Quake 2 Vortex mod full server setup download

[fader]

Heyo 

This is essentially my last dying gift to Quake 2 at large; I've uploaded a full server setup package on my webspace for Vortex mod. It's a full download of Chilean Vortex, complete with a fully setup maplist and server.cfg with explanations. I've also included some other cool things like a list of admin commands possible with this version of vortex to make things like testing even easier. Also included is the full source code for the particular version of Vortex that comes with it, so you're more than free to do whatever you want with it. This has been something I've been sitting on for the better part of this decade, and I've finally decided to bring it all together for an easy to understand server setup package.

http://faderjok.tastyspleen.net/VortexServerSetup.zip
http://faderjok.tastyspleen.net/VortexServerSetup.zip
http://faderjok.tastyspleen.net/VortexServerSetup.zip

For a little backstory, I started playing Vortex after I got banned some time in 2012 and it's just been an uphill battle to try and get things squared since. Vortex is an incredibly hostile and user-unfriendly mod. It's hard enough to actually play it let alone start your own server, since most of the resources out there on the internet are either incredibly dated or just plain wrong.

I have pestered so many people trying to get something like this together, and it's still incomplete. There are still many things I wanted to do for this mod, such as help get a server on goto among others. The thing I wanted to do more than anything was to create a new trading map that's covered with textures basically explaining how to play the game, since the game doesn't explain things at all in depth when you connect. Here's an example of what I wanted to do;



In theory, this hypothetical map would be filled with textures like this explaining the basics of the game so that newer players didn't have to go downloading pdf's off moddb just to play the game (I actually included one of these pdf's explaining the mod's many abilities as well). However, it just never came to fruition.

Easily the biggest problem with Vortex is it's user-unfriendliness, so at the very, very least, I hope this might help fix that on the server side. With this, everybody should be able to host their own Vortex server with (hopefully) little difficulties. My biggest goal was getting a vortex server of my own hosted on goto, but I've failed every step of the way. Now that I've accepted that's probably not going to happen, I've just decided to put it all out there for everyone to experiment with. Maybe there's someone who can do something better with it than me.

Thanks to Razor for helping me compile the .dll, thanks to Darkzard for throwing together the server package this thing is built on, and thanks to quadz for compiling the .so.

http://faderjok.tastyspleen.net/VortexServerSetup.zip
http://faderjok.tastyspleen.net/VortexServerSetup.zip
http://faderjok.tastyspleen.net/VortexServerSetup.zip

-me

[XANA]

 

It's been well over a year since this was posted and I've already seen servers pop up here and there using this as a foundational template for a functional Vortex server. Very nice! I hope that everybody who downloaded it found very little problems in setting up this absolute nightmare of a mod for other people to enjoy. While this warms my bitter, cold heart by just a few degrees, I think it'd be even more productive to expand on all of the frustrations that I've had with Vortex over the years and what I think is holding it back from being bigger and better in the grand scheme of Q2.


If you don't know, Vortex mod is an RPG style mod for Quake 2 that involves gaining experience and levelling up in order to build your character from whatever class it is that you decide to build. These classes include Soldier, Poltergeist, Vampire, Mage, Engineer, Knight, Cleric, Shaman, Alien, and Apprentice/Weapon Master. Every class has it's own unique abilities and talents that offer advantages and disadvantages over one or another. It was originally created by GHz using the KOTS mod as a framework, and eventually grew into it's own thing with it's own community. After the release of version 4.3 in 2009, however, GHz dropped Vortex and the websites associated with the original version of GHz's Vortex disappeared shortly after.

If you Google "quake 2 vortex", a moddb will show up as the first result. This is a full download of v4.3 in 2009, so we'll call this version "GHz's Vortex". There was however, no guide whatsoever to prepare you for setting up a server.

Fast-forward to 2012 (it could be earlier, I'm not sure), Vortex mod was picked up yet again in the Chilean scene by Darkzard (along with a few others such as N4CH0 and Ticamai, who later changed their name to ky0), who added new features, new gamemodes, and some additional stuff that I don't care enough about to look up right now. Let's called this "vrxcl", or "Chilean Vortex". The Vortex scene exploded once again before dying off a few years later. Over the past couple years, there were some attempts to revive the Vortex mod once again, but they also died out very quickly.


So what happened?

Well, for the first and most glaring, offensive sin this mod commits, the user-unfriendliness.

Vortex is an incredibly complex and arguably sophisticated mod. You're taking a game that was originally designed for just shooting people and turning it into a full-blown role-playing game complete with classes, an experience point system, and gear. Of course the code involved in it is going to be sprawling and confusing. It's not just the code, however, just playing the mod can be incredibly daunting for a newcomer. Even the most recent version of Chilean Vortex that was picked up not a year or so ago still has the outdated link to GHz's Vortex page in the help screen. It's just not useful whatsoever for a newcomer who has no idea how the mod works to navigate to the help menu (if they can even find out how to bring it up) and be greeted by "there's too much information to go over, go to this web page".

It's just not practical to tell newcomers to stop playing and read some outdated guide in order to play the most fundamental aspects of the mod. Most people will just quit! You should be able to join a Vortex server, be able to find out how to navigate the menu fairly easily, find out what it is you're supposed to do, and start playing immediately. For all of the quote-unquote experienced programmers and software developers out there who have picked up this mod, they haven't quite figured out how to solve that one.

But since I'm on the subject of the code, let's talk about it!! I personally had to pester Darkzard over and over and over again to compile some form of server package. Expecting your average person to compile this fucking abomination of a mod even with the source code is absolute lunacy. There are over 180 different commits of Chilean Vortex on Github, and there might even be more than that made by other people. The documentation between versions is very poorly written (if written at all), and there is no .dll or .so file to download. You are expected to compile everything yourself if you want to play this mod.
I understand that the only people who play this game anymore are deranged veteran IT professionals who own their own server hardware and can just edit whatever they want in this mod and compile it with no issues, but that still isn't a sustainable long-term strategy for the survival of a mod. I feel like there were too many people with their hands in Vortex who wanted to use it as their own personal little side project to mess around with, but nobody has any concept of user-friendliness when working on it. It's just a side project, so I'll just commit it to github and call it a day; who cares, right?

I had to figure out how the admin commands worked in Vortex by peeking around the source code myself. Giving yourself ability/talent/weapon points, credits, and the ability to spawn enemies from the console is supposed to be an invaluable tool to test the functionality of the mod! How come I had to find this crap out on my own?! When Darkzard finally decided to take pity on me and compile the server for me and fish to throw up on his .german network of servers, we found out that generalabmode, the ability to grant every class the power to use every ability, was bugged and did not work.

When I asked Darkzard if he could compile the newer version of Vortex he made that fixed this issue, he told me to "just use mercurial with scons".
While I'm very happy for the fact that he clearly never had to work on a help desk to get to where he is, it wasn't very helpful to a teenager who just wanted to get his daily heroin fix of Vortex. I had to get Razor to help me compile the .dll and quadz to compile the .so (which was still bugged with q2admin and prevented any server using it from being able to use WallFly, to my EXTREME FRUSTRATION).



Even though I still hold that it's vastly superior to GHz's Vortex, it's very unfortunate that the zip in this post is using a very old version of Chilean Vortex (v2.65, it was the version I originally played in 2012), since newer versions include new classes, new talents, higher level caps, and other stuff. Uniques were also bugged in 2.65 as well to my knowledge, and did not work. But that leads into another problem; the unnecessary changes.

Why were things like the ability to buy weapon/ability points removed? Why were hard skill caps introduced when you could already become absurdly powerful either way? Why were runes nerfed so badly in later versions? Character rotation should be introduced if people get too powerful anyway! It made no sense to me. The fun of Vortex and RPGs in general to me was character building, and anything that gets in the way of that isn't fun. These are things that should at least be able to be configured on the server-side, not hard-coded into the mod.

This has kind of always been a problem in Vortex, things getting nerfed or buffed constantly, with no clear consensus of balance ever being reached in the community. There were some people I saw who even lowered the amount of experience you gained! Why? Do you think you don't die enough in this mod already? I love a balanced mod more than the next guy, but I just wish there was an option for those of us that loved our crazy OP builds. 



And last, but certainly not least, one of the biggest problems is the inconsistency in availability.

It feels like every two years or so, somebody comes along and wants to revive the Vortex mod. "We're reviving Vortex! We're gonna bring it back! We're getting like 8-10 players every night! Come visit our website!", only for it to completely disappear in a single year. Maybe their free trial of AWS ran out??

The lack of a consistent, always available server on tastyspleen or even packetflinger has hurt this mod more than anything; because once someone tries to do something to revive the mod, they post Discord servers, websites, and server IP's all over the place only for those links to rot away forever, further confusing people who just want to play. If there was just one, single, always available Vortex server that was properly maintained over the course of multiple years, it would probably be very popular even to this day. Maybe there could also be things such as events that give prizes such as credits, ability points or runes. More invasion maps would also be great because nobody can seem to get enough of that fucking mode.

But that sadly hasn't happened. So Vortex remains dead. There are a couple of servers, but they're not connected on goto and don't seem to get much traffic.



So what can be done to truly revive Vortex?

• Compile all major Vortex versions as .dll's and .so's, complete with proper, up-to-date documentation and changelogs detailing and outlining all noticeable differences in versions.
• Have an official, easy to setup server package for people who want to run their own server instead of play on one.
• Make the Vortex mod much more easily accessible to those who have no experience in how it works.
• Come to a clear consensus with regards to gameplay features and balancing.
• Have a consistently available and well-maintained server on goto.
• A proper, long-term web presence wouldn't hurt, either.

I would be willing to at least help out with achieving some of these goals, but only if I had full, unfettered administrative access to such a server. I'm finished with constantly being some sort of intermediary when I just wanted to make this mod better.



The airing of grievances has now been completed. You may now continue with your normal operations.

-sh1va

need a light?