ET: Legacy 2.80.2

ET: Legacy 2.80.2 'Path Cleared! But like, for real this time!'

Two weeks ago we released the first hotfix 2.80.1 'Path Cleared!' for the initial ET: Legacy 2.80 'Clear the Path!' release another two weeks earlier. Backed by an absolutely amazing increase in activity following the recent Steam release of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, we are happy to bring another hotfix your way.

Given the age of the game, user-friendliness is not on the level of modern games. Given the recent influx in players, we improved the quality of error messages for debugging. On the other hand, we also fixed an issue crashing the game on start-up for some of you. Improving debugging is only a small part as we are also actively looking into UI customisations and improvements. (Again. But like for real this time!) Some improvements to the mod UI have already been included in this release with others still being ironed out.

PRIMARY CHANGES

• Fixed double sound issue
• Fixed voice chats on steam 2.60b client
• Fixed game not running on Wayland on Linux
• Prevented unintentional pushing by holding down +activate

-> full changelog

OTHER NEWS

ET: Legacy on Steam? We are still reaching out to the right people regarding the possibility of releasing ET: Legacy on Steam. Some progress has been made, but unfortunately we have no official news regarding this just yet.

ET: Legacy being flagged by Anti-Virus We have acquired an official license for a new Windows installer, which allows us to digitally sign the binaries. This will make antivirus software less trigger happy in the future. Unfortunately, migrating to the new installer is still a work in progress, so this hotfix is still using the old installer without signed binaries. The new installer should be available starting with release 2.81.

ET is on Steam!

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory was released on Steam.

A dream come true for so many of us who have been with this game for years. If you actually missed the news, yes this is real. With the official Steam release of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory we've seen an unbelievable resurgence in player counts for the game across all clients (Steam version of ET, original ET and ET: Legacy). To put it into perspective, the first day after the announcement over 6000 new downloads have been registered on our website for ET: Legacy 2.80.1 'Path Cleared!'. Yes, six THOUSAND! Before that, the daily average was around 300 per day, which already is amazing, but this recent increase is unprecedented. According to Steam Charts we have had an average of nearly 300 concurrent ET players this week and this is only counting those with the Steam version. Additionally to this, you also have those players that use ET: Legacy or vanilla ET clients. The increased interest in a nearly 20-year-old game is incredibly motivating and for a community project like ours opens up so many opportunities.

Therefore, let's take a moment to talk a bit about what the Steam release is and isn't and what options it brings with it.

ET: Legacy on Steam

The most important question regarding this Steam release for our project obviously is: Can we now bring ET: Legacy to Steam as well? Yes and no. Unfortunately, the Steam version of ET does not include a Steam Workshop integration. Therefore, we cannot simply move ET: Legacy to Steam as a 'mod' to the original game. We still would require a Steam page of our own. Much like RealRTCW does for the Steam version of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. However, you can still make ET: Legacy run with the Steam version of ET. For instructions on how to do that, please check the following two video tutorials by Aciz.

How to play ET: Legacy with ET Steam release

How to run ET: Legacy natively on Linux through ET Steam app

That being said, having Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory on Steam significantly improves the chances of ET: Legacy coming to Steam. We are currently getting in contact with the right people to make ET: Legacy on Steam a reality. On a more personal note, we are excited to play around with the Steam features, which is why we are investigating the possibilities that steamworks integration would bring to the project. So far, however, this is new territory for us. If you know your way around handling Steam integration into games and are interested in bringing in your expertise into ET: Legacy, please reach out to us!

Game Version has changed

The Steam version of ET is not simply any of the previously available ET versions put on Steam. Most likely due to legal reasons, the source code has been recompiled, for example to remove Punkbuster and implement an ETKey generator straight into the client. Among other things, this means that unmaintained mods validating the client gameversion (e.g. ETPro) will not work with this release.

How to play

If you are still looking for a more competitive experience, please check out the ET: Legacy Competitive Discord. There, you can find like-minded players who you can join for a few friendly scrims. If you are rather interested in more relaxed and casual games, you can look for public servers on third-party game trackers like TrackBase.

Performance on modern machines

As there haven't been any major changes regarding the engine, the performance and compatibility issues of the original ET remain. This means that even on modern hardware, most users will experience significant performance issues. This is mainly due to incompatibility with modern OpenGL drivers and the game's graphics pipeline relying heavily on CPU while lacking any multi-threading. Aside from that, the game does not support modern resolutions without tweaking and renders UI elements at 4:3 aspect ratio. You can somewhat accommodate these issues with adjusting in-game CVARs, however, this poses a significant entry barrier for players used to 'plug-and-play' games. If you require technical support for ET, please feel free to join the ET: Legacy Discord. We do recommend reading through the FAQ on our wiki as a first step of troubleshooting.

Additionally, we have compiled a few quick Q&As for using ET: Legacy with the ET Steam version:

I am getting NewItemIOError in PowerShell when trying to create symbolic links for etl/etlded?

Make sure you deleted or renamed the original binaries - symlink creation will fail if a file with the name already exists.

I am getting Error 0x800700E when copying the ET: Legacy binaries to ET Steam folder?

Your antivirus software is flagging etl/etlded.exe as a potential virus - no need to panic! Just whitelist the binaries in your antivirus software. This is mainly caused by ET: Legacy code not being digitally signed by Microsoft, and the fact that the current release is less than a week old, so antivirus software have not yet learned that the game is not in fact a virus. Remember, the project is open source, anyone can view the code in our GitHub repository.

My antivirus is flagging etl/etlded.exe as Trojan:Win32/Wacatac.B!ml?

See previous answer.

How do I restore/add exclusions to ET: Legacy binaries in my antivirus software?

This will depend on your specific antivirus software, here and here you can find instructions for Windows Defender.

The game is crashing with FS_CreatePath: failed to create path "C:\Documents\ETLegacy"?

Sometimes the game incorrectly tries to set the default homepath. To fix this, start the game with +set fs_homepath C:\Users\<user>\Documents\ETLegacy where user is your Windows username. You can also change this path to whatever you want to, as long as it's not the same as the installation directory. We're investigating this error and hope to address it in a future release.

I am not seeing any servers in the server browser?

The Steam installation of ET ships with an etconfig.cfg that sets sv_master2 to blank. This cvar is used as an additional master server, as the original master server is down from time to time. To fix this, navigate to your Steam ET directory, find the etconfig.cfg in the etmain folder, open it with a text editor, find the sv_master2 entry and set the value to master.etlegacy.com. You might also need to do this to your profile-specific config in C:\Users\<user>\Documents\ETLegacy\legacy\profiles\yourprofile\etconfig.cfg.

ET: Legacy 2.80.1 'Path Cleared!'

With the ET: Legacy 2.80 'Clear the Path!' and the breaking in of a brand new decimal two weeks ago, we leaped into unknown territories.

Unfortunately, it seems like the ET: Legacy 2.80 release wasn't entirely clean. Especially, judging by the compatibility reports from you that we have seen. We now have identified and solved the primary cause of your spleen. But enough chit-chat, you're surely wondering: 'What does this mean?' Well, the culprit has been identified, so let us lift the smoke-screen: Reason for this hotfix is restored vanilla ET behaviour for activatelean. 'What are you even talking about?!' is what some of you might currently scream. Historically in ET, if you press +activate and A/D, instead of moving sideways, you will lean. In 2.80, this was not the case anymore, so we fixed it.

ET: Legacy 2.80.1 'Path Cleared!'

Changelog

• This hotfix comes with some further stability and performance improvements.
• Compared to vanilla ET, the first airstrike bomb was delayed by 750ms, which has been adjusted.
• The perceived shooting delay based on delayed firing sound on SDL2 audio backend has been addressed. This includes changed default settings as well as an additional cvar (s_sdlLevelSamps) you can set in the audio section in the in-game system options. NOTE: The actual delay of 100ms when shooting remains. This only addresses the perceived delay based on audio latency.

LAST NOTE: We are aware of a bug occasionally triggering a second firing sound when shooting. We can assure you, this is only 'cosmetic'. There is no second bullet actually being fired. However, we are still investigating this, so unfortunately, the bug remains.

ET: Legacy 2.80

A brand new decimal is joining the ranks! After ET 2.55 and 2.60 for the official releases, the first ET: Legacy version was 2.70 in 2013. It is now nine years later and we are breaking in a new decimal with...

ET: Legacy 2.80 'Clear the Path!'

Slightly delayed, but we are still sticking to the quarterly release schedule. As mentioned last week, this release heavily targets the competitive side of ET: Legacy again to iron out the gameplay and ensure a smooth experience. However, also smaller quality of life adjustments are included. Both on the mod and the game side. For a complete list of changes coming with ET: Legacy 2.80, please refer to the changelog on our wiki.

Some honourable mentions include:

• Optional prevention of Z-axis player shoving
• Swapped suicide animation to the default death animation
• A sleek looking square compass
• Hitsound-related performance improvements
• New sharetimer command to improve team play
• Added option to specify scoped sensitivity separately
• Added mod-sided flood protection
• Removed fps-dependency of wait commands in map scripts

That is all for now. Thank you everyone for all your support, contributions, feedback and helping hands over the years. This community project certainly wouldn't have been possible without all of you. So, a heartfelt thank you! Have fun and see you on the servers!

ET: Legacy Competitive Ladder

ET: Legacy 3on3 Ladder is here!

The long-awaited ladder system is now ready and waiting for you to join in! Head over to https://reddal.gg/ to sign-up, create your team and challenge others to score points and get a position on the ladder.

RULES

To avoid confusion and misunderstandings, it's recommended to read the ladder's rules before your first game. You can find them on the Reddal website or on the ET: Legacy Competitive Discord in the #ladder-3on3-rules channel.

FEEDBACK

To assure constant improvement of the ladder system, you are encouraged to provide feedback and suggestions on the ET: Legacy Competitive Discord in the #ladder-feedback channel.

HOW TO

1 The team captain needs to create a team on the website.

On the Reddal website navigate to your profile section and select 'Create Team'. On the team page, navigate to 'Administration' and invite at least 3 players to your team.

2 All players must add their GUIDs to their profiles before joining the ladder

On the Reddal website navigate to your profile section and select 'Edit Profile'. To check your Legacy GUID simply type /players in the in-game console. The GUID is the number on the right side of your nick.

3 Once a team has at least 3 players, the team captain can join the ladder.

On the Reddal website navigate to the 3on3 ladder and select 'Join this ladder'. You've now joined the ladder.

In case of any doubts about the above, please open a thread in #ladder-feedback on the ET: Legacy Competitive Discord.

We hope you will all enjoy the oldschool clanbase-like Legacy competitive experience in 2022. The ladder will last for at least a year, depending on the activity.

A massive thank you goes out to the organisers! To everyone joining: Good luck and have fun!