Quaddicted.com Forum

negke

Moderator

New Q1SP pack: Func Map Jam 9 - Contract Revoked / Knave theme

Another one of Func_Msgboard's map jam events has concluded: Func Map Jam 9.

The result is 15 varied single player maps by various authors following a Contract Revoked-inspired theme using the Knave texture set. Apart from a start map and a secret level, the pack also includes many custom sounds, models, skyboxes, and even a new background music track. The levels run on the latest version of the Quoth mod and require a high-limit engine port such as Quakespasm 0.92.0+.

Download

Icantthinkofanickname

Moderator

Re: New Q1SP pack: Func Map Jam 9 - Contract Revoked / Knave theme

Note that you'll need to grab the updated version of Quoth 2.2 from Preach's website: https://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/quoth/. Despite having the same version number, this is a later version of Quoth than the Quoth 2.2 currently on Quaddicted. Using the wrong version will cause problems on some of the maps.

Spirit

Administrator

Re: New Q1SP pack: Func Map Jam 9 - Contract Revoked / Knave theme

And this is the later version of func_mapjam9.zip which I renamed to func_mapjam9_2.zip.
I also now added the second Quoth 2.2 release as quoth2pt2full_2.zip and quoth2pt2patch_2.zip because reusing filenames for updates is a terrible practise.

Icantthinkofanickname

Moderator

Re: New Q1SP pack: Func Map Jam 9 - Contract Revoked / Knave theme

I'll create map pages for those and then update the func_mapjam9 map description a little later tonight.

Unless negke beats me to it.

negke

Moderator

Re: New Q1SP pack: Func Map Jam 9 - Contract Revoked / Knave theme

I'm certainly not going to do it. Apart from the fact that the "new" Quoth 2.2 files are simply corrections of previously wrongly packaged files (not new 2.2. but real 2.2), even if keeping each and every iteration of a file makes sense in a strict archivist kind of way, it's absolutely counterproductive to useability. Having multiple versions of the same file (especially if it's "same same" like in this case) makes things even more confusing for the users than Quaddicted already is (not to mention the rudimentary Injector hacks). That's why I added the second version of the jam9 zip instead of the first one. Likewise, there should only be one entry for each Quoth 2.2 file - pointing to whatever the proper version is called in the filebase.

Icantthinkofanickname

Moderator

Re: New Q1SP pack: Func Map Jam 9 - Contract Revoked / Knave theme

Sent you an e-mail.

Icantthinkofanickname

Moderator

Re: New Q1SP pack: Func Map Jam 9 - Contract Revoked / Knave theme

Update:

In light of negke's post above I decided to hold off on creating those map pages, as I didn't want to further complicate an already overcomplicated situation, and wanted to get some input from both Spirit and negke first. Since I wasn't sure if a public forum was the best place to continue the discussion, I e-mailed them about it, but Spirit wrote

let's discuss it in public, that way others could potentially suggest/implement solutions or at least understand the trouble.

So here's the relevant part of my e-mail to Spirit and negke:

I fully agree that there should be only one Quoth 2.2 full and one Quoth 2.2 patch page, instead of multiple versions, but how can we achieve that? I don't think it's a good idea just to leave things as they currently are, where users have to be directed to an external source to get the correct file.

As far as I can tell, as a moderator I'm not able to delete map pages nor change what zip they point to, but I'm guessing at least one of those would be trivial for Spirit to do. The easiest, quickest solution would (it seems to me) be to just change the existing pages to point to the correct zips.

If that's not possible at all, I'm still willing to create pages for the newly added versions, so that the incorrect pages can then be deleted.

Spirit

Administrator

Re: New Q1SP pack: Func Map Jam 9 - Contract Revoked / Knave theme

I was hoping negke would join in but I guess I have to post first. Warning, incoherent rambling ahead.

The system was structured around unique files back in the days: coolrelease.zip has the "zipname" "coolrelease" and that is used everywhere, including the page https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/coolrelease.html (dynamically generated, don't mind the .html file-lookalike)

That's why there is no "Quoth" or "Quoth 2" page. The structure is not around projects but files, using their name as identifier. And without basically starting from scratch there cannot be a different system. If I did it today, I would do it differently and use some kind of hash to uniquely identify files without possible conflicts (eg http://forums.insideqc.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5738).

My aim is archival and that means that if a file was available to the public, then it should be kept. My sadly doomed approach to think that everyone would make sure their filenames would be sane and more importantly unique then means that a "fix" has to have a different filename. Unfortunately the mapper community has largely ignored reasonable standards for releases.
If a release was public, someone is bound to have it and this leads to confusion later on. The QW community had some fun trying to make their servers agree which bless.bsp (iirc) was the real one. Their habit of discarding original zip archives and even readme files only fosters these kinds of situations.

The same-name quoth2pt2 problem really pisses me off. It was released a year later!

The mapjam9 update having the same filename is just dumb. People posted demos of their playthroughs with the first version. Should those demos be broken now if someone installed "mapjam9"? No, they belong to the first release, not the second one.

About patching: The Quake Injector is quite limited in what it can do dependency wise. We have no "provides" or "conflicts" fields, so installing patches will render everything inconsistent. Don't even get me started on engine requirements and incompatibilities. :(

PS: I know that the repackages to make things work with the Quake Injector are against everything I just said. I hate them, we should handle problems differently. Ideally each release had a machine-readable set of instructions (think https://git.archlinux.org/pacman.git/pl … ILD.proto) but the habits and practise of the creators does not look like it would be worth pursuing... The Quake Injector was a great idea but things are more complicated and people continue to make it harder than necessary.

dumptruck_ds

Member

Re: New Q1SP pack: Func Map Jam 9 - Contract Revoked / Knave theme

Thanks for the post Spirit. The system you have here is solid but the human machine is the issue. I think we should just have a splash page somewhere we can link to that houses the most current version. We can then amend the descriptions here to point to the latest and greatest files.  Perhaps PuLSaR can make that happen.

negke

Moderator

Re: New Q1SP pack: Func Map Jam 9 - Contract Revoked / Knave theme

I replied to that email!

My suggestion was to change the names of the old files (e.g. quoth2pt2full_original.zip) and use the existing DB entry to avoid confusion for players (especially since the map list is overloaded as it is) and possibly Injector dependencies. Although in its current state the Injector system is lacking anyway, only working in simple one-way cases and incapable of handling multiple files and versions/patches. This is something that should be improved first and foremost.

I do see where you're coming from, Spirit. It makes sense, although one could argue that it's maybe a bit overly strict since this is "only" Quake levels and one might expect the current download on Quaddicted is always the one to go with. Doomworld's idgames mirror is a bit better in this sense, as people often upload their levels a while after the actual release, including updates and such, so the mirror then hosts the final version.

Mugwump

Member

Re: New Q1SP pack: Func Map Jam 9 - Contract Revoked / Knave theme

The pack actually contains TWO new music tracks: one by Dumptruck_ds for his own map and one by me (a.k.a. The ?uestion Mark), that was used in Skacky's secret map.

Last edited by Mugwump (2017-08-20 18:36:34)