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Whitelisting Mods and Mutators

Yoshiro

Senior Community Manager
Staff member
  • Oct 10, 2005
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    We are prepping for our code whitelist which will allow custom mods and mutators to not take game out of ranked mode and allow perks to progress.

    To submit your mod/mutator for consideration for whitelisting please provide us with the compiled and uncompiled mod as well as a description of what it does. We would also like to see your mod hosted on workshop. You may submit these privately via a PM to myself or @Kittenmittens.

    To be considered your mod/mutator must not alter the core game experience or cause unwanted changes to a clients perks or game environment if they joined a server running it.
     
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    Progress?

    Progress?

    Is there any progress on this scene? Something preventing our group from expanding into the KF2 scene is the inability to add some cosmetic mutators that make the server easy to maintain for large groups without also disabling all perk progression.

    Do we have an ETA perhaps for a whitelist, even if partial?
     
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    I wrote an open-source mod called Controlled Difficulty: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=738484519 / https://github.com/notblackout/kf2-controlled-difficulty/

    This is typically used to make the game harder than stock HOE, by increasing the max monsters, quickening the spawn rate (removing the game conductor), and setting a sort of script of monster spawns, called a SpawnCycle, that disproportionately emphasizes big zeds. It can also be used to make the game easier -- just as you can set the MaxMonsters to 64, you can also set it to 1.

    I've had several users ask me to submit it for whitelisting. I don't know how to do that, so I'm posting here.

    If it were accepted, would whitelisting require reexamination for every release?

    I've also heard, informally, that I might have to try to modify CD so that it only makes the game "harder", not "easier", (for some definition of those words) if it were to be whitelisted. I've thought about that quite a bit, and I'm convinced it is futile. Even if I did it, it would merely play into the hands of guys running perk trainer maps. And the overarching theme of my mod is giving control to players... I really don't want to take away the "bottom" end of difficulty settings provided by CD just to get it whitelisted, artifically constraining player choice.

    I think most of my players who want whitelisting really just want it for personal best updates. If you are uneasy about whitelisting CD due to difficulty concerns and XP farming (even though I think that's not valid as long as perk trainer maps exist), I suspect almost everyone would still be happy with a version of CD that disables XP gain but still allows personal best updates.
     
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    notblackout There is no way that mods like CD and ProjectOne should ever get whitelisted unless there are restrictions within the code that prevent it from making the game easier. However, this goes against the point of those mods, where you have complete control over the aspects of the game made accessible to you via those mods. Even saving the personal best wouldn't really be fair, because it could be really easy to achieve say 50 big zed kills with the spawn cycle someone has set up. If saving personal bests is such a big deal for the users, perhaps looking into storing the personal best related data on the server would be the way to go.
     
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    If the author's of mods don't ask for a whitelisting status it will never happen. I do wish you luck with that tho notblackout. There is what ONE whitelisted mutator by a TWI employee? Even though many other's are out there like forestmark fpbackpack +legs, Workshop by Marco, to name a couple that have nothing to do with changing difficulty, they just enhance the game or make it easier for server maintenance regarding workshop content.
     
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    It was most certainly not a troll post and the fact that you even think that makes me think you have completely missed the point of what I said.

    Mods that get whitelisted are typically those that cannot be exploited to make levelling easier, or make it easier to obtain achievements. I know that perk training maps currently already do this, but it doesn't mean that TWI should go out of their way to allow mods to do it as well :confused:.

    I know this because I had a friend who struggled for months to keep his mod from making his server deranked, and even though it was harder than standard HoE, TWI could never guarantee that it would stay that way and not be exploited for levelling.

    You don't have to agree with me, but just know that TWI haven't even whitelisted things that have nothing to do with difficulty or experience (as oldschool pointed out), so don't hold your breath.
     
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    I'm personally indifferent. Like I said, I'm here because it was directly requested by my mod's users. I realize you may see yourself as doing me some kind of favor, but please, just let TWI speak its own policy. I don't even want to be here having this conversation; anyway, if you're right, TWI will be in complete agreement with you, and you'll see yourself proven "right" anyway. But it's TWI's game and whitelist, not yours or mine, so please let them speak to it (or let them just ignore me indefinitely; that's actually less work for me, and I'd be pretty happy with that outcome).
     
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    I am a huge fan of blackout's mutator ControlledDifficulty. I run the 5 42 slot HopelessDemocracy Killing Floor 2 servers. I am interested in making my large player servers as hard, if not harder than the vanilla settings. I would like to make a custom spawn cycle which substitutes the smaller zeds with the larger ones, and remove the spawning rates. I have been experimenting with having waves of 10-15 fleshpounds at a time. It is very challenging even with so many extra players. It is a great deal of fun, and many people in the community have told me that they enjoy the atmosphere of a small army, over the feel of a small group of survivors.

    I have been pushing blackout to investigate whitelisting, because most people will leave as soon as they see that the server is unranked.

    I agree that blackout should not limit his mutator just to make it whitelisted. However I would love to support a project in which a more compact or maybe simpler version would accomplish making the default HoE difficulty harder, at the same time being whitelisted.

    I'd be willing to donate time or money (~$100) in that event.
     
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