Ross Scott

Ask questions or topics to discuss here for the next videochat with fans on 5:00pm UTC on May 5th at twitch.tv/rossbroadcast. This one may be longer than usual since the "games as a service" video made a pretty big splash, so I'm guessing there may be more questions on that. This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

I'm not even pretending to be knowledgeable on that part, but I've gotten a few messages on this that I've been referring to the person who worked reverse engineering a server emulator. Here's a general response I've been sending, no one's replied back yet: I was only talking about the "minimum effort" options to give users a fighting CHANCE to create a server emulator. To that, he replied with this: "On the documentation part, it would highly unusual for the server engineers not to keep SOME packet documentation during development since the server developers and the client developers are often separate.There is guaranteed, at least SOME packet documentation. There has to be. Like imagine that packet 02A sent a 8 bit packet of numbers, and it had to do with say, MPH in a racing game. This is really simplified, but you'll get the point. Then one of the 20 programmers comes along and has to ask EACH TIME what packet to check for that info.There's no way, at that point it becomes a profit loss not to have the server developer just type what it fucking is into something like OpenKM so people can search for it." He also attached a comment somebody else made in the comments (attached below) If you're saying that's still way off base, feel free to give specifics that I can pass on to him. If you have specific grievances, you can even get as technical as you want, so I can pass it along to him even if it goes over my head. On that note, I have some questions for you if you don't mind: 1. Since you're saying his time estimate is way off base, in your opinion, what is the BARE MINIMUM of effort a developer can do upon game shutdown to give users a CHANCE to attempt to create a server emulator? In other words, not a functional emulator, just enough info to not make things an almost-impossible task. Everyone seems to agree that disabling packet encryption is a big one (that alone could save YEARS or work). What else? 2. How long would you estimate your bare minimum effort solution would take to implement? 3. The above is referring only to games that had no EOL plan to begin with. But say you were creating a game from the design phase where you knew you wanted an EOL plan upon shutdown so users would have some method to run the game upon shutdown. Assume it doesn't need to retain 100% functionality, so it may not contain things like auction houses, matchmaking, or being able to handle the same volume of players as a central server. Just as long as the player can technically run around in the game and get some of the bare bones playability from the game. How much extra work / budget do you estimate creating the EOL would take? Assume 2 different scenarios: 3a. A simple arena shooter like Nosgoth or Lawbreakers 3b. A moderately sized MMO like Firefall or Wildstar

You call it a technicality, countries like Canada define them as dead-to-rights goods. As for loopholes, sure, that's possible, but do companies really want to kick off players who lapse for a couple months and lower their playerbase for not paying 3 cents? Having other players run around in the server and keep it populated is worth more to them than that, that's the reason the free to play model is so successful. Again, this is CHEAP, cheaper than finding ways of evading it. The only thing that's cheaper is doing nothing at all, I'm trying to see if the law can slam that door shut. It's like the other features I mentioned. Eliminating piracy does not require you to ALSO destroy the game forever upon shutdown. In other words, sure it eliminates piracy while the service is running, but that does not REQUIRE the game to die after shutdown. The logic on this can confuse people. I admit the odds aren't great, but I am legitimately seeing a chance, so I'm going for it. If I thought it was hopeless, I wouldn't have made this. It's like I said, I need it to end or I need to be defeated. I may quote you for a future video I have planned, you may like it.

My ultimate video on "games as a service"! This video is more fact-heavy than the vast majority of ones I make, but it's on a topic that I think is the largest problem in gaming today. As you'll see in the video, this is my declaration of war on "games as a service." I've been meaning to make this video since at least last year, there's been a lot leading up to this. It's quite long and dryer than my usual stuff, you may want to watch it in chunks, or just skip straight to the ending. In the past, I've made "Dead Game News" videos as a way to shine a light on how bad the practice of destroying games is. That hasn't been enough to curtail the practice in any way whatsoever; on the contrary, the practice continues to accelerate. This video is essentially what "Dead Game News" was leading up to. I was hoping to raise enough awareness on the topic to take some sort of real action against it. Most of the video is a "deprogramming" of the industry narrative as to what "games as a service" is, similar to how you would try to treat a rescued cult member, hence the reason it's so long. The end goal of this video is to lead to some sort of legal action against the industry (details on that in the video). Now that I've learned enough about the topic to see that this could actually be possible, I think it's the only chance for saving many games in the future. I honestly have zero idea if this video will lead to real action being taken or if things will completely fizzle out. Either way, I felt compelled to make it, like it wasn't even in my control. This video is very much a "It's better to regret something you have done, than regret something you haven't done" situation. This did take time away from my other usual videos, my apologies about that, but it also served as an exorcism for me so that I don't have to keep obsessing on this topic in the future. It's in fate's hands now, I've done what I can, we'll just see what happens. Anyway, more fun videos are coming for the future, which is what I'd rather be making anyway! This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

Here's the latest videochat with fans. I talk some about the next video coming up, plus answered questions as usual. The topics of AI learning, Stadia, and Watch Dogs came up. More videos coming this month! This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

I've mostly recovered from being sick! Ask questions or topics to discuss here for the next videochat with fans on 5:00pm UTC on April 7th at twitch.tv/rossbroadcast. My sickness skewed production some, but I've got some big videos coming for April. This is just a detour, Freeman's Mind is still coming! Also, since the chats have been getting longer and longer, this time I'm trying something new and am only going to answer the top 20 voted questions. After that, I'll skip the others unless I think they're pretty good topics + ones from live chat to keep the length of these down a little bit. This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

Just a quick update, I've been sick with some sort of virus (probably flu) for the past week and a half. It's affected my voice and means all recording is currently suspended until I'm better. I have been working on supplemental material for the videos in the meantime, though going is slower since I'm still in an ongoing "blah" state. I'm also cancelling the playsession with fans this month on the 23rd. I'm anticipating I'll be good enough to do the videochat with fans in April, but I'll post an update if not. This will definitely delay the release of the next videos since I can't record yet, but may not impact the total time much for them all coming out since I'm still working on all of them. I have some neat stuff coming! This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

Here's the March videochat with fans with the usual rambling. I genuinely thought this was going to be a shorter session, but had too many questions to go through. I think in the future I'll have a cutoff point for how many I accept just to cut down some on the time. I also think I may have screwed up and started it too early, but it went on so long I'm not sure that changed much. Things happening with other videos in the meantime! This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

Ask questions or topics to discuss here for the next videochat with fans on 5:00pm UTC on March 2nd at twitch.tv/rossbroadcast. I'm currently having minor setbacks on FM that I'm getting modding help on, been working on other videos in the meantime. This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

Here's another blooper that happened in Freeman's Mind 2, completely unplanned. This one happened multiple times, but this is one I recorded from the demos. In addition to this, I also would get caught on something upon leaving the boat, being completely unable to move, but I could at least fight that one with noclip. Not this. This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

ekket: That looks like almost exactly what I want, too bad it's still prototyping. EDIT: Almost, upon further examination it looks like they don't have a button for the pinky finger either, I'm a mutant.

Here's the next episode, late, but still faster than the last one! The boat created several issues for this one, but it ended up working well enough. One annoyance is when playing back a demo, the screen glitches out for a frame or two every single time Freeman enters or exits the boat, so that needs to be fixed in editing. There was also a more impressive bug I ran into which I'll post a blooper video of in a few days. This video was also my first attempt at outsourcing the volume balancing to someone else. I wasn't happy with the results, so I ended up doing it myself, which probably still isn't great, but is less not great than before. I plan to try again with volume balancing help for future videos until I hopefully find someone better at it than me. Next episode of FM2 is slowly underway! This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

For Saturday, I was going to attempt to play Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne with fans, since it recently got patched to support 24 people at a time. Unfortunately, if you own Warcraft 3, the process is rather convoluted. It used to be you installed the game, then installed the patch. Not anymore. I ran into so many problems trying to get the recent patch working, I almost thought I was going to have to cancel the event entirely. I found Blizzard's instructions to be utterly wrong and refer to links that simply didn't exist. I finally did figure out how to get it working, so if you own a copy of the game, the instructions are below. I can't promise they'll work for you, but this is what finally worked for me after MANY dead ends. This isn't an attempt to get people to buy the game, I just figured it was a popular game at the time and many people may still have a copy of it somewhere. Definitely don't go and buy the game just to play in this, it's possible it'll just be this one time I try a 24 person game of this, depends on how it goes. It should download automatically when we play, but if you want a head start, this is the map I was planning on us playing. INSTRUCTIONS FOR PEOPLE WHO OWN THE CD COPY: 1. Do NOT install Warcraft 3 from the CDs (It may not impact anything, but it certainly won't help). If you already have it installed this way, I advise uninstalling it and deleting the directory. 2. Download installer from here (it's for 1.30.2, but it will update). Best I can tell, Blizzard does not host the installer / patches anymore, a brilliant move. 3. Unzip the installer and run it with Windows XP compatibility mode on (right click on it, properties, compatibility tab). I couldn't get it to work properly without doing this. 4. Install the game. If it gives you trouble here, I may not have help for you aside from uninstalling it (if it lets you), deleting the directory it was installing to, and trying again. 5. After installing the game, don't launch it yet (you can if you want, but it will probably give you an error). Instead, go to your installed directory, make sure "Warcraft III.exe" is NOT in XP compatibility mode, then run it. 6. Enter in your CD keys for both Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos and Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne when prompted. 7. Launch the game, then click on Battle.net and create an account. Best I can tell, this is DIFFERENT from the Battle.net launcher used for Blizzard-Activition games like Overwatch, Hearthstone, etc., you'll need to create a new account entirely I think. So, yes, this is for battle.net, not battle.net. 8. After creating it, on the main menu, click on the magnifiying glass to change the gateway selection. Since fans will be playing globally, I'm thinking we'll try USA East as a compromise to have the lowest average ping for USA West and European players. 9. Join the stream at 5PM UTC on February 16th at twitch.tv/rossbroadcast so we can coordinate starting the game. You don't have to leave the stream running afterward if you don't want to. We'll wait a few minutes to let latecomers join in, but unfortunately people are locked out once the game starts. INSTRUCTIONS FOR PEOPLE WHO GOT A COPY WITH WARCRAFT 3 REFORGED: 1. Beats me, you're on your own. Steps 7 and onward are probably the same. Everyone else is welcome to watch at 5PM UTC on February 16th at twitch.tv/rossbroadcast. EDIT: Blizzard's gaslighting me. Apparently they've restored the option to download the official clients here: https://us.battle.net/account/download/ That option was removed a week or two earlier. Here's the wayback machine link to prove I'm not crazy: http://web.archive.org/web/20181223085451/https://us.battle.net/account/download/ This doesn't affect the instructions at all, just wanted to add that. This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »