Mail Bag

Excepts  from letters on specific timely issues in the news.

Date: Fri, 05 Sep 1997 12:48:08 -0700
From: FullaHate
Subject: Reaper Source Code

Once again I see you are making a mockery of your website title "bluesnews".

Your site is held in high regard in gaming circles as a source for Quake information. It is unfortunate that you have, and always have had, I strong belief in censorship. The most recent being the censorship of news concerning the Reaper Bot.

I find it interesting that Steven Polge has taken the time to respond to you, while ignoring the people who have been trying to gain insight into his feelings of their modifications of his code.

By censoring this issue you stand the risk of depriving devoted Quake gamers of getting a much improved Reaper Bot. I say this because I believe your site is a lot of gamers main Quake link....

On the issue of modifying the Reaper source code:

Steven mentions in his text, that you have reproduced on your site, that he asked people in his documentation not to modify the bot. In this same doc. file, Steven then proceeds to state one very large "lie". He flat out fabricates that the "bot does not cheat", when in fact, the bot source code is racked full of coded bot advantages that the player cannot duplicate.

I long suspected bugs in the Reaper, but when I first looked at the decompiled source code I was really upset to find coded cheats, not bugs. Several of the web sites that cover this issue have, in my opinion, been very polite concerning this issue, and have gone so far as saying the infamous "vanishing gun" was a bug caused by the calling of the "fl_client" function and the gun just left the playing environment. In fact the bot calls this function at respawn to help it navigate the level, as well as, cheat thanks to Steven allowing the bot to retrieve the powerful weapons it finds.

This might not seem a big deal to you, but to me this diminishes Quake's replay value. Thanks to severe lag, my only hope at enjoying deathmatch is to play against the bot. After a few a minutes, with the original bot code, I would usually get frustrated playing the bot due to Quake's extremely poor diversity of a weapons ability to frag an opponent. When playing the bot, you either have the rocket launcher or you are consigned to respawn hell. It is very frustrating when out of ammo to watch over and over again, the rocket or grenade launcher vanish with only you anywhere near it, only to have a Reaper turn the corner and greet you with a rocket to the face.

The biggest problem about this whole deal is the blatant lies told by Steven. He coded this and several others (several web sites document quite a few more). These are easily detected with no attempt at disguising them.

He has profited from the Reaper by obtaining, what I would hope would be, a better employment opportunity. I honestly believe the Quake community had a good deal to due with his gaining this job due to the barrage of publicity they heaped on the bot, almost all of it extremely positive.

Several months have gone by, Steven has abandoned the project, reaps his rewards, and then bites the hand that feeds him by whining how horrible people are for attempting to improve his seriously flawed, though mostly well coded, Reaper Bot. It took a whole two lines of code to correct the "vanishing gun" advantage. But this was too much to ask, so the Quake community, thank god the excellent hackers they are, did it for him.

It is these well meaning attempts at improving a valuable Quake resource, especially with gamers with slow modems or ISP's, that you intend to censor.

I really didn't believe you would be able to top the John Cash incident, (where you apologized for making a joke about his car accident - you gave him what he deserved, all the endless id posts regarding their "bitching" cars, where an embarrassment) but you have gone and topped yourself with this....

Don't take this too personally, these are only the thoughts and beliefs of one person....

I understand your frustration with bugs in the Reaper bot. I am also aware that my policy is not going to be popular with some. My position is simply that regardless of the state of the program, it is the author's right to determine its future. There is little or no difference between taking the position that a mod author has the right to use reverse compiled Reaper source for their project because there are bugs or aspects of the original program that they wish to address, and taking the position that a programmer has the right to do that with the Quake source code that was stolen a while back. Your contention is that Steven Polge is not doing the "right thing" with the Reaper. My contention is that it is his right as owner of the code to determine what the right thing is, and that using the code without his permission is the "wrong thing" whether you agree with his reasoning or not.

--Blue
   September 6, 1997

Here are some responses:

Date: Sat, 06 Sep 1997 09:23:34 -0700
From: Taskmaster
Subject: Reaper Bot support

This will be my first and last letter to you (I know you're busy) regarding that ridiculous letter you got from "FullAHate" (you should post his email address BTW)...

You are 100% correct. The reaper bot code belongs to Steven Polge. The fact that it may have bugs is irrelevant. The fact that it may "cheat" is irrelevant. And the fact that someone doesn't like the way it works is CERTAINLY irrelevant.

If he says don't modify it, we MUST respect that. It's like the Quest source code. The authors released it, but have maintained a tight reign over who can release versions of it - to prevent the very thing that's going to happen to the reaper bot code. A hundred different versions running around with 1 or 2 extra features and a few "fixes". That can't happen because, although the hackers mean well, all they are doing is cheapening and tarnishing the original code - and the unfortunate side effect of that is that the original author gets a bad image because people get the modified versions, find problems, and blame the original author when the fault really lies with the hacker that didn't understand what he was doing.

Anyway, just letting you know you have my support - and that you have gained a little more of my respect.

Taskmaster (Warren Marshall)
www.brutality.com/mpq
www.brutality.com/toetag

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Date: Sat, 06 Sep 1997 11:30:25 -0700
From: insane
Subject: Reaper Bots and the horror to follow

Thought I would throw in my $0.02
    It would seem Steven is in the right... then again things are not always as they seem. Sounds like his bots are naughty boys to me. Requesting others not to mess with your source while you are still working on it is one thing, thats proffesional courtesy. However when said thing is dropped like a rock, with errors still in it, to try and say "no you can't fix it" is ludicrous. His bot is built on Quake, it is not a stand alone product. The community itself is built around the sharing of information. These are important points he seemed to have held himself aloft from. Infact were it not for ids vision and generosity his bot would not be here, in any form. It still has many problems, and occasionally likes to drown itself(!?), and the excuse that "I am working on something better" does not cut. Basically id provided the accesible qc, and frankly I think he has abused that. However he still is technically right, wich just bites something hard.

    However censorship is another thing, this is the internet, world wide web, last I knew thats the kind of thing we were fighting against. I completly understand however your choice in not posting things relating to the Reaper Bot, however I have to wonder where that will stop. I believe there was already one mishap concerning a skins page. Censorship is not a good thing. I would also point out your duty (if any) is to report the news AS IS, not sugar coated, watered down, or shock full of lies. Thats what local news casts are for. If anything I would recommend if coming upon a Reaper Bot patch that requests to be posted. Post it, with the additional   "Not Authorized By Steven Polge" and let that speak for itself. You report on TCs, like the Star Wars TC, wich is not "legal", yet you just make some comment about them being "foxed" eventually. How different is that than this?

Fox vs. Quake Editing
Steven Polge vs. Quake Editing

I mean come on, get real, if anything was to "not be reported on", it would surely be the people like Fox that actually have a legal leg to stand on. This is not to say you don't have a right to not post certain things.. however I believe you should evaluate it alot more closely before hand, with the knowledge that one decision follows another, pretty soon its "Bluesnews: All the terribly_cute, legal, politaclly_correct, non_violent, and_non_bloody_carnage to post"

Sounds kind of vomit inducing dosn't it?

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Date: Sat, 6 Sep 1997 13:29:19 -0500
From: Monte Krol
Subject: More reaper traffic...

Hi Blue,

I read Blue's News just about every day. I've been out of college for several years and I write software for a living. I have been interested in the story about Steven Polge's ReaperBot and its recent reverse-compiling.

I fully support your position on the ReaperBot, and I have two rants to follow...

I was upset by FullaHate's letter and his (her?) accusation of censorship. Clearly, our First Amendment rights include freedom of speech. Nowhere, at any time, in no way, does any part of the Constitution say that you must use your resources to help another person exercise that right. I think that FullaHate has a misguided notion that it is your responsibility to help all individuals exercise their freedom of speech, when in fact you have no such obligation. It is 100% within your rights to remove any material from your site that you wish -- perhaps we as a Quake community have so grown complacent and indeed spoiled from the sharing of information that occurs that we no longer view that dissemination as a privelege or courtesy, but instead expect it as a right. It is not a right. If Mr. Polge does not want his source code released, that most certainly _is_ his right, and non-compliance on our part is our violation of that right. Mr. Polge doesn't owe us anything. Not his job, not his publicity, not his source code. FullaHate seems to have a different opinion on topic.

Second, because I am a software professional, I was appalled at the level of respect presented by FullaHate towards Mr. Polge's wishes and legal rights. FullaHate and others who have reverse-engineered and modified the source code have violated both the spirit and the letter of the law, and further shown disrespect for a fellow member of the Quake community by blatantly disregarding Mr. Polge's intrinsic copyright on the code and his _express_ wishes not to release the source. In any professional software discipline, this behavior would have a _team_ of attorneys pummelling the offender. In this Quake community, there appears to be a notion that this type of iniquity is acceptable.

I don't care if the Reaper cheats. I don't care if Mr. Polge lied. He gave us a _great_ mod to use with Quake. His only restriction: please don't steal my work. I think that it is a sad reflection on ourselves when we not only steal his work, but then proceed to complain that he hasn't done enough for us and we expect more....

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Date: Sat, 06 Sep 1997 16:46:19 GMT
From: (erik robson)
Subject: Fullahate's rant

I'm sorry, I read Fullahate's email to you and it's got me fuming. He throws the word "censorship" around so haphazardly that I have to wonder if he understands its meaning. He can't even pull off the conspiracy-theorist rant he's imitating; it just comes off as if he's pissed off he can't beat the reaperbots. So they have a pre-programmed advantage. Deal with it. Use another bot, for God's sake. If you're *that* pissed off, go learn QuakeC and code a better, fairer one. Steven doesn't OWE you a fair bot. He doesn't owe you shit. The de-compiling of the Reaperbot is a pretty touchy issue that I'm still on the fence about. I tend to feel like the generous, giving nature of the Quake community is tentative, and based on respect for authors' creations. The de-compiling betrays that. However, they're only doing it because they want a better opponent, and Steven has been unresponsive to Quakers' pleadings for development of the Reaper.

I'd tend to say, in the end, that there's no excuse for violating the Reaper's copyright...

I received the following before the mail from FullaHate that I posted first. I don't think that he makes any points of logic that need addressing further than the original letter (if it does, my feelings are echoed by the letter above), but the author wrote again offended that his thoughts on the subject were being repressed, so here they are:

Date: Fri, 5 Sep 1997 10:33:42 -0600
From: "Mike Kelly"
Subject: Steve Polge's bitching about Reaper hacks...

The solution is simple. Steve should finish the Reaper code (making it far superior to anything that anyone else could do), scramble it to prevent reverse compiling and release it. There would then be no need or way for anyone to hack it.

Look, I know that Steve is busy but he, of all people, should know that the Doom/Quake culture is based in a large part on the ingenuity and ability of hackers that are fans of the genre - the same folks that are now *improving* his work. He did not offer the Reaper for sale so what loss is it to him? If id software (who *did* offer their work for sale) took this same attitude, Doom would have dried up and blown away a long time ago and Quake would have never happened.

This is nonsense Blue and it's even sillier that you will not carry news of hacks/enhancements to his bot.