Xonotic developers are censoring servers via client-side hac

[leilei]

I know you love OA so much, and guess what? OA "censors" outdated, incompatible servers too! Oh those poor client mismatch errors........ 10 years of systematic oppression now.

[Lyberta]

I know you love OA so much, and guess what? OA "censors" outdated, incompatible servers too! Oh those poor client mismatch errors........ 10 years of systematic oppression now.

Eh? Incompatible? How? Xonotic uses DarkPlaces engine which uses QuakeC virtual machine and client-side code is uploaded from the server to the client. This makes it possible to make pretty much any kind of mod and it will work. One of Xonotic devs run Quake 1 servers. Yes, you can start Xonotic, connect to a server and play Quake 1.

Somehow, I don't think OpenArena uses such system. Wikipedia says that even Quake 2 stopped using QuakeC, so old OpenArena clients can't connect to a newer servers.

[leilei]

OA runs virtualized gamecode too, and the code can be included in pk3 files. One of the old methods of automatically "patching" minor releases partially (not engine) were servers uploading patch pk3s to older clients, and it's possible for an 0.8.8 server to connect to a 0.8.1 server and the versa. However, it's not possible to connect from 0.8.x to 0.7.x because of the protocol number change and the pak0 data checksum differences... this is deliberate "censorship" and forcing this to work otherwise would be a very bad idea.

[Lyberta]

I don't find it censorship if client simply can't connect to a server due to incompatible protocol.