Proposed Challenge Rules

by **Jediluke** » Thu Oct 03, 2013 9:13 am

Fair enough. Your argument makes sense from that perspective.

I rescend my argument but stand by my offer to give him windows for free allowing him to enjoy homers the way they should be and smarts.

(but fyi: I understand it is not about ME but I can only offer MY opinions from MY perspective and argue MY points to which I have also answered with rational compromise. I am not seeking to give myself an advantage...I am seeking to eliminate advantages through competitive fairness across the board....we just don't agree on how to get there. We SHOULD be playing a single version of the game and that version is homer mod imo. and to allow anyone to deviate from that is opening the door to a flood of competitive inequalities imo.)

by **RiTides** » Thu Oct 03, 2013 9:53 am

Cheers Jedi, and I do agree with you about a single version being best. Hopefully 58.2 makes this all a moot point!

by **Drakona** » Thu Oct 03, 2013 11:36 am

I'm not sure it's entirely open and shut, though you make a pretty good case clone.

"Players Lead" isn't the only philosophy to consider. I don't have a pithy phrase for it, but the other important philosophy is honoring and encouraging piloting excellence. Competition over participation, opportunities for glory. That sort of thing. This place is supposed to be for high skilled 1v1 competitors.

I don't want to damage high-stakes play with multiple versions of the game. The game should be stable, correct, and then untouched. I think playing with two kinds of homing behavior does damage it. Maybe not a ton by historical (multiple FPS) standards, but it' still something. Maybe the non-retro homers are something you can be expected to adjust to like lag . . . most people do seem to be treating it that way . . . but it is damage nonetheless, and that's not something to discount.

You make a very strong case that Loni isn't having trouble getting games, though! I did say to Jedi that if someone who "normally" plays Loni wants out of a challenge on account of non-retro homers, I'd be pretty skeptical. I didn't realize that was more or less everyone except Jedi himself!

by **Jediluke** » Thu Oct 03, 2013 12:04 pm

imo there should be only one set of variables pressed upon us by the game itself that we have to deal with. We can't necessarily account for player connection issues but we can, to a large degree, control the way the game behaves through modification of the code to make it behave more like the original game. (aka homer mod, which affects more than the homers)

At the highest level of competitiveness an extra homer kill or two or an extra smart missile kill or two or eliminating secondaries thus affecting kills that would have been earned with them otherwise is enough to affect the outcome of the game.

It's win by 2 points. Almost every game DJCJR and I have played in recent months has been decided by those 2 points and that spread shouldn't be affected by differing weapon variables from game to game but by our own personal skill at handling the variables that can be controlled.

There needs to be one definitive version of this game to compete at the highest level. Now, if that's a fork...so be it. If it's getting Drak's code in to the main release of 58.2 and it takes ALL of us to email bomb the guy building it...then we should do that.

by **RiTides** » Thu Oct 03, 2013 12:18 pm

Agreed on both of the above posts. But a definitive version of the game ought to support macs, so if as expected 58.2 does that and also incorporates the homer mod, we should be good to go.

by **Jediluke** » Thu Oct 03, 2013 12:54 pm

If it does, great.
Do we know if it's going to? Are the smarts going to be fixed as well?

If not, then we need work towards making that happen. IF he isn't willing to make that happen then we need to fork it.

Again, dual boot for free should be a viable option. I'm not sure why that gets ignored.

by **RiTides** » Thu Oct 03, 2013 2:24 pm

I think the homing of everything is going to be addressed, but it'd be good to verify. Do you have any inside info on that, Drakona?

I think they posted as much on the Rebirth forum (and maybe on the Rangers, too). Will see if I can find the post.

by **Drakona** » Thu Oct 03, 2013 2:33 pm

I only know what's been posted publicly on forums. Zico's hamer02 build is the same as my Retrohomer build in all the important places, though there are some philosophical differences. It isn't identical, so it needs to pass playtest. So far the playtest results have been positive.

Hamer02 was one of a couple homer builds he was considering. I have no idea what he decided to put into core Rebirth, or if the code has changed in the six weeks since I examined it.

I don't know how smarts perform in Hamer02, and there are definitely subtleties involved with getting them to work right if you're messing with homing code. I screwed it up the first time I tried! I have no idea if it's been done correctly in Hamer02.

I also don't know what he decided to do about D2.

So . . . I'm hopeful, but I'm kind of in 'wait and see' mode.

by **RiTides** » Thu Oct 03, 2013 3:08 pm

Any chance we could ask him for a second round of feedback- particularly regarding smart missiles? Maybe I'll put up a thread over there on this...

by **ryusei117** » Thu Oct 03, 2013 3:14 pm

The last update I saw was that zico decided to apply the D1 tracking cones to D2X-Rebirth (). Browsing back through his commits to the unification/master branch at the , I can see that that's still the latest tweak he's done, and that the current state of D1X-Rebirth's homing code still seems to be that of the hamer02 build.

Also, Kreator () is the maintainer of Rebirth's Mac builds. I have no clue whether he's contactable, but I would assume he knows how to build Rebirth on Mac. (This whole Mac issue probably wouldn't exist if cross compilers targeting Mac were more readily available …)