I resign as administrator of Warcraft 2

[Certified MENSA Genius Brain (smart)]

lol yo tk... tora saw me being friendly and playing actively, to the tune of hundreds of games, on one of my smurfs that he knows about.  he just is mad i smurf or whatever

[shesycompany]

il is dating and shit ..he is not gonna be in alot

[Winchester]

Who is going to join a server whose admin bans names

Alot of games ban people for offensive usernames.  Though war2 shouldn't be one of them considering its community lol

[Yamon]

blid is a blatant idiot. and Il is competely gone.

obviously TK is right in saying it all needs to be redone.

I tried accomplishing this myself in what ways I could, with war2 custom ( which is far superior to war2combat in every way)

When that project failed, war2 lost like 50% of it's player base in disappointment.

Of course lance was a shit person, but a great developer. It's hard to say how war2 custom would have turned out, but I think lance would of been a necessary evil, and honestly what's the worst he could have done? There's being able to do something, and then facing the consequences.

[iL]

Well, just looked into the forum:

First of all: i'm really busy again in different projects which are as interesting as war2.ru, but have focus to earning money. So, my priority is moved to them. But i still have desire to improve and grow up war2.ru project. Very sad to come and say "yes, good idea, but i have no time again".

the situation is more complex than "Tora was willing to save everything & iL said no" -- i doubt Tora would be willing to put up the cash needed to 1. hire anyone decent 2. fix all problems and 3. do it without iL's guidance through the maze of existing pvpgn customizations (as he has no time to offer it). the alternative is to start from scratch which is certainly possible & maybe the best course but that'd probably cost even more. like tk says it'd be great if anyone who has the means could eventually do that & probably the only way the war2 population could make any kind of meaningful comeback.

The main problem is really "the maze of existing pvpgn customizations".
I think that works not so bad to delete it and start from scratch. I think evolution way would be much better than revolution one.

I'm ready to give some kind of API to people who want and can make something useful based on currently working software.
I think the best way in current situation: i have enough time for some emergency situations (like restart server, fix the database, etc), i also can find enough time to make some kind of quick hook for you if you are ready to make your own job related to war2.
The main problem is there's no people who want and can do things. At least i don't see these people.

Let me detail and structure the todo requests as i understand them:

1. social questions.
"Blid is bad, he banned me unfairly", etc.
Well, we have a team of admins who at least proved they keep the community for years.
XuRnT, Blid, Mousey, Tora, w/e? I hope all the social questions could be resolved without my attention. No technical knowledge requires for that questions. So i just try to go far from that part.

2. technical questions
let's look detailed:
2.1. questions that are not highly attached to current war2.ru infrastructure:
based on popular requests:
"let's make war2 with high quality resolution"
"let's make war2 working under linux"
"let's fix hosting for lags/closed ports clients"

please, append this list if you remember more...

This list could be implemented by anybody who want and know how.
No relation to "busy admins".

2.2. requests about new revisions for currently working software.
"let's update combat and add features x,y,z into it".
"let's make several improvements/add improvements on the bnet-server".
"let's finish antihack, make it catching hackers and make it mandatory".

That is really a problem as requires my active attention.
Let me explain the problems:
2.2.1. combat:
well, i can see 3 high-priority things:
- to add ddraw natively, not like "try 4, if not working try 3, if not working try 2". Need to follow next-next-next-next-finish and enjoy.
if anyone knows how to integrate current 4 ddraws into combat, would be great to do that.
As an option i see: a console application that checks if shaders or w/e are available on the current system and return errorlevel.
Could be called on installation process so select proper ddraw version.
Source code would be also appreciated. With no monstrous frameworks on libraries, clean winapi is welcomed.
Can anybody make such application or hire a programmer for that?

- to add dep exclusion on installation process for win10. If you use DEP activated on your win system, war2 will crash on start. You should add it to DEP exclusions.
My command: rundll32.exe sysdm.cpl, NoExecuteAddFileOptOutList ""{app}\Warcraft II BNE.exe""
That worked on win-vista/7/8/8.1, but not working anymore on 10.
Need a new command that will work on 10.
Also not sure if firewall working or not: "netsh.exe firewall add allowedprogram " and "netsh.exe firewall add portopening protocol"
If it's working on 10 or not. Need your help with that.

-to add videos/music to combat. Requires 600Mb on the hosting. Not sure i have enough space, but well, i'll find it if dep and ddraw will be resolved.
As soon as dep and ddraw problems will be resolved, i'll release new version.

2.2.2: bnet-server improvements:
yes, i remember somebody asked me about some kind of backend for his project, i still didn't make it. I said: "do it and i'll add the backend interface for you". Looks like i didn't get a confirmation the project is finished and my part required. Maybe i'm wrong, i'll look what happened with that project.
But there have been only 1 case when somebody really made (or tried to make) something.
Other conversations just stayed on the step "let's do that or that"...
Let me know if i forgot something.

2.2.3: antihack
Well, my fault i think. Looks like i still have no time to continue that project, so maybe would be better to admin i will no have time for that in the future.
Looks like we can try to attract a programmer who will have enough time and knowlegde for that. Also important condition: he should be a trusted person.
Also, i don't see such person in our community. I also not sure if that will be easy to hire such programmer who can make working code and make it updatable. If you find some random guy on some kind of freelance exchange, he will most likely release some kind of trash that you will have to rewrite from scratch when you want to update it. Also he should be trustworthy.

I can make the detailed specification for such antihack, how it should look like and programmed.

2.3 questions related to site&forum
looks like no problem with that, mousey is great and active admin who always ready to help with anything related to web questions.

My thoughts and offers:
The most problem is nobody can really make and implement some technical solutions for the project. For example, you can make an antihack, but yon need the server-side part of check clients, otherwise client doesn't make sense.
One good programmer is Lance, he can do that (if he have time, most likely he is not), but looks like he is not fully trusted.
Another guy who probably can is USA~Archer, but he makes some useful program by one hand and hacks the server by another one at the same time.

So, if you are a trusted person and you are ready to make some job yourself, you're welcomed for that. Important thing, is you should understand how to integrate it into current infrastructure (i have enough time to explain specifical details you can't know).
The problem is everybody who have skill, have no time and work on war2 for fun.

Looks like need to collect all the wishes related to technical questions in one place. To look and see.
Very difficult to observe all the requests spreaded by the whole forum.
Maybe to run some kind of the bugtracker or w/e to collect incidents/issues/wishes
Or just to make thread with such TODO list on the forum? Maybe some of them could be resolved easily by me or by somebody else?

[shesycompany]

lamb has built the build hack detector. that may be useful in tools download or included in ru future build.

[OMOgremage]

This is all a bunch of blabbering bullshit. I log on every day play games for hours and have literally 0 issues with anything. The game works, games are played, and people come back. All this bitching an moaning is worthless. As far as I can see someone (I dont really care who) put a lot of time an effort into making the game work for me and im happy that it does. You all sound like a bunch of highschool girls whinning about nothing... Play the game and stfu. gg no re. Also, Thanks Tora for everything. Youve always been there to help me with any issues ive had.

[OMOgremage]

WTF. iL is a legend. What problems need to be fixed? Game is fine, no need for any crying or reality TV drama here. Thanks to iL for always looking after us.

Exactly what I said... 100% agree SG.

[iL]

lamb has built the build hack detector. that may be useful in tools download or included in ru future build.

Anybody have the source code? I saw that, looked great, but i didn't see it's code. As i understood he even use cryptors for his projects.
Would be interesting to include as a part of another tool, but could also be interesting as a standalone thing.

[I hate naggers]

wouldnt it be gooder to just create a launcher for w2, necessary to log in + memory protection? like bwlauncher

AH in its current form wont prevent dirty hax0rs from hax0ring

[Delete mine too]

wouldnt it be gooder to just create a launcher for w2, necessary to log in + memory protection? like bwlauncher

AH in its current form wont prevent dirty hax0rs from hax0ring

We can do that easily! But iL has built the antihack into the loader so it won't be shared to other developers.



You also have to add your new exe for the Warcraft 2 crash fix. When you multimage with a building war2 will crash.

[I hate naggers]

would there even be need for AH if we had that?

[iL]

wouldnt it be gooder to just create a launcher for w2, necessary to log in + memory protection? like bwlauncher

My opinion is that is more weak protection as hacker have to just kill it on his computer side some way and enjoy his hacks. Periodic synchronization with the server should be stronger against hackers. If you kill your antihack on the client side, you will be seen as a probable hacker.

Maybe no big deal, bwlauncher works fine and people enjoy using it. And that would be definitely better than what we have now.

If someone have a programmer who can make war2 launcher similar to bwlauncher, that could be also useable. As i see this option: server.war2.ru should check clients connecting with that launcher, so you need at least initial sync with the server. Something like certificate handshake between your client and the server. That certificate is what i have to install, everything else you can make yourself.
Of course, that antihack launcher should come from trusted person, to make people sure there's no trojans or backdoors inside it. Source code would be welcomed.

You also have to add your new exe for the Warcraft 2 crash fix. When you multimage with a building war2 will crash.

Oh, thx! Forgot about that, added

[Ywfn]

I haven't been following these forms very closely in the past few years, so maybe I missed something, but this thread alone is fairly solid evidence as to why you need someone with the maturity level of blid or il in charge.

[Lone]

Out of curiousity, if someone decided to develop any of the above, what level of skills would he need and how much time would these projects take approximately?