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You stand ready as the countdown begins. Your breath making clouds in front of you, your hands sweat as they grip your rail gun. You feel a knot of anticipation, and your teammates eyes are on you, willing you to be ready to play your hardest. This is how it might feel to be in the arena. Ready to battle it out in that cold freeze world. This is how it must feel for those that are participating in the Dayentech Frag Fest 2. For those that do not know anything about the freeze tag mod, I thought it best to quote theh3rb, Admin/moderator over at DayenTech, co-founder of FreezeWorld.net and the DayenTech FragFest Tournament. This FragFest consists of 14 teams or 12 clans. "Teams were separated unto two Divisions. Each division consists of seven teams. During regular tournament play, they play round robin style. The top four clans from each division then move to single elimination playoffs in which one team from each division is crowned, Divisional Champions. Then it’s Super bowl time. Those two top teams play each other for the FragFest Championship. Only one team survives and only one team gets the glory,” says theh3rb. I got a chance to talk to theh3rb about topics ranging from the start of his freeze career, the FragFest Tournament and his opinions on current happenings within the Freeze community. [Bitter_Ivy]: You are an admin/moderator for the DayenTech and FreezeWorld servers? theh3rb: I admin and moderate DayenTech, Yes. Going on 3 years now. I part own and run FreezeWorld where the DayenTech FragFest Tournament currently resides. [Bitter_Ivy]: And you are the creator of the DayenTech FragFest? [theh3rb]: The online tournament, yes. (We have a LAN, too.) [Bitter_Ivy]: How did you get your start in the Freeze World? [theh3rb]: Actually, my first mod was InstaGib+. At the time, being 20min from DayenTech servers, my quake3 in game browser put DayenTech at the top. Ah yes, the good ‘ol days of having a 20 ping. So, of course, I played at DayenTech's InstaGib+ server. I played for about 5-6mo and was pretty much oblivious to Freeze Tag. (Or any other mod for that matter) The very first time I played freeze I was at work looking for some games to play at lunch. I noticed some more DayenTech servers popping up called ‘freeze.’ I think this is when John first started them at DayenTech. I played a few games and I thought to myself, this is a pretty cool game, but I never really got into it. So every night, I would, um, get in the right, um, ‘mind set’ (hehe) and just play some 1v1. Eventually, it came down to a player I got to know in 1v1 pretty well. He had been playing at DT a lot longer than I had. So, after some long nights of playing each other, and I guess out of boredom of him kicking my ass every game, he finally persuaded me to go play some freeze for a few nights. Next thing I know, I am playing like 2-3hrs a night, and just getting pwned. Honestly, I had no idea wtf a 'Team'DeathMatch type style of play really meant. After all, I was a 1v1’er. My mind set equaled “Kill, Kill, Kill.” Not, “Someone unfreeze me.”. I mean, Teammates? What are those? It’s everyman for himself right? Now that I think back, I was such a n00b. ‘How do you thaw?’ ‘How do I bind my hook?’ All those things you see today and are like, ‘Great, some n00b is on our team, we’re screwed.’ But, I had a good ping and a great rail from my 1v1 experiences. And since it was ‘Insta’ Freeze Tag, I was acclimated very easily to the game style of play. [Bitter_Ivy]: How did you come up with the idea for the DayenTech FragFest? [theh3rb]: ‘FragFest’ is the staple of DayenTech. It has always been “DayenTech’s FragFest.” So, the name was there. But, as for the online tournament, I saw a few tournaments from other communities and some clans, start and die a horrible death. And some tournaments seemed biased to the clan that put it on. And, well, pretty much, I thought, I could do better. I was also fed up with the 5yr old comments from clans saying, "My clan is better than your clan!" So, basically I decided, it’s time for them to prove it. I was just sick of the informal scrimmages and practices that clans ‘claimed’ were legitimate ownage of other clans. Clan’s would post screen shots of scrim’s or practices against other teams to boast some sort of ‘image’ that they were better than that team. Well, things are definitely different in the arena when people know their reputation is on the line. I have seen it happen many times. When it’s a real competition, that clan that is ‘supposed’ to just ‘get their rail on,’ doesn’t always win. That’s what makes this Tournament fun. It really does separate the Men from the boys. (Or in some cases, the Women from the girls, lol.) [Bitter_Ivy]: What is the difference between standard freeze tag and freezedt? [theh3rb]: Well, honestly, FreezeTag 1.51b and freezedt is pretty much the same thing. You have to realize the coder of freezedt [fodder] only fixed some minor bugs with vanilla 1.51b and allowed the grapple speed to be adjustable. [fodder] also added some administrative and countermeasure type additions. So, its basically ‘FreezeTag 1.51b+’ Let me explain: - Countermeasures: I guess the real difference between Freeze Tag 1.51b and freezedt is the anti-cheats in which [fodder] implemented. In the OGC hay day, we caught about 90-100 people within one month. ONE MONTH! Including more with other bots/hacks. I mean we nailed so many people so fast, that [fodder] had to ‘fix’ a quake3 limitation in its ‘g_banlist buffer’ just to accommodate the amount of players it was catching cheating. No mod had this type of detection. He had also implemented an auto banning system into the mod that was pretty much hands free. The mod detected the cheat, spammed the server that the ‘player’ was cheating with a certain bot/hack, kicked the player, added their IP to the local ban list, logged it and permanently banned the player from the server. All we had to do was look at the ‘listip’ and then move the local bans into the global ban file and ‘poof’ they were banned from all servers at DT. Even with the addition of PunkBuster, [fodders] anti-cheats were detecting and banning before PunkBuster even knew what was going on. Even when OGC was updating from 1.6 thru 2.3 to combat PunkBuster and even to combat [fodder] anti-cheats, (I surfed the OGC forums daily and our name was mentioned many times about how OGC did not work at our servers) [fodders] anti-cheat DID NOT need to be updated or patched, it still seamlessly detected the cheat and banned the players. PB on the other hand was playing catch up. Which is why, an admin at Evenbalance forums contacted me to get in touch with fodder. I then hooked up fodder with Tony Ray, the creator of PunkBuster, in a meeting. They had several chats about how and what [fodder] was doing. Fodder now does some freelance work with PB when needed. Even TODAY, people are dumb enough to try to cheat at DT. Idiots. - Admin functionality: Beyond the counter measures, it also adds some admin functionality’s that we needed. Giving us more ‘control’ over the game and the allowance of handing players an ‘admin’ control, not rcon, so they could help us, with impaired abilities, watch the servers and take care of any problems that arose with players. Much like the ‘Referee’ type control in OSP but without control over the game itself. They were allowed to list clients, kick, ban and mute players. They could not change game settings. - Game Play: As for game play though, it fixed some simple bugs, and allowed the grapple to be adjustable. Other than that, it is Freeze 1.51b. That’s why we use freezedt rather than vanilla Freeze Tag 1.51b in the FragFest Tournament. It gives us a lot of security against cheats and hacks while allowing for ‘adjustable’ game play in the grapple. Be on the look out for a new version of freezedt in the near future. I am already working with fodder on some things I and some other Admins would like implemented for the mod. [Bitter_Ivy]: How long does each FragFest Tournament usually last? [theh3rb]: It really depends on how many teams sign up. In FF1 (FragFest 1) we had 20 teams sign up. The set time of the tourney should have taken only 3 months. It ended up taking about 6 due to unforeseen problems and rescheduling from clan matches. In FF2, 14 teams signed up, it should be running only 2 months, but we are already a week behind. The reason why FF1 fell so behind is because in the FF1 Tournament, I personally set the times, dates and maps for the matches. This was a big inconvenience for most teams. A lot of the teams could not show at the times I had set. I guess they had a life or something outside of quake3. So, a lot of matches were rescheduled. So, for FF2, I have a ladder/tourney program (like OGL) that allows each team to schedule times, dates and maps. So, each team now can set the match up exactly when and how they want it. This seems to be working out pretty well so far. The reason we have fallen behind now is because people are ‘getting use to’ the challenging process. [Bitter_Ivy]: Do you think that with the start of a freeze ladder in the ogl, it has helped or hindered you for the FragFest 2? [theh3rb]: I don’t think it has helped or hindered my tournament. Looking at the OGL teams on the Freeze ladder, four out of the eight were in FF1 and five out of the eight are in FF2. So, there are seven clans that are in FF2 that are not in the OGL Insta Freeze ladder. I find a lot of problems with the OGL set-up anyway which might deter clans. But, in either case, my tourney is run regardless and clan knows this is more of 'tournament style' games rather than a 'pick-up game' style. [Bitter_Ivy]: What problems have you noticed with the OGL set up? [theh3rb]: Basically, it leaves too much up to the players and teams. The first problem with OGL is teams having to 'find' servers to play on ‘themselves.’ Finding a neutral server to compensate both teams is very difficult. Teams are hailing from all over the U.S., Canada and even Europe. So, trying to compensate that to allow the most balanced play for all players, seems hopelessly lost. I know of ‘some’ people who set-up OGL dedicated servers. But, that leads me to my next point. Allowing a team to set-up and run a server with the 'supposed' official OGL configuration is taking a HUGE leap of faith. If it was serious competition, teams could EASILY exploit that. The whole issue of teams playing on a clan’s server in which one of the teams has rcon access can lead to problems. If a problem does arise, a team could abuse that power claiming anything they wanted. Not having an unbiased Referee around to mediate the match makes me uneasy in competition play. In the FragFest Tournament, we provide the servers up and everyone plays on the same servers. Everyone knows going into the matches what settings, pings, game style and maps are set forth. There is no guessing at what is or could go on. We also allow clans to practice with the default settings, that no one else can touch but me, whenever they want. There is an official Referee or Admin at every match to deal with problems and enforce the rules of the Tournament. It seems to me, it is much better to have it already set-up, configured ready and moderated for the players so there can be 'no' controversy. [Bitter_Ivy]: Where can anyone or I find information on the FragFest Tournament?
[theh3rb]: You can find all relevant information about the FragFest Tournament(s) at
www.freezeworld.net/fragfest. Also, you can find
information at these links too, www.instafreeze.net
(a great place for
information on all our communities),
www.dayentech.net/vbulletin
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