I just had a conversation with someone on IRC about the question why we replayed the first match, but did not replay the second (the replay), although something "strange" happened there too. The person was referring to this situation: Video

I then explained why there is a difference between a "flag-score-bug" and to what happened there (which we called "flag-bug" in that conversation). In a nutshell: What happened there didn't affect the score/result and it's actually even correct. In real-time (without lag) the player picking up the flag was first, the player returning it only reported it faster (due to less lag). Thats why it appears strange when the server corrects itself to all others than the player who picks it up, including the demo/video. Furthermore, only deciding the way we did prevents that in future games players would want to have a high ping to force a replay, which is highly undesirable.

You will prolly best understand it all if you read the full conversation. For privacy reasons I renamed the one chatting with me to X. Link: Log of the IRC conversation. We hope this clarifies really everything now. We are happy that the one got in touch with us and gave us the chance to listen to how we explain our decisions, because we really try to give our best within our boundaries of not getting paid for it and only doing it for a hobby.

We created a video of the flag-score-bug which led to the one score MOFO would have won the game with, if we didn't replay it.

We've heard some players doubt our neutrality in that decision. We would kindly like to ask these players to take a look at the video. We would also like to ask the ones some questions: if we decided to count THAT as a regular score and therefore as a win for MOFO, wouldn't that much more be "biased" than replaying it? What would happen in the next games? Because if you don't do anything the first time it occurs, you kinda have to decide the same way in the future - or argue a lot. And if you are one of the players doubting and seriously still think you wouldn't have decided to replay the match, we have a final question for you: would you allow a team to win just by provoking that bug succesfully maybe like 3 times in a game? This is what could happen, though. ;-)

video

We figured that it might be an idea to run the polls for the Qualification Maps in the SauerClub Forum so the mapchoice is at least influenced by a big group of people, who play the game pretty often. We'll see how it works out.

We can't do it publically as it could be manipulated very easily then (usually by the change of an IP or the deletion of a cookie) - and sending out emails and counting all votes manually is way too much work to do it every month. We hope you understand.

The poll for December's maps has already started and runs for a week. Sauerclub-Members: Please participate.

Congratulations to all winners: Majikal won in ffa and TC in capture, CTF and iCTF. tenshi won instagib for the third time in a row and became Grand Champion which means that he is now blocked for the next title match.

In CTF we had a flag-score-bug. Some of you may know that bug already from public games. You can see it in the demo of the relevant game after 5.10 mins (demo / video). It occurs mainly if 

(1) someone returns the opponents flag,
(2) the own flag carrier is very close to the one returning the opponents flag and
(3) the ping of the flag carrier is substantially higher than of the one returning the flag.

The server then "believes" that the flag got returned already and as the flag is close enough it counts a score.

The outcome is unfair as you score whereever you may be, which in this particular case was even right next to the opponents flagbase, where the flag just got picked up a few seconds earlier. We first decided to let the match go on as it could have ended very clear so the one score would not have mattered really. Unfortunately the game ended so close that it did matter and we decided for a replay.

The bug is the same with something you might have seen too: you sometimes watch someone pick up a flag although it got returned already. Here it's rather that see things too late. The one picking up the flag was actually earlier, but due to the lag the server reported it later. It also does not really affect the game, unlike the flag-score-bug.

We hope the bug will get fixed with the next Cube2-release, the solution could be that the flag events have a number and get refused if they are reported to early.

Ace mentioned that we should replay every game with a flag bug, not only if the final result is close, because there is a psychological effect anyway. we believe he's right and therefore will cancel the game whenever we see it happen and replay it.