zBlock 4.4 - A quick chat with CodeRed

Written By Chad "SPUNJ" Burchill
25 July, 2009 03:53 PM

Here is an interview with one of zBlocks top developers - Mirko 'CodeRed' Oleszuk. Enjoy.

SPUNJ:
For those people who are not educated in the world of Counter-Strike: Source plugins can you please give us a run down on what zBlock is and what are the goals that the zBlock team wants to achieve?

CodeRed:
Basically zBlock is a Source Engine Server Plugin with the intention to achieve a balanced and fair playing field. It began in the past with blocking certain unfair convars and nowadays it does much more as it contains special features for a competitive environment like a ready-up module, a match config loader or a teamcash function.
 
SPUNJ:
What bugs/glitches in the past has zBlock been able to overcome and what kind of work goes into making this possible?

CodeRed:
We recieved and recieve a lot of cheat, exploit or bug reports through our forums from the community and we are very grateful that they help us to improve the game and scene overall. Sometimes it is just a "new" cvar that disables some walls (like we fixed one in the 4.3 release) or someone finds a command that crashes servers (like we fixed in this release), but usually when a new bug occors we test the problem or exploit and see if we can replicate it or better understand it in-game. If it is not clearly understood we will have to do some research. Otherwise J3Di just goes to the keyboard and fixes it.
 
SPUNJ:
zBlock version 4.4 has stirred up a lot of discussion lately about certain gameplay changes, mainly removing the ability to bunnyhop. What is zBlocks reasoning for removing bunnyhopping from competitive play?
 
CodeRed
In Europe many leagues forbid the performing of bunnyhopping, we know that it is different in US and Australian leagues and therefore we just offer the possibility to remove bunnyhopping from the game via the setting "zb_bunnyfix". It is up to the leagues, some see it as an unfair advantage if you bunnyhop very fast to a place where you should not be at that time, some see it as some kind of skill. You might notice, I dislike bunnyhoppping, too, but we don't want to force our mind to other leagues as this is a crucial gameplay change.
 
SPUNJ:
Here in Australia it seems that bunnyhopping is something that the competitive scene wants to remain in play. Will it be possible with zBlock 4.4 to turn the ability to bunnyhop on/off?

CodeRed:
Yes, zb_bunnyfix 0 will allow you to play with the old bunnyhop behaviour. It is turned off by default. The Crouch-bug fix is enabled by default, but can be also turned off.
 
SPUNJ:
Are you able to give an official release date and change log for zBlock 4.4 at this time?

CodeRed:
We have just released the Release Candidate 1 of zBlock 4.4 for public beta testing. Everyone is invited to download it from our website and to give feedback. This is already a very close Release Candidate as we had excellent beta testers, but we are always open for more feedback. Currently we are adjusting the super-boost fix and evaluate the enormous feedback.

Changlog
 
SPUNJ:
Thankyou so much for your time. We look forward to seeing the improvements in action.

CodeRed:
Thank you, too, for your interest in zBlock and the work behind it. I would like to send some greetings to the other developers J3Di, Orion, TheUnknownFactor and Trepje and thank them for their great job and thanks to the community for providing us again and again with new
exploit reports. :)