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EE Mods and more - state of the art?

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 9:35 am
by Neotje
I just came back to Neo-EE, and I noticed that there are people that are using the drexmod.
However, I was also talking to some other guy today that seemed to have a version that also shows what epoch the players are in...

What is the current normal-to-have, and what is considered cheating? Because knowing what epoch your enemy is in can make a noticeable strategic advantage.. Additionally the zoommode seems quite an advantage, but is not part of - for example - the normal patch.

Re: EE Mods and more - state of the art?

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 7:39 pm
by Arntzen
In the save-ee lobby ToS we defined cheating like this:
Cheating is defined as ... (a) the use of any bannable glitch, (b) modifying game files (including civilizations), or (c) the use of a program (such as a trainer) ... in order to gain an unfair advantage. However, breaking a game's rules is not cheating, despite the fact that it is disrespectful.
What part of drexmod is considered cheating comes down to what one would consider an unfair advantage.
EEMap tool that lets you record game and rewatch it doesn't give you an unfair advantage IMO since the information is only available after the game is played, not during.
Example of EEMap:
eeplayer.jpg
Ability to zoom out on the other hand is something that clearly gives an advantage in game. It's a double edged sword though since it gives you a clearer view, but drastically harms your accuracy (example: ability to micro). Does it give an unfair advantage? I don't really think so. It's available to all so everyone can chose whether they want to use it or not. The ability to zoom out your view does not change the way EE is played, and expert players would not want to use it in competitive liga/mid/mod/p2n games. It turns out horrible accuracy isn't something you want if the goal is to play quick and well :D

Drex is now making a new and better mod which will improve some of the things he's made previously and also he plan on adding new things. One of which is the HUD you speak of which shows the player in game the epoch and total score of every player in the game. Including the enemies. This is clearly an advantage and would be a game changer if it was introduced.
I'll just come straight out and say to me, this is definitely a cheat. It's a HUD that gives you information you wouldn't normally have. You will still have to scout your enemy, but not as much as before. If it was allowed it would force everyone who wants to compete to start using it. It would change the game, and IMO to the worse.
Here is a picture of how it looks like:
HUD.jpg
I have expressed my concern to drex about this, and he has said he will add an option of when you're hosting a game to disable the hud, or if you wish you can disable all drexmods (like the zoom out) for all the players in the game. To me this is a fix to any problem (as long as there isn't a way to overrule this).

What do you guys think?

Re: EE Mods and more - state of the art?

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 8:57 pm
by lightnessking.
add an upgrade in the university to deny your enemies from seeing what epoch you are in for a sum of 250 gold. (available at bronze, not copper.)

Re: EE Mods and more - state of the art?

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 1:03 pm
by Neotje
Giving the option to turn parts of it off sounds like a proper method for me, if it works.
However, it seems currently there are some people with a version running around that also has the HUD that shows epoch. I don't think this should be the case... Either it's all, or just some...

Re: EE Mods and more - state of the art?

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 5:15 am
by Omega
I'm in agreement with Arntzen here. The zoom mode is not really any sort of advantage, but knowing what epoch your opponent is in (for multi epoch games) and/or knowing their score (for multi epoch games or especially single epoch games) is an obvious advantage.

With that said, Empire Earth is an old game. It was released in November 2001, more than 16 years ago, and before this year is up we will have kept it around for more than a decade past the shutdown of the official servers (and it stopped getting any sort of software updates LONG before server shutdown). If someone wants to gain an unfair advantage at this game, it's not exactly difficult for them to do that at this point, and there will always be people who want an unfair advantage.

This is a great game, but for a game this old, my suggestion is to enjoy playing and not worry about other players using any software that might grant an unfair advantage, except to avoid using that software yourself if you find it unethical, and avoid playing with anyone who is leveraging a massive unfair advantage to the point the games aren't fun. Basically, just have fun and enjoy playing this game while there are still other players around!

Damn, now I'm somewhat tempted to reinstall...

Re: EE Mods and more - state of the art?

Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2018 3:25 pm
by drex888
hi guys,

My opinion about drexmod's HUD.
copy/past of from my youtube channel (including all spelling and grammatical and others errors :D )

...
1 - HUD don't display players resources but players scores which is different from resources.
HUD Score includes Military and Economic and Society points: resources gathered, current resources, units kill/lost, population, army, buildings Killed/lost and others stuffs.
Score is an aggregation of player points from the start of the game to the current time, its impossible to infer current enemy Miltary/Economic situation from his score. the player's score reflect only global level of player during current game.

2 - All version of Age Of Empire, which is very similar to EE, has Score/Age HUD included in official version, and that don't spoil/damages gameplay:
http://ageofempires.wikia.com/wiki/Score
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=githpL86X8U

3 - dreXmod with HUD feature is not yet released. Only me and few beta testers have it. In practice, HUD score give very little advantage. Personally I only use it for the convenience of my stream viewers. I don't watch a lot on it.

4 - The most important point, I had a conversation with Arntzen (save-ee Admin) on this subject, we have found a good compromise: in the next version, I'll add a feature which allow game host to disable HUD or others dreXmod's features for all players. i think that's going to solve the HUD's problem once and for all!



.

Re: EE Mods and more - state of the art?

Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2018 9:51 pm
by D55
So drex, I purchased a new computer a few months ago with a big hd screen, I currently use the zoom out feature on your mod, and to be honest it is very hard to play with out the zoom out feature on. I don't know if maybe because its a 15 year old game and was not meant for these new big screens but when i first installed ee on this computer it was almost unplayable because how zoomed in everything is. I found out about your mod shortly after and well man its been a lifesaver for me. When you say the new version of the mod will let hosts disable some features of the mod like score viewing, are you going to include them being able to disable the zoom out?

Re: EE Mods and more - state of the art?

Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2018 10:00 pm
by Arntzen
d555killer have you tried a 4:3 ratio resolution without the zoom? 1024x768 for example.

Re: EE Mods and more - state of the art?

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 3:37 pm
by Neotje
drex888 wrote:hi guys,

My opinion about drexmod's HUD.
copy/past of from my youtube channel (including all spelling and grammatical and others errors :D )

...
1 - HUD don't display players resources but players scores which is different from resources.
HUD Score includes Military and Economic and Society points: resources gathered, current resources, units kill/lost, population, army, buildings Killed/lost and others stuffs.
Score is an aggregation of player points from the start of the game to the current time, its impossible to infer current enemy Miltary/Economic situation from his score. the player's score reflect only global level of player during current game.

2 - All version of Age Of Empire, which is very similar to EE, has Score/Age HUD included in official version, and that don't spoil/damages gameplay:
http://ageofempires.wikia.com/wiki/Score
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=githpL86X8U

3 - dreXmod with HUD feature is not yet released. Only me and few beta testers have it. In practice, HUD score give very little advantage. Personally I only use it for the convenience of my stream viewers. I don't watch a lot on it.

4 - The most important point, I had a conversation with Arntzen (save-ee Admin) on this subject, we have found a good compromise: in the next version, I'll add a feature which allow game host to disable HUD or others dreXmod's features for all players. i think that's going to solve the HUD's problem once and for all!



.
Personally I do not agree on point 2, I think it actually changes the gameplay. I do agree it does not give a very big advantage though.
Regarding point 4: I agree that this is a perfect compromise, I would appreciate if the HUD is an independent option, because I do like the zoom function a lot. Additionally, if everyone has it, nobody has an unfair advantage...

Re: EE Mods and more - state of the art?

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 6:06 pm
by D55
Arntzen wrote:d555killer have you tried a 4:3 ratio resolution without the zoom? 1024x768 for example.
ah thank you zen, it does make it better when i play with out zoom, however with that resolution, the zoom doesn't see as good now lol. Do you recommend a certain resolution to be playing with zoom on?

Re: EE Mods and more - state of the art?

Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 3:30 pm
by Jodocus
I am always impressed of what yukon has achieved so far. Optional additions to the game are never a disadvantage, including this HUD. It would be better if straight everyone on NeoEE automatically had the yukon patches (which he/she can enable or disable as he/she wants). Unfortunately, right now, I am just too busy to spend the necessary time for development, especially for a more dynamic patcher that would allow yukon to easily deploy his patches to all NeoEE users. But to be honest, porting the NeoEE servers to Linux is actually even more important and I am not done with that either. And then there is the ladder, for which there is no theoretical limit to implement any longer as the research work is already done. Just a matter of time...
Anyways, props to yukon and sorry for the patch-chaos. You can partly blame me on that.

Re: EE Mods and more - state of the art?

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2018 7:48 am
by lightnessking.
Does that drex mod disable AI from cheating? Since AOC works for me and I just played a stone-ww2 game where i got rushed by 40 spearman and 25 of those units that bring your buildings down within 5 minutes of the game.