Mac Gaming Mods

Hello everyone,
I'm fairly new to the forums, but I've been a long time player of Halo and HaloMD. The downside to the application is the horrible lobby, it's always empty.
I've come up with a solution, I can list every server (that is compatible) from GameSpy's lobby. I read during the development of HaloMD you guys had some troubles getting this to work.
I would be happy to share my knowledge of how I did it, and I have a few ideas on how to integrate it. (Seperation between modded maps and the only compatible map, Bloodgulch, from gamespy.)

Thanks,
-Darry

The goal wasn't to show GameSpy's lobby. If you were after Halo Full lobby, you would use Halo Full.

The next version will have a way to add servers from outside of MD's lobby. (It's even already possible now through editing a file in HaloMD's app support folder; just a lack of UI).

The lobby is sometimes empty, but not always. At this moment I'm making this post, the lobby is active. I don't know why people exaggerate this.

The phoenix/parallax server is actually on the gamespy lobby, but only because the server owner also wants his server to show up on our lobby, and vise versa. The phoenix server in particular, even though it's on the gamespy lobby, gets more of its traffic from MD. Additionally some of our servers show up to PC players using xfire due to using sapp.

You can't join every single server in the full lobby, so you may as well handpick which servers you as a player want to join, rather than having MD show these non-trusted servers (that can change the map at any time) out of the box. You as a player can even grab the other full version maps and place them in your Maps folder if you want.

The big advantage to our approach is that I see MD as a platform. It's one thing to be able to have a large portion of people to play with; it's another thing to have most of our players on the same version. In other words, in any game if you were able to find someone new that you like, you should able to easily say "hey, let's go to the bigass server" or "let's go onto the chatroom" without him looking at you confusedly.

nil wrote:The next version will have a way to add servers from outside of MD's lobby. (It's even already possible now through editing a file in HaloMD's app support folder; just a lack of UI).

The lobby is sometimes empty, but not always. At this moment I'm making this post, the lobby is active. I don't know why people exaggerate this.

The phoenix/parallax server is actually on the gamespy lobby, but only because the server owner also wants his server to show up on our lobby, and vise versa. The phoenix server in particular, even though it's on the gamespy lobby, gets more of its traffic from MD. Additionally some of our servers show up to PC players using xfire due to using sapp.

You can't join every single server in the full lobby, so you may as well handpick which servers you as a player want to join, rather than having MD show these non-trusted servers (that can change the map at any time) out of the box. You as a player can even grab the other full version maps and place them in your Maps folder if you want.

The big advantage to our approach is that I see MD as a platform. It's one thing to be able to have a large portion of people to play with; it's another thing to have most of our players on the same version. In other words, in any game if you were able to find someone new that you like, you should able to easily say "hey, let's go to the bigass server" or "let's go onto the chatroom" without him looking at you confusedly.

I understand what you're saying, but it's hard to enjoy the only 3 semi-active servers available, and some weird hours or in some strange countries, this can be difficult.
I think the UI should have an option to "Show Gamespy Servers", it would be very simple and allow you to have more options.
Even though it's just Bloodgulch, many of the servers are modded, which can be a lot more fun. Before Bigass started all the servers were empty, rarely getting 13 players.

I've mastered the handpicking part with an automated script I'm currently using.

• Filtering Map: Blood Gulch
• Filting Client Version: All the working versions
• Filtering bad-mods that can't run (non css bloodgulch, or weird server configurations)
• Full list of high quality players and servers in a simple IP:PORT output.
• Experimental, ability to detect map rotations in past hour for different maps.

I know we have different views, you want a classic single client, but if you're interested I've made an alpha version of my vision of a "Updated Halo":
[spoiler]
I've personally modded the client, tell me if you think about my setup:
- You must have a registered name, with server verifying username/password.
- Your account has a profile setup, (currently on my localhost web server).
- You can see your statistics and some made up ranks. (buggy since the sever won't send me data unless I get some authorization).

I think it would make the game more tightly spun of a community and having a list of top 10 killers of the day etc, it's fun and motivatious.
It would also reduce trolling and allow administration to be easier, you would feel more dedicated.
[/spoiler]

Darry wrote: I understand what you're saying, but it's hard to enjoy the only 3 semi-active servers available, and some weird hours or in some strange countries, this can be difficult.
I think the UI should have an option to "Show Gamespy Servers", it would be very simple and allow you to have more options.
Even though it's just Bloodgulch, many of the servers are modded, which can be a lot more fun. Before Bigass started all the servers were empty, rarely getting 13 players.

Just for info, this link might be helpful.

Having modded maps that use "bloodgulch", even if they're CSS, is not in the spirit of MD. It used to be a problem in Demo (and is in Full) where players would be annoyed joining a game without knowing it's modded, and without knowing what mod it is. This has been a solved issue.

Before Bigass, BG servers did fill up especially on Foxhole. Time of the day still matters greatly though.

I see where you're coming from, but I personally think that spreading the word (e.g. youtube, mac whatever) and telling people about MD to a newer bigger pool of audience, should rank higher than hooking up with an old PC player base being limited by what they can't do.

Darry wrote: I've mastered the handpicking part with an automated script I'm currently using.

• Filtering Map: Blood Gulch
• Filting Client Version: All the working versions
• Filtering bad-mods that can't run (non css bloodgulch, or weird server configurations)
• Full list of high quality players and servers in a simple IP:PORT output.
• Experimental, ability to detect map rotations in past hour for different maps.

Every MD user has a made-up serial key. It should be the normal case that an MD user can't join a full version server and will get an "invalid serial key" notice. Servers that work otherwise are modified to be "cracked" or disable cd key check, and may lose the ability to do effective CD key banning. There is no easy way to filter this programmatically; it'd just involve handpicking servers. (And I have a bad feeling that just because someone can join a game with his invalid key at one moment doesn't imply another person can with his the next)

Darry wrote: I know we have different views, you want a classic single client, but if you're interested I've made an alpha version of my vision of a "Updated Halo":
[spoiler]
I've personally modded the client, tell me if you think about my setup:
- You must have a registered name, with server verifying username/password.
- Your account has a profile setup, (currently on my localhost web server).
- You can see your statistics and some made up ranks. (buggy since the sever won't send me data unless I get some authorization).

I think it would make the game more tightly spun of a community and having a list of top 10 killers of the day etc, it's fun and motivatious.
It would also reduce trolling and allow administration to be easier, you would feel more dedicated.
[/spoiler]

I find not having a registered username and password is just simpler, and trying to hack this in a game that doesn't care about this enforcement both on the client and server side is just asking for trouble.

A clan battle system could be beneficial for private games, but I feel this should be integrated onto a separate website (or as a MD plug-in), and not bother people who don't want to care about it. I as well as others like to play in public games casually.

nil wrote:I see where you're coming from, but I personally think that spreading the word (e.g. youtube, mac whatever) and telling people about MD to a newer bigger pool of audience, should rank higher than hooking up with an old PC player base being limited by what they can't do.

That would be great, but it's not something you can count on, especially considering that there is nowhere else in the Halo community you can market to. The Halo mac players are either on MD, or they aren't around on Halo anymore. MD primarily exists because of the extremely limited number of mac keys for Halo Full, that's why you were all on trial for so long. It's not going to be very realistic to count on gaining members that don't have a previous history with Halo.

MD has decent activity now, but it's not going to survive nearly as long as Full as long as you keep it separate, because it simply doesn't have the numbers. Both are slowly dying, and more quickly as long as they're kept apart. You can have a controlled uniform experience, or you can more greatly benefit the community by giving them more players and content.

Media that is successful and media that isn't, is only how people will remember it. If it doesn't succeed, it doesn't matter if it took a gallon of blood and 3 years of work. You made MD for the community, keep making it for the community.

I feel that is a wrong perspective.

MD has activity now because people find about it, even despite how poorly it's been advertised. If we relied on an old user base, MD would have almost no Mac players. You say mac players are either on MD or aren't on Halo anymore, but how do you think they got on MD in the first place? Most of our user base is completely new. They are not from a previous Halo user base - there is plenty of room for more people to find this game.

It being difficult to buy this game certainly does help us, but so does us packaging a 0-cost version that is dead simple to run.

Ultimately I think some major software change will be what will kill this game for us in the future, like it did with the old Demo.

[edit]: So I launched up my copy of full version just for kicks and I am basically shocked how much the public servers have deteriorated.

nil's right about the current userbase of MD; the vast majority of people I've been playing with as of late have been people I never knew on the old Demo. Moreover, I think it's easy to overestimate the extinction rate of games like MD - I was playing Aleph One, a free, modernized version of the Marathon games that I played with my dad when I was five years old, well into my teens. That community is still alive today, and I guarantee it's not made up of the same old farts I was playing with.

At the end of the day, MD is free, fun, and in many ways does a better job at a lot of the things we used to use Full and Demo for. I don't see why we need to compromise that to reach an audience that'll probably go extinct faster than we will.

I'd like to point out www.hackforums.net has a big gaming community, a section dedicated to Halo.
I'll give it a whirl towards mac users.

Also bigass dedicated server is gone, sad face.

It's probably just temporarily down.

(I'll just point out that unlike Aleph One, Halo isn't open sourced, so eventually we'll run into a wall and won't last as long).

The Bigass server is paid monthly. Give the owner some time.