Messages

151

/dev/random / Re: Led Zeppelin Got sued for Stairway to heaven

« on: June 24, 2016, 05:58:04 PM »

It's not just happenstance in my opinion. Those two bands played shows together, and at the time when they did, Spirit definitely would've played that song at the show. Jimmy Page can't truthfully say that he never heard that particular song before writing Stairway to Heaven. I can't blame him for fighting it out in court to keep his money. I'd do the same thing. But I'm pretty sure that if he would've lost and had to pay anything, in his own mind (cuz he'd never admit such a theft to a living soul) he wouldn't have been calling it a total injustice.

I'm just kinda surprised it took THIS LONG to bring it to court. Like I said, even as a kid I kinda thought it was probably more than coincidental that those songs sounded so alike. They couldn't have NOT heard the same thing until just recently. Maybe it took them this long to get enough money pooled up to afford to take it to court. I guess if they would've gone after it on the cheap, either Led Zeppelins attournies would've settled for 2% of the potential award they could've gotten for winning, or they would've simply gone ahead to trial and outspent them with experts to back their defense. So, yeah, they took a shot and lost, but I can't see the surviving members of Spirit bothering with such an expensive task in the first place unless they knew they were right. Sucks for them. They should've been more famous I guess.

It wasn't the surviving members who chose to litigate it. It was the trustee for the estate of Randy Wolfe, Michael Skidmore who brought the case. As trustee, he has a fiduciary responsibility to preserve the properties and copyrights and if not defended a copyright is useless. I don't know if the son derives any benefit from the trust. I hope so. Now Skidmore has to answer for the expenses and justify his actions.

Per Rolling Stone:
"The jury was not legally allowed to hear the original recordings of "Stairway to Heaven" and "Taurus" in determining their verdict. Instead, they heard an expert perform both songs based on the original sheet music."

152

Quake / Re: Why Q2Pro over R1Q2

« on: June 24, 2016, 09:58:53 AM »

I hear you. Q2Pro doesn't feel that great to me and I'm always on a learning curve with it since trying it years ago. I just updated it last night as a matter of fact and the HUD scaling and brighter digits are nice on old eyes but I like the old-school feel of r1q2 so that's my regular client. I mostly have the other clients on my machine for testing. I've never done a side-by-side comparison so I won't try here.

153

Trouble Shooting / Re: Help setting up Railwarz CTF Linux Server

« on: June 23, 2016, 11:51:47 PM »

ive done everything like normal or same way i have updated the .so file each time.

i delete the tmg directory.

i reclone it form bitbucket. then i overwrite the existing .so file in the ctf folder
 but ill try again... i was messing with q2admin maybe i screwed something up

No need to re-clone. Go into the tmg/TMG folder and do git pull. Git will pull the files it needs and synchronize with the BitBucket repository.

Then do make all.

Once you have it built, do a cp gamei386.so ../../quake2/ctf/gamei386.real.so to copy it into your mod folder.

Once you have it running, if you want to keep a backup of the old DLL before copy the new one over do mv ../../quake2/ctf/gamei386.real.so ../../quake2/ctf/gamei386.real.so.old

154

Trouble Shooting / Re: Help setting up Railwarz CTF Linux Server

« on: June 23, 2016, 11:38:24 PM »

the latest tmg build wont launch server for some reason.

Added packfile ./baseq2/pak0.pak (1106 files)
Added packfile ./baseq2/pak2.pak (2 files)
execing default.cfg
====== Quake2 Initialized ======
R1Q2 build 8012, compiled May  2 2016.
http://www.r1ch.net/stuff/r1q2/
Linux i386 (./r1q2ded-8012)

thats all that it says

It's not loading the TMG game DLL. It appears to be loading the game DLL that comes with the r1q2 build. That DLL is vanilla quake2.

Either you copied the TMG DLL into the wrong folder or it was built wrong, but there should be a banner at the start announcing the version. Check you startup script too.

Another thing to check is that you have named the DLL's correctly.

When you use q2admin.so it must be named gamei386.so and it must be in your mod directory.
The TMG game DLL MUST then be renamed to gamei386.real.so and it must be in your mod directory.
The engine will look for and load the q2admin DLL, then the q2admin will look for and load the TMG DLL.

155

/dev/random / Re: Led Zeppelin Got sued for Stairway to heaven

« on: June 23, 2016, 09:24:03 PM »

My brother was a music major and is in a band. His opinion was that everything's been written and it's all just "sampling" now.

For example, Blues Traveler's "Hook" is deliberately based on the progression in Pachelbel's "Canon in D" and it's that very melody that is the hook in "Hook".

The baseline of the chord progression in Taurus and Stairway is formulaic and fundamental and very old, that they both used it is a coincidence. It's entirely possible that Page heard it in Taurus and doesn't remember it but the burden of proof on the origin of the idea is on the plaintiff. In both cases, I think it can be said that they both got it from a prior source and that source is unknown.

They took a shot, they lost.

156

Trouble Shooting / Re: Help setting up Railwarz CTF Linux Server

« on: June 23, 2016, 09:00:15 PM »

Fixed WallFly blockout tonight.

HUD motd now shows for 3 seconds and then closes, spawning player as spectator.

This should allow WallFly to speak freely and it also fixes FreeCam mode if humans don't hit a key but let it time out. If a player hits a key per the prompt, the tilt is still stuck but that's a bug for another day.

157

Trouble Shooting / Re: Help setting up Railwarz CTF Linux Server

« on: June 23, 2016, 05:18:46 PM »

setting the dm flags didnt help and i guess the players need to be different models not different skins. in order to frag each other.

You don't SET the bits, you clear them. Subtract 448 from whatever is in dmflags, that is your new value. But it must never be less than 0. The value in dmflags must always be a positive integer between 0 and 65535. It's a bitmap so it confuses a lot of people.

158

Trouble Shooting / Re: Help setting up Railwarz CTF Linux Server

« on: June 23, 2016, 08:31:35 AM »

in FFA railwarz mode if we have the same skin as someone it wont let us frag each other.  not a big deal but if that could be changed it would be convenient to not have to ask people to change skins.

I think that's actually configured in dmflags and this capability was common to all mods. Make sure the DF_SKINTEAMS, DF_MODELTEAMS, DF_NO_FRIENDLY_FIRE flags are not set by subtracting 64, 128 and 256, (448 total) from the dmflags value in your server configuration file. That's one of the things the operator has to configure when changing from CTF to FFA.

159

Trouble Shooting / Re: Help setting up Railwarz CTF Linux Server

« on: June 22, 2016, 01:08:29 AM »

Yes. TMG rail server banishes all spawns. I don't know what it would take to spawn techs in railserver CTF. Something too look into.

160

Trouble Shooting / Re: Help setting up Railwarz CTF Linux Server

« on: June 15, 2016, 05:49:11 PM »

On Windows, if you have VS installed, clone the repository to whatever working directory you choose. In the TMG directory you'll find TMG.sln, the solution file for the VS project. Double-click that and VS ought to launch and open the project. You'll have to tweak the project settings to build the debug and release mode DLLs in the right places but most of the project settings should be correct. Definitely not as easy as on Linux and Microsoft did themselves no favors when they separated the GUI from the makefile scheme and required separate installation of command line tools. That might change once they've fully adopted clang but we have to suffer for now.

161

Trouble Shooting / Re: Help setting up Railwarz CTF Linux Server

« on: June 15, 2016, 03:41:31 PM »

i took a closer look the other night at highscores.

they seem to be behind 10 or 15 points. i guess they are not recording the very last flag capture maybe?

10 points awarded to them team. 15 for the person who made the capture.

possibly the last few frags arent recorded as well i didnt look that closely at the numbers.

I've changed where the highscores get computed and written to the file so it should display correctly in the intermission with good current scores. The highscores table can't be updated demand and it won't reflect the latest until the next level change. If I try to grab current scores and update it fills up the table with today's high scores. After 10 hscore commands it's full but looks silly. This needs more work. I'd like to add the capability to make it keep current without filling the table with identical entries. Another feature I want to add is the ability to ask it in game about highscores for any map, a hscore mapname command and a hscore lastmap command.

162

Trouble Shooting / Re: Help setting up Railwarz CTF Linux Server

« on: June 15, 2016, 03:28:30 PM »

Yes, the entry into the server is captured and instead of putting the client into the game as a player, as most mods do, it holds him in a message of the day (MOTD) screen until he hits a key. Any key will do.

Once he hits a key it puts the MOTD away and presents him with the FreeCam view, but even that is broken since you can't tilt the view. It moves and pans OK but won't tilt until you cycle into one of the chase modes or go out of spectator and back in, then it fixes itself. I remember something like this problem with other chase cams but I don't remember what I did to fix it. I have not looked at my past notes yet to see if I documented it. Low priority right now.

Once a player is past that first MOTD screen all chats are transmitted, it's only that first capture for the MOTD that mutes players or WallFly.

The solution will be either:
1. Put up the MOTD for a few seconds, then drop them into spectator mode.
2. Don't make the MOTD screen a mode. Transmit the MOTD text in center of screen and take the player directly to spectator without the capture effect. ( I think I like this idea best. )

I tried to skip the MOTD and not present it, this made the menu hang and I couldn't pull up the join menu. The logic is full of gotcha's and it's a bit tangled up right now. Too many conditions have to be set and they are all interdependent. I'm working on it but it has to stew in my brain for a while.

I have fixed the DM mode (I think) and it is playable. Give it a shakedown and let me know if you see anything else that needs fixing. Presentation of the scoreboard looks funky to me but I have not seen it on a full server with spectators and real players.

Modes for you to test:
CTF rails. (ctf = 1, railserver = 1)
CTF all weaps. (ctf = 1, railserver = 0)
DM rails. (ctf = 0, railserver = 1)
DM all weaps. (ctf = 0, railserver = 0)

Also something to test is tech power-ups and their spawns and mask-outs. I have not taken the time to test all those combinations and it would be nice to know if that logic is all working correctly.

I think I also spotted a bug in the CTF mode. If a flag is dropped by a fragged player it can sometimes end up inside a solid. Once it's there it won't return itself to base and it's stuck where nobody can pick it up. I'd like to know if you guys have seen that happen.

The bots work in CTF and DM, I think these are the ZigBots that Focalor referenced recently. They shoot rails out their ass and do some amazing dodges and double-jumps. Pure evil.

If you can test and spot more bugs and give me ways to reproduce them I can run them down and fix them here.

163

Trouble Shooting / Re: Help setting up Railwarz CTF Linux Server

« on: June 14, 2016, 06:47:56 PM »

I'll look at where the scores are captured and written to the file. There's a great deal of time between the frag or capture that triggers the intermission and the scoring of the game within the intermission. I suspect it's also possible to quit the server in the intermission and lose the registration of a high score.

OK, the highscores are not recorded properly until BeginIntermission is called and that doesn't happen until the scoreboard view and mapvote timers have expired at the end of the match. The highscores as displayed at the rotation of the scoreboard or after the map is completed are correct but if you cmd hscores before the intermission is completed you'll get the wrong scores. I will have to see what can be done about making it more current.

TMG is very odd about player entry into the game and the scoreboards at intermission and it departs from normal Q2 entry and presentation in a lot of ways but it can be fixed, hopefully for the better. This is also related to the problem with commanding WallFly.

164

Politics / Re: another terrorist attack

« on: June 13, 2016, 07:39:57 PM »

The .08 level is the threshold of 'must arrest' any non-zero level is 'may arrest'. I believe the statutes in most states are phrased such that one is prima facia intoxicated at or above .08 to make the logic "crisp" for juries. Prosecutors make the decision about whether to prosecute a case the cops can only arrest on probable cause and present the evidence to the prosecutor.

I was on a jury years ago that convicted a guy on manslaughter who blew .18 and shot his wife through the heart with a .22 cal. revolver on New Years Eve.

If you killed a guy who was shooting up the place and saved lives no cop would arrest you and it would take a true asshole of a prosecutor to charge you but there are also a lot of huge asshole prosecutors out there. Your biggest problem would be the complete lack of visual and physical coordination to use your weapon under those conditions.

165

Trouble Shooting / Re: Help setting up Railwarz CTF Linux Server

« on: June 11, 2016, 09:59:32 PM »

I'll look at where the scores are captured and written to the file. There's a great deal of time between the frag or capture that triggers the intermission and the scoring of the game within the intermission. I suspect it's also possible to quit the server in the intermission and lose the registration of a high score.