and FAR too instantaneous. I'm perfectly fine with players having the ability to heal themselves, but it needs a lot of refining. I'm not sure what to do with it honestly. Force freeze? Do elaborate. I don't recall any such power, but then again I hated Episode III and only watched it once or twice. New saber styles will not happen in JAOWNT for a while, if at all. I'm okay with having *lots* of new styles, but there is a LOT of background work that we need to actually succeed in before that will happen. It is certainly something we'd enjoy, but why waste the effort doing it with Ghoul2 when you can make a better system that is far easier and modular. Cagelight and I both share a disdain for Ghoul2, and I'm sure most other coders do as well. I'm not willing to make a whole new move set in ghoul2, just for it to be outdated or useless the minute I'm finished with it. At some point we WILL be tweaking the weapons a lot, but that is not happening yet. Right now we’re in the planning phase for the force powers, and I would hate to make highly controversial changes without at least getting some kind of input first. Believe me, this is merely the tip of the iceberg.

I'm not opposed to a modular system, although at the moment, I was planning on using cvars for everything and setting all parameters in cfg files. That way, servers can change anything on the fly, and users can make simple mods to the current abilities without a code mod.

According to Cagelight, this error is caused by Firefox not allowing Javascript to parse the CSS. If I recall correctly, there are two places where this is done in ParaTracker. Worst case scenario, we might be able to substitute a default value if the CSS part fails.....I'll have to sleep on this one, though.

With ParaTracker done, I hope to get Linux installed on my computer soon (Again) and get moving on this project in earnest with Cagelight. Since there is already a working physics engine, and the force powers are both dated and boring, Cagelight and I were talking about what to change about them. The goal is to make the force powers interact with both the physics engine, and other force powers. Here is what we came up with so far. Feedback is welcome! If you have any idea what to replace heal, protect or drain with.....please speak up!

Ahhhhh, I did not know this. I will give it a fresh go after I finish with SoF2. Thank you, that helps a lot.

I downloaded and started MB2 for the first time ever, hoping to get levelshots. Apparently, cheats are not allowed (So I can't noclip to get levelshots, or even explore the maps to find nice things for levelshots) and I can't start the maps in base openJK due to a vehicle extensions error, and I have no desire to pick through their assets removing vehicles to get it to work. Is it even possible to use noclip in MB2? Alternatively, if someone is willing to provide levelshots to us under MIT license, we will accept them. Otherwise....I think I'm done with MB2 and will move on to games/mods that are easier.

Try this CSS file. I fixed that issue for you as per Cagelight's instructions, but I also added a few other styles that were missing from minor updates. http://paratracker.dogi.us/Circa2.css Even though I didn't want to initially, I also made the ParaTracker logo / version number a clickable link that opens the setup page. I hope that's okay with everyone. If you don't like it, just speak up and I will remove it. After a bit of thought, it just....made sense to have it.

ParaTracker 1.4 is live. Any bugs, let us know. If you need assistance setting up things like a custom skin, let us know. Big changes this release are: Refreshes are now butter smooth (no page reload) The player list can be sorted several different ways The color of the scrollbar can be customized An analytics button has been added directly in the tracker Website: http://paratracker.dogi.us/ Sample: http://paratracker.dogi.us/?ip=dogi.us&port=29070&skin=Metallic%20Console&filterOffendingServerNameSymbols=true&displayGameName=true&enableAutoRefresh=true&levelshotsEnabled=true&enableGeoIP=true&scrollShaftColor=039&scrollThumbColor=079

If all goes well, we will be updating some time tomorrow or the day after. The utilities will be organized nicely on the new page - use them to your advantage! This might be a bit bumpy, so if something breaks, let us know and we'll fix it.

Off-topic from the last several posts: Analytics looks like it's pretty much done, minus a little polishing. If anyone would like to do some bug testing, feel free. Here's a sample from SO's server: http://testbed.dogi.us/ParaTracker/utilities/Analytics.php?ip=so.jk3.in&port=29070 And here's one from my favorite CoD4 server to track: http://testbed.dogi.us/ParaTracker/utilities/Analytics.php?ip=66.150.121.164&port=28931 Click around on the graph to see more data on things. Edit: You can also link people to exactly what you're looking at, since parameters are set in the URL. If you have any issues, post a link here! Edit 2: Analytics data has been reset. Don't bother with it for a few days.

Fixed. Removed. If you know/learn of any other differences between JKG and base JA just give us a shout.

Currently, every server that is tracked by any user will continue to be tracked until it is offline for seven days. After that, the users will have to re-track the server, although the old data will remain. It is theoretically possible to use a JA master server; however, I have no knowledge of how to do this, and it is impractical given that we are tracking 10+ games. The load on the web server would be incredible.

By bitflags, I mean things like g_forcePowerDisable. See this link for the reason I am asking. http://testbed.dogi.us/ParaTracker/ParaTrackerDynamic.php#bitValueCalculator I hate to ask you to spell this out, but unfortunately I do not know C yet (And I am also very very tired) - if I'm reading this right, the gametypes for JKG would be something like this: 0 - FFA 1 - Duel 2 - Powerduel 3 - Single Player 4 - RPG City 5 - RPG Wilderness 6 - Team FFA 7 - CTF 8 - Warzone 9 - Ninelives 10 - Ticketed 11 - Roundbased Yes? If so, I will add them just like that.