Gamethread 6/26/09

By Shamus Posted Friday Jun 26, 2009

Filed under: Notices 47 comments

ALL THESE SERVERS ARE YOURS. USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE.

Open thread to talk about server issues, games, MMO hookups, Looking for Guild requests, or suggestions about what Gamepunx magazine should do with the bailout money.

Have fun.

 


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47 thoughts on “Gamethread 6/26/09

  1. B.J. says:

    …but I wanna land on Europa.

  2. MintSkittle says:

    Gamepunx should start by firing most of its staff, then give multi-million dollar bonuses to whoever is left:P

  3. Pickly says:

    We had a really nice series of three on three matches earlier this week (My team generally lost, but they were hard played games.)

    I think I’m starting to figure out Demos and Heavies somewhat effectively (In that I don’t just merely walk out and get killed by snipers, while getting an occasional lucky kill while spamming attacks), although a lot of the running and jumping that other people do is still taking a lot of time.

    It’s always interesting to play offense on cart pushing maps, since when playing as a heavy i often get quite high score rankings compared to others. (I think part of this is that I get cart pushing points, and part is that I can just stand near the cart and spam away with the ammo replenishment, while other classes don’t get such a big supply.)

    As mentioned in the other thread, I’m wondering how Anno 1404 is, it has sounded interesting from other people’s descriptions, but information is thin so far.

    I’ve also been developing some new alpha centauri factions. The gameplay and backstory are pretty much finished, but the graphics have been taking quite a long time, with a lot of hitches.

  4. Lochiel says:

    Regarding the RTV mod; while on one of the lowpop servers, we ran into a case were 100% of the players wasn’t enough to trigger a Map Change. RTV required 4 votes of yes, but we only had 3 players online at the time.

    While both the servers are laggy for me, the group itself is loads of fun to play with and worth dealing with the lag.

    EVE Players:
    Join Channel 20D or contact me (Lochiel) if your new and want help

  5. Goto Dengo says:

    My suggestion-

    Make “Lawful” into a 32 player server.

    Discontinue “chaotic” which is obvsly underutilized

    Thereby:
    Saving monies AND
    Making Lawful more chaotic.

  6. Pickly says:

    Gamepunx should start by firing most of its staff, then give multi-million dollar bonuses to whoever is left:P

    But they will have to use recycled paper, and be owed partially by the Magazine publisher’s union. (the other big bailout). Remember, gamepunx provides a large number of jobs and if it fails could cause economic collapse, so needs billions and billions of money to survive. :)

    My suggestion-

    Make “Lawful” into a 32 player server.

    Discontinue “chaotic” which is obvsly underutilized,

    Agree with this (or something like it.) It might be useful to have some days where a wider variety of maps is in play, to give people a chance to try out other maps that they might like but not have experienced otherwise. (Since the first poll people have have had a chance to try some different maps, and overall opinions of “which map is best” may have changed.)

  7. Pederson says:

    what Gamepunx magazine should do with the bailout money.

    A massive bender. Then, preposterous hangover cures and legal fees.

  8. Mantergeistmann says:

    I’m in favor of keeping chaotic. The occasional “non-conventional” matches on it are loads of fun, and it’s nice to have an alternative server that I know if lawful is a.) on a map I don’t feel like playing, or b.) full of mic spammers with no mods in sight, both of which happen on occasion.

  9. Jabor says:

    Apparently my gaming rig doesn’t like Steam, so I’ve still been unable to get into TF2.

    Oh well. I suppose I’ll be sticking with Tribes this weekend.

  10. JoeFF85/Skitzophrenik says:

    Last night I one on oned with another d20 on Chaotic for more than an hour. Weird experience. Games are very different one on one.

  11. Jonathan says:

    Steam still hasn’t successfully updated my TF2 from whatever patch was issued earlier this week.

  12. Yar Kramer says:

    As an aside, Left 4 Dead‘s SDK got released officially, along with — get this — VMFs for all the maps for all the official Campaigns except the lighthouse. This smells like awesome.

  13. RPharazon says:

    I’m not in support of increasing player count, or removing Chaotic. Two reasons.

    32-player servers attract very undesireable types and inhibit social interaction, whilst making individual efforts more nullified and games more frenzied.

    Chaotic is often visited by pretty much pure [d20] members. Last night we had a good 6-10 member melee battle frenzy for nigh on four hours. As people joined in, they usually caught on and started meleeing people. I particularly liked the Fire Axe and Shovel rounds. Chaotic is a really fun niche server where members can spend downtime if they decide to get together and escape the sheer numerical oppression of Lawful. That, and they might want to escape Hoodoo.

  14. Rutskarn says:

    By the way: I’m not in-game very often, but I’m usually by a computer with Steam up, so if you ever have a serious problem with unruly players, feel free to send me a Steam Message.

    My steam name is:

    [ChHa] Rutskarn

    And the id is:

    darthoccam

  15. Nash says:

    heh… 2010’s quote. I liked it.

  16. TSED says:

    NOT RELATED TO STEAM AT ALL:

    Is there a 20 Sided Guild Wars… well, guild?

    I’ve been sort of thinking about getting back into it, but you know, there’s only heroes and henchies to play (I am not the kind of guy who looks for people in game for whatever reason).

    And you know how fast that gets old.

  17. Yar Kramer says:

    … now, if only I could load any of the official L4D maps without Hammer immediately crashing with a page pool memory error … oh well, comes with trying to run a modern game on a laptop made only a little while after XP SP2 came out …

  18. Davin Valkri says:

    To Goto Dengo: NO. WAY. IN. HELL. For whatever reason, idiots of various stripes love to jump into Lawful, but don’t follow the inevitable migration into Chaotic. We lose Chaotic, we lose our fallout shelter against the imbeciles.

  19. Edtopia says:

    I had a lot of fun with a bunch of single class rounds on Chaotic the other night. Spies only is the most ludicrous thing. I vote it stays.

  20. LintMan says:

    I liked the 2010 quote too.

  21. Jonathan says:

    After I posted the above, Steam updated fine within 5 minutes, despite having had problems for hours of attempted updating earlier in the week.

    Go figure.

    I favor keeping Chaotic. I want more Heavy boxing.

  22. Lochiel says:

    Throwing in my support for not changing the player limit and keeping Chaotic.

  23. Volatar says:

    I was there during all those fun rounds. We did rounds like each and every class melee only (yeah, actually, we did all of them twice), sniper only, spies vs snipers, scouts vs medics, taunt only battles. Oh man, so much fun stuff. I was there from the start. It all started when we had only 5 players on gravelpit. We all agreed to play scout with only bats. We kept it going from then (about 7 or 8 pm EST) to at least 2am EST when I left. A couple of others and I were the driving force behind it. We decided on what to do each round change pretty much by committee. :) It was awesome. Thanks to [ChHa] Rutskarn for keeping the riffraff in line when sheer force of will on the part of everyone else didn’t work (only a couple of cases). Thanks to everyone involved for coming and enjoying it all, I had so much fun, I got in trouble with my parents for playing too much and staying up too late, but I don’t care :P

    I swear that it was all on lawful though, not chaotic. Every other map was a payload map, and we never had any “chaotic” maps. I never really play on chaotic, so I may have the two mixed up, but maybe not.

    Though I would love a 32 player server so we could fit people in, I do agree it would attract more troublemakers than it is worth.

  24. Pickly says:

    NOT RELATED TO STEAM AT ALL:

    Is there a 20 Sided Guild Wars… well, guild?

    I've been sort of thinking about getting back into it, but you know, there's only heroes and henchies to play (I am not the kind of guy who looks for people in game for whatever reason).

    And you know how fast that gets old.

    No guild information, but I have two accounts (Man of Minions, Luxon turtler) if you want to add me ot a friends list (though I won’t be on that often.)

    I do have a one person guild, but might be joining a larger one within a few months (so am not in a position ot invite people.)

    About chaotic servers:

    The big problem with the current server setup is that often one server will be completely full, while the other one is completely empty or have 1-2 people on them, and it than takes a very long time to fill up (which just leads to long waiting times.) It doesn’t matter whether a server merge takes place, whether someone one the servers makes sure to get a big group to move to another server, but something should occur to keep the servers evened out.

  25. Rutskarn says:

    My major reason for not playing Guild Wars is that there’s no mechanical squirrels to sell there.

  26. Carra says:

    @Pickly. I’ve read some great reviews about Anno 1404. Seems to be a great game. And I loved the original Anno 1602, that’s one of my favorite games.

    However… It has a 3x activation limit DRM which I’m not willing to accept.

  27. Avaz ( [d20]Teldurn ) says:

    I agree with whoever said to raise the Lawful player limit to 32. But DON’T get rid of Chaotic; I consider it a legit pool for spillover from Lawful when it’s full (which is most of the time).

    Besides, if Lawful wasn’t full, I wouldn’t have had a truly awesome 1-on-1 run over the course of about 7 or 8 maps with [d20]Skitzophrenik. Payload maps require a whole different strategy when you’re all alone. Truly epic.

  28. Spider Dave says:

    @Volatar: It was definitely on Lawful. I never see anyone playing Chaotic.
    I must say, all snipers is surprisingly fun, although there is nothing quite like both teams being entirely populated by red spies.
    I was not expecting heavies to own spies so hard.

  29. Pickly says:

    My major reason for not playing Guild Wars is that there's no mechanical squirrels to sell there.

    Minipets. :)

  30. Adeon says:

    I’m strongly against raising the sever population to 32. 32 plays very differently to 24 and I personally consider the 24 player experience to be superior.

  31. edcalaban says:

    @Goto Dengo: I agree with making Lawful bigger, but Chaotic gets just as much action and usually has some hilarious alternate gametypes going on (spies only, heavy punching only, etc). Leave Chaotic be.

    In general, some requests:
    1. Votekick plugin OR more trustworthy people with the ability to kick troublemakers.
    2. Some way to kick people sitting in lobby (not spectators, but the guys who are afk for the whole map). I don’t mind it all the time, but during high volume times they’re just taking a slot and it can get hard to get on.
    3. Is there a way to alter respawn times based on server population? Or have I not noticed it happening? Because Goldrush is hard to win when every defending player suddenly dies while Blu pushes the cart into B.
    Edit: 4. Forgot to ask, but can we get some sort of scramble plugin? Winning teams occasionally stick together through several maps and make it hard on the losing team.

  32. Nico says:

    We’re still having some problems with players who hack/spam/troll/whatever. I was in a game where there was someone playing with somehow boosted speed and 100% criticals. It killed the entire server.

    Admins might help.

  33. Adalore says:

    24 too 32? /gurgle.

    Hoodoo would become implausible to play on, esp if there is a bunch of heavies all firing at once, it just eats my frames per second like some bitesize low carb snack!

    Ah yes the upgrade bit with machines… Well this one might as well be nearly a decade old. :p

  34. Aergoth says:

    Re: Twenty Sided GW
    I’d be happy to see a Guild for the folks here. I could foot the bill for it if we had the members.

  35. GnomishMight says:

    In my experience, 32 player servers tend to become less dependent on teamwork and more dependent on spamming explosives into the oncoming horde. Not to mention that a new 32-player server would serve as a beacon to those who would thrive in such an environment.

  36. Scorpionica says:

    I’m in favour of leaving the TF2 servers mostly as they are; they both serve their purposes quite well, even though they might not be occupied to their capacity at all times. The only addition I’d like to see would be on either server (not necessarily both) to add a few different maps. There were a few players on ctf_turbine on the Lawful server through RTV, and although the map didn’t seem that much fun (there were only 6 players on either side, that may have been a problem), it was a nice change of pace.

    The instituted one-class-only rounds have been fun so far, with the fair few moderators (Phase and Rutskarn) keeping things in line. Even when teams are unbalanced, it’s far too hilarious to complain about it.

  37. If anything, it’s chaotic that could be raised to 32. TF2 maps were made for 24 people, and any more than that and things start to get very spam-ish and unbalanced. Scouts have almost no place there, for example. But for Chaotic, that could work. For Lawful, things should be vanilla as they come. I’ve had great fun so far on the servers, so keep up the good work!

    Ben

  38. Pickly says:

    they both serve their purposes quite well, even though they might not be occupied to their capacity at all times.

    This is not why people are suggesting 32 players, the problem is that one server is often full while the other one is empty, and because servers with with few players aren’t much fun for most people, the full server gets a line while the empy server takes a long time to fill up. (Thus, the suggestion to get a 32 player server, or et least have some method of moving people over to the second server when the first one is full.)

  39. Lochiel says:

    The problem isn’t that Lawful isn’t big enough; the problem is that when Lawful gets full, people do not migrate to Chaotic.

    Is it possible to post a link to Chaotic in the “Serve is Full Message”?

    Perhaps include Chaotic’s IP in the MOTD?

    A mod that automatically moves people to Chaotic if Lawful is full?

    Perhaps just wait and let people migrate to Chaotic on their own?

  40. Scorpionica says:

    @ Pickly

    Thank you for addressing my reply.

    I’m (mostly) aware of that, and although I have very little experience with TF2 or online games for that matter, I think that with a 32 player server (Lawful, Chaotic, both), nothing would change for the few [d20] regulars. There are a lot of players who never heard of Twenty Sided playing on Lawful (some of them very good and friendly, some even visiting Twenty Sided because of the friendly atmosphere), while very few visit Chaotic, due to obscurity or because it’s no different from Lawful (apart from the notion it should be more Chaotic, maps are pretty much the same).

    Reserved slots may help with accommodating [d20]-people on a particular server, but that brings a lot of administration and hassle (reserved slots have their own problems). Increasing the limit could help, but I’m not confident that it will.

    As for the second point: moving people over to the other server should be done voluntarily, not forced in any way through scripts or pre-determined modifiers. There doesn’t seem to be a good way for this though. On the other hand, Chaotic seems to have more peaks than a median number of players, which probably comes from the regulars agreeing on moving over for those oddball moments. Hopefully a solution will present itself soon.

  41. Volatar says:

    @ 31 and 32 – edcalaban and Nico:

    I agree here. We could most assuredly make use of a plugin to solve each of these problems.

    I Google’d, and found some that may work.

    Votekick, voteban, votemap, and votemute
    http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=72058

    Or, just a mapvote addon
    http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=66581

    For AFK kicking I found two similar addons
    http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=74531
    http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=79904

    Though I did not find an addon to adjust respawn by the number of players, I did find one to adjust the map rotation by the number of players, and several other optional factors.
    http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=68668

    Team scramble
    http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=89136
    or
    http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=77370

    Also, some of these addons may be fun to play with. If they seem to make the game too “chaotic” then maybe they should only be put on Chaotic and not Lawful :)

    Roll the Dice (definitely chaos causing)
    http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=75561

    Map rating – This could be a useful tool to allow data collection for Shamus.
    http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=69593

    Stats – I personally love stats, they make me happy :)
    http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=58314

    Post-round extra respawn – More after-win carnage and death (looks amusing)
    http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=72530

    Hope these could be helpful.

  42. Spider Dave says:

    For those extra crazy days, I’ve been on servers with a vote for changing the gravity all the way from the inability to jump and almost negligible falling time, to heavies leaping onto the bridge in 2fort and having midair dogfights. Definitely for the chaotic server.

  43. AlfieUK says:

    I’ve spent more time on Chaotic mostly because Lawful did not show up in the server browser (in fact it still doesn’t for me if I remove it from favourites, I had to add it via IP), and as a UKian, Lawful never seems to be populated at the infrequent times that I have available to play.

    When Chaotic is not busy (i.e. when the USians are asleep/at work) it does seem to suffer from the odd clan rush whenever something interesting is going on, for instance I went on Chaotic mid last week and there were 3 people so we agreed to do achievements, I got asked if I was an admin (have a [d20] tag), said no, so some clan ‘WMC’ or similar, decided to just gank us all and took over the server for a few hours. I think that that’s one of those ‘to be expected’ things with public servers.

    I’ve not seen the same with Lawful, but again that’s mostly because it has no/few players when I’m usually awake to look at it.

    Reserved slots will be a nightmare with the number of [d20] players (531 in the group at time of post), who gets preference?

    It may be better to make the decision financial, i.e. if Shamus gets enough money to keep both open then keep both open, if the donations tail off then Lawful gets preference. If its financial then it takes the decision off of Shamus and puts it down to us mostly, I know Shamus said he would pay but if we aren’t using/enjoying them then what’s the point?

  44. GnomishMight says:

    Oh, and as this is FPS related: Battlefield Heroes is now open to the public! Its like if Battlefield 2 and TF2 had a baby that was available free to the public. Woo!

    P.S. I’m not a secret advertising troll, I’m just really excited.

  45. hevis says:

    I just heard about Trine from my friend. It’s indie game available on Steam. I downloaded a demo (yes, there is one) and will be buying it on monday when I get money.. Just awesome game! Great mix of platformer, action and puzzle genres plus playing with physics. A game I gladly pay 30 euros.

    Edit: The game reminds me about old SNES game The Lost Vikings.. In Trine you also use 3 different characters with different abilities.

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