[bfprog] RE: BFProg Digest, Fling and Leagues

Sat Jul 30 16:38:47 PDT 2005

The only way to ensure that the fling and kill functions work in with the
expected result is to check the player's vehicle or vehicle type.  Obviously
players in non-damageable vehicles or vehicles which don't descend would be
immune to these functions.  The solution is either a remove player from
vehicle function or a 100% surefire way to kill a player separately from
just blowing up their vehicle. I'm sure you guys have seen the zombie-like
undead state where you need to run over the player in order to get them to
the spawn screen.  Hopefully DICE will look into this and provide us with
this basic functionality.  Unfortunately, the Python system hasn't really
lived up to be quite the "extensible" r-con that it was touted to be. It is
nice to be able to get more output from the server and perform server side
checks and auto-admin.  Now we just need tested and proven methods for the
most basic admin functions such as kill, switch teams, assign and remove
commander and squads/squad leaders etc.

As far as guaranteeing validity and authenticity of scripts the best system
would be to have the server manager constantly perform CRC or MD5 hashes of
the "acceptable league scripts". The manager could also verify specific
server settings as well. When the round is over the manager could output
hashed data in an email to the league for review.  I think this is something
that needs to be answered by the leagues themselves though. They need to
decide just how vulnerable the scripts are to hacks etc.  I've played in
leagues before and I can tell you if there's a way to cheat it will become
rampant immediately and across the entire league.  That's just my
observation and experience. If the league wants to ensure a fair playing
field they need to invest their time and money to do so or just allow ALL
cheats!

-----Original Message-----
From: bfprog-bounces at lists.matureasskickers.net
[mailto:bfprog-bounces at lists.matureasskickers.net] On Behalf Of
bfprog-request at lists.matureasskickers.net
Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2005 3:00 PM
To: bfprog at lists.matureasskickers.net
Subject: BFProg Digest, Vol 2, Issue 20

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Today's Topics:

   1. RE: BFProg Digest, Removing a player from a vehicle (Brandon)
   2. Re: RE: BFProg Digest, Removing a player from a vehicle
      (Omnix (PsB))
   3. Re: RE: BFProg Digest, Removing a player from a vehicle
      (Einar S. Ids?)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 15:52:05 -0400
From: "Brandon" <brandon at bf2cc.com>
Subject: [bfprog] RE: BFProg Digest, Removing a player from a vehicle
To: <bfprog at lists.matureasskickers.net>
Message-ID: <64BC11EF69A041BDA0BA369953566F.MAI at milehiservers.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"

I don't believe it is possible to remove a player from a vehicle. We have
tried with no success.  We have a fling command in our scripts that will
move a player into the air, but I'm also afraid that this will promote
cheating in clan matches.  Anyone can create a script to move their players
forward more rapidly or into sniping positions etc.

-----Original Message-----
From: bfprog-bounces at lists.matureasskickers.net
[mailto:bfprog-bounces at lists.matureasskickers.net] On Behalf Of
bfprog-request at lists.matureasskickers.net
Sent: Friday, July 29, 2005 3:00 PM
To: bfprog at lists.matureasskickers.net
Subject: BFProg Digest, Vol 2, Issue 19

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	bfprog at lists.matureasskickers.net

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Today's Topics:

   1. Implementing a slap-function (Einar S. Ids?)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 17:03:15 +0200
From: "Einar S. Ids?" <esi at itk.ntnu.no>
Subject: [bfprog] Implementing a slap-function
To: Battlefield Programming <bfprog at lists.matureasskickers.net>
Message-ID: <42EA4533.7010503 at itk.ntnu.no>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Does anyone know how to programmatically make a player exit a vehicle
and become a foot-soldier?

Why I'm asking:
We are working on an ingame-admin script with quite similar
functionality to Kevin Lockitt's BFxM-series in which you could issue
commands such as !kick <partofplayername> in the ingame-chat (sidenote:
that function was a result of our community's ideas and my close
communication with Kevin as beta-tester :)). As a part of the
command-repertoire we'd like a slap-type command to get a player's
attention when they don't listen to !warn-messages.

One of the ways of making a slap is to set the player coordinates five
hundred meters above their current location - now that should get their
attention, all right! This is quite easy to do, but there are some problems:

1. When slapping the passenger of a vehicle, nothing happens until the
passenger exits the vehicle, at which point the slap takes effect.

2. When slapping a soldier who is using a firmly placed weapon such as
TOW or AA, the entire object is transposed 500 meters up, not just the
player. It doesn't fall back down like a tank would, probably because it
has no mass-properties.

3. Weapons fired from a Cobra after the co-pilot had been slapped, were
fired 500 meters above the heli.

All of these instances can be explained with the fact that it's the
player's vehicle-object that is being lifted the 500 meters. When the
player is not a foot-soldier this means that his vehicle is his
AA-weapon, his gun on the chopper etc. It is of course possible to run
the slap only when the vehicle is of type footsoldier, but that really
limits its use.

All of these problems would have been avoided if we had a way of forcing
a player to exit his vehicle immediately before he is slapped. I can't
find any methods to do this, unfortunately - anyone else?

Other clever suggestions to how we can make this function or a similar
one are also appreciated. Making a kill-function would inherit many of
the problems from the slap-function, so this is a problem that would be
nice to solve for more reasons than one :)

Cheers,
Einar, Kybber @ Battlefield.no

------------------------------

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End of BFProg Digest, Vol 2, Issue 19
*************************************

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 21:05:56 +0100
From: Omnix (PsB) <omnix at punksbusted.com>
Subject: Re: [bfprog] RE: BFProg Digest, Removing a player from a
	vehicle
To: Battlefield Programming <bfprog at lists.matureasskickers.net>
Message-ID: <20050729210556.3c286197 at localhost>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

On Fri, 29 Jul 2005 15:52:05 -0400
"Brandon" <brandon at bf2cc.com> wrote:

> I don't believe it is possible to remove a player from a vehicle. We
> have tried with no success.  We have a fling command in our scripts
> that will move a player into the air, but I'm also afraid that this
> will promote cheating in clan matches.  Anyone can create a script to
> move their players forward more rapidly or into sniping positions etc.
> <snip>

This is down to trusting the server admin at the end of the day, as with
many other similar things.  However, is there something that BF2CC could
provide to _players_ in the server to assure them that the server is
"clean"?

Here are a few ideas - the possibility for players to enumerate all
modules loaded by ModManager, the admin scripts loaded into memory and
also, a sanity check for BF2CC and related scripts itself (i.e. checking
scripts match released or versions deemed 'safe').

While this when implemented as a server side option could be open to
fiddling itself, but as long as it doesn't provide a false sense of
security, it might be a useful function for leagues etc.

-- 
Omnix, PunksBusted Staff
Building a safer gaming community, one server at a time

e: omnix at punksbusted.com  w: http://www.punksbusted.com

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 22:20:10 +0200
From: "Einar S. Ids?" <esi at itk.ntnu.no>
Subject: Re: [bfprog] RE: BFProg Digest, Removing a player from a
	vehicle
To: Battlefield Programming <bfprog at lists.matureasskickers.net>
Message-ID: <42EA8F7A.2090300 at itk.ntnu.no>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Do you do this for footsoldiers only? If not, have you experienced any
of the problems I described when flinging copilots and such? Have you
found a smart way to get around them?

Einar

Brandon wrote:
> I don't believe it is possible to remove a player from a vehicle. We have
> tried with no success.  We have a fling command in our scripts that will
> move a player into the air, but I'm also afraid that this will promote
> cheating in clan matches.  Anyone can create a script to move their
players
> forward more rapidly or into sniping positions etc.

------------------------------

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End of BFProg Digest, Vol 2, Issue 20
*************************************