Recent Valve change limits creativity for server mods. (Petition)

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voogru

L1: Registered
Feb 17, 2008
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tl;dr

Valve is intentionally breaking mod functionality, preventing plug-in authors from attaching entities to players. This is a petition asking them nicely to consider reversing this policy.

This kind of policy going forward towards modifications may eventually break other kinds of mods that use various Source engine features for creativity.

If you are a server operator, please encourage your community members to sign the petition as well. Because this affects them just as much as server operators and plug-in authors, because they are the main beneficiary of these kinds of plug-ins, the players.

https://secure.voogru.com/petition/index.php
If you post a comment, please be nice and respectful, being nasty will not get us anywhere.

Full version:

In the 1.0.8.6 TF2 update, Valve put in a new policy that prevents server modifications from attaching entities to players and having the attached entity be visible.

This greatly limits creativity with server-side mods, a list of what this new policy breaks:

1. Custom, unofficial hats. One example of this is my servers "AWESOME!" hat which is a giant yellow ball with the famous awesome smiley. Valve can't possibly add every single hat to TF2 and some servers have special unique hats. Essentially, all servers are barred from using anything as a hat.

2. Custom, unofficial and on-the-fly generated weapons that server modifications may issue to players. An example of this is my dodgeball flamethrower for my servers. Custom weapons simply are not going to be drawn to other players (and possibly the owner itself)

3. Any future game play modification that may want to attach an entity to a player for a variety of reasons. PropHunt used this feature, valve explicitly added two new inputs to prevent PropHunt from being quite difficult to fix. My question to Valve is, would PropHunt ever came into existence if this policy on no attached entities been in effect the whole time?

Valve games have always been very mod friendly and this is one of the reasons for the longevity of their games, Valve has been one of the few game companies that are quite open with their games that allows these kinds of things to thrive. This new policy is an arbitrary limit on mod creativity.

This currently breaks:

TF2Items
TF2 Equipment Manager
All of my item toys which do similar things to the above, and affects my Dodgeball items.

Link: https://secure.voogru.com/petition/index.php
If you post a comment, please be nice and respectful, being nasty will not get us anywhere.
 
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lana

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Sep 28, 2009
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I don't see how the change affects custom weapons.
 

Fraz

Blu Hatte, Greyscale Backdrop.
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Dec 28, 2008
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I'll be glad when I can go into servers and there won't be any random hat mods, that look UGLY, or people spamming "!Hats" and stuff. Well done Valve. ♥ Valve.
 

Vincent

&#128296 Grandmaster Lizard Wizard Jedi &#128296
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Sep 5, 2009
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I kinda like it in a way. I hate joining a server just to wait another 15 minutes downloading 10,000 custom hats and other stupid mods.

But I do see where you're coming from, that doesn't make me want to sign it though.
 

YM

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Dec 5, 2007
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Vanilla (or 32man) all the way :D

That statement is so conflicted it's unbelievable.

I guess voogru that they see your system as a way of circumventing theirs. I know you've got unofficial stuff there, but you're also giving out official hats to anyone for any class, which kinda goes against what valve want with the item drop system.
I'm not really on either side, but I don't think you have much of a moral grounding here.
 
Feb 14, 2008
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Pseudo-circumventing the item system is creativity?
 

drp

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Oct 25, 2007
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That statement is so conflicted it's unbelievable.

I guess voogru that they see your system as a way of circumventing theirs. I know you've got unofficial stuff there, but you're also giving out official hats to anyone for any class, which kinda goes against what valve want with the item drop system.
I'm not really on either side, but I don't think you have much of a moral grounding here.
same can be said about 32 man servers, idlers, skins, key binds, etc. while i personally dont like or dislike custom hat system on a per server basis, i dislike developers impeding someone from customizing their game/server to their liking.
 

voogru

L1: Registered
Feb 17, 2008
39
31
Wow, I didn't expect such a negative response on here.

I like how I can't find any info about steam community openid being legit.

Is the Enhanced-SSL (green address bar) from Valve and the URL being "steamcommunity.com", not enough?

This isn't just about hats.

Basically, you can no longer attach entities to players and have those entities remain visible.

I was in the process of implementing an interface where map authors could add their own custom weapons for additional gameplay map types, this basically breaks it. (mainly weapon swaps and attribute modifications)

I kinda like it in a way. I hate joining a server just to wait another 15 minutes downloading 10,000 custom hats and other stupid mods.

This doesn't prevent that, infact, it's worse now because plug-ins can change the entire player model now if they wanted to and give special players special player models, and player models are significantly bigger than hats.

I guess voogru that they see your system as a way of circumventing theirs. I know you've got unofficial stuff there, but you're also giving out official hats to anyone for any class, which kinda goes against what valve want with the item drop system.
I'm not really on either side, but I don't think you have much of a moral grounding here.

How many hats did the community provide and submit to valve? Valve never mentioned that they'd rather not see servers issue "fake" valve hats, if they asked, I'd honor such a policy.
 
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Snacks

TODO: Clever title
Oct 15, 2009
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Wow, I didn't expect such a negative response on here.



Perhals the Enhanced-SSL (green address bar) from Valve and the URL being "steamcommunity.com", isn't enough?

This isn't just about hats.

Basically, you can no longer attach entities to players and have those entities remain visible.


The site wants credentials and looks like a steam password stealing site.

The long url makes it look fake.

A quick google search turns up nothing to corroborate.

A quick search of the steamworks page says nothing about openid.

No news: http://store.steampowered.com/news/search/?term=openid

If its real, Valve forgot to tell anyone.

Valve has told us again and again "Never tell your password to anyone."
 

YM

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I was under the impression they were working to sort a solution out for mods like prophunt?
 

voogru

L1: Registered
Feb 17, 2008
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31
The site wants credentials and looks like a steam password stealing site.

The long url makes it look fake.

A quick google search turns up nothing to corroborate.

A quick search of the steamworks page says nothing about openid.

No news: http://store.steampowered.com/news/search/?term=openid

If its real, Valve forgot to tell anyone.

Valve has told us again and again "Never tell your password to anyone."

https://steamcommunity.com/openid/login

Notice the damn URL. It's not a fake.

Yes, me. Voogru, a long time server (Since TF2's release) operator is going to run a phishing site. :rolleyes: I also asked permission to the site owner before making this thread.

Do you use tf2items? Because he does the same thing.

http://www.tf2items.com/openid-test/

I was under the impression they were working to sort a solution out for mods like prophunt?

They retroactivly made a change that PropHunt can fix itself, but my argument is, would PropHunt ever came into existance if they had this policy from the start?
 
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YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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They retroactivly made a change that PropHunt can fix itself, but my argument is, would PropHunt ever came into existance if they had this policy from the start?

From valve's PoV though, here is some guy who runs servers where players are given all the hats they want (I am unaware of how the system works exactly) and is it not fair for them to want to stop that? The fact they were quickly willing to allow prophunt shows they're targeting mischievous use of the parenting commands.

They could ask you not to run said mod, but there is no guarantee other people would not code the exact same thing, so their option is to let you continue, or to code it out.

I'm just conflicted taking either side.
 

FireSlash

L2: Junior Member
Sep 29, 2009
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This isn't just about hats guys. That particular mechanism is useful for a lot of things. Retroactively enabling it for prop hunt is a bad approach, since new mods wanting to use it in a new creative way will find themselves unable to.

Even if valve was going after the hat mod, there are so many better ways to approach that. Not to mention, it's really not valve's business to attack innocent server plugins. The fake player count plugins are still around (which are forging data to steam's servers), and they're going after a completely cosmetic feature?

There isn't a good reason not to sign this.
 

voogru

L1: Registered
Feb 17, 2008
39
31
I am fine with weapon modification as long as stats are disabled. (I just am deal with it) However, at hats I draw the line because this server mod is just like the idler program. If you want hats just play the dam game or idle.

Also:

And what if a community would like to have a hat that valve doesn't have? They shouldn't be able to have it?

Ban all custom hats?

Where did some of these hats come from anyway?

http://www.teamfortress.com/contribute/

And again, it's not just hats. They targeted hats but it's affecting so much more than just the silly hats. If it was just official hats I wouldn't care so much, but it's custom hats and custom weapons that are basically being broken and that's a lot of collateral damage to prevent hats.
 

lana

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Sep 28, 2009
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And what if a community would like to have a hat that valve doesn't have? They shouldn't be able to have it?

Ban all custom hats?

Where did some of these hats come from anyway?

http://www.teamfortress.com/contribute/

And again, it's not just hats. They targeted hats but it's affecting so much more than just the silly hats. If it was just official hats I wouldn't care so much, but it's custom hats and custom weapons that are basically being broken and that's a lot of collateral damage to prevent hats.

So contribute the damn hats. If Valve doesn't want your hat in their game it's up to them. And if you start to make comments like, "Valve won't roll out enough updates," or, "Valve should care more about the community," I think you should look at what they've done with TF2 so far.

Or if you want to continue on your hobby horse, just reskin one of the damn hats.
 
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