Official Servers

[Lucifer]

Let's just say that I've been wanting to write this post for several days but have been busy, and let's leave it at that (within this thread).

So, I really like the idea of having some "official servers". I really like the idea of having a particular place in the UI where they show up. It will take some work to make THAT part happen.

However, there's no reason we can't make the servers themselves now. In fact, there's every reason to start putting them together. In the UI, we can't list servers that don't exist. So let's get some shit started.

I've created Breakfast in Austin as an Armagoshdarn clone, but it's obviously flawed. What I remember of the server involved a lot of grind-beating. So there's a lot of rubber settings to be tweaked (this came in 0.2.7.1, and the settings I tapped are from 0.2.5.something). It also seems to be too fast, like a Breakfast server.

In any case, let's start putting together servers we want to consider "Official".

And, with that, let's lay down some rules, some of which will take time to implement (meaning: let's focus on making good servers first and foremost, then let's focus on the political shit):

Rules:
* Banlists need to be shared so that if someone is banned from one server, they will be banned from all
* Moderator lists also need to be shared. Moderators need to have the same power on each server. So if you're going to host an "official server", you need to accept the "official moderators" too.
* The moderators will be subject to public discussion/criticism. Keep that in mind if you think you have what it takes to be a moderator. Just, you know, look at recent history to see what you may have to endure.
* Above all, servers should welcome new players and heavily enforce any rule that helps new players, regardless of whether or not it hurts old players. Bring the banhammer down!

And then there are guidelines, and these are based largely on what *we* (meaning all of us, I hope) makes competitive servers that are friendly for new players. These would be considered optional, but at the same time the failure to meet, at least in spirit, the purpose of these guidelines might get a server removed from the official list.

* Make settings that encourage competitive play (infinite walls don't do that, but they have educational value for new players, so they're not ruled out here)
* Generally speaking, a core dump is worth 1 point, and a match win is worth 10 points. Deviations from this need a solid reason.
* Map rotation is a wonderful idea, but the scoring needs to be kept the same, and the goal on each map needs to be kept the same (CTWF is fun, when you know the maps. For the rest of us, it's frustrating)
* Team modes apply, please exercise these to the best you can.

I had more, but it didn't make it in this post. Perhaps I really wanted discussion.

We will make "official servers", whether or not there's programming support for them. We have to. It makes no sense to offer "official servers" in 0.4 when we don't have any to offer.

So let's discuss what it takes to make an official server. Right here. You know the drill.....

[sinewav]

I am not quite sure I understand this proposal. Let me type it and see.

Official servers get preferential UI placement, effectively funneling most or all new player to them. Assuming the flow of new players is large enough, they will always met a fair amount of players of their skill level, excluding the occasional veteran who comes in to squash some n00bs while on their lunch break. As players gain experience and explore Armagetron they will naturally find their place in one of Armagetron's sub-communities while being replaced by more new players. It seems like a great idea if you can keep the servers populated. You might only need 2-3 official servers offering a decent variety of options, which would be very manageable. I suggest at least one BiH type server, one with some variation of default settings (while steering clear of something too similar to Fort/Sumo — blondie has good settings for this), one gimmicky server with zones and/or maps, and maybe an HR server (though my personal bias says HR automatically fails the "competitive" requirement). Something like that would give new players an overview of the World of Armagetron. You might even reach out to current owners of popular servers and see if they are on board with donating a variation and maybe lending some staff to moderate the official variant.

Am I close to understanding?

[Lucifer]

Sinewav: to the extent you discuss it, you pretty much nailed it.

A couple of things, though:

1) Any "preferential UI placement" hasn't been decided if it's even going to happen. So there's plenty of room for discussion on that one.

2) The focus is to create servers that welcome new players. Like, as in all capital letters kind of focus. I only mention that here because in neither of our posts is it getting the kind of placement it should get.

Reading your post brought up a few new thoughts for me.

It should be obvious, hopefully it is. We wouldn't want any list of official servers to dominate the server listing, or supplant all the other servers, especially the popular ones. So the number of official servers needs to stay pretty small, and the gametypes available kept limited. We could rotate out gametypes over time, just to keep things interesting, but for things like Fortress/Sumo, for example, we still want the community-hosted servers to do the bulk of the hosting. An official sumo server would only be created if we wanted to show off that type of play while providing a guaranteed friendly environment for new players.

There has also been 0 discussion of what sort of management structure would exist. I think the structure that will organically develop will be a combination of master server admins and the official server admins basically developing a semi-democratic way of working as a group. I'm certainly not offering nor asking to be in charge of this, nor am I suggesting any particular management structure, other than having a lot of solid moderators on the servers.

[sinewav]

There are plenty of good game settings out there, we just need some people to volunteer to run an official server or two. The management details will work themselves out over time. I think the concept of official servers would go a long way toward new player retention. Still, I think the bigger problem is how to increase the number of new players entering the game in the first place. It's never been solved.

[Z-Man]

I got a shiny new VPS to replace the crappy old one. Since I intend to keep the Wiki off it, it should be able to handle at least two normal game servers. What's the best/most convenient way to give someone owner access? I personally always just compile my server programs right there on the machine and run them in screen sessions in simple loop scripts, but that's probably not a procedure for everyone.

[compguygene]

I do have a VPS that can easily host another game server on it. Z-man, I run my servers in much the same way as you have described.

[Ratchet]

Maybe it's a small contribution to the overall discussion, but:

Server locations are almost as important as the types of servers, in my honest opinion.

1) All of the servers should not be hosted in one central location (or even two of them in the same location)
2) There should be at least one US and one EU server (which game modes each contain should probably differ). Maybe an AU server if there exists a large enough player base.

I know that for many US people that playing in EU servers is difficult, if not downright unenjoyable. I've never had the privilege of playing in (and enjoying) servers like The Yellow Submarine and Cheers because of bad connectivity. Sure, it's a reality, but maybe forcing newcomers to play on foreign servers wouldn't be a great idea.

We should ensure that our newcomers have at least one viable server for them to play in.

[Lucifer]

I was thinking about that, Ratchet. Same issue we had with the AFL and that comes up in the Ladle every month.

Not a lot to be done directly, it all depends on who volunteers servers and where they're at.

What we *can* do for sure is have a naming convention that includes at least the continent a server is on so a new player from France can tell the difference easily between a server in Germany and a server in the US.

Other than that, it's really more about encouraging people to donate servers, really.

[blondie]

aforementioned settings

Code: Select all

CYCLE_ACCEL 35
CYCLE_ACCEL_SLINGSHOT 0.5
CYCLE_ACCEL_TUNNEL 0.5
CYCLE_RUBBER 2
CYCLE_RUBBER_DELAY 0.3
CYCLE_RUBBER_DELAY_BONUS 0.3
CYCLE_RUBBER_MINADJUST 0.000001
CYCLE_RUBBER_TIME 1
CYCLE_SPEED 12
CYCLE_SPEED_DECAY_ABOVE 0.2
CYCLE_SPEED_MAX 3
CYCLE_SPEED_MIN 1.5
CYCLE_START_SPEED 25
CYCLE_WALL_NEAR 10

with significant influence from Phytotron's Bebop in Harlem, and in turn the servers that influenced that.

The actual values are maleable, the key is the organization of them.

The important interactions are low base CYCLE_SPEED with high CYCLE_ACCEL. We use CYCLE_SPEED_MIN and CYCLE_SPEED_MAX to prevent abusive behavior in both directions, and we eliminate slingshotting as a source of speed advantage altogether. The combination creates settings that highly incentivize player interaction.

[Z-Man]

Server locations are almost as important as the types of servers, in my honest opinion.

Right! Mine's in Europe, of course, Strassbourg.

[Phytotron]

* Generally speaking, a core dump is worth 1 point, and a match win is worth 10 points. Deviations from this need a solid reason.

You mean to say that 10 points wins the match, right?


Obviously I'm biased, but I think Shrunkland is kind of an ideal server for this, both because of its age and iconography as well as its actual settings. I've always said that one of the best things about it, about which I'm most proud, is that it's both accessible and informative to newbies as well as competitive for veterans. Low skill floor, high skill ceiling. It's also more intuitive for new players. People come to this game expecting to be derezzed when they hit a wall, not be able to sit there and go take a piss and come back and still be alive, or be bale to hump it or turn against it. I would bet this game has lost more new players than it has gained by rubber allowing that nonsense.

That said, realistically, almost every server allows that crap. So, practically speaking, the current iteration of Shrunkland may not necessarily be best as an introduction to Armgetron at large—despite my strong belief that this iteration not only best embodies the spirit of that server, but also represents how I would prefer rubber be employed universally. In particular, the way have I have _RUBBER_TIME set up to (almost) immediately recover, since basically no one else does that. I can make a few tweaks for a more traditional/classic rubber behavior, though, and would be happy to do so if provided the platform. (But I would be just as happy to leave it as-is.)

By the way, by the same token, the acceleration settings Blondie posted might not be ideal—specifically the _SLINGSHOT and _TUNNEL settings. Almost no one negates those the way I did for Bebop in Harlem. That is, knowing that you can get extra acceleration from passing between walls should be included in any introductory server.

My one concern about using Shrunkland in this way is the whole standards and moderation dealio. It was important to me to provide a certain type of atmosphere, as summed up in the MOTD:

Welcome to Shrunkland! Try to be decent human beings to one another. Please refrain from any bigotry, bullying, or trolling. No clan activity. Leave the weirdo game rules, and insistence thereof, at the door (i.e., "open/loose/DF/whatever"). People may play as they like, within reason. Enjoy!

Oh, by the way, on the subject of Armagoshdarn, you may want to note my comments here.

[Lucifer]

* Generally speaking, a core dump is worth 1 point, and a match win is worth 10 points. Deviations from this need a solid reason.

You mean to say that 10 points wins the match, right?

Yeah, basically. The basic scoring idea is that points are scored with core dumps. Other possible ways to score being de-emphasized (but not outright discouraged), so that the match win score is representative of core dumps.

Oh, by the way, on the subject of Armagoshdarn, you may want to note my comments here:

Funny you chimed in Gene, as part of what sent me on this quest was related to your Armagoshdarn "clone." Did you get your settings from this forum (here or here)? Not a lot to go by, right, and those rely a lot on whatever the default settings were. For example, cycle_speed—those settings only give a speed_factor (and 1.5 isn't possible). I think default cycle_speed in <2.6 was 10, while it's now 30. With speed_factor 1, that makes base speed read as 14.2, according to my speedometer. Also, the size is way huge.

I just checked, and you're right, the defaults changed a lot. So I've just got all the 0.2.6.1 defaults put in so they get set first.

Ok, I was going to reply to a lot, but I've got a server to test! Watch for it, "Armagoshdarnish in 0.2.8"

[Ratchet]

I was just eating supper and browsing through the forums and an idea kinda hit me.
I have tron on Kubuntu and on Windows. On windows, I run the latest stable build. On Kubuntu, I have one of the 0.4 alphas.

So, on 0.4, there's a menu in local play named "Game Setup". This is roughly the exact idea that I had. Except, maybe a few modifications as to which settings show up to the users. But, regardless, wouldn't it be more streamlined of a transition if we had exact replicas of our "Official Servers" as game modes for the local players to play?

Like, say, we decide that "Armagoshdarn 3.0" is going to be an official server. We should make that one of the options for "Game Mode".
i.e.: Game Mode: Armagoshdarn 3.0

By doing this, users who play local for long enough to realize that settings exist will likely become familiar with these names. Thus, if they make it online to multiplayer, they'd see the names they're already familiar with and go "AH-HA!"

Maybe even a message once a match (during local play) saying something to the effect of "Tired of beating up on all of these bots? Try the multiplayer server with identical settings located in the "Online Multiplayer" menu!"

If this were to be implemented, I'd recommend making "Game Mode" the top (and thus most frequently seen) menu item when you click on Game Setup. Currently it isn't.

edited to allow fast readers to distinguish what's important

[Phytotron]

I approve of that idea. I don't like what vov is doing, for multiple reasons. I don't even really like the 'included examples' that come with the game, for reasons. But if this 'Official Servers' thing were implemented, it would make sense to me to include local versions. Of course, rubber functions differently in a local versus online scenario, but whatever.


Fun fact: Once upon a time if you joined an online server then backed out to a local game, the local game would retain the server's settings. Pretty sure that was eliminated with 0.2.8.x, and could have been a bug for all I know.

Yeah, basically. The basic scoring idea is that points are scored with core dumps. Other possible ways to score being de-emphasized (but not outright discouraged), so that the match win score is representative of core dumps.

Totally. One point for a dump, 10 to win is standard in my book. Just wanted to be clear about the wording, so someone wouldn't possibly misread it as to mean "a round win is worth 10 points" (the "worth" part being what could confuse somone), which is really bad scoring, in my view.

[Lucifer]

I'm on board with Ratchet's idea, too.

I had my own little epiphany, which is that we put a server subcultures browser above the existing server browser, and make the official servers simply a subculture that comes preconfigured *and* preselected. No code changes required for servers, no protocol changes for the master server, just the UI changes needed in the client.

Then we can include other server subcultures, should there be any to put in (like a ww, or Ladle, or whatever).

The interface flow that I'm imagining would be that you'd go left/right to browse to different subcultures (changing the sort would be disallowed, not necessary for small cultures). You'd go up/down as usual, but when you reach the bottom of the current culture's last server and you hit down again, you drop down to the standard server browser.

Or you can tab back and forth between them.

Sooo, who wants to take these two ideas to the 0.4 todo list thread?