Now that DOOM 3 will not be the game to be used in the CPL World Tour, theres been a lot of speculation as to what game will be used. There is currently 2 favorites: Painkiller & UT2004. The CPL have already said that it will not be Quake 3, and it wont be CS.. as thats a team game only.

Today I got informed by Stermy the Italian PK player, about a couple of threads over at the CPL forums. One thread was made in the Painkiller section to get Painkiller picked, and one was in the UT2004 section to get UT2004 picked. As you will see, UT2004 had way more people replying to vote for it to get picked, where-as Painkiller only had about 4 replys. So, Im posting it here, to get all of you Painkiller fans to give Painkiller the support it deserves. Just post to say you would like to see it at the CPL, and why. It will do the game a tremendous amount of good if it does get chosen, so lets help it.

The Painkiller thread at the CPL forums can be found here, and the UT2004 thread can be found here.

What are you waiting for? POST!

Today, PKEuro got a chance to catch up with a couple of the Chains.MOD guys, and ask a few questions about their thoughts on their MOD being used in tournaments such as The CPL & ESWC.

pkeuro: Hi guys, been a while since our last interview, could you please tell us who you are, and what your job role is in the Chains.MOD Dev team?

stR4y: Hi, im Dominik “stR4y” Tomasik, im living in Poland and im 2D graphic artist. My role in Chains.Mod Dev Team is all graphics – hud, new gui, simple item etc. Also im webdesigner and now im working on a new layout for www.chainsmod.net.

kAzu: My name is Greg and Im known as kAzu. Like stR4y and most people of Chainsmod.dev team Im from Poland. In our team Im second Client Side programmer. Actually Im working on new GUI and overtime feature at the moment.

pkeuro: How do you guys feel about the way the community has reacted to Chains.MOD?

stR4y: I feel good 🙂 I want to thank all these people, which play Chains.Mod and give us support.

kAzu: The Painkiller community reacted very good. 😀

pkeuro: Now, I know that Chains is going to be used at The CPL and ESWC as the official MOD, what are your thoughts on this? Extremely happy I should imagine?

stR4y: Yes, Im very glad to see our mod on such huge events. I never expected it and i think this is very big achievement. I hope it will help us in work and give more CM users.

kAzu: Im also a Business Director in Chainsmod team so I must talk with organizers of these very huge cups. Sometimes it was very funny, but not always. The worst time was when we were waitng for answers 🙂 Now everybody is happy. I think Chains.Mod should be more popular after these events.

pkeuro: I also hear theres going to be a special edition, just for those particular Tournaments. Can you give us some details on what is going to be in it? 🙂

stR4y: Especially for these tournaments I created a new HUD and MENU. About other things talk with my friend, kAzu. 🙂

kAzu: Yes. Actually we are making special release for ESWC. Specially for this event i did: Overtime, new GUI (which includes client/server config menu) and also I put ESWC logo in game during warmup. I think ESWC competetors will be happy 🙂

pkeuro: Is there anything you would like to say to the people reading this? IE. Server ops.

stR4y: I search sponsor which will give me cash for trip to Texas, USA for CPL tournament 😀 Also I want greet all my friends and family :>

kAzu: I cant understand server admins. We created CM especially for clanwars, cups etc. We did such useful things as rcon, referee for server side. Why admins arent using CM on their servers? I dont know. To gamers I can only say: Thanks. To server ops: Install Chains.Mod on your servers.

pkeuro: Finally, who do you think will win ESWC? :p

stR4y: I think mysod|mess will win 🙂 Polish game, polish mod.. polish winner 😀

kAzu: I hope: our great player – mysod|mess 🙂

pkeuro: Thank you for your time guys, I hope all goes well with future builds, and keep up the good work! 🙂

stR4y: Thank u2 🙂 Greets. 🙂

kAzu: Thank you. Greets goes to painkiller players, all members of dzastfrends crew: overeq, yareq, fUtRzAk, guhard, k4r3n1n, syzmon, My new polish friend CrippLe :), tester for server hosting and all people on #chainsmod channel.

Extras: Screenshot | Chains.MOD Website

Today, I got the chance to catch up with Yar, the Lead Programmer of the upcoming Painkiller MOD; Chains.MOD, and ask him a few questions. Theres alot of speculation over this MOD, as weve seen a couple of good looking screenshots, showing off the new hud and stuff. Heres what Yar had to say:

pkeuro: Hi Yar, could you please firstly tell us a little about the team currently hard at work on the Chains.MOD, and what visions lie behind the creation of this MOD?

Yar: So, our team currently includes 4 people: I am the lead programmer – client side, kAzu – 2nd Lead programmer & bussines, Soft – server side, gameplay programmer and StR4y – 2d graphics. Our target is to create a mod similar to Q3 OSP – with lots of features, tweaks and bug fixes. Painkiller is a very good game but it requires some tweaks – like advanced hud configuration, remote console, admin/referee, pause match or lock teams.

pkeuro: How will the Chains.MOD help create a new experience and improve Painkiller?

Yar: Chains.MOD is adding a lot of features. eg. ammolist, timer, time & date, team scores on hud in tdm (and you can set position, size & turn on/off all of them) setable position of messages, team reports – with hp/armor ammo etc and much more – this will create a more player-friendly game and make it easier to adjust Painkiller to our requirements. Maybe we will tweak weapons a little to improve balance also. This is all very important to create good multiplay in my opinion. 🙂

pkeuro: Some say mods destroyed the Q3 community by fragmentation, are you doing anything to prevent this happening again with Painkiller?

Yar: We really dont want scene fragmentation.

pkeuro: What is the current status of development, and when do you think your MOD will be ready for release?

Yar: “Public release will be probably be in 1 week.” This is all i can say 😛

pkeuro: Thanks for your time Yar, and good luck.

Yar: NP. Luck will be useful ;] Thanks.

Extras: Screenshot1 | Screenshot2

well Ive done some more playing with the settings and I think it feels a lot better now.

Just a bit of understanding first: Lots of small packets work well for digitial connections, but for adsl where processing latency is higher, and bandwidth more limited, lots of small packets are as benefitial. Latency increases reciprocally as remaining bandwidth decreases (the amount it does this depends on the technology)

However, splitting the rate up into lots of small quickly transmitted packets means that updates occur more quickly.

Hence there is always a compromise between processing latency and update rate.

Settings
========

What I noticed is that maxpacketsize affects server to client number of packets and packet size. The server rate is split up by the maximum packet size this way. The range is 20-1400, 20 gives nearly 200 packets per second, which will is unusable. Setting high values, the update rate drops to around 50/s (obviously it wont drop below server fps*). This is much more acceptable considering that the servers typically run at 45fps. This is still a lot more than Q3s 20fps. I would suggest you experiment with this value, since large packets may not be handled well by your network or routing.

*yet? Like snaps

What concerns me a lot here is that the default is 300. Well this might be ideal for servers with only a few players, but as soon as the server starts getting busy, your packets will get fragmented, and more packets mean more overhead, which means more bandwidth which means even higher latency (as well as the increased update latency).

NetUpdateSendPeriod which is controlled by ActionUpdatePeriod from command line – this is analogous to cl_maxpackets in Q3 except that it is 1000/(the value). 10ms = 100 maxpackets. As always higher update rates, mean lower update latency at the expense of increased bandwidth and the associated increase in latency with that. Play with this value, but you will find that the range over which you can play with it realistically is only, perhaps, 8-12.

Cfg.PushLatency is analogous to negative cl_timenudge in Q3. Like in Q3, it is important to get this setting correct, and requires experimentation.

I also used the new prediction, but it is important to get your basic connection settings correct first of all before using the patch of prediction. Prediction should just *help* but you need to have a playable connection without it first to get the best effect from it.

This is what seemed to work well for me:

Cfg.NetUpdateMaxPacketSize = 700
Cfg.NetUpdateSendPeriod = 10
Cfg.PlayerPrediction = true
Cfg.NewPrediction = true
Cfg.PushLatency = 25

Let me know what works well for you

Doughboy1er Will Be Collecting Demos For the new up and coming film for PAINKILLER (Frag Film.)The Name of the film is going to be – Faces of Destruction 5 God Needs A Painkiller

For Those Who are Interested In joining the Video
Contact
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MSN: Doughboy1er@hotmail.com
IRC: EntertheGame @ #Painkiller ( Nick Doughboy1er )