News about restoring TR2NOrigins/Armagetron compatibility

[compguygene]

I would like to take this time to thank Luke-jr for doing about 20 hours of work on this and starting a branch on the TR2NOrigins launchpad. Both luke-jr and I have tested it, and it works with Armagetron. I am going to build a master server and a regular server binary and fully test it. Manta and I are both swamped with other things that need done before we fully launch TR2NOrigins to the world-at-large. This is going to save us much more than the 20 hours of work Luke-jr did. This once again shows just how committed the devs on this project are to working with us! Assuming that all works out in testing as it appears that it will, Manta will merge this with our trunk, so further development of our next release can proceed with compatibility already in place.
I will continue to updated this topic as testing progresses. I would also like to thank dlh for his work on the subculture for the t2o servers, and any other work I am not aware of. And thank you Z-man for helping to guide our development and supporting our users as well. My hope is that we give you guys plenty to steal!

[Phytotron]

/me wonders if and when down the road these two projects come back together as one, when it's all said and done, at the end of the day.

[ZURD101]

seriously...compguy?

[Z-Man]

Zurd: luke-jr didn't change any of your work. He just reorganized it, put every little change into an appropriate little drawer in his cupboard. He's that kind of guy

[compguygene]

Zurd: luke-jr didn't change any of your work. He just reorganized it, put every little change into an appropriate little drawer in his cupboard. He's that kind of guy

If you want to check out the branch from using bzr, here is a link to the appropriate branch lp:~luke-jr/tr2norigins/tr2norigins-recommendation.
So, just like if you are building a server binary on linux, you can build this by downloading it via bzr, aka bzr branch lp:~luke-jr/tr2norigins/tr2norigins-recommendation. Follow the directions for Linux development, here: http://wiki.armagetronad.net/index.php? ... pendencies
I am going to build a server binary, master server, and put up a couple types of servers to fully test it before merging with our trunk. I would appreciate it if you take the time to build a client from this, so you and I can fully test this.

[DESiRE]

Well, atleast the Developers are getting more involved now

[Z-Man]

Oh yeah, I forgot. As far as I understand it, you're not supposed to merge luke's branch with yours, you're supposed to copy it over using 'bzr push --overwrite'. Of course, take the recommended branch or the one ending at 0.4.2 or the recommended one only up to the 0.4.2 tag as you please. Merging is just going to give you conflicts from both branches doing essentially the same things. Any work done on your trunk in the meantime needs to be recommitted, of course; we'll help with that if you let us.

[compguygene]

Thank you for the clarification. I will be sure to let manta know. All of the help is greatly appreciated!

[Z-Man]

Oh, another thing. Provided you go with the suggested reverts that broke the compatibility, do we want to allow servers to be on both networks at once? We're of course open to T2O servers advertising on the AA masters, from our point of view, they're just regular servers with some restrictions. But the other way round may not work so well. A small technical hurdle would be your authority @stats which our servers currently don't support; that's easy enough to rectify, though. What's more problematic is that on AA servers, T2O users would be confronted with players using other client versions. You could make it so that servers that don't disable backward compatibility are not listed on T2O. Servers give the relevant info on login to the master and as ping response.

[Luke-Jr]

What's more problematic is that on AA servers, T2O users would be confronted with players using other client versions. You could make it so that servers that don't disable backward compatibility are not listed on T2O. Servers give the relevant info on login to the master and as ping response.

Is that really problematic, though? As long as they're on T2O servers, everything should work as normal, and the non-T2O servers would be clearly isolated in a Subculture (on the T2O client). If players choose to login to a non-T2O server in such a way, they shouldn't be expecting to gain the benefits of T2O on that server, IMO.

[compguygene]

Oh, another thing. Provided you go with the suggested reverts that broke the compatibility, do we want to allow servers to be on both networks at once? We're of course open to T2O servers advertising on the AA masters, from our point of view, they're just regular servers with some restrictions. But the other way round may not work so well. A small technical hurdle would be your authority @stats which our servers currently don't support; that's easy enough to rectify, though. What's more problematic is that on AA servers, T2O users would be confronted with players using other client versions. You could make it so that servers that don't disable backward compatibility are not listed on T2O. Servers give the relevant info on login to the master and as ping response.

There are 2 reasons why I do not think it would be desirable for us to have T2O servers appear on the Armagetron Master list. As Destiny has stated in the past, we really do want to try to keep from having the problems of multiple client versions in our servers. Also, we really are developing a different community, which is more family-friendly. For those 2 reasons alone, a subculture is much more appropriate.

[Z-Man]

Is that really problematic, though? As long as they're on T2O servers, everything should work as normal, and the non-T2O servers would be clearly isolated in a Subculture (on the T2O client). If players choose to login to a non-T2O server in such a way, they shouldn't be expecting to gain the benefits of T2O on that server, IMO.

I was more thinking along the lines of servers advertising to both sets of master servers simultaneously so they don't appear as just part of a subculture, but on the main server list.

[Manta]

On the topic of combining the two networks into one, only divided by subcultures.

As some may have noticed I’m not one for groups or chatting but I’d like to make a few comments now.

Clients for both games run side by side simultaneously on the same desktop.
Servers for both games run side by side on the same physical server just fine.
It’s just as quick to close one client and open the other as going in and out of the subcultures menu.
For those few who wish to play across both games, they have more options by just having the screens side by side.

While we will be sharing bug fixes and compatible upgrades as far as possible, The arma community is now pursuing the path to a 0.2.8.4 release and holding true to the roots and game modes that have kept armagetron a thriving community through the years. While origins is made up of a group pursuing a different philosophy, organizing around community and modernization at the cost of the classic game play.

Armagetron has a strong following and will continue to grow in the future. Origins is not designed to compete with armagetron but merely to go into a new market that armagetron has not wished to embrace.

So it mainly boils down to. Those who love playing armagetron the way it is will stay where they are anyway regardless of subculture integration.

Armagtron has been a huge part of my life ever since that day 5.4 years ago that I randomly happened across armagetron while searching for games on sourceforge. I have many happy memories of my years here, starting out in breakfast and swampland hoping one day to be able to live for more than a few seconds once lack or your_mom attacked me. Then the fun discovery of team play on the the MBC server. Later CVS fortress, Luke’s hexatron that we needed a separate client for, ground pig’s ctf hack. I like to view armagetron as the strong Debain base that we will be building our new distro on. Right now we are trying to be the Dreamlinux offering of tron. Maybe someday we will be a “stable” elive, but the armagetron so many people know won’t be sitting still either.

Armagetronad is an amazing game that has now spawned a new game and as such they will be separate games. We will not be working on compatibility immediately, who knows what the future holds though.

The Developers of both will remain friends and share ideas, since at the root, the love of this game is what brought us together in the first place.

I would like to thank luke for painstakingly documenting the changes made so far in Origins.

Manta

[Phytotron]

While origins is made up of a group pursuing a different philosophy, organizing around community and modernization at the cost of the classic game play.

Kind of ironic to be calling it "Origins," then, isn't it?

[arilou]

So does this mean the 4.0 Arma client can look like the the TR2N or at least have the option to?
And that is originally what I liked about Arma was the tight knit groups that played in places like MBC server.
So the Origins really does hold true.