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[torhu]

In anticipation of SG 1.1, I'm releasing a new Monster Browser

On first startup it will automatically update your configuration to use the new master server. This might be annoying if you've already done this yourself, as it just replaces your mods.ini file. It will back up your old configuration and tell you where the file is. Sorry if this is inconvenient.

The extended color codes are enabled by default. One funny thing about this is that the code ^8 becomes orange instead of black, but SG 1.1 works the same way

Downloads, etc.

Changelog:
- New: Support for World of Padman 1.6, plus updated settings.
- New: Support Smokin' Guns extended color codes for player and server names.
- New: The "Add..." dialog now accepts host names.
- Change: Updated Smokin' Guns master server to master.smokin-guns.org.
- Change: Use master.ioquake3.org as the default master server.
- Change: The progress bar is only filled once when querying servers in multiple batches.
- Fix: A couple of crashes fixed.

[torhu]

By the way: MB is still using the same, ugly icon it always has. If someone wants to create a better one, that would be great. The size needed is 256x256x32, which then will be shrunk to make the 48x48, 32x32, and 16x16 versions.

[Biondo]

Just a try ...



UPDATE: Extended version, probably to be used as site logo:

[torhu]

Wow, that's pretty good I'll have a closer look tonight, but initially I like the last color varation best. Or maybe the first...hm.

[Bart202]

Works very fine! Great work!

[torhu]

Nice Could you send me some files with the individual icons, so I can test them?

[Biondo]

Could you send me some files with the individual icons, so I can test them?

Yes, I can, of course, but how can I deliver them to you? Can you supply to me an email account via PM?
I wouldn't like to upload a lot of files to Imageshack.

[torhu]

It so happens that the amazing Biondohad made a whole bunch of different icons. The new Monster Browser icon is most likely going to look like this:

mb_new_icon_256x256.png (10.25 KiB) Viewed 21570 times

It's still an M and a B, only it this time it looks a million times better than the current MB icon, which was made by me

If you want to use this icon for you MB shortcuts, get it here. You can only replace shortcut icons using this, the old icon that is embedded inside the MB executable is the one that will show up in the titlebar and some other places. Of course, that will change when I make a new release

[Tequila]

Congrats, this is really an amazing icon !!
Good work Biondo, good choice torhu

[dansh]

A beautiful icon in the style of a monster; Biondo icon also resembles the Loch Ness Monster . Please add to the list of OpenArena. I think they are also our friends, and so many fans of the game, if MonsterBrowser advertise on the forum OpenArena, the Imagine how many people know about Smokin' Guns.

[torhu]

I agree about the icon

I remember OpenArena from years ago, didn't know it was still active. I don't think I will add OA to Monster Browser, as it is not a good fit for how MB works. OA actually uses several different gamenames (mods, if you will). While MB is based on a single game with different mods, which Quake 3 was when I started working on MB. Then MB was updated to support standalone games, when SG and other Q3-based games became standalone. OA would need several items in the game selection dropdown, making it too messy if I include it by default.

But I did some testing and found out how to get the OA servers. You get most of them by adding this in your mods.ini:

Code: Select all

[OpenArena baseoa]
mod=baseoa
masterServer=dpmaster.deathmask.net
protocolVersion=71

[OpenArena ctf]
mod=ctf
masterServer=dpmaster.deathmask.net
protocolVersion=71


You need a couple of more variations of that to get the rest, though. And you need to add the exePath setting so MB can launch the game.

Maybe a future version could add a setting to disable the mod filtering, and display a gamename column instead. Time will tell

[dansh]

I agree with you. But add in the OpenArena MonsterBrowser in the release, then many people will enjoy MonsterBrowser, and naturally they see for themselves the game Smokin' Guns.
And as I wrote above, the players from OpenArena learn about the Smokin' Guns.

[/dev/random]

OA actually uses several different gamenames (mods, if you will).

Uhm, that's not quite true. Q3 already used different mods (WQ3 , E+, UrT, Q3Rally etc.). Some of these mods supported the same gametypes as Q3 did (CTF, FFA, Tourney etc.) and some added new ones.

OpenArena does not have that many mods (iirc just E+ and AfterShock and some less frequently used from Q3 like Defrag and CorkScrew) and most of them provide the very same gametypes which baseoa has.
Most admins however setup their sever in a bad way, using something else than default "baseoa" for fs_game (even though they are just using the baseoa code*), which shows up as "game" in info replies. This does in no way reflect which actual mod and thus gametypes are available and used on a server. Gametypes themselves are mod-specific and show up as a simple number in "gametype" in info replies and as "g_gametype" in status replies.

If you want to filter servers by mods, you'd have to take a look at status replies and use the "gamename" value there. This is not the same as the "gamename" value in info replies! Instead, it coresponds to GAMEVERSION in the mod's source code.
If you want to filter servers by games, you'd have to look at "gamename" in info replies, which is the same as "com_gamename" in status replies. This only works on recent forks of ioquake3.

* You may set fs_game to provide additional pk3s such as brightskins. In either case, "CTF" is a bad name for this, it should either be "brightskins" or something along the lines of "mymod", as CTF itself is not a mod, nor are brightskins ctf-specific.

[torhu]

Thanks for clarifying what the "game" variable is. Should be ok to just ignore it, right?

I found six different gamename values on the OA master:

Code: Select all

gamename=unlagged RR
gamename=excessiveplus
gamename=baseoa
gamename=defrag
gamename=megafrag
gamename=Quake3Arena

I guess just displaying all of these in the same list would be the best solution for Monster Browser. People would be able to configure them as individual game items if they like.

What do I do with fs_game when connecting to a server? Is it safe to always set it to gamename?

[/dev/random]

Usually there's no need to set fs_game manually while connecting to a server, since the engine will figure this out on its own.
If you insist, then just use "game" from the info reply, since it matches the server's fs_game setting. Be aware that this key might not be present if it equals the default BASEGAME, e.g. "baseq3", "baseoa", "smokinguns" etc. (in which case you should not need to manually set it either).
Since it does not include any useful information for the players, I'd say just ignore it.

Be sure to use "gamename" from status replies to discriminate between mods.
The same key in info replies is set to "com_gamename" in recent ioquake3 forks. I have no idea why they chose a key name which is already taken by another cvar.
I guess this is the "safest" way to detect mods. There is no guarantee that a mod actually changes this value, but you'd have to rely on other hacks to detect mods in this case (like looking at special version cvars, such as "xp_version" for E+ in status replies).