i got mine to fire, but as soon as i hit someone without the cloak mounted, we both ctd, which is a pain

www.mod.pff-clan.us

Openlancer

I for one would also be interested in including cloaking in my mods; I have been working on a heavily modded version of FLRebalance for ages now and it's intended for private i.e.home LAN use with my family. Most of my modding is based on star trek (have 100's of ST ships added).... and am therefore keen to explore the possibilities of cloaking.

I missed out on all the early comotion over servers being ruined by people using the cloak as a cheat and have struggled to gather info that would enable me to test the possibilities.

If anyone can mail me a description of functionaility and / or example code I will be grateful. Or access to admins forum where I can gather the info would also be appreciated.

If anyone wants a reference regarding my character i.e. confirmation I'm unlikely to try and use info on a public server then LS at Solorus mod can vouch for me.

I've been working on a cloak for stealthbombers or recon ships. Which would be faction ships. The cloak would use say 999 out of the max. 1000 energy the ship has, so even if the ship wanted to fire while cloaked. It couldn't, It would have to uncloak and recharge. I however don't got a working one and might not want one since it still can be changed by other people and used to cheat but the idea was to remove all class 10 and make the max 9 and have class 10 for Cap turrets and recons.
However, my major goal was to have NPC spawns uncloak when they spawn, say nomads. But what happens is that the NPC never show up and it later crashes to whatever bug FL likes to throw at people.

So much for fun.

I myself have missed the whole cloak problen as well. A friend of mine got me into freelancer about a year ago.
If you do find out any info or find anyone willing to share any, I'd like to know about cloaks for admin use on my server.
btw, the friend that got me into freelancer is also an admin on my server and would have access to the mod

my least spammed email account is [email protected] please send any info you have there

I don't understand. Why do you want to go into all the work to get cloaking to work only for admins when you can just go and get the Ioncross server OP and give all admins ubershields or uberarmors. It's listed in the data files and it doesn't cause problems.

I've never seen problems from cloaking either
that was before I ever played the game for the first time
if you look at it that way why bother with uber shields if you can just ban trouble makers?
I'd honestly rather see for myself that someone was causing trouble and not be seen, than to risk banning people that didn't deserve it on accident.
It's not like players are going to see a ship named Admin with uber armor or shield coming and say "I think I'll just keep causing trouble even though they'll see for sure and ban me."
If they don't know you're watching they'd be more likely to keep causing trouble.
Makes perfect sense to me.

Cloaks cloaks cloaks... "I want I want I want".

Strangely enough, having been around when it all started, this is exactly what people said.

"Make it so you can't fire by energy" - you miss the concept of a cheat. That can all be changed client side.

"It'd be cool in this mod" - cloak (as exists) activated so it's available in game? Cloak won't work, everyone can see it. Only works as you see it in the single player game by creating a difference between players. Yes, if you don't make changes - then your ship appears invisible to you as well as others. However, do make changes so it can be turned on/off? Everyone else can see you as well (if it's activated in files).
The whole idea of the cloak required a difference between the files. It is, simply put, a cheat - you can't implement it without being a cheat. It works in a useable fashion because your files (the cheater) differs from the servers, and other players too.

We've had no end of people saying "I want to make it work in my mod" - heard it before, not really happened or happening is it?
We've heard people say "I want to use it for my server" - guess what, this all happened for that EXACT reason. Calgary 24/7 servers admin created the mod. He eventually shared it with a trusted friend or two, who then spread it about and released it on TLR. They claim they did it, but they hadn't got a single clue about the cloak until "Proto"/"Daemon" told them how to do it.

Also - how are folks supposed to be able to discern who is genuine and who is afraud? "I am an admin" - that's all you've got to believe these days. "It's only for lan" - I said that again too.

TLR has a policy, it's not to deprive you of fun - because if you can't do it yourself, then tough is the answer... the cloak doesn't exist for you
The policy is because it was damaging - because having "ultimate power" brought about the worst in people. They were happy to RUIN other people's games, to be bullies and more. Server admins are the same, they get bored - they blow someone up - it's all bullying.

tbh there is a damned good reason why it's been banned, and it will stay that way. People made sites to talk about cloaking in FL, suggest you go and find them - they exist already.

would like to do that but, it seems I can't find any
I'm sure that's the reason this thread was started (Toy probably couldn't find any either)
seems all the sites I've seen have had it romoved as well
heck, after what I've heard I think I may only want to try using it on a LAN server at home

The reason you cannot find it on any other sites any longer should speak volumes to what we are discussing here. ANyone who has run a server or played this game knows that cloaks are a bad thing on any server as it does get abused even with the best of intentions at the start.

Requiem: A Total FL Conversion Mod .
http://mod.pff-clan.us

i agree that the use of cloak mods/cheats is not good and that this shouldnt be supported

for that case these rules are pretty well choosen
but when it comes to the point when the cloak should be used for other things like thn scripts or "controlled" serversided cloaks then i believe it is a good idea to have discussions

this whole situation is like the issue with nuclear power... military use... civil use
2 sides of the coin.... and the 3rd side is the one which does regulate and seperate them (aka rules)

in the past some1 just needed to say the word "cloak" and poof the discussion was closed... no matter what the intention was
every development on the "civil use" of this matter was stopped before it could even start
and 0 development does mean death

its better to listen first and see what the purpose of the cloak discussion is
if it is about a cloak cheat then -> bye bye thread
if code is released that could lead to such a cloak cheat -> bye bye thread
but if it is about a useful concept that doesnt do any harm... then give it a chance for development
(just my oppinion)

the outcome of this could look like this:


this kind of cloak does only work if the server does allow it by running a mod
if its used on client side only the client will crash -> no unpermitted use
the activation of the cloak is only possible if a background tool is running on the server (neccessary to activate/deactivate it)
npcs dont react on the cloak (but in fact that never was the task)
players still can detect the cloak under special circumstances and at least see parts of the ship (if they open their eyes)
note: this are just pics of a very early stage of development (latest version does show some kind of electro magnetic effect around the shiphull)
a few minor problems still need to be fixed and it will be released when its fully finished and bugfree

oh and for those which say that cloaks bring only problems to the gameplay... well in SL every ship was able to cloak in mp deathmatch and it was very good this way

Well like every game there will always be cheating. The way to get them is to ban them and leave it. Hopfully a server will get cloaking going and see what happens.

Nice job, SWAT_OP-R8R. Are you going to put something like that in Crossfire?

Edited by - magnet14 on 2/14/2007 2:34:25 PM

simple, exactly what i am doing. nearly totally transparent texturing. nice to know its so successful.

>tbh there is a damned good reason why it's been banned, and it will stay that way.

To be honest banning cloak discussions was the badest thing ever happened here.
I always hear those anti-cheat blabla of not giving out information and so on.. IMO this is all crap.
Of course cheat-tutorials have to be banned BUT if you are really that concerned about cheats, you would have to close the WHOLE modding section of this forum.
Now remember, what would you need to cheat with a cloaking device? Right! You would need a loot mod first. You can find that easily by searching the modding forums. BAM! Now shouldnt this topic get banned? And what about the players that now search for the invincible armor scales? They can also search the forum and will surely find something. BAM! Another cheat, invincible players.

Now, talking of now, all the main servers that are professional have working anti-cheat programs that ban you immediatly if you want to cheat this way (looting cloaks).
Back in the days, when the anti-cheat systems were not so common, you could still defend the server by applying certain server side ini changes (renaming cloak devices so that they cannot be looted)
If discussions about cloaks would have been allowed, Im sure serveradmins would not have to search some secret admin forums to get their anti-cloak serverside mods etc.

Talking of nowadays, its completely stupid to still ban cloak discussions. Serveradmins are not a back number.

Why dont you let the users try to make cloaking work?

Rant finished.