i like your last point skeletor, because it reflects similar views i have . . . you make a law against killing people, period. you don't need laws about killing people with guns versus kiling people with knives, because they're both already illegal. making a further law to make guns illegal because you can do illegal things with them is preposterous. logistically the additional law (guns are illegal because you can kill people with them) does nothing, because there is already a law in place concerning that issue(killing people with anything is illegal). all the additional law does (aside from possible psychological ramifications which i won't deny the possibility of) is restrict legal and harmless uses of guns (hunting, sport, self-defense, etc).

similarly, legislating against all scripts because you can use some scripts to abuse the game is pointless when abusing the game is already prohibited. instead you create an issue where there was none (ie the notion that someone can be a "scripter," which is entirely false. while i concede that you can do "bad" things with scripts, the bad things have nothing to do with making you "better" at the game and are quite obvious) and block innocent utilization of a valid feature.

the thread was less of a summarization of my position and more of an interesting collection of a few quotes i liked. its true, you can script almost everything that has a legitimate purpose with bs 1. but have you tried? imagine taking a whole config and stringing it out so that every single variable is tied to the previous one through a series of +/- aliases that turns your 15 settings into 45+ lines of code whereas you could have just put "bind f8 exec fade.cfg" into your config.cfg. then do that for every config. just so server admins can have some "protection" against an imaginary army of script abusing lamers.

it also evens the ground between poor people and people with n52's and triple fire mouses, and between people with carpal tunnel and ex-diablo2 clickmasters. there's a cap on the pistol for a reason and i think its safe to say that anything under or at the cap is perfectly legitimate . . . there's no question that current pistol scripts aren't hardly abusive. plenty of people can hit the cap with their finger only, plenty of people bind it to two or more keys, plenty of people have innocuous hardware macros(or a notchless mousewheel) that do it for them. typing 'alias +p +attack' and 'alias -p "-attack; wait; wait; +attack; wait; wait; -attack" in the console lets everyone without those advantages do it too.

i could keep going, really. but i think i'm nearing the point of diminishing returns.

My, my, and I thought I liked to yell at brick walls.

I'm sick of people thinking you can turn yourself into god or Goobag with scripts, but blockscripts on gives us one less avenue of trouble to deal with, and one more hurdle for would be sploiters and server crashers to deal with. (The more, the better.)

I myself irked at the blockscripts thing at first (cuz again, I've thousands - my autoexec.cfg was almost 100k when we added it, I had to adjust my zone size just to get NS to load!) but I noticed, from an admin standpoint (adminning 5 servers at the time), that it really did cut down on a lot of amateur trolls, vs. the crap I was dealing with regularly on the other servers that didn't have it.

Really, I'm tempted to disable aliases and any usage of semi-colons, just to put everyone on the same playing field... And I probably would have already written up the plugin to do so - except half my admin, command, and communication scripts would bite the dust, and I'm just too lazy to setup windows macros to replace them all.

Plus Goobag would never be able to talk again.
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"Has everyone been incapacitated by a unknown virus introduced into the world population in order to incapacitate internet users by slowing typing speed to a reallllly slow pace ....or am I just lagged?" - Deidre
Thothie

We block the spec for the same reason we kick people from the ready room. When we have it open, it gets used for idlers more than anything else.

I've not looked at what admin level our spec blocker requires (or even if its an AMX plugin or a metamod). If its an AMX plugin we've the source for, I can set a special admin level for it, and we can give spectator access to a few select individuals that way, without giving them actual admin, and revoke it if they start abusing it for idle.
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"First of all, Papa Smurf didn't create Smurfette. Gargamel did. She was sent in as Gargamel's evil spy with the intention of destroying the Smurf village, but the overwhelming goodness of the Smurf way of life transformed her." - Donnie, discounting a Smurf sexual fantasy proposed by a friend
Thothie

Beowulf, I see your point. It some ways, it's very similar to DRM arguments - why limit the use of P2P technology when there are legal uses for it? Nevermind that MOST of the use is illegal. So why limit the use of scripts when there are legitimate uses for them, and (in Beowulf's opinion), it doesn't really do much to stem the exploiting?

But I digress. Mostly I'm glad this can be discussed in a civil manner instead of the usual scripts flame war that erupts. I think it's the last point that Thoth disagrees with - in his experience, blockscripts really does help stem exploiters. (Correct me if I'm putting words in your mouth, but I think I'm right.)

Of course, our analogies are limited. The main difference I see between this server and the laws of the United States is that this is definitely NOT a democracy. You don't have these things called "rights". Basically, when His Pinkness decrees it, it shall be so. So, in summary: point taken, agree-to-disagree, pip-pip-cheerio.

What I don't like about the spec mod is the bad people know to behave when someone is in there watching because they know its an admin, so they will play nice/regular when they see someone in there....

I would concur, and thoth your shady for having the quote log be a fake sig, I just now got that... Cute...

You could have admins around to kick the people who idle in the spec mode. I really dont think there would be many because most of the time the server is full of people who want to play.

Yeah, we tried that when we migrated from AMX to ModX, and well, we scrambled to find that spectator blocker real fast.


Didn't feel like going through the hell the specator mask caused last time (maybe some other time, I'll try), but today I added some mods to the goco15 plugin that should.

- Turn on all talk in CO mode
- Uncap Autoconcede/limitteams in CO mode, so players can setup marines vs. insane # of bots, if they so wish.
- Put back some FNOTD bot names (although probably not all the same ones, cuz de memory, it be fuzzy...)

Won't know if its working proper until Watts clears out of there and the map changes though.

edit:
Hmm... Not taking effect for some reason. >_>
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"He who sees no evil, and hears no evil, and speaks no evil, can do no good."
Thothie

NOES!

Keep us posted thoth

Meh, before my puter fried itself I tried again, but no idea if it is working. I think maybe the co_mode.cfg file I created didn't take hold due to permissions or some such, so I changed the plugin to make the changes itself. (annoying, as it makes it less dynamic)

Another change I tried to make but didn't get to test, was setting up the "nextmap" command, so it returns the ACTUAL nextmap, based on the number of players, rather than the map it would be, if you were the only player on the server. (No more grones of "omfg not CO!" - from n00bs who see the false nextmap reports.)

Considering adding ns_mineshaft to the rotation, but only if there are 16 players present - to ensure the server doesn't get emptied by custom map load.
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"No quote file today: the system is down."
Thothie

Alltalk wasn't on last night

the system

is taking over!

dancing robots

Alltalk worked last night.

Unless that was goobag.

oh and occasionally I get svc bad and dropped after a match is won / lost

Tis a Steam thang, not related to the AMX.
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"Sacrifice more babies to Gabe Newell, STAT!"
Thothie

please consider doing away with all co maps on this server.
co blows.
classic ns maps is where its at.
co is waaaay worse than counterstrike.
its probably just beacuse i suck, but co is shitty.
at least with the classic ns maps i have a team to fall back on.
this 0 kills and 999 deaths crap has to stop, and its not gonna be beacuse i get any better.
i have played on this server on and off since ns first came out, so this is proof that i will never get better.
so, the jiglly server should just give into me and get rid of co maps.

seriously though, at least make the voting system switch to co maps when the majority vote for it and not just 2 people.

o yeah, and another thing:
co is for sluts.