Messages

181

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.

182

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.

183

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.

184

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.

185

weapons / Re: WallFly broken? Goto and invite not working

« on: June 10, 2016, 10:10:05 PM »

Since I've sort of taken over the TMG mod maintenance on the Bitbucket site I'll look into what can be done about that limbo mode. I was thwarted a few times by it too and I don't know why it exists except for the purpose of displaying the welcome message. MotD?

I'm flying home from a business trip in Houston tomorrow so I'll be able to do some testing on my server this weekend or next week.

186

weapons / Re: WallFly broken? Goto and invite not working

« on: June 09, 2016, 09:46:11 PM »

Beaver, where did you get your q2admin source?

I recommend using the git repository:

git clone https://github.com/tastyspleen/q2admin-tsmod

It also uses the -fPIC option.

See if that builds OK  for you.

Both the repo version and the one in the TS archive build OK on my systems.

Edit: the TS version builds x86_64 library, the GIT repo builds I386 (32-bit) library.
If you use the TS version from the archive supplied you'll need to modify lines 8 and 9 of the Makefile to read:

CFLAGS  = -m32 -O2 -fPIC -ffast-math -w -DGAME_INCLUDE -DLINUX -DSTDC_HEADERS -I/usr/include
LDFLAGS = -m32 -ldl -lm -shared

187

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

« on: June 03, 2016, 06:35:02 PM »

hscores are working well now. i had a some pemission issue on the folder or files that may have been preventing it from writing.
is there anyway to be notified at end of match that hscores were updated?
or even display the highscore chart at the very end before map change.

It should have written a message in the server console and the log that it was unable to save the file. It would do it if it can't create the file or if the folder didn't exist. It doesn't put it to player consoles but I suppose it could. It's silent on success unless you set developer 1. The file is written early in the beginning of BeginIntermission but there are some long time delays in the scoreboard where it seems to pause. I didn't analyze it very closely because it seemed to be a logical place for it to be but the mod does have some delays built in where players could disconnect between the end of the match and the movement of all the clients to intermission. This might delete their scores before they could be sorted and saved. I'll have to test that and log the timestamps when those events occur but it will have to wait until I get home.

I noticed you had strange ownership on your home directory, they're all owned by root and that isn't the norm. Look into the "chown" command to see how to set ownership permissions on your home. Having to always su between root and your login isn't normal. I remember needing to compile and move the game DLL as root and run the game as regular user.

It looks like valid combos are
ctf 1/0
railserver 1/0

dm always 1, coop always 0

I'll test the mod in ctf 0 mode and see where it's broken. I have not touched the DM scoreboard code yet but there might be something hung in the spawn-up in FFA mode. The bots don't quite spawn perfectly either, I think they spawn at random points in some maps and they end up inside walls or spaces where they die. I'd like to see that fixed.

Use set show_highscores 1 in your config file to make it automatically show the high score table after the scoreboard intermission.

188

Quake / Re: New Anticheat Release

« on: June 02, 2016, 10:01:41 PM »

Went looking for a map in the quake2 tree using Windows Explorer and Windows Defender popped a message about malware detected. Sure enough, it was false positive on anticheat.dll:

Category: Trojan

Description: This program is dangerous and executes commands from an attacker.

Recommended action: Remove this software immediately.

Items:
file:C:\Quake2\anticheat.DLL

Get more information about this item online.
https://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/threat/encyclopedia/entry.aspx?name=Trojan%3aWin32%2fAutobatl.A!cl&threatid=2147709037&enterprise=0

Strange thing was this Windows 10 machine had been loading and running the DLL only a few days ago. The file was quarantined.

189

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

« on: June 02, 2016, 09:10:42 PM »

im running 2.12 and switched to DM server. but i cannot join or start playing for some reason.

also in CTF the highscores. im not sure if they are recording currently because we played a game and the next map the score didnt display but was higher that the ones listed.

I am on the road so I can't test this until after next week. A quick look at the code shows me there might be a problem with DM. It looks like it's always CTF but you can select rails or non-rails and play the usual weapons. Try keeping CTF set and turn off rails mode and see how that plays. At this point I'm not sure DM was ever a playable mode for this mod. I know CO-OP is definitely disabled.

If highscores is 1 the game is recording highscores files in ./ctf/cfg/hs/*.bin and *.txt. If in doubt, delete all the files in that folder and see that it creates new ones as it plays. If the highscores files already exist for a map it won't write new ones and you might see some ancient highscores from them. I don't think you'll have any problems deleting them with the game active, it doesn't keep those files opened or locked.

190

/dev/random / Re: The Strange and Interesting Thread

« on: May 31, 2016, 11:08:53 PM »

There's a video on YouTube of some dudes with a homebrew railgun into the side of a Saturn. It penetrated the door panel and it looks like didn't even deform the panel, it kind of fractured it without elastically deforming the metal. It met a cross beam inside the door and deformed it without breaking or penetration. It was a big armature though, and they never measured the muzzle velocity so I have no idea what the energy might have been and it kind of disappointed me since I expected it to do as you described and continue drilling the car. But it was a flat-nose armature and not the sabot round the Navy plans.

They also put another shot into ballistic gel with some effect but it didn't' blow it apart.

Mach 3+ SR-71 heated to 700+ degrees in cruise on the leading edges from friction with the air, even at high altitudes. But this takes a while to build up and stabilized at constant airspeed.

But yes, high velocity means brief time in contact with meat and less energy transfer to the meat as they meet.

191

/dev/random / Re: The Strange and Interesting Thread

« on: May 31, 2016, 04:28:38 PM »

All that us rednecks wanna know is will we need a special permit to go deer hunting with it or will the ordinary Big Game license be okay?

I posted something years ago about them cloning Mammoth DNA. If they can bring back dinosaurs... you see where I'm going with this? Yee haw?

Talk to your local game warden.

I'll get my calculator out to compute the effective energy of a 30-06 or 7mm vs a 50,000 Joule rail rifle but I think anything hitting a deer at Mach 7 might just put a hole through the animal and all the trees behind it for half a mile. That's assuming there's a hole in the animal and it doesn't actually make it hamburger meat. The latter may go contrary to the purpose of the hunt.

Edit:
I looked it up. A 30-06 delivers about 2700 lb-ft of at the target (180 gr. @ 2600 ft/s), that's about 3661 Joules so we're talking very reasonable holes in deer.

A 50,000 J personal rail gun delivers 36,880 lb-ft at the target so you'd definitely want a smaller gun... say a .22 cal. 5,000 J model. Such a weapon would be both lighter on the target and lighter on the bearer since the power supply could fit in a small backpack. Backstop would still be a concern.

192

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

« on: May 31, 2016, 04:17:21 PM »

Added efficiency stats to HUD in player and chase modes.
Eff. is displayed as percentage and also as ratio of frags/shots fired.
Fixed match countdown timer format so it's always double digits in the HUD.
TMG is now version 0.2.12

193

/dev/random / Re: The Strange and Interesting Thread

« on: May 30, 2016, 03:17:15 PM »

I knew that the technology had been around for years, I thought maybe they had hit a new tech advance with the projectile speed.  I thought it was a cool story, so I shared it.

The first Railgun kill happened on December 9th, 1997   

Love it.

It's certainly topical for Q2. I'm just disappointed that the news people are so stupid about topics - but not surprised.

Here's a look at it from 2009: http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a2289/4231461/

... and a world record 10.64 MJ shot from 2008 YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZourRsUsnho

It only took them a year or two to get to 30MJ.

FWIW, 30MJ is only 8.33 kw-hr so a generator doesn't have to be huge to recharge the capacitors.

A Joule is 1 Volt-Amp second so 30MJ delivered in 10ms is 3 x 10^7 / .01 or 3 million amps at 1000 volts... a nice arc-flash.

I love science!

Imagine the recoil!

194

/dev/random / Re: The Strange and Interesting Thread

« on: May 29, 2016, 04:01:10 PM »

military railgun 'bullets' could travel at Mach 6 - http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/05/29/first-look-at-navys-experimental-railgun-that-can-fire-at-4500-miles-hour.html?intcmp=hplnws

First look? Not hardly. This weapon has been in development for 20 years. It might be the first time for Fox News but they can hardly be counted on to be current with technology. This is the first deployment of the weapon for testing at sea, so perhaps this can be a "first look" at what a production weapon might look like. They even used footage that is over 4 years old. This was a very poorly done report.

CBS reported on this TWO YEARS AGO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHN-vplJZg

Advantages of rail guns:

1. No gun powder.
No need for storage of giant bags of gun powder and no need for stacks of crewmen to load and fire the weapon.

2. Extreme muzzle velocity.
Artillery is limited in range by how fast it can push a projectile out of the barrel. Conventional guns accelerate the projectile with expanding gas from the detonation of gun powder. As the gas expands the force behind the projectile in the barrel is constantly decreasing, limiting the muzzle velocity. Increasing the amount of gun powder to increase muzzle velocity requires increasing the wall thickness of the barrel to withstand the increased pressures. This increases the weight and size of the gun. Range is limited by the muzzle velocity and terminal velocity of the projectile, larger projectiles are required to deliver greater kinetic energy and are enhanced by explosive charges in the projectile. (Think about Missouri's 16-inch guns and 2300 pound projectiles.)
Rail guns accelerate the projectile with nearly constant force for the entire length of the barrel. Taking the Navy at their word at 2000 m/s muzzle velocity (Mach 6) and estimating the length of the barrel at 10 meters with force applied for 10 ms, this computes to about 20,400 g.

3. Electric power.
Rate of fire is limited only by the ability to recharge the capacitor bank that powers the impulse system and the reload time of the weapon. BAE has been developing an automatic reloader for the prototype.

4. Smaller, lighter, projectiles.
This allows for storage of several times more projectiles in the magazine and easier reloading. No need for 2 ton hoists to handle them. This allows the platform to fire more projectiles at more targets before returning to port to reload.

5. Zero defense against a KE weapon.
The weapon kills by penetration. Energy is dissipated as pure heat in the target. Stationary targets such as concrete bunkers can be repeatedly hit with extreme accuracy and pulverized no matter how thick. Impact in the ground near the target causes earthquake damage at the target that can actually be more effective than a direct hit.

The rail gun's disadvantages:
Vulnerabilities of its electrical supply.
Ablation of the rail material as the armature propels down the barrel, caused by arcing between the armature and the rails. Specification of the rail material is probably classified since this is critical to success and lifetime of the weapon.
Intimacy of contact between the armature and rails is critically important to efficiency of the weapon.
Insulation of the sabot from the rails. Probably Nylon or Delrin sleeves. This can be mitigated by delivering the projectiles in their sleeves and mating the armatures to the sabots at load time. Delrin would be my guess, since it's very machinable and holds tolerances and doesn't melt and peel like Nylon.

Did they mention there's no gun powder?


http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/videos/high-power-railgun-research

195

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

« on: May 29, 2016, 12:25:12 PM »

OK, highscores are fixed.

set highscores "1" to enable them.

Once enabled, commanding "hscore" will display the high scores list for the current map.
If highscores is set to zero, using cmd hscore displays the usual scoreboard, just as F1 would.
This doesn't interfere with F1 for normal scoreboard.

set show_highscores "1" to tell the server to display high score list during the intermission after displaying the scoreboard.