[voogru]

Update, see original post.

[Acdervis]

Just read the OP.

Can't someone re-write/edit your plugin or recompile Valve's models to look as custom content? Wouldn't everybody do this in the long run?

Don't get me wrong, I think you've done an amazing job regarding this issue, but the community can be pretty evil at times. Anyway, I hope that I turn out to be mistaken.

[Kevin_b_er]

Well then valve will block that work-around too and you'll be back to square one.

If a bunch of people work around the built-in protection voogru adds, valve will find the concept to have failed and they won't reverse anything. They'll also like close the workaround voogru is utilizing as a result.

[voogru]

Originally Posted by Acdervis Just read the OP. Can't someone re-write/edit your plugin or recompile Valve's models to look as custom content? Wouldn't everybody do this in the long run? Don't get me wrong, I think you've done an amazing job regarding this issue, but the community can be pretty evil at times. Anyway, I hope that I turn out to be mistaken.

Any discussion like this on here would be deleted, if server admins want to run "cracked" copies of my plug-ins from shady people, be my guest. We're not going to allow another patch that doesn't have the protection in place to be distributed on this site.

The recompiling of the valve models has some drawbacks.

1. The effort required to decompile it and the chances that they will screw up the model.
2. Adding the model to the downloads table and forcing players to download even more models. There's over 30 hats as far as I know.
3. Future hats and models may have increase complexity that would make it even more annoying to do this.

Some servers may do this regardless, but they will be in the minority I think, most server ops that slap on some sourcemod plug-in are not going to go through the hassle. A disclaimer can be added to the equipment manager not to try to use official content.

Originally Posted by Kevin_b_er Well then valve will block that work-around too and you'll be back to square one.

Valve kind of already knew about the workaround, but I came up with a way of doing it that basically didn't have any of the drawbacks they thought it would have. I asked him what he thought about releasing a patch and he told me to go for it, as long as it had some protection.

I'll add that the chat I had was extremely friendly. It wasn't hostile at all. He saw the petition and it wasn't like "oh the petition clown, go screw yourself!". That's why I think if we work with them to help them get to their goal we can get the policy relaxed just enough for custom stuff.

[Mecha the Slag]

It's not hard to recompile hats. I've done it loads (to then replace the model with a custom one and submit it to valve ) but it's not as hard or complex as you make it out to be

[voogru]

Originally Posted by Mecha the Slag It's not hard to recompile hats. I've done it loads (to then replace the model with a custom one and submit it to valve ) but it's not as hard or complex as you make it out to be

I know it's not that hard, but it's annoying and the question is will the average server op who drops equipment manager onto his server go through the trouble of adding every single freaking official hat.

We need huge disclaimers in the plug-in that the copying of valve hats will risk the feature being taken away if it becomes widespread and perhaps we could also get their servers blacklisted on the TF2 blacklist if they decide to go through with circumventing the policy one way or the other.

I don't think servers will be willing to face a delist over freaking hats. We just have to be proactive in punishing those who don't play by the rules.

We have to at least try.

[Thrawn2]

voogru, thank you so much for all the effort you put into this.
get that man a custom medal instantly! ;)

[eraserhead]

Originally Posted by Kenny8U In our case the change has meant the ‘Equipment Manager’ is now redundant on our server. We can’t even attach our own made ‘8U Admin Fez’ to our admin players. We created this hat so people could easily identify our admin if they had any questions, problems or wanted help whilst on the server. We were very proud of this and we believe this has pay dividends over the last 8 months. Ever seen a prettier hat?

We had exactly the same idea for our server! And i found someone to make the models for us. We were thinking of armbands so our admins could still wear the other custom hats they like.

I also was busy on porting lots of custom hats and would have shared them with the community as a pack within the next month but Valve has brought it all to a halt unfortunately.

We also used custom hats as a reward for donating members which worked really well. They would own a hat exclusively that no one else could wear.

voogru, thank you so much for all the effort you put into this. get that man a custom medal instantly! ;)

^^That!

[noodleboy347]

I can totally see Valve's side on this... but still, custom hats should not be banned because of it. Like you said voogru decompiling hats and recompiling them is a pain and would not be fun to download for a half an hour, so maybe Valve has some other ideas in mind... or something...

[Narwhal]

Thank you voogru for taking the time to research and implement a solution that keeps both sides happy. I'm sure for those of us that want the official hats it won't be too crazy hard to figure out. I understand the reasoning for the restricted fix, and I'm sure it will be respected that nobody publically releases an un-restricted workaround. My use of the Equipment Manager is strictly for a LAN server, where we like to have hats when we're not connected to Steam ;).

Originally Posted by voogru 2. Valve considered this for a long time and had some worries about content cloning where people make exact copies of their stuff, hence the outright ban on everything. My argument is I think servers doing this would be in the minority.

I fail to see how banning server-side attachment of models accomplishes anything at all in this regard. For anyone that wants to clone Valve's items they have to look no further than their game directory using a VPK viewer like GCFScape. Or, if they have the dedicated server package, the models are right there for them to decompile.

./materials/models/player/items/
./models/player/items/

A server-side mod doesn't add to this capability in any way. Oh well...that's Valve for you .