WolfCon "dMw Edition"

[ArithonUK]

As some of you guys know, having been made an admin, I was sent a copy of Wolfcon.

After some quick investigation, I found the author had dropped the project, but posted the source-code online. Being a programmer and an incurable fiddler, I took the program apart to see what made it tick, break and leak.

To the end of improving the look, function and performance of the WolfCon program, I have begun a WOLFCON "dMw Edition"



I will add screenshots and details of what I've added/fixed/broken as I go.

Simply download WolfCon_dmw.rar and unRAR the file into your wolfcon folder.

The new version is named "WolfconBC2dMw.exe" and uses the same folder, settings etc. but leaves you access to the original version.

Your use of the program and feedback on changes are welcomed.

Changes so far:-

• Removed player list form
• Changed player list tab to resemble in-game scoreboard
• Player class / death state is now icon
• Fixed country IP lookup / flags (mostly)
• Obtained 2011 "geoIP.dat" file, replacing 2008 version.
• Dropped "player info" window
• Added player info to right-click player pop-up menu
• Save "yells" to user settings and auto-suggest based on previous entries
• Server pop-up menu yell has fly-out previous yells.
• Removed server list in favour of server list menu.
• Tried to stop player refresh clashing with server data read
• Added some polish to interface

[RizZy]

Groovy.

[Gone_Away]

Looking good.
 
I've spoken with Arithon on this a few times now. He's managed to cleanup what I thought was a real annoyance which was the player / score refresh. I'm sure you guys have seen that sometimes the refresh only picks up 60% of the players. Bit annoying to say the least when you're trying to kick TwoBad for C4 Kills!!!
 
We should get it in a state to test on our server. The main thing is that I'd want to make sure that the full version that sit's on our server works as intended. I will email you the Main server profile and the main pw. for testing..
 
I wonder if we could put this up for others to download and get props for it in the BC2 Community. What do you guys think?
 
Perhaps we could investigate the ownership of wolfcon.co.uk and add it to our own?
 
NF

[ArithonUK]

My thoughts are:-

• Iron out the bugs
• Test to destruction
• Put a //www.deadmen.co.uk/wolfcon page online
  
• vote on obtaining //www.wolfcon.co.uk (which is available) and point this at landing page
  

.

[TeaLeaf]

We can certainly sort the last couple of things if needed.  A dMw-badged Wofcon would be great to support and maintain - and might bring many more gamers our way.

[Penfold]

Nice work :thumbsup2:

[Gone_Away]

Agreed on your approach Arithon! Exactly in line with my thinking and the idea that this could have residual goodness for dMw (hence the URL).
 
We need to consider pushing out any updates however. Also, we should if possible, contact the original designer and politely state that we will be enhancing the product if necessary.
 
We can then pimp it on websites like multiplay to gather support / interest.
 
NF

[TeaLeaf]

It's also worth prepping any pages you want, we can develop it within a separate forum topic in the BC2 GA section, then just move it to the public side when you are ready to roll.

[TwoBad]

Bugs spotted:
Map title in the bottom info bar doesn't update with map change.
BattleMap is always one player short

Request:
Can you add a players rank on the Players tab?

[ArithonUK]

Bugs spotted:
Map title in the bottom info bar doesn't update with map change.
BattleMap is always one player short

Request:
Can you add a players rank on the Players tab?

Map title - will fix this when I can find WHY it isn't getting called!
Battlemap is under major revision - keep watching...
Player rank is NOT available through RCON - our only option is to look it up elsewhere and store it. Not great, but I will pursue this.

[GhostMjr]

Guys this is your section.

So I have kept out of things so far.

What I would say is that once we have things firmed up the tool and know it works that we then approach pc gamer with our tool to be placed in their section of their magazine known as extra life.

This would be put on the pc gamer magazine cd/dvd and give us a huge bit of publicity!

[Naldo]

Personally I think this is a bad idea.

1, You are taking an open source project and only tweaking a handful of things. Mostly cosmetic and dMw server specific.
2, If you "release" that. Then you will have to support  the release. With countless people asking for more. Is Arathon ready for this?
3, The only people interested in Wolfcon is server admins. They have their own servers so why would they be interested in ours?
As a player, why would I be interested in Wolfcon.

No disrespect to Arathon, but what has been done atm is minor or mostly cosmetic changes. Converting an open source tool to a branded/publicity tool, Is just wrong IMHO.

Please don't take my text in the wrong way, I would rather we talked about it on TS.

A better way would be sort of...

Put everything back in that was removed becasue I can guarantee that someone will complain.
Add in the fixes only.
Not include anything dMw specific

Then just a post on for example, the EA forum stating that this new version is released with x,y,z fixed. and just linking here to download it.
Also stating what type of support level will be included (If any).

[ArithonUK]

I have the bug-fixed version of WolfCon available for download. Because of the new map images it weighs in at 101MB. Just unpack it to the current WolfCon folder.

I have to say that I agree with Naldo on many points. And don't worry Naldo, I don't get offended.

My motive for modifying the application was (a) to get a better understanding of the game and (b) fix the bugs and obvious shortcomings of WolfCon. Like I said, I'm a fiddler!

However, during the last few days reading up on Map kill-coordinates and server RCOM protocol, wading through forums, I've actually found there is a much better tool already available which does everything I have been trying to get written into WolfCon.

It's another OpenSource project called "Procon Frostbite" and frankly it's excellent.

It would take me months to get WolfCon as polished as ProCon and I've already spent 10's of hours re-coding parts of WolfCon just to get them working because it is quite badly coded.

I'm all for promoting dMw, but I think WolfCon is a dead end in this regard. Sorry Ghosty.

[smilodon]

I'm not sure I understand why it's a bad idea to work on Wolfcon (other than the fact that ArithonUk has found a better application to use). It would depend if there were any terms or conditions applied to the source code? If it is actually 'open source' i.e. released under something like a 'creative commons licence' the it can't really be an issue.  The very definition of 'open source' is that the source code is open and people are actively encouraged to hack it about, remove bit's, add bits and rewrite bits. The only requirement is that whatever results from that hacking about is also open source, so the source code to ArithonUk's version would have to be made available. The fact that it's probably not of any use to anyone outside dMw isn't really the point. He'd also not have to support it any way if it was released under a creative commons licence.

Procon Frostbite's source code is hosted by Codeplex who AFAIK only host open source code, so I don't think there would be any issues in ArithonUk tweaking this software. In fact the author seems to be actively looking for his program to be developed and plugins written for it by others. I guess if we do end up using either the vanilla version or a derivative of it we could make a donation to the project from dMw funds, but that would have to be agreed by the community leaders, so it's not for me to say.

[TwoBad]

Arithon, have you noticed the server messages getting repeated?
[ATTACH=CONFIG]741[/ATTACH]