There is still a lot of talk about a 'lag button'. Wether thats the truth, I dont know, and I'm not really the person to figure it out.
A lag button is basically anything that will compromise your pc or your connections performance without actually crippling it.
Even something as simple as taking a screenshot can produce a disruption on the other end of the communication.
It would be very simple for the incurably unsporting to rig something that uploads or downloads on the press of a button, reducing the quality of their coms to order. Just having a second pc on a home network turned on causes a very noticeable drop off in the quality of multiplay performance at the other end. This is the problem with taking online play to uber-competitive levels, people will do things like this to gain an advantage for themselves.
The Silence continues. The War Of Lies has no end.
---- Battlezone II Log File ----
//=====================================================
App version: bzone 1.3.6.4z Public Beta Nov 11 2013 20:16:30
Windows version: Windows Version: 6.1.7601 'Service Pack 1' PlatformID=2
Last few battlezone.log lines (may or may not be relevant):
DIAG| GameObject:3206 |11:24:42|1476378|JOIN, obj has id 0x00236B23 team 2, and local id 0x00023294 team 3
DIAG| GameObject:3045 |11:24:42|1476378|JOIN, recompute isUser=1 from id 0x00023294 local 00023294
DIAG| GameObject:700 |11:24:42|1476378|JOIN, GO::Init change ID 0xFFFFFFFF to local DPID 0x00023294
DIAG| GameObject:3206 |11:24:42|1476378|JOIN, obj has id 0x00023294 team 3, and local id 0x00023294 team 3
DIAG| GameObject:3045 |11:24:42|1476378|JOIN, recompute isUser=0 from id 0x006F2933 local 00023294
DIAG| GameObject:3206 |11:24:42|1476378|JOIN, obj has id 0x006F2933 team 4, and local id 0x00023294 team 3
DIAG| Planners:3330 |11:24:42|1476388|SetAIP - cfg(stock13_iia.aip) team(6)
DIAG| LuaManager:165 |11:24:42|1476388|Lua file 'stock13_iia.lua' not found
(done)
Exception code: C0000005 (ACCESS VIOLATION) WRITING to 20584420h
Message : Exception
Error occurred at 12/15/2013 11:54:26.
C:\Battlezone II 1.3 - Copy\bzone.exe, run by Commando.
C:\Battlezone II 1.3 - Copy\bzone.exe, run by Commando.
CPU: 8 processor(s), Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz
Intel64 Family 6 Model 58 Stepping 9
Process Memory : 1322 MB free out of 2048 MB total
Physical memory: 29944 MB free out of 32715 MB total
Page(swap) file: 62324 MB free out of 65428 MB total
This exe is using 323 MB (120 MB dlmalloc), peak use 329 MB
Please don't cut out the 1.2 style physics. I loved the high flying ability of the original Thunderbolt. Leave it as an option because I was playing a game last night at everyone I played with liked the older Thunderbolt even if its only used occasionally.
It was broken. A project intended to replace it (1.2 variant) with a recycler variant was started, but it wandered off and became the Mod known as VSR.
The Silence continues. The War Of Lies has no end.
With that logic you could argue that no mod is a mod. And the opposite works just as well.
Even a slight change like making empty's cost more/less, can be named a mod. It is the implementation that makes it so it could be called a recy variant. But seeing how far VSR goes in 'altering' the game, I think its perfectly fine to call it a mod. Even if that doesnt sink in well with those most interested in it.
It adds new content, like extra races, its a mod. The bad assets thing only works one way, players without it find themselves unable to join games if its assets are used. Recycler variants can only really function without issues if they are either included in stock or are part of a Mod. In its previous recycler variant format VSR was potentially incompatible with any other Mods. Users would have had to make new installs of bz2 to run other mods on as you could not easily disable VSR once it was installed.
The only way round this was to ensure that all other mod makers did manual asset checking against VSR as a part of their development. That is not a viable plan. I think the only way to do Map pack style addons is the way g66 did it, where the only way to access content was by loading a g66 map, this approach will probably not work smoothly once you introduce a 3rd user playable race.
All in all its a hell of a lot of work to do just to allow its users to join stock games without restarting bz2. And the problem with other mods having VSR functionality appearing in them is not solved. A FE-VSR hybrid game would not allow the users of only one or the other to join and a user could host a game unaware that nobody could join it.
The down side of this approach could seriously outweigh its advantages.
The Silence continues. The War Of Lies has no end.
VSR is designed to to allow players which have VSR loaded to join stock 1.3 games, however there is a bug that causes bad assets to occur only on some maps. It was due to the act of converting some of the stock 1.3 maps for use in VSR, some of the maps did not have their filenames renamed for the 4.4pre2 release, and so it will look to the person running VSR that certain hosts are playing on VSR-modified maps when in fact they are just playing stock -- and they will get a bad assets error when joining these maps. That's going to be fixed on the next version.
As to whether it's a recycler variant or a mod, I would consider it to be both. Insofar as something like ZST is a mod (a very light mod, but a mod nonetheless). ZST was a map-based mod (where new maps had modded functionality) and VSR is attempting to isolate itself to its own maps (because 'full functionality' requires map DLL support), as opposed to other RVs which would want to be played on stock maps.
As to inter-mod compatibility, vsr is currently using the 'safe' method of using its own config file shortcut -- but even if it werent most items, especially the ISDF and Scion things have 'vsr' in their file names to prevent file clashes with other mods and RVs. But racial assets, (namely hadean and icecream assets) use generic names in some places (e.g. dvscav, dorder.odf, devent.odf, etc) or the same texture and models as they did in their original mod (e.g. the hadean stuff). If I moved back to putting vsr in maps13, this would potentially step on the toes of other mods which use the D or E raceletters and may want to put their own race into maps13 or addon, however it should not interfere with them if they run using a config file shortcut which would cause their own versions of the assets to take priority. But do note, this should only matter if both VSR and the other mod were trying to put the same race types (e.g. the 'd' race) into maps13 or addon.
Regulators
Regulate any stealin' of this biometal pool, we're damn good, too
But you can't be any geek off the street
Gotta be handy with the chains if you know what I mean
Earn your keep
