FAQ and Server Rules

rules

These rules are pretty strictly enforced when a server operator is around. IPs are (usually) logged and bans are permanent; so it behooves you to read and follow the rules:

Things which will get you banned immediately:

Impersonating someone else on the server (or a regular / server operator).

Building sentries or supplystations in patently disruptive places (you know what I mean).

Maliciously dismantling friendly sentries/supplystations.

Maliciously concing, flashbanging or toasting teammates.

Taking the enemy flag into the respawn (etc.) and not capturing.

Excessively immature language / behavior at the console

... in general, anything which requires active malice is grounds for immediate banning.

Things which are against the rules (warning then kicking/banning):

building sentries in the ceiling, floating sentries, sentries on heads and similar nonsense.

(Of course, grenade jumping to build on light fixtures and such remains a completely valid technique.)

Spamming the console with messages not related to the game (ie website or clan advertisements).

Exploitation of various known/unknown bugs.

Exploiting bugs (on purpose) to bypass class limits.

Joining the team which has more players and is winning! I may ask you to switch teams. A two-sided game is more interesting for everyone, so join either the team with fewer players or the team with fewer points. Same obviously goes for switching in the middle of the game.

Helping another player do any of these things.

Thing which will get you kicked with no hard feelings:

Sitting in the spawn area and not playing. This makes the teams look unfairly balanced/unbalanced and takes up spots which could be used by actual players. If you're going to be gone from the computer for more than a few minutes, you should spectate.

Things which aren't really against the rules, but which we think are lame (and might exacerbate other infringements):

Respawn Camping / Spamming - I am very tolerant of this, but we prefer to see you going after the flag or defending your own.

(Repeatedly) concussion jumping and taking the snipers with you - despite your hatred for snipers, they do have proper right of way in the sniper's deck. Try concussion jumping from the ground or elsewhere (easy; practice) or check the deck before you prime that grenade.

Grabbing the flag at the beginning of the game before the other team has even gotten a chance to connect, especially as a recon. Go ahead and hit their base immediately, but be a sport and give them a chance to spawn and defend it before you grab the flag and take off.

Ignoring both offense and defense so that you can rack up personal frags (or play around with sentry tricks in some remote area). Though this is a public server and the teamplay aspect isn't always overwhelming, we appreciate if you make a try at teamwork. It's pretty fun; you might like it!

Complaining about server settings, the map, the lag, etc. - read the FAQ or post on the bulletin board if you'd like to discuss it. Unless all the players are lagged, the lag is almost certainly on your end.

faq

What is mirror damage? Can you turn it off? What does "UnnamedPlayer killed himself" mean?

Mirror damage is a server setting for friendly fire. (Other options include "no team damage" and "team damage"). On a mirror damage server, when you shoot teammates you take the damage instead of them. This means you can kill yourself by shooting teammates; the death message will read "UnnamedPlayer killed himself".

I think this is the best friendly fire setting, and I don't plan on changing it (please don't ask). Let's look at the alternatives:

No team damage is easy, but on a public server all the games degenerate into spamfests. There's no penalty for tossing grenades and rockets everywhere.

Team damage on a public server really sucks (I tried this at first); you're always getting creamed by clueless teammates. It only cuts down on spam a little. Worst yet, malicious teamkilling can really ruin a game. (This is probably the setting I'd use if I were to have a "real" match, however.)

Now check out why mirror damage rocks:

It really does discourage spam, since the spammer is hurt if he hits teammates. Another way of saying this is that it forces you to be deliberate with all of your shots; you are punished for slopiness which might not be considered "spam". I think you'll find that this makes you a better player with practice.

Mirror damage makes spy-checking easier; simply fire a weak shot (every class has a weapon which doesn't do very much damage) at the player -- if you get hurt, then it's a teammate. Otherwise, it's a spy.

Mirror damage makes malicious spam worthless: you can't gas, HE charge, or nail-bomb your own team. In fact, it's pretty funny to watch people try to do this, since they just get hurt and die as you stand unphased inside their gas.

That said, there are a few annoyances to mirror damage (probably less so than the other settings). These include damage incurred from hurting a teammates' (or your own!) sentry/supplystation, difficulties grenade jumping with low-armor classes, and teammates who accidentally run right in front of your sniper shot. If you are cognizant of these, however, they're pretty easily avoided. Hopefully some of these issues will be "fixed" in future versions of Q3F.

What is the map rotation? Why don't you have voting enabled? Why don't you run forts and well? got_duck?

The map rotation (unless I've changed it since posting this) is:


q3f_chaos3
q3f_2machse
q3f_2night3
q3f_cbases
q3f_2stag2
q3f_causeway
q3f_spamtech
q3f_castle
q3f_lastresort
q3f_32smooth

The reason for not enabling voting used to be that I had no way of preventing idiots from selecting duel maps. However, I grew to like rotation during that period. It gives more variety, but the stability of a predictable sequence. Get to know all the maps; it's good for you.

As an old qwtf player, I can't bear to play the q3f versions of forts and well any more. There's nothing seriously wrong with the Q3F versions; they just wear thin on me quickly.

Got Duck is the stupidest map I've ever played. Do you guys actually like playing this?

Can my clan use the server for clan matches / practice? Do you want to join my clan?

No -- quake.snoot.org is for public play only. You and your clanmates are welcome to play here, but you can't have it all for yourselves.

I don't want to be in any clans right now. But perhaps some day I'll start one?

Can I have the rcon password? Can I have a private slot on the server?

No. The rcon system has some problems which make it difficult to administrate (perhaps most notably the lack of a logging facility). However -- I do eventually plan to implement a web based system where priviliged users can at the very least see the IP addresses of the current players. This will make banning offenders easier.

No matter how cool you are, I'm not allocating private slots for you (sorry!). These take up resources (whether they're being used or not) and I actually don't like games with more than 16 or 17 people.

What is the IP address of the server? It's not showing up in the list.

If you want to bypass the server browser, you can just open up the console and type:
\connect quake.snoot.org

The IP address (which may change whenever I change rooms at school) will always be whatever quake.snoot.org resolves to.

My stats look wrong. What gives?

For some reason the Q3F team changed the weapon indices between 1E and 1F. I haven't gotten around to updating the stats program to deal with this, but I will eventually (this only affects the weapons recorded; overall stats are still accurate).

It may also simply be that I haven't updated the stats recently. I tend to do it every day or so (usually right after I play) when I am around, but sometimes I take vacations or am busy with school work.

Why don't you run any 3rd-party maps on your server?

I want to, but I'm afraid that this might make it harder for people to play on the server (there are some annoying issues with autodownload and pure servers to work around). So I've been putting it off. It may be that the next version from iD fixes the autodownload problems. Also, if I ever finish my map, I'll probably put up other new maps with it.

Do you have ICQ/AIM/e-mail?

My e-mail address is twm at andrew.cmu.edu. I prefer it if questions/comments of general interest are posted to the message board, since they can perhaps help others there too.

I don't use ICQ or AIM, sorry.

back to quake.snoot.org