tl;dr;
IG+ is now available and most (hopefully all) compatibility issues with LeagueAS140 have now been patched.
Vote for AS+ (or +AS) maps in Map Vote, or use !setmode ASplus to play in PUG matches.
And the full story:
So, in case you missed it, it's 2024 already.
Shocking, I know.
But in other news, a few people have been talking about this subject for a while, and it's fairly well-known that our little pocket of a community has generally been quite a bit behind other communities, leagues, cups and tournaments with running "oldnet" style netcode - that being, per the base-game, all (relatively low-polled) player movement and hit registration is performed server-side.
This obviously presents challenges with huge disparities between low/high ping players and generally varying degrees of playability depending on time of day / day of week, especially when having to balance a lossy low-latency requiring game and dealing with general internet connectivity & traffic.
We've had "zeroping" instagib for many years already, and we've tried other mods such as "LC" or Lag-Compensated weapons, which went the completely opposite direction with introducing client-side registration, but also movement prediction. Beyond continuing with "zpiAS", our community largely dismissed "LC" as being too game-breaking.
Other communities out there however have largely settled on a mod called InstaGibPlus (aka IG+/UT+) brought together by spect, originating as an InstaGib-centered fork of TimTim's NewNet - that being a client-side hit registration mod which has been around for more than 10 years. IG+ has since been forked again by Deaod and maintained and grown to be a very distinct and highly recommended mod in its own standing, which has moved on largely from the "NewNet" world and instead sought to introduce and balance features back into our "oldnet" world.
We are now very well down the rabbit hole of forks and have our own variant of Deaod's IG+ in order to address compatibility issues with our aged League Assault mod... It was the "lesser" of two evils in having to maintain a further fork versus having to re-write League Assault. However, I've tried to keep the changes to the bare minimum required, and simply used workflow processes to address things at time of build, allowing us to simply "merge" in upstream improvements as and when we wish to (in short - I really didn't want another mod to have to maintain independently).
What this new mod brings to our dwindling community is quite vast, but in short:-
Feel free to collate any feedback here or in discord.
FAQs:
Why forks and not spoons?
A fork in this sense is a copy of source code that has since undergone independent development. You are welcome to bring your own spoons.
Where's this all maintained?
There are 3 main projects -
- Our LeagueAS140Plus fork can be found here: https://github.com/Sizzl/LeagueAS140Plus
- Deaod's actively maintained IG+ can be found here: https://github.com/Deaod/InstaGibPlus
- spect's original fork can be found here: https://github.com/utspect/InstaGibPlus
How do I play?
- Our always-on Pug Server is running Map Vote and has a list with AS+ prefixed maps. Voting for any of these will turn on LeagueAS140Plus. Launch mapvote with "mutate bdbmapvote".
- For our pug, we have two new game-modes - "ASplus" and "ProASplus" - these can be switched on with the !setmode command, e.g., !setmode ASplus
IG+ is now available and most (hopefully all) compatibility issues with LeagueAS140 have now been patched.
Vote for AS+ (or +AS) maps in Map Vote, or use !setmode ASplus to play in PUG matches.
And the full story:
So, in case you missed it, it's 2024 already.
Shocking, I know.
But in other news, a few people have been talking about this subject for a while, and it's fairly well-known that our little pocket of a community has generally been quite a bit behind other communities, leagues, cups and tournaments with running "oldnet" style netcode - that being, per the base-game, all (relatively low-polled) player movement and hit registration is performed server-side.
This obviously presents challenges with huge disparities between low/high ping players and generally varying degrees of playability depending on time of day / day of week, especially when having to balance a lossy low-latency requiring game and dealing with general internet connectivity & traffic.
We've had "zeroping" instagib for many years already, and we've tried other mods such as "LC" or Lag-Compensated weapons, which went the completely opposite direction with introducing client-side registration, but also movement prediction. Beyond continuing with "zpiAS", our community largely dismissed "LC" as being too game-breaking.
Other communities out there however have largely settled on a mod called InstaGibPlus (aka IG+/UT+) brought together by spect, originating as an InstaGib-centered fork of TimTim's NewNet - that being a client-side hit registration mod which has been around for more than 10 years. IG+ has since been forked again by Deaod and maintained and grown to be a very distinct and highly recommended mod in its own standing, which has moved on largely from the "NewNet" world and instead sought to introduce and balance features back into our "oldnet" world.
We are now very well down the rabbit hole of forks and have our own variant of Deaod's IG+ in order to address compatibility issues with our aged League Assault mod... It was the "lesser" of two evils in having to maintain a further fork versus having to re-write League Assault. However, I've tried to keep the changes to the bare minimum required, and simply used workflow processes to address things at time of build, allowing us to simply "merge" in upstream improvements as and when we wish to (in short - I really didn't want another mod to have to maintain independently).
What this new mod brings to our dwindling community is quite vast, but in short:-
- We have a stable long-standing and accepted mod which introduces a welcome balance between "oldnet" and "newnet"
- We're effectively running in the same mode as some other communities, introducing mostly movement improvements with higher polling rates to provide more accurate view of player positions, along with some weapon handling changes.
- Hit registration is still calculated server-side, but the "rng" or randomness of some of these are now controllable.
- Splash damage and hitscan weapons will feel improved due to the improvement in movement and positioning of players.
- Those movement and animation improvements are introduced through increased levels of sampling and other fixes to player models
- Hitsounds are optionally available (and either, server-side generated or client-side generated).
- Skin/model standardising is available - should you wish to have a consistent experience in-game (may help with launch aiming?).
- A crosshair "factory" is available to build your own crosshairs easily, in-game (use "igplusmenu" and scroll to the bottom).
- Play should be largely similar across different communities now, the only differences might be in tweaks to weapon switching time and weapon power.
- On that note - we can now freely adjust weapon settings to better balance gameplay, or be fearful of change and leave everything as it ever was.
igplusmenu - launches a graphical window allowing you to make client-side changes
mutate playerhelp - lists available commands in the consoleFeel free to collate any feedback here or in discord.
FAQs:
Why forks and not spoons?
A fork in this sense is a copy of source code that has since undergone independent development. You are welcome to bring your own spoons.
Where's this all maintained?
There are 3 main projects -
- Our LeagueAS140Plus fork can be found here: https://github.com/Sizzl/LeagueAS140Plus
- Deaod's actively maintained IG+ can be found here: https://github.com/Deaod/InstaGibPlus
- spect's original fork can be found here: https://github.com/utspect/InstaGibPlus
How do I play?
- Our always-on Pug Server is running Map Vote and has a list with AS+ prefixed maps. Voting for any of these will turn on LeagueAS140Plus. Launch mapvote with "mutate bdbmapvote".
- For our pug, we have two new game-modes - "ASplus" and "ProASplus" - these can be switched on with the !setmode command, e.g., !setmode ASplus
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