Spring RTS Engine

I don't think it's necessary to cut out smurfing anyway. Let people play anonymous if they feel compelled to do so.

Why not let them cheat than?im sure some will want to.
Fact is smurfing ingame, in some instances, is as harmful to the game experience as cheating.

that is a bit of an exaggeration.

Professor wrote:Why not let them cheat than?im sure some will want to.
Fact is smurfing ingame, in some instances, is as harmful to the game experience as cheating.

ITP Yan does irony.

smoth wrote:that is a bit of an exaggeration.

Not in say an FFA.
If a player smurfs in an FFA and pretends to be a newbie while being a top player he can get the win just cause of that...
Ask albator or 8D...

that isn't the same as a cheat. The top player would win EVEN WITHOUT the deception. outside of bullshit like "I won't attack you for 30 minutes" then hitting the other player with a rush.

because in the end the nu-b will still get creamed.

a cheat would mean that the player gets an advantage beyond the normal parameters of the game.

The thing with the HW hash and open-source is, that only one person has to "hack" it, which will likely be something like a 5min job or so.
he could then make the altered source available on github and as spring binaries, and this would all be totally legal and legit.
The only thing we could prevent is, that it is advertised on springrts.com (for example on the forum), but that's it.

will lobby accounts finally be linked to the site?

I remember that we pretty much agreed, that this is desirable, and if it would be done, it should be done through OpenID.
PhpBB (this forums software) supports OpenID login, and there are at least 1 C++, 1 C#, 2 Python and 6 Java libraries for OpenID (SL, ZKLobby, ueberserver, TASServer; i don't know about Delphi (TASClient)).

hoijui wrote:The thing with the HW hash and open-source is, that only one person has to "hack" it, which will likely be something like a 5min job or so.
he could then make the altered source available on github and as spring binaries, and this would all be totally legal and legit.

But I have to ask "so what?". The same is true for a globalLOS-hacked-spring.exe, no?
If we'd classify modified spring executables as a critical problem then the whole concept of the spring engine (all data available on every PC) would be questionable.

Professor wrote:

smoth wrote:that is a bit of an exaggeration.

Not in say an FFA.
If a player smurfs in an FFA and pretends to be a newbie while being a top player he can get the win just cause of that...
Ask albator or 8D...

Another thing that can happen (when not smurfing) is that you get ganged on because people know you're the best player. Ok, doesn't actually happen often at all since people are usually not that smart/coordinated.

Actually in FFA it might be best if everyone was anonymous. To cut out some of that metagaming part, you can still spot a good player from the way they play.

IMO anti-smurf does not need to bind you to a certain name, just to an account and its associated rank. That way it'll still be possible to be "anonymous" (pseudonymous), but the rank will still show.

of course smurfing has benefits for pros, which is proven by them doing it. These benefits for pros are bad for noobs. Those that want anti-smurfing measures, want them to make the experience nicer for noobs. i am pretty sure that if there was a community wide poll, that noobs interests would be voted more important (and/or possibly more legitimate to protect, in this case).

if there is an FFA with 1 pro and 3 noobs, the pro will win in 99.x% of the runs, if he is smurfing (and the other players don't know it). if they do know it, they might choose to unite against him, and his chance to win goes to somewhere like 50% or the like. though, in most cases, noobs would not unite against the pro anyway.
the actual setups are usually more complex.. with more players, some pros smurfing some not, and lots of intermediate players. the most unfair (both in quantity and amount) games still are the ones with undetected pro smurfs, and not those with worse players uniting against the pros (which likely will give a more interesting game to the pro even).

Edited, long post.

This is what i deduce from some new guys talking in either help channel or main:
The diference is we know each others nicks and smurf acounts, in LoL the rage guy disapears or you ignore it, here in spring you just see it again and again day after day ^^, in every day DSD match.

First step and easiest way before any technical measures is to bring forth public moral against smurfing and towards fair games.

The first action is ofc you, especially pro-gamers, to show good example and not to smurf and clan stack.

Second step is soft aswell, to speak against smurfers and respect the real and fair play, stating your opinion clear about bad behaviour.

Third maybe harsh, but Imo most efficient, to start ignoring and 'banning' smurfers and bad behaving people (even when its your best "internet butt-buddy!") from your games and servers, being in active front, doing rightful actions to stop and prevent antisocial and destructive behaviour.

Unfortunately, due tolerating (even respective in certain ways) attitude towards smurfing and 'elitism', you fail in every step.

Now I will do first constructive and positive deed for this effort, a moral project, by praising myself :) Because I don't smurf, I actively promote fair games and I raise my voice when some behaviour is destructive.

Banning smurfs and making smurfing a bannable offense was offered several times before and was always rejected cause the people who are responsible for adding stuff to the "rule book" smurf themsevles...

You cant demand people to stop smurfing and show a good example much like you cant expect everyone to carry their trash with them cause there is no garbage bin nearby.
You have to facilitate a positive environment which discourages smurfing like officially declaring its an offense and doing anything possible, technically, to stop it.

Players attacking top players and ganking them is the proper way of how things should happen in an FFA.
Top players can still win even if this happens.
What is truly wrong is when nobody knows ur good and nobody touches you thinking you are some newbie first rank so you can grow your eco without disturbance, thats truly unfair.

SirArtturi wrote:First step and easiest way before any technical measures is to bring forth public moral against smurfing and towards fair games.

The first action is ofc you, especially pro-gamers, to show good example and not to smurf and clan stack.

Second step is soft aswell, to speak against smurfers and respect the real and fair play, stating your opinion clear about bad behaviour.

Third maybe harsh, but Imo most efficient, to start ignoring and 'banning' smurfers and bad behaving people (even when its your best "internet butt-buddy!") from your games and servers, being in active front, doing rightful actions to stop and prevent antisocial and destructive behaviour.

Unfortunately, due tolerating (even respective in certain ways) attitude towards smurfing and 'elitism', you fail in every step.

Now I will do first constructive and positive deed for this effort, a moral project, by praising myself :) Because I don't smurf, I actively promote fair games and I raise my voice when some behaviour is destructive.

with respect.
yes, i do the same as you, problem is, your thinking of spring like a comunity of 1000 or 2000 people, witch it isnt, we are stuck with the same people in this never ending cicle. In fact some people smurf, so that they can just enjoy a casual game, without people smacking in theyr face you lost, you won, "lawl stacked pro team".

Ive seen people rage because they waste theyr free time, in waiting rooms, where they could be playing something else.

Im by no means escusing people that rage, or saying lets sit and do nothing. You just cant expect people to behave, they dont do it in other online games.

-Ive sugested temporary moderators for lobbys, or self autohost moderation, but you cant moderate all the time, nor can you change peoples mind.
-Ive sugested the creation of the No DSD day, but thats taking peoples freedom of choice away.
-Ive sugested a permanent tournament day,one per 10 days, where i could host a tournament, for diferent mods, like from gundam to xta, but few people are interested.

But isn't that only a positive thing: You have right kind of attitude. Then you are doing just good.

By being loud and clear about this, exampling good morality, will hopefully reflect on others. I believe that this is the first step we need to take. To raise our morale by judging loudly the wrong-doers and respect the good ppl. Moderating will hopefully follow.

I see that people raging about waiting and wasted hours in waiting rooms isn't really that big issue. This is kind of an issue we can more easily approach technically.

However, we need to be careful about the level of technical interferences because, yes I do realize that, the community and playerbase is small and too strict actions could narrow this even smaller.

SirArtturi wrote:But isn't that only a positive thing: You have right kind of attitude. Then you are doing just good.

By being loud and clear about this, exampling good morality, will hopefully reflect on others. I believe that this is the first step we need to take. To raise our morale by judging loudly the wrong-doers and respect the good ppl. Moderating will hopefully follow.

I see that people raging about waiting and wasted hours in waiting rooms isn't really that big issue. This is kind of an issue we can more easily approach technically.

However, we need to be careful about the level of technical interferences because, yes I do realize that, the community and playerbase is small and too strict actions could narrow this even smaller.

well, that is good thinking, both in life as in a gaming oriented world. But maybe its being to optimistic about the subject and the world itself. But theres no harm in trying a bit harder, to make room for some moral into the lobby.

I was planning on spending a few hour everyday sitting in a 1v1 or maybe a 2v2 server getting as many noobs as possible to spectate/play and have as many "play and ask" games as time would allow.

But university more or less steamrolled my plans.

I will however try to squeeze in as many of these games as i can whenever time allows.


Hopefully someone else with more time will do the same, if atleast a few "elitists" would start helping the newer players develop and mature, then we may also influence them to become contributing community members with high morals.

This must be better then the trolls we breed today.

Accept reality.

If you go noobing through life, you will get yelled at. If you go noobing random team in battle.net you will get yelled at. If you go noobing when crossing the street, you will get yelled at.

People that know me know I play with this same name, and I don't yell at noobs.

Now you have to understand that some noobs come into teamgames with zero knowledge, because they think it is like a single player game with a tutorial. They just don't give it much thought.

But the reality of life is this: if you are going into a team activity with strangers, you have to at least know what it is about. When you hinder your team of strangers with your lack of research (spectating) then you will get yelled at, both as an encouragement to further study, and as a release to the anger of the people who's lives you know nothing about and who's game you ruined.

TL;DR: yelling at noobs is a feature, not a bug

About smurfing, allow experienced players to mark others as smurfs in the system. If a lowrank has been marked as smurf by a few experienced players, then auto-balance should treat him as a toprank.

Why not accept them as a part of this community and instead of trying to destroy what little this game has left just work around or with it.