Author Topic: Can we change Co-op a bit? (Read 16798 times)

ReCycled · « **on:** March 10, 2009, 06:40:08 PM »

Specifically put on a new Single Player challenge. Right now co-op is still crashing after 3 levels. When it re-boots you're back at Base1 to start all over again. It's not just the overly familiar maps of Quake 2, but the fact you're always back at Base1. Becomes really tedious and most people don't bother with Co-op anymore. They only time they show up is if I start at a level much farther down the rotation (eg Command). At least it's not Base1.

The one new SP game I would like to put on Co-op is 1492 - Anno Domini. It's completely new for most people, has tons of action (enemies) and only 8 levels. Meaning you will get a lot of gameplay before it crashs (after 3 levels). But each level is huge. The drawbacks are there are a lot of custom textures and wav files. I can post the link to download the pak file in advance. Here's some screenshots:

QwazyWabbit · « **Reply #1 on:** March 10, 2009, 08:08:09 PM »

I believe the reason coop crashes is because the SP maps break for a cinematic at the 3rd level. This leads to a memory corruption in q2admin and eventually the server gets worse until it segfaults and crashes. I have seen player commands get corrupted or not work after the 3rd level leading up to the server crash. It does affect all mods that support coop mode. I am not sure it's directly related to q2admin. Never took the time to debug that deep into it. It does crash Windows and Linux servers alike. Anything involving a different map list would probably help.

[BTF] Reflex · « **Reply #2 on:** March 11, 2009, 05:26:15 AM »

Got to be a way to bypass the cinematics...

The SP mod looks/sounds great

The Happy Friar · « **Reply #3 on:** March 11, 2009, 06:37:34 AM »

the cinematic only work if they're on the drive... if they're not there (the server & client?) they should be ignored. I've done coop with my friends before no issues.

peewee_RotA · « **Reply #4 on:** March 11, 2009, 06:57:17 AM »

Quote from: The Happy Friar on March 11, 2009, 06:37:34 AM

the cinematic only work if they're on the drive... if they're not there (the server & client?) they should be ignored. I've done coop with my friends before no issues.

I've hosted coop on a Windows XP pro SP3 server on r1q2 running q2admin and never had that problem.

However I have seen a similar problem happen on LAN games that are not running q2admin.

Also, I'd be very willing to try out the coop server on another string of maps. (and hopefully with cheats disabled in the .dll

)

better yet. All of the cheats can activate a stuff command that forces them to run the command "kill"

|iR|Focalor · « **Reply #5 on:** March 11, 2009, 11:26:20 AM »

I can definitely remember a time back before the new Tastyspleen IP and hardware upgrades when co-op worked just fine. It would be really nice if that were the case once again. Honestly, like ReCycled said, I don't ever bother hanging around at co-op anymore due to the fact that it crashes every 3rd map and on the 3rd map before the crash, no console commands will work (including goto and cheats for more ammo).

ReCycled · « **Reply #6 on:** March 11, 2009, 01:00:35 PM »

This is how the 1st level starts with insane waves of enemies. Also some other screenshots.

[BTF]Jehar · « **Reply #7 on:** March 11, 2009, 01:07:28 PM »

Yay gl_modulate 50

Anywho, this is a bug that has survived long enough to take down the co-op scene for q2. Co-op modes are always important to have, and are still a big part of the other quake communities. There aren't as many awesome q2 sp maps out there, but there are a substatial amount, so seeing them on a coop server would be nifty. The server config would be a little tricky, since many of the sp maps (like ars) have their own mod folders, many of which probably don't have available source or linux clients. So that puts a crimp on things, for one. And the config would have to be updated to switch to another sp mod after a couple weeks or so.

PANTONE 7717C · « **Reply #8 on:** March 11, 2009, 01:26:31 PM »

About the coopserver crashing, months ago I was looking for a way to 'bypass' the crash that usually occurs upon exiting unit1 (or follows shortly after that). What I had done was make a set of entity overrides that basicly merged the maps of the first unit (base1, base2, base3) with the maps of the second unit (bunk1, ware2, ware2), creating one unit of six maps. By merging the first two units the game will not reset the unit-spawnflags at the end, so if you use the exit elevator in base2 it will immediately take you to bunk1 without intermission and reset, like a normal level change within one unit. > e1u1+e2u2 overrides_for_coop_only

From base2:
"classname" "target_changelevel"
"map" "eou1_.cin+*bunk1$start"

"eou1_.cin+" -> tells the game to include the cinematic.
"*" -> the asterisk is what tells the game to reset the spawnflags and causes it to pause at the intermission camera.
"$start" -> just tells the game that players should spawn at a certain group of coopspawns.

While it's safe to take out the "eou1_.cin+" cinematic (to rule it out) there will be problems if you take out the "*" because there are such things as crosslevel events. You can have up to eight crosslevel events for one unit. Originally unit1 only uses one crosslevel event and unit2 also has only one so they could easily be merged. As far as I know this hasn't been tested on the server yet but I still think it would be worth to try these overrides and see if they change anything. And if it does it would be easy enough to disable all cinematics.

ReCycled · « **Reply #9 on:** March 11, 2009, 03:00:17 PM »

All of those fixes are cool but the thing is.....We all know every tiny square inch of this game, start to finish, so a completely new one would be a breath of fresh air. Every corner and tunnel would be fearful and a challenge. That's more what I was getting at.

PANTONE 7717C · « **Reply #10 on:** March 11, 2009, 04:31:42 PM »

I know what you mean but personally I'd rather see a crash free server with the ability to mymap custom SP episodes. Problem with most custom levels is that the ending will result in a hard crash if the endmap is not linked back to base1 or something else. But I fully support the idea

QwazyWabbit · « **Reply #11 on:** March 11, 2009, 06:17:42 PM »

New maps or old maps, the bug exists and is clearly reproducible. I have removed q2admin from my test server and have played a complete coop scenario from base1 to the end without a crash.

The crash fault occurs inside q2admin, function freeBanLists(), in line 701 of the q2admin 1.17.44 sources with a bad call to gi.TagFree().

I hope someone can use this information. I am afraid my work schedule right now won't allow me the time to dig into this. (Busy saving the world's economy and "glad I still have a job, sharing the hardship for the good of the company" at the moment.)

console · « **Reply #12 on:** March 21, 2009, 05:30:24 PM »

I have disabled q2admin and WallFly on the coop server.

Please let me know if it still crashes.

Regards,

quadz

Alpha-Prime(CW) · « **Reply #13 on:** March 21, 2009, 11:03:10 PM »

Coop works Great , But we REALLY need some kind of friendly fire protection

ReCycled · « **Reply #14 on:** March 21, 2009, 11:03:32 PM »

Joined a game in progress tonite and it played right through to the end with no crashes. And it restarted at Base1 after the game was finished.

Author Topic: Can we change Co-op a bit? (Read 16798 times)

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