PoLiX

Being ASSS is Open-Source and the whole purpose behind it was to allow other developers to contribute, be able to update/modify, and to get away from the closed source issues this game is plagued with; I would say it is more the standard that if you are going to release anything for asss, you should release the source to honor the abilities that the open source server gave you. Just my own opinion though, and just like assholes we all have them.

Sometimes OS installs just don't go right, and it takes some tweaking for different users to get things to work the same. Some need to disable DEP, sometimes an anti-virus/anti-spyware programs read continuum differently than others (had to uninstall microsoft's windows defender as it kept blocking continuum, and then the dlls), and some find continuum isn't the only program with issues and a fresh install of windows fixes everything. Seems you might have fallen in the later. Thanks for the update.

Am holding off on the installer update due to priit actually replying. But I do still think the zones need to turn off peering unless he replies he is willing to tweak it. He most likely doesn't care if they are altering population or not, won't put any pressure on him. Also toying with the downloader for the installer to attempt to download an updated zone.dat off the server during install. This way we can always keep it up to date without chasing down the installer. May even have it check the exe and dlls, but would really be unnecessary as the zone should report an issue anyways. Though might be nice to get them to do it before hand, save more potential players. This may also give the ability to have more accurate stats on how may installs per downloads we actually get.

Sounds like good moves to me man. Keep up the good work.

I was able to reach Priit on another subject and he responded quickly. Have now passed on this subject, and will keep you guys updated.

I updated the installer last may, but so many things have changed server wise in the past year, the zone.dat is out of date. I even posted an updated zone.dat in the downloads for players, but it too has quickly gone out of date. I have decided that only certain zones will be put on the default list now (There are really only 7-8 actively developed, populated, and staffed zones, and they haven't changed anything in quite a few years). Will make sure to let players know they can download other zones though. This may help with the red zones issue. I am planning to push this installer on quite a few websites I control the download on, so hopefully will get a good mass update out there.

A url would be nice. It wasn't discussed in game with me, and I registered here just for this, because stag fwded me ssc emails. Simple searches aren't turning up anything obvious right away. edit: in any event, the question is about priit's attitude more than the src itself. edit: resolved in game.

^ The amount of features lost would kill the zone.

Hallu would tell you my threat had nothing to do with it. He had thought about removing it previously, and had been on vacation. This just brought it to mind, and so he did. He was actually surprised to have a person contact him the next day saying they were happy to see it gone. The threat isn't by myself. I again am just louder, and have the ability to make such a threat. The other zones have made their own threats (IE: TW leaving the SSC Biller) though noone has made it this public thus far (minus the previous thread on this issue, but HS just added 1K to pop there). I personally think Ghost Ship's threat of removing the zones from SSC was a bit far, but he is my superior, and that is his call. I do not speak of just Ekted's code. But the Continuum source issue was discussed in game, to which I replied here also. Obviously there is much you have to learn about the client's code. As far as the fix.dll, yes it is all Priit's code, so he has no excuse there beyond his security paranoia. Childish, maybe, but I'm not here to impress anyone. Sometimes we have to result to childish antics to get something done when everything is in a stalemate. Leverage must be used to make a move.

If *putfile worked, you'd be fine, but it doesn't. EG has already tried such measures and crashed the zone when it recycled.

Actually passed a car today with ghost flames (didn't even notice the type) doing 50 in a 70. Definately wasn't faster Engine Swap depends on how much you are willing to do yourself, how much you're willing to manfucature yourself, and how much knowledge you have. Never had a shop do it, but I wouldn't imagine it being cost effective at all. You may not see the results you are hoping for either for the cost. Heck a B18B1 can be turboed up to 7 boost stock, gains great results, and is far cheaper than a swap. Don't remember what the 2001 Accord had in it, but still I dunno that'd I'd waste my money on an H22 swap if I didn't know enough to do it myself.

Chaos/Zone has stopped peering. It was not because of my threat, it just brought it to mind that they had thought about stopping it to test if anyone complained, and now decided why not. There was an old thread, some of you (maybe most) were not around for. It spread all over SS, and soon tons of players we joining in on it. ZippyDan wrote an essay against what Priit was doing at the time, and things going on in the game. Priit attempted to defend himself in this thread, but was constantly attacked from all sides of players angry at SSC, the Closed Sourceness of the Game, and the "power-mongers" in general. It may be no coincidence the only real release after this time was Continuum .39pr1, and the fact .39 Final sat finished and unreleased for 4 years (Priit admitted to this himself). Rampant cheating and constant poking from Ghost Ship is the only thing that got us .39 Final (renamed .40). From replies since then, Priit does still care enough to keep the lights on (most likely servers paid to be managed by Superb - the hosting company), but he lacks motivation, time, or dedication to do much more. The fact Continuum is not solely his code or work, he lacks the rights to give us the source. To login to a zone that says 40 people and all 40 are in spec, it sucks sure, but normally atleast 1 or 2 of them are not completely afk. To see a zone with population of 100+, and find only 2 players, feels like someone pulled the rug out from under you. And you find yourself looking for all the others wondering wtf. This doesn't only happen to new players, nor only vets, even active players. I remember when I got home from work, looking through the tickets, open Continuum and saw EG, Chaos, etc. with tons of players thinking "Holy Crap some sort of advertising finally worked!". I only found my hopes dashed when I learned it was a side effect of the arena sharing. Heard a lot of players make that same comment that day, and many part time players thinking someone revived the game to find out otherwise. Sure, we're still here, but it sucked even for us. Can't imagine the feeling a newb or an old player returning has when they realize they were wronged. The feature has an ability to be great and do good. But it requires changes we currently cannot make ourselves. There are ways around it using the abilities Powerball has given by being the controller, but instead it will be used as another attempt to force Priit into doing something. Something that may be answered with "fine, don't like it, go somewhere else" and off go some of those lights. Or he may not do anything and just ignore it. Sure you don't know til you try, but I'd be prepared for all 3 scenarios. As for my threat and deadline, will have to wait and see wheter it was empty or not.

When previous reviews have been posted the people quickly jumped on the site "being small" and meaningless. Which was not the point here, the point was that someone period was pointing out the issue from the outside. On top of that, anyone who knows my horrible grammar and spelling, would tell you I couldn't type that if I wanted. If you look to previous posts on the issue, I was a supporter, but more and more I have seen the other side's points. I just happen to be louder than them. And 2 of them are also ASSS zone head sysops. EG has an asss server setup, and the option to move to ASSS on PB's hosting. Subgame is closed source, and always will be. Continuum is closed source and always will be. Can you blame Priit for stopping development? Would you continue developing for a group of people who are unthankful and constantly bitching at / attacking you? His entire desire to spend anytime on this game was lost, and now we pay for it. The reason for the short time is a few people have mentioned issues with Windows 8 and the installer (guess few had issues with Windows 7 too, but not enough to warrant fixes) and I'd rather update it to see if that fixes the issues. It needs various other updates anyways (almost half the zone list is red, if not more now) and so if I repack a working one, might as well release it. The problem is until very recently they had just dropped the subject and begun ignoring it. Obviously this has gotten the ball rolling again.

At the Moment: SSCX Chaos/League Zone SVS (*) ops:* bans:* players:34 (Client: 106) SSCU Extreme Games (*) ops:* bans:* players:74 (Client: 118) SSCU Extreme Games (*) ops:* bans:* players:4 (Client: 70) - Lists as SSCX Extreme Games SSCX PowerBall (*) ops:* bans:* players:6 (Client: 99) How would it not be frustrating to a new player (or any player at that) to see 99 in Powerball, go in, and 6 players all in spec (maybe less pending on sub arena bots)?

Resol is only angry his server was denied SSC access, but that is another subject. The reasoning behind the threat is to start discussion, which it has brought some talk in the council, and a lot in game. Everytime someone complained about it wheter in the council, in game, or on the forums the zones involved just ignored it. If you brought up the subject, they just said Priit needs to fix the "bug" and they wouldn't remove it. Granted EG tried to upload the patched fix.dll (inadvertingly crashing the zone for some time), but noone has just thought to disable the feature until such time that another work around could be found. Heck, the arenas can be shared without the population... Many in their own zones have even protested it from the start, and more and more have joined calling it a useless feature. A few in EG brought up the point it shoves the EG arenas down below all the shared arenas which they find rather annoying. You code a module or a bot and it doesn't work right: do you leave it up running regardless of the issues or do you shut it down and try to fix it?

No, Spade12 was never staff here. Thinkin it mighta been Spyed not Spade. He had the Pokemon zone.

Priit hasn't been active here in many many years. Few years back, SyrusMX (for reasons I still don't understand) thought it a good idea to purge almost 4500 user accounts. This was also around the time Spade? (forget his exact alias) purged a whole crap load of posts from general discussion. There were no database back ups being done by the admins during my hiatus, so all was sadly lost. That coupled with the database corruption from us using an illegal copy of vBulletin before buying a license really killed this place. Heck, even 4yrs ago we had ~140-150 people visiting daily. Now we're lucky to see 50.

Probably just a temporary hiccup, but trust me, a lot of discussion on the subject going on atm. I am repacking a new installer at the end of the month to update a few things, tweak a few settings, and include some information/faqs for issues many people run into. I told them I would not include any of the zones with inflated population in the installer's default zone.dat, and really got some talk going. Only time will tell. Trying to make people understand a feature that works as its creator intended, and not as they intended, is not a bug. Priit isn't jumping on this "bug" because it is working as he intended it to originally. It just doesn't work the way they want it to, so it is a "bug". I'll admit to supporting this and calling it a bug myself, but I have seen the other side of the story and continue seeing the bad side effects of it.

I think that is meant more as like *warn or a message from staff than a chat for staff themselves. Otherwise it'd be pointless to show everyone.

A big wide movie screen has a total different effect on people though. Kind of like Cloverfield in the movie theater gave my wife a headache so bad we had to leave early. While watching it on my own tv, she sat down and joined me not realizing what it was at first and had absolutely no issues. But yes, I agree there is a lot to be said about the current TV programming... Kind of like what happened to MTV for example...

Actually you are both partially wrong. We went over this in one of my old high school digital media classes many many moons ago. The Human eye does not perceive in frames or images, it takes in a solid stream of data that if possible to break down on a per electric signal basis would be equivalant to 150 fps. The human eyes vary of course on their perception of what frames look smoother than others (same as you have some people in need of glasses, and others not). The average person has an easy time telling the difference between 60fps and 40fps. But there are people capable of telling the difference between 100 fps and 60fps. Others with weaker eyes had issues telling the difference between 15fps and 30fps. It is all based on the strength of your eye. It is just the same with resolution. Some people could tell if an object was 1 pixel off center, while others could barely distinguish 5 or 10. And many could tell something didn't have a fine line at 1280x720 while others could barely tell at 1024x768. If you look online, you'll find various answers, and many are just spewing the common "60fps" answer. But when you get down to it, it is a lot more person to person basis than a single answer. Edit: Oh, and 1 other cool thing I read about a couple years ago was how higher fps is actually heavily damaging to your eyes. And that they found 48fps+ in movies would actually make people sick. Think it was at 60fps people felt the film looked too realistic even, and that it ruined any of the typical blending effects used on CGI which made it look totally fake.

^ Is exactly why Continuum by default limits the framerate. You have to disable the framerate limit to achieve higher, and your average player doesn't do this nor knows how to. Edit: Just for shits and giggles, disabled the "No Framerate Limit" in advanced options, and it tries to keep mine around 128 fps (120hz monitor). Turn it back on and right back to 320. Not sure that Continuum is accessing my Monitor drivers (though it does record them in your billing registration when you create a name), but just seems a bit interesting.

DSB has the lucky fact they run their own server. Stag Shot modified the fix.dll (1 byte change btw) so that their zone won't add the shared arena populations to its total population. Extreme Games tried uploading this fix.dll in a shady kind of way, and it crashed EG and kept it offline for a couple hours until Priit could restore it. Sadly seems he restored the old fix.dll. He has been sent the fixed fix.dll and told of how to fix the it if he wishes to do it himself. Nothing has happened yet, but Ghost said he will try spamming him himself after this weekend.

60 fps is perfectly fine tbh. Most console games only run at 30 fps, and movies at 24 fps. Even the best LCDs don't display past 120 fps, while avg ones are locked at 60fps. The only benefit for higher frame rates is so if there is any processor lag or if your display discards a lot of those frames, you don't get skippy/choppy action. Above that, it is just about bragging rights. As to the issues I know it was found with a lot of new nvidia cards that you had to enable all the options at the bottom of "Advanced Options" to achieve optimal performance. A few didn't even display resolutions without "Show Default Resolutions" checked. I'd say give another game a test go (IE: CS:Source) and see what your results are. If you find it only to be continuum, play around with those advanced options to find the best results.

Esc+C is not client based, it is based on the template.sss that is server side. LC: Frequency Shift played with the game sounds. Would play with the pitch of the sounds and distort them by making them higher or lower. Since Continuum made sound replacements easier, and plans for LVZs made it possible for zones to add custom sounds, it was removed. I know for a fact we did that in Bulldogger, and I think T3 may have also had it enabled. Can't recall any other public arenas, but quite a few subs in zones also used it. They may still even have it enabled, but would have to use SubSpace to find out.