I am Mortis from broadbandreports.com (root level) [BBR] Enemy Territory and UT, and I also admin (root level) at Primer's Linux. Although this is my first post here, I peruse these forums from time to time. First of all, I'd like to thank all of the ETpro team from their tireless efforts to improve the game. You guys are miracle workers.
I have seen here and elsewhere that the reason that ET almost always crashes after downloading a new map is due to some sort of checksum error after the download. A cleverly timed /reconnect can avoid the crash out of ET. I see elsewhere, like int he Mac port thread for example, that Activision may be sharing SOME of the source code. Of all the issues in ET, I think the map crash out bug is something that really discourages noobs and even intermediate players from liking/trying new maps. Most of them don't even know that it is a game flaw; they just think your server is f'ed up. In terms of promoting the longevity of the game, I think that stable downloads would do wonders.
My ideas for solving the problem.
1. Get the source code and if possible fix it directly.
2. Failing that, would it be possible for ETpro to detect when a new map is downloaded, and then automatically /reconnect for the user after a one second delay?
3. If that is not possible, would it be possible to make a server command like b_maplistqueue "directory here" where all maps played on the server would be checked by etpro prior to connecting/joining?
other suggestions:
I changed the target of my shortcuts to start in etpro mode. "C:\Program Files\Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory\ET.exe" +set fs_game "etpro" This allows me to go directly to my ETpro settings. If ETpro was bundled into an installer, it should 'update' the shortcut for Wolfy to etpro as default IMO. Noobs can't figure out why their menus change and their favorites disappear because they don't understand that game is running in a different mode. Maybe there could be a tab in etpro called "tips" that gives specifics bits of advice, like how to start in etpro mode, etc.
/kill control. Although damage XP is nice, I have a more effective solution. I would prefer to have an optional two second delay on all /kill commands. This won't disable the function, doesn't stop /kill-ing for ammo, but does stop fools who are scared of getting blasted by a panzerfaust from /kill-ing to dodge your blast. They will be long dead before they can /kill out of it.
Mouse sensitivity. I have heard rumor lately that people are messing with the mouse sensitivity cvar to reduce up-and-down pitch rate relative to back-and-forth. So they are able to whip the gun left to right very fast, but the ability to keep the target on an enemy's head centered (up and down movement) is very stable. This seems like an exploit to me. I would love to see an etpro feature that requires uniform mouse sensitivity, or would simply override their setting while playing an etpro server. The variable involved is m_pitch.
Auto-move-to-spec I would love to see a built in countdown timer for 999 players that would move them automatically to spec when they are connection interrupted or downloading a new map for more than 60 sec. For that matter, it could be matched to the warmup time, so at the match start, all 999s are auto moved to spec, sparing the admins the jobs of stopping play to move 999s to spec.
I have more ideas; if any of these sound good, I'll happily delineate more ideas for you guys. If not, I won't litter your forums with yet more 'only if' threads.
I have dozens more of ideas brewing......--Mortis
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With all the uncountable bug fixes and improvements there's no need to have vanilla ET any more. Since almost all changes are optional, I also wouldn't see a limitation for other mod developers. On the contrary, I'm worried about the fact that the people who're coding Urban Terror or Price Of Peace will be left with all the general ETMain bugs that you already fixed in ETPro, like phantom traces, broken antilag, buggy pmove_fixed etc. etc.
