Given this also seems to be ignored (I asked three times on IRC by now) I'm thinking it has to be something I did wrong. I can't understand why my patches are not seen otherwise... each time I asked someone said at least part of them can be committed, but nothing happened in weeks, and no one mentioned anything else so I'm confused.

If they can't be applied now or they are bad changes that's alright, just wish for a decision to be taken if possible. I can't work on anything else with so many pending changes to take care of, and seeing delays with no answer makes me feel discouraged on working at new things. Is there a feature freeze that hasn't been announced, or is there no one who had time to check all patches on the tracker yet (although they've been there for a month)?

I'll commit the menu sounds patch, and part of the first patch. (I'll add a menu option for listen servers to choose to have ghosted items or not.)

Thank you very much, I'll wait Sorry for worrying, just didn't know what was going on for such a long time.

I am not committing changes to Nexuiz with any regularity, divverent has been quite busy as well.

I think it is mostly a matter of surprise on the part of other maintainers at having to deal with submitted patches for the first time, usually expecting someone else to deal with them.

No criticism intended or implied.

I have not looked over the patches but the titles sound like good things to me.

I find it interesting that the ghosted items I implemented are causing confusion, they seem like a useful aid to me, but I am not sure their settings are optimal - I never got confused by the ghosted items in Spidflisk mod, but I admit my implementation has more potential for visual ambiguity as to whether the item has been picked up (I have made the mistake of seeking out a ghost item a couple times as well - which never happened in spidflisk).

So perhaps someone needs to tweak the ghost item settings a bit and find less confusing defaults.

LordHavoc wrote:I am not committing changes to Nexuiz with any regularity, divverent has been quite busy as well.

I think it is mostly a matter of surprise on the part of other maintainers at having to deal with submitted patches for the first time, usually expecting someone else to deal with them.

No criticism intended or implied.

I have not looked over the patches but the titles sound like good things to me.

I find it interesting that the ghosted items I implemented are causing confusion, they seem like a useful aid to me, but I am not sure their settings are optimal - I never got confused by the ghosted items in Spidflisk mod, but I admit my implementation has more potential for visual ambiguity as to whether the item has been picked up (I have made the mistake of seeking out a ghost item a couple times as well - which never happened in spidflisk).

So perhaps someone needs to tweak the ghost item settings a bit and find less confusing defaults.

I see now... thank you for clearing that up. I was surprised since this is the first time patches are delayed for so long. Just for the note, I finished a new patch yesterday that's ready to go... ads UT2k4ish ghost bodies upon respawn http://dev.alientrap.org/issues/show/635

In my opinion it would be very helpful if someone could take more care of patches... maybe check them at least once a week. This makes it difficult and discouraging for contributors who can't commit, imo. No criticism intended either, just not sure what to do is all. I'll be posting my 5th patch in a few hours, which I believe implements a great new possibility in Nexuiz (not saying what to not spoil the surprise, I'll be linking it here once it's ready )

As for the ghost items, one of my future ideas is finding an additional effect for them rather than just decreasing the alpha. My plan was making them shadow items (totally black alongside the low alpha) but also thought about hologram items, blinking ghost items or anything else I can manage to test.

Alright, my surprise patch is finally ready http://dev.alientrap.org/issues/show/636 It implements a scripted trigger which can execute any server-side command or change any cvar, making anything that can be done from the console possible with a trigger like func_button. I think this will make an awesome addon for maps and open mapping to new possibilities

Holy crap that is AWESOME!

I see a button that lowers gravity

Sepelio wrote:Holy crap that is AWESOME!

I see a button that lowers gravity

Thank you And yes, that's one of my favorite uses for it ^^

Also added a new feature yesterday. It can now trigger in-world entities only if a cvar meets the specified requirements. For example you can make a door open when you bump into it only if there are at least 2 bots present (bot_number > 1)

Hehe, that sounds like a fun addition to the mappers arsenal! But are there security issues? In theory, I could now make a map that has a button that executes 'quit' on the server right? Just wondering.

I didn't think of this as a security issue since I thought an admin checks new maps before putting them on. I guess that is true, and allowing it to execute any command can be harmful even if someone checks their maps first. Ill try to see if I can add a command filter tonight.

Sorry that first post was a bit too up front, I changed it because I love the way you make all kinds of new stuff and I didn't mean to sound so abrupt.

I was thinking, a blacklist of commands that can not be used sounds like a tough job and hard to maintain because of the always changing nature of Nexuiz. Maybe a whitelist of things allowed to be changed by the mapper would work better? For example, even g_balance weapon settings can cause server and client crashes when they are set 'wrong'. I could imagine a great scenario where players could control the refire rates of weapons by pressing buttons, but the problem is that allowing mappers to choose without restrictions can cause server crashes or even client crashes. For example try setting electro secondary ammo to 0, refire and animtime to 0.001 and lifetime to 1000 or so. Spam spam spam and detonate. Bye bye server and/or client

Still, this patch already gets my PB Seal Of Approval

It's ok Imo there are way too many cvars for a whitelist, but a blacklist should be good. If the blacklist can be made a cvar, it can be used in different areas of the code so only one blacklist needs to be maintained. Just hope I can find a way to do all this properly... I set the patch to 90% until then, and will look into it tonight.

So far I made a cvar (sv_allow_scripted_triggers) that can disable scripted triggers on the server, for the security reasons mentioned.

I generally oppose maps tinkering with game settings in any way, it's the whole mapinfo trouble all over again (and I'm still really skeptical of some of the stuff in mapcfg).

I have a different question... What exactly are the uses for this feature?

Perhaps the easiest way to implement this is to only have it available for certain variables if thats possible. Then abuse of it can be avoided.

I see it as being useful in that you can make maps more interactive. Actions can have consequences. I personally would like to see an assault or onslaught match on a spacecraft where you have to sabotage the artificial gravity

LordHavoc wrote:I generally oppose maps tinkering with game settings in any way, it's the whole mapinfo trouble all over again (and I'm still really skeptical of some of the stuff in mapcfg).

I have a different question... What exactly are the uses for this feature?

Imo it has good uses, since it allows maps to do awesome new things. Gravity triggers, buttons that can add or remove bots, dynamically change the behavior of weapons or anything else doable via console... as well as entities that can execute based on cvar values. To me this seems like a great feature, as it allows lots of new creative possibilities (especially for assault and singleplayer maps, or artistic demo maps).

An idea: I can use this to make a map containing a long hallway that can take you to any other map (I can have slimepit, toxic, stormkeep2, etc. on one side of the hallway, with a picture of each that you can walk into). At the end of the room I can make buttons that change gametype when you shoot them, closing doors to maps that aren't supported in that gametype. Not that I couldn't do this from the menu, but the possibility to make such a thing seems awesome to me

I'm currently working on a flexible filter which should keep all harmful commands away. I'll post it in a few hours when it will be ready.

MirceaKitsune wrote:I'm currently working on a flexible filter which should keep all harmful commands away. I'll post it in a few hours when it will be ready.

And how is this "flexible filter" different from a cookbook method? (known working command sequences, with everything else not allowed)

It seems like if you had a set of generic command names (not literal console commands) in the qc to take care of each of these desired tasks that would be in the whitelist, it would avoid the console involvement entirely, and would be defining a standard way for the map to communicate its wishes.

More importantly, some things you described had a specialized equivalent in Quake1 that simply was not implemented in Nexuiz

(trigger_changelevel for example)

On another note, this would be another step on the road to making a singleplayer PvE style campaign possible

Finished blacklist and updated on the tracker. It is a cookbook method, but I used a blacklist (a whitelist would be hard since there's a lot of safe cvars and commands the trigger could use). Apart from dangerous commands however, almost all important settings are .set rather than .seta, so most harmful things a bad map can do would be reverted on next startup. Also, if case an attack map does manage to brake persistent cvars (imo unlikely someone would make that and succeed too) the owner can easily delete the bad stuff from config.cfg... I do that all the time when I feel I might have a bad setting persisted.

Anyway, I don't want this to be a security breach or a feature that causes trouble and annoyance. My idea was finding a way that maps could use the possibilities of cvars / commands as map features, which is the intent of this patch. It would make a wonderful addition especially for assault and single player maps imo, which I thought would be a great and joyful thing

Single player campaign by loading level after level, heck yes! That would be something i'd enjoy even if it were only as the entity that LordHavoc mentioned there.

MirceaKitsune wrote:Finished blacklist and updated on the tracker. It is a cookbook method, but I used a blacklist (a whitelist would be hard since there's a lot of safe cvars and commands the trigger could use). Apart from dangerous commands however, almost all important settings are .set rather than .seta, so most harmful things a bad map can do would be reverted on next startup. Also, if case an attack map does manage to brake persistent cvars (imo unlikely someone would make that and succeed too) the owner can easily delete the bad stuff from config.cfg... I do that all the time when I feel I might have a bad setting persisted.

I recommend a whitelist method and use wildcard pattern matching, I.E. anything beginning with g_ is safe, sv_gravity is safe, etc, combined with a blacklist on anything containing $ or ; characters or other escape sequences that could be used to exploit things.

MirceaKitsune wrote:Anyway, I don't want this to be a security breach or a feature that causes trouble and annoyance. My idea was finding a way that maps could use the possibilities of cvars / commands as map features, which is the intent of this patch. It would make a wonderful addition especially for assault and single player maps imo, which I thought would be a great and joyful thing

I still think a select list of possible features is better than any level-designer-supplied command text, which may refer to commands and cvars we remove in later versions, where as the real support method would be updated accordingly (because we know what features can be used, and do not later get bug reports about one map we never heard of, not working properly in a future version).

Finished and updated on the tracker Sorry for the numerous re-uploads there. http://dev.alientrap.org/issues/show/636

MirceaKitsune wrote:Remade and improved most of the code. A whitelist is now used for commands whereas cvars are filtered through the same filter as mapinfo's settemp. Cvars can be changed from a separate function which may only settemp them. Multiple commands and cvars are separated using ; and all are checked and executed separately, so everything is 100% safe now Updated the test map too and added a few new demos ("map scripted_test_v2") Also thanks to Blub\0 for the helpful tips he gave me on IRC.

I just realized I didn't commit anything yet.. Damn my memory sucks... /me adds it to his todolist this time

Also, I'll check out the triggers patch, however I can't commit this as it might get me raped by div0 if it turns out to harm something

Anyway, I committed the menu sounds.. However, div0 said that a menu option for ghosted items (if not client side) is useless for listen servers, and since dedicated servers use a server.cfg file, it's useless for those too. The other patches, again, i'm not sure if I CAN commit them -- Player sounds per character etc you'll have to ask div0 to commit this, and the cvared fallback player model -- i'm not sure is needed.

Late reply, but thanks a lot for committing that. I'll ask div0 again about the rest.