Q4, defs and purity

[swelt-]

I read that Q4 mapping is not off topic here, so hope this is OK to post.


There was a major headache in Doom 3 with custom maps on servers. If you put a custom map on a server, every client that wanted to connect to the server had to have the map, regardless of whether that map was active on the server at the time or not. This was a significant barrier to getting custom maps on servers. I remember reading something to make me believe this was fixed in one of the patches, but it was long after my interest (in fact pretty much everyone's interest) in D3 multiplayer had died a death.

Quake 4 is here. Quake 4 does the same thing. If I follow any of the standard "bundle your map" tutorials and dutifully create a mapname.def etc, and place the map on a dedicated internet server, people can't connect.

Browsing teh intarweb, I find a guide: http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/doom/AddonPaks This instructs me to create an addon.conf instead of a <mapname>.def. And from what I can see, this appears to exclude it from the pure checks and so forth, recognising the pk4 as an addon. However, it also seems that working in this way doesn't get the map onto the voting list. Thus my newly created map on the internet dedicated server can only be reached by someone with rcon priveleges or by rotation?


Does anyone know better than me - have I simply not understood what I am supposed to do? Or if I am right, does anyone else feel that this is an unacceptable solution for support of custom maps?

[dynerman]

Add-on paks is the way to do custom content like you describe. I'll look into the voting issue, but I'm not sure how much can be done with that since the whole point of add-on paks is not loading them until they're used.

[swelt-]

That raises two points then doesn't it... First - every tutorial out there is telling people to do it the other way. Second - what use is it having a map on a server if you can't access it.

I guess what we've got is the fix to the root problem, the addon.conf allowing for custom maps to be present on the server, but that the voting system hasn't been updated to take account of this. Rather than building a list of votable maps from the local .def files (as I'm guessing it does) it should pull down the list of available maps from the server (or the just the delta list of additional addon maps).

I hope this gets fixed, because there are enough barriers to success for custom maps already without inventing new ones.

[MidnightQ4]

wow that's rediculous lol. seems like everywhere you turn there is some cheat protection mechanism getting in the way of playing the game.

[swelt-]

Just to add to this, following further investigations:

[*] Using addon.conf rather than <mapname>.def results in the load screen not functioning properly (doesn't recognise the name, picture etc)
[*] There is a console command to call a vote, clientcallvote. Calling a map that is defined as an addon returns error "server: map not found %s"
[*] Once you do find someone to switch the server to the map, the original problem starts again. Even after you've switched back to a regular map, clients without the map are once again unable to connect. You can fix this by setting net_serverReloadEngine 1 but this adds a good 20+ seconds to every map restart.

[MidnightQ4]

it's unfathomable how they can release a game that can't play custom maps. just utterly rediculous.

[hemostick]

Browsing teh intarweb, I find a guide: http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/doom/AddonPaks This instructs me to create an addon.conf instead of a <mapname>.def. [...]
However, it also seems that working in this way doesn't get the map onto the voting list.

Doesn't it show up in the list for those who do have the pak ? If it does, in a way it makes sense, you don't really wanna vote for a map you don't have. If you start the server for example, it'll show up in your vote list (at least in D3).

[swelt-]

Nop. And as I say, even ignoring the list and using the console command to directly vote for a map (e.g. clientcallvote map mp/swq4dm1) doesn't work. It's fubar. Until it gets fixed, the old broken was is better than the new way.