Wirehead Studios

Don't know if this is internal to the map or due to Generations, but I get this when I try to load up Polaris...

"CL_ParseGamestate: Bad command byte"

This only occurs on this map.

big maps like polaris , mpterra1 , and 3 do that sometimes , even in normal quake 3 .

Except that mpterra1 and 3 work just fine, and Polaris is STILL broken.

polaris is a wee bit bigger then mpterra3 i think , not shure

You're the first to encounterethis problem so far.  I just loaded Polaris under FFA and CTF without problems, and none of the beta testers have run into any difficulties with the map.  The only map I know of that crashes Gen consistantly is Mpterra2, and it crashes with a ZMalloc error, not a bad command byte.  If this is happening on a local game you might not have enough memory set in com_hunkmegs.  Otherwise it might be a Q3 glitch if your hardware isn't keeping up.  Try backing off on the detail a bit and see if it loads with a lower resolution or lower bitdepth if your com_hunkmegs looks adequate.

Found the source of the problem. It was my CUBIC ASSLOAD of pk3s in baseq3. It's better now, though you might want to put out a caveat for map/model-lovers out there.

Having a bazillion .pk3 files can cause problems with any large mod, not just Gen.

Enough of them will even cause issues with base q3. I had nearly 300 pk3 files in baseq3 at one time, and I'd get glitchy errors quite often.

Here's a neat little workaround I've found - extract the contents of all of the custom .pk3s in your baseq3 into one big .pk3. The problem is the amount of separate files, not the amount of data. I have about 3GB of custon shit in my baseq3 and was having these problems until I did this. Now everything runs fine.

Just be careful doing that with maps and player models that you intend to use online.  Pure server looks at individual pk3's and does a checksum on them, not the files within the pk3's.  If any pk3 is not kosher to the server it's rejected and does not load.  This can cause you to get booted off a server for a missing map file.

its best to not do those with pakx.pk3 files , I think for the rest it should be fine .

not if the server is a pure server and one of those pk3 files overwrites a file from another pk3

:( One would think that all the people still playing Q3 would be sensible enough now not to need such restricitons anymore.

While pure server doesn't kill off hard core cheaters it DOES keep the game consistant for Joe Quaker.  When you deal with things like version differences between maps, models, and mods it helps greatly.  Someone running the wrong version will get booted for an invalid pk3 instead of some wierd error from an unknown event number or other unusual behavior that results from having the wrong data loaded in memory.  Consistency is vital to catching and eliminating bugs, so I'm always going to be a fan of pure server while we're still in development.

:offtopic:  :rules:

Say, this thread's topic is wrong - again it isn't a real bug :]

ontopic:

Well, I hate pure because it is all-encompassing. My already famous dutch commentary cannot be used even by myself, for the simple reason that ID thinks it would be a 'cheat' of the same magnitude as, say, spiked models. There's no separation in customisable and gameplay-related files, so there's no way to use harmless improvements in your copy of Q3A, while pure is active. That's my biggest problem with it, really.

There are other ways to cheat? Thats kind of worrying...

Like what Tab says though, it would be nice to be able to make small, non critical customisations to the game so long as they dont affect consistency.

 Although I'm not going to say its practical in a multiplayer centered game, I'm personally very fickle with the games I play. If there's something that irritates me in a game then more often than not I'll go looking for tools to change it. I couldn't, for example use the raw, 8 bit, 11khz classic Doom sounds in Gen if I wanted to, which would be just a minor matter of personal taste that would take 2 minutes for me to get it how I like it.

Obviously, this is targeted more at Q3 in general than Gen specifically.

Hey look, we're being on topic with the off topic tangent  ^_^

There's no practical way to make it possible in Q3 (or Gen, for that matter) whilst keeping the use of pure. That's the conclusion from a previous discussion of pure and what Phoenix would tell you if you asked him. :]

Unfortunately, yes.  There are proxy programs and God knows what else for getting around pure server.  If pure server was all that was needed to kill cheating than Id would never have integrated Punkbuster into Q3.  Pure does help to a small degree, but using it for an anti-cheat is not my primary concern.

My primary concern during the development phase of Gen is to ensure a stable and consistent environment.  We do pay attention to those bug reports we get.  If there are 20 different people with 20 different customizations, each reporting different bugs, how am I to know if it's a problem with the mod or a result of a bad customization?  I'd spend a lot of time chasing ghosts and asking questions about obvious things like model packs, sounds, etc, that could otherwise be put to better use.  Until we reach the 1.0 stage I prefer pure server for this reason.  The easier my job is, the quicker we get there.  Everybody wins.  :thumb: