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History
LOX for the 21st Century by QwazyWabbit<WOS>
In the four years between the last release of Wod:LOX 1.11
in September of 1999 and December 2003 the LOX mod waned along with the popularity of Quake 2 and eventually there were only 1 or 2
servers running LOX in any form on the Internet. Part of the problem, it seemed to me, was the stability and general crankyness
of LOX on both the Linux and Windows platforms. If only we could fix some of the unstable interactions of some of the features, like
the guided missles making player POV go nuts when they were intercepted by the angel of mercy, or the fact that decoys never worked right, or
the way the server would crash every couple of hours if you didn't have all the right features configured or certain weapons banned.
If only...
Finally, I decided after years of enjoying the mod and enduring all the vagaries and bugs and server crashes to actually get
off my butt and do something about it. I had the LOX source code, a version that was purported to be LOX 1.11, in a ZIP archive.
But what's this? I compile the code - and lo and behold it _says_ it's LOX 1.11 and runs just fine but where are the guided
nukes and the guided darKMajick grenades? It turns out that the only remaining source archive of the LOX code was a version that
was numbered 1.11 but was something between 1.10 and 1.11 and it was missing a lot of features that existed in the LOX binaries that
were being distributed world wide. I had intended to make some minor bug fixes and some tweaks to the code here and there and just improve
it just a little bit and then sit back and enjoy the new game and watch everyone have a good time. Little did I know.
As Dave described, LOX is mixture of WOD and lots of other cool features and weapons from other mods that everyone thought would
be cool to have in a really insanely funny mod. The result was some pretty weird interaction of those features and sometimes some
server-crashing incompatibilities. I come from a background in real-time systems and robotics where if the system crashes, really
bad things happen in the real world. I couldn't just let a few bugs remain un-smashed. My goal now is to make LOX as full-featured as possible
and to minimize the pain an admin has to endure to keep the server up and to make LOX as smooth and stable as I possibly could. So here is
the result of one year of effort, off and on, as I had time on weekends and in the evenings in my motel room during the week, (I travel a
lot in my job), finding bugs and cleaning up code and in general,
just learning all the tricks I needed to learn about programming FPS games in C, without dispatchers and tasks and all the other neat things
that make programming real-time events a little easier. I won't bore you with the details of my learning
experience, but what started out being a few minor tweaks here and there became a full-on rewrite of
what has now become over 220 source files worth of code from a variety of authors coding to different standards and different objectives.
I broke a few things along the way, I fixed a few things, I added a few things and I think and hope that LOX is better than it was when
I started working on it. I haven't run out of bugs or ideas yet, there are still more versions yet to come with added features and weapons that
will hopefully make it even more fun.
The first few LOX 1.12.x packages installed on top of existing WoD:LOX installations, so LOX 1.10 or 1.11 should be your starting point
since LOX versions 1.12.1 thru 1.12.4 are all merely DLL replacements. Beginning with LOX version 1.12.6 I am creating a full installation
ZIP file that will drop everything you need to play LOX into your Quake 2 installation. This ZIP file contains the LOX libraries for
Windows and for Linux and should be compatible with Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, Windows XP, Fedora Core, Red Hat 9.0 and 9.1 with
other flavors of Linux yet to be tested. Some versions of Linux require the Quake 2 v3.21 code be built on or for the target
system, so Linux owners, you know what to do. Loxophilia, the WOS server that runs LOX for our clan is running Red Hat Enterprise
Linux using Quake 2, v3.21 built on RH9 and LOX code built on Fedora Core 1.
02/08/2005
Foreword and History of the Mod, By The Lopez
Thank you for choosing my mod. This is truly one of the most weapon packed and
feature packed mods that has ever been written. It has no theme other than grab
a weapon and completely destroy your enemy. Please after you play it don't email
me to say well the mod sucks, it is just a combination of a bunch of different
mods. I already know that. We, the development team, have gone into a bunch of
different mods source codes and found which weapons and features were the best.
Knowing this information we code that code and added it into ours. But originally
this mod was not really a mod, it was a joke. It was a joke on the part of Clan
Lox. During a smoke break, after a night of drinking and playing quake, a bunch
of us started to say "wow wouldn't it be cool to have a chain Railgun in
WOD?" In my drunken stupor I said yeah that would be cool. So the next morning
I down- loaded the WoD code and started to play around with it. We, Gametoken and
myself created the original sweepers that day, Superblaster, freezer, grenade,
bazooka and railgun. We put this new DLL onto our clan server, Monty's Meatgrinder,
and started to kick peoples butts. Then people started to get mad cause our DLL
was messing up the stats. We changed the name of our mod from just WoD to
WoD:LOX, Lethal Orifice eXamination. At the time we only had one server up and the
end of the school year was drawing near. Then one day when I was going from WoD
server to WoD server trying to get people to switch to WoD:LOX I met clan RAD. After a
butt-kicking on my part I told the people who were there about my mod and they
seemed interested. If I remember right it was Deathdawg and Papatick. I
think that was who was there from clan RAD. There might have been others but I
can't remember. So I showed them the mod and they liked them. They set up the
second of the WoD:LOX servers. It was because of their interest in the mod that
kept me wanting to develop the mod even further.
After tearful goodbyes clan Lox went their separate ways for the summer. At home
I kept developing the mod, adding new weapons and features. But that was not the
only thing that I did. I put up the eight lox servers that have served use
faithfully since then. More and more people started to join our ranks as WoD:LOX
players.
5 September, 1999 - Beginnings of LOX ver. 1.10
Current LOX Developers
Origonal LOX Developers
Author:Dave Martin
aka: The Lopez
Email: jblabs@aracnet.com
Original Author:Steven Boswell
aka: Hash Assassin
Original Original Author: Matt Wright
aka:PunK
Wyrm ][ Code:Josep del Rio
Email: wyrm@telefragged.com
========
Mod info
========
New DLL(s): Yep
New Sound(s): Yep
New Model(s): Yep
Known Bugs: I've fixed all the bugs I've received.
=======
Credits
=======
- Dave Martin opus@aracnet.com,javabean@aracnet.com,jblabs@aracnet.com
- Code Warrior using Visual Studio 5.0
- Dusty Lloyd
- Pseudo Code Warrior using Visual Studio 5.0
- Newest version of Modula-3 for the enhanced homer code
- Ada for the angel code
- Justin Sucharski
- Blind as A Bat Boy using Photoshop for skinning (we all know)
- Brendan McWalters winkel@zork.net
- Provided moral support and food and someone who we could smack around a bit,
with a wet trout of course.
Testers
- Rommel[RnR]
- Tiger's Cum Rag<LOX>
- Hippi<LOX>
- Winkel<LOX>
- Betrayal <LOX>
- PurityControl<LOX>
- All of Clan RAD
- Ed Gein and Clan OBD
People to thank
- Clan RAD for being so supportive of my mod, without them the mod wouldn't be
where it is today
- My girlfriend for being patient on those nights where I would get up from sleeping
to fix a bug or two.
- Boarder for the Angel Of Revenge idea
- To everyone else who submitted a weapon or feature idea that I forgot to put in.
- Chaos Mod developers for being so understanding
- All the people who play the mod and keep it alive
===================
Mod Version History
===================
1.10
- RELEASED: WoD:LOX Server Configuration Tool. There is a link to the zip file
at the wodlox download page. This should help server admins configure their
wod:lox servers.
- Added the Explosive Chaingun. Hehehehe this should make the game a little bit
more interesting. Fires explosive bullets rather than than the regular shells.
- Added the Explosive Shotgun weapons. Each one of the shell weapons now have an
explosive alternate. People should get a kick out of the new Explosive Streetsweeper.
- Got the Linux version to compile, but I am still getting Segmentation Faults
right after someone connects. I am trying to get it to work. Another problem
that we had was that the Torture Chamber was making it so the Linux binary would not
load up. I had to take it out of both versions. Hopefully I can get it to work
sometime in the future.
- It works, it works. After getting reports that the explosive and detonate
command didn't work I was bummed. I thought that I had fixed the bloody thing. Then I
noticed that when the explosive killed you, when you died, if you had an explosive out
it had to be detonated, thus causing damage to you, killing you, and so on and
so on. You can see how this could cause a server to crash, well this is fixed now.
- I added rocket armor and grenade armor. Though this does not protect you from
the grenade or rocket splash damage.
- Fixed up the angel of death to fire the new weapons
- Fixed up the trackers to fire the new weapons
- Changed the Spiral Rocket Launcher, so when the rockets actually hit they will
act like the flame rockets.
- added variables for revenge factor, revengeaward and highfraggeraward.
Hopefully this should motivate people to use this feature of the mod.
- added the daynight server variable. It is set by default to 13 minutes. To
change it just add the line 'set nightdaytime <time in min>' where <time
in min> is the number of minutes you want the cycle to take. A cycle if you don't
remember is the time it takes for it to go from day -> night -> day.
- changed the MOD messages for the explosive weapons.
- Added 3 new commands that you guys will love. Well actually it is four
commands. The first of the commands is lbind. This command is needed for the following three
commands: onspawn, ondeath and onenemydeath. So if you can imagine these new
commands will be very useful. For instance you no longer will have to set up your HUD each
time after you die. Instead you can do 'lbind onspawn "<commands>" ' the
commands have to be in quotes else it won't work properly. Enjoy.
- Added the Sticky Grenadesweeper
- Added Explosive Machinegun
- Added and fixed the High Fragger Ghost feature. Bascially what this does is
create a ghost like
effect above the person with the most frags.
- Added the positron grenade
- Added the Kaminit gun. Basically when you hit someone with this weapon it will
initiate their kamakaze sequence.
- Added the Wall Piercing Railgun, so all of you who like hiding behind walls,
beware.
- Added Angel Of Unfreeze per request of many people. I know that the Angel of
Frost can become overly annoying when used. Well here is my answer to it.
- WoD:LOX Linux finally compiled and worked fine. Thank you gametoken, sigh.
1.09
- I have fixed the explosives bug as well as I can. There is a server-client
timing issue that the ID Software code has. I really don't know what to do.
- After play testing the trackers with some people we noticed that the rate of
fire has been too fast. I slowed the rate of fire down. Plus the trackers now
track a lot better.
- All the sweepers actually work correctly now. After tweaking their code a bit
I have been able to make them work like the streetsweeper works. As long as
you hold down the attack button down you will fire.
- If you have the sweeperfiremode enabled and have the attack button pressed
while firing the attack button down you run the risk of having your sweeper
explode. You have been warned.
- I have gotten sick of people asking me "How do I do ...." you can
finish the rest.
Well as a solution to this I have implemented a in WoD:LOX help system.
Ask it a question about a feature, command or person and you will get a short
description and the command to it. I hope this helps people.
08-14-99, wow I finished the commands part of the in game online manual.
I am going to start on the weapons parts of it. It is looking really good.
08-15-99, The weapons part of the in game online manual is done now.
- Modified the scanner so it can be relocatible. Basically if you type in the
console Scanner <xpos> <ypos>, you will be able to determine the
location of the scanner. Try it, it is cool.
- Added Holo commands, now you can drop a decoy BFG, invulnerability and quad
damage. You can use these to lure people out in the open. WoD:LOX sould be a
little bit more interesting now. Hehehehe.
- I fixed the Trackers so they actually shoot the correct ammo now. So if you
drop a tracker while using the blaster, it will shot blaster shots. Trackers can
now be destroyed by shooting them. I also toned down the trackers. You can only
shoot 3 of them out and when they shoot their ammo they will shot a lot slower.
- Added the time command. Now you can see what time it is, useful for those long
nights of fragging.
- Fixed the invisibility command. After playtesting it was noticed that you
could be invisible and cloaked at the same time.
- Toned down the grenade and bazooka sweepers. After play testing it was noticed
that excessive use of these sweepers made the servers crash.
- Added the Slug armor. This armor makes the player absorb the damage that any
of the Slug weapons do.
- Added the Cell Armor. Same as Slug armor but absorbs the damage from any
weapons that use cells.
- Added the Shell Armor. Same as Shell armor but absorbs the damage from any
weapons that use shells.
- Added the Bullet Armor. Same as Bullet armor but absorbs the damage from any
weapons that use bullets.
- Added the sonic railgun. Shoots when you release the attack button. The longer
you hold the attack button down the more damage it does.
- Added the Spiral Rocket Launcher. Shoots 3 rockets. The one main rocket in the
center with two outer rockets spiralling around the main one.
1.08
- After getting reports that the explosives were not working correctly in the
mods I desided to investigate the problem. And low and behold there was a
problem in the code. I fixed the bug, in the process I created a second command
called detonate. This is the command that you use to detonate a explosive from now on.
- Added the Durg gun, with this weapon you can make your opponents lose their
current weapon.
- Added the Durgsweeper.
- Added the Angel of Revenge.
- Added the Double Impact weapon, shoots two grenades verses the one for the
grenade launcher.
- Added the Tracker, WoD:LOX style turrents.
- Added the FBFG.
- Added Disruptor from the Wyrm ][ code. With that code in place I will be able
to use its special effects to create some new weapons.
- Added the Vacuum Maker. This should make the game more interesting because now
you are able to pull people and objects to you.
- Added the infamous energy vortex
- Added a time variable for the night-day system
1.06-1.07
- Well I have been avoiding this for way to long so here is the lowdown on
the new version of the mod. We have got 13 servers up and over 1000
playing the mod now.
- Added three new angels, Angel Of Horror, Angel of Blindness and Angel of Flame
- Added a new grenade, Blindness Grenade, based on the Angel of Blindness
- Added the mace weapon, again based on the Angel of Blindness
- Fixed the day-night system. It seems like the day-night system was still
not working together. Basically the system should have reset itself on
each level load, but it did not. Well Now it does.
- Added the ver command
- Added the logplayers command. This command will display the players names, ip
addresses, current weapon and current map. This is to help weed out the name spoofers.
- Added the Airstrike command.
- Added the Flamesweeper, new type of flamethrower.
- Added the chunkgun, new type of sweeper based on the Angel of plague. You
can all thank Z'ha'dum for this one.
- Fixed the new angel code to make it more efficient and concice.
- Created a workaround for the Index Overflow error
- Started to work on two new angels, Angel of Evil and Angel of Revenge.
1.05
- Fixed the annoying Angel Of Frost bug where if two people were playing with
the angel of frost active and one person froze the other person, the frozen
person's angel could still freeze people.
- Fixed the Day-Night bug where after a level ended with a change in the
lighting, the new level would start normal, then all of a sudden change
to the next light level.
- Added the new Angel Of Plague
- Added the new Icecube gun
- Fixed the Sticking Grenades so they will work with the explosive command
1.04a
- Added the Anti-Camper Deterant System
- Added a new Angel, Angel of Frost
- Increased the Damage of the Guided Missiles
- Started the creation of Server Admin functions, remote map changing,
password protection, etc.
- Removed the egg weapons were causing the servers to crash
- added the Height function
1.04
- Added the Day-Night system, look at the dmflags for that
- Added three angels, life, mercy and death.
- Added the flaregun
- Added the organic armor
- Per request, I have toned down the buckyballs and made it so the flares
cause no damage
1.03
- Added the rangefinder.
- Added Player Id when player holds crosshairs over enemy
- Added checkstats command
- Added Revenge Factor
- Fixed up the feature, weapon and grenade banning, just set them up in the
server cfg file
1.02a
- fixed the superblaster, it actually shoots normally now
- added two new functions invisibility and flashlight
- added a nailgun
- populated the buckyball death messages
1.02
-Broadsword added
-Cloak command modified, added timer and coloring to person when using it
-added homer and rocket grenades
-explosive command added
WOD:LOX BORN
1.01
-New sweepers added
-Homing rocket code enhanced
-New grenades added
-Cloak command added
-Removed weallknow command
-Renamed the MOD from wod to LOX
6.02
-Grenade launcher now fires all darKMajick grenades
-New alternate grenade-launcher weapon, the bazooka. Fires all darKMajick
grenades, but in a straight line.
-Lasers replaced with laser tripwires that fire all the
darKMajick grenades.
-Homing rockets can now be shot down, and only take 1 rocket per shot
(was 2 per shot).
-Doubled the amount of ammo backpacks & bandoliers give.
-New plasma rifle.
-Fire now makes a sizzling sound.
-Added ZbotCheck 1.01 by the Lithium crew. (Windows version only: the
Linux version won't link & they seem to be uninterested in providing
support.)
6.01
-Added the allow_cataclysm server variable
-Sniper gun now takes 5 shells, not 2. Weapon balancing thing.
-Cataclysm device kills no longer credited to inflictor.
-Homing rocket radius explosion kills now credited to inflictor.
-Added "You've been frozen" message when player gets frozen.
It's a lame hack until I rewrite the frozen code to make being frozen
more intuitive.
-Fixed even more bugs -- spawnpoints no longer get thrown in explosions,
decoys work again, skin no longer gets hosed when you're frozen, the frozen
obituary message is accurate now, the lasersight gets cleaned up when the
player dies, and NoAmmoWeaponChange() is a little more intelligent.
-Officially released a Linux version, finally.
6.0
Done by Hash Assassin, whatis@yyz.com, on or around 9/28/1998. My
first official version.
-Fixed an ungodly number of bugs, compiler warnings, and inefficiencies, some
in WoD code, some in the original Id code.
-Added streetsweeper
-Rewrote plasma rifle to be more like Doom II version
-Rewrote NoAmmoWeaponChange() to select some of the new weapons.
-Increased ammo capacities. Now more fragfest than ever!
-"maplist" feature. Just set the Q2 variable "maplist"
to something non-zero, and the next map will be chosen out of the maplist.txt
file in your WOD dir. No more running maps in a boring old loop.
-Deathmatch players now invulnerable for 3 seconds when they spawn. Gives
them a fighting chance & protects against people putting laser tripwires on
spawn spots.
-Balanced the weapons better. Now ammo usage is more in line with power.
-Added/modified client obituary messages.
-Laser sight brightens when on a player or monster. Hee hee.
-Removed triple hyperblaster. It's a nice weapon, just very laggy.
And the machine rockets are already pushing the limits.
5.4a-
-Fixed Crashing when dying with freeze gun.
5.4-
-Added Freeze Gun
-Night Vision
-Re-added standard railgun
-Added new Grenade and Super Blaster effects
-No bugs needed to be fixed! Woohoo!
5.3:
-Perfect Chasecam, I'm pretty sure it's bugless.
-Re-added standard Machine-Gun
-Added Burst Fire mode for Standard machine-gun
-Fixed Cluster Bomb bug
-Fixed kamikaze when dead bug
-Removed Viewable models, do to so many bugs [people wanted to use their
custom models, but got a white diamond on its ass, etc.]
5.2:
-replaced detpipes with shrapnel grenade
-added sniper gun
-added decoy
-added plasma gun
-better rocket explosions
-replaced grappling hook with swinging grappling hook
-fixed tons of bugs
-removed ricocheting lasers and range finder- it lags net play horribly
5.0:
-Added chasecam
-Added Visible Weapons
-Added sound for ricocheting lasers
-Added scanner
-MOTD support
-Fixed yet more bugs - Thanks Mike Fox
4.9b:
-Fixed messages
-Fixed crashing when using super blaster
-Lowered number grenades picked up
4.9:
-Fixed numerous deathmatch bugs.
4.8:
-Re coded the WHOLE mod with the 3.14 source as a base. This should
fix all the deathmatch and coop bugs.
-Re added shotgun
-Enhanced flamethrower burn. It now uses a model for the burn animation.
4.7:
-Now works with 3.12/3.13/3.14
-added Grappling Hook
-fixed 8 twice
-put fire model for fire on the ground
4.6 - minor update:
-Updated flame thrower. It has a great new model.
4.5:
-Removed super blaster model, so now there's no null skin error, and it
can run on servers without clients having the patch.
-Replaced Burst Railgun with Flamethrower
-Added Flame Grenade Launcher
-Replaced chain shotgun with Fire Rocket Launcher
-Changed Chain Shotgun to Flame Rocket Launcher
4.1 - small update:
-(Re)Added random blue/red lasers to blaster
-(Re)Added long kickback for Super Shotgun.
4.0:
-Removed Homing Rockets due to code conflicts
-Added modified model for Superblaster
-Removed Grenade Launcher proximity (see below)
-Added "darKMajick" grenades- Cluster, Floating Proximity
(improved from previous grenade launcher proximity),
Railbomb, Plasma Bomb, Napalm Grenade, and Cataclysm device
-Added kamikaze device
-Added ricocheting lasers sound
-Added Machine Gun Rockets
-Fixed entities covering up blaster laser effects
Other: This was a challenging task. I had to rewrite the whole code from
the base up to add in the darKMajick grenades.
Version 3.6:
-Made the jetpack much better.
-Fixed crashing
Version 3:
-Fixed the laser sight skin error problem
-Added Rangefinder
-Added "Star Wars" Lasers
-Added Zoom Commands
-Added Laser Tripwire
-Added Burst Fire shotgun
Version 2 :
-Changed the super blaster trail effects so it looks like a blaster and not
a grenade.
-Changed the Cluster Bombs to a Triple Grenade launcher
-Balanced Railgun more.
-Detonatable Throwing Grenades!
Version 1: Initial release.
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