Is there an an old school server you want brought back

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Phytotron
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Re: Is there an an old school server you want brought back

Post by Phytotron »

Swampy wrote:I want to also mention that Phytotron worked hard to perfect the Shrunkland settings after I got that server running. Thanks Phytotron!
There are several other things I've contributed to the project, both in bug testing and conception. Granted, much of that was before you came along. You're welcome to browse my old posts, even some more recent ones, Pollyanna.
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Re: Is there an an old school server you want brought back

Post by compguygene »

cash wrote:
Phytotron wrote:Look, if you kids want to have your little quasiclan forum
Understand that Mud Puddle and the Swampland forum are not run by kids.
They are run by 6 people all between 30-50 years old and no one is interested in clans.
Furthermore, your opinions are worthless with regards to any of the servers you talk about in your posts, as you contribute nothing.
Many here contribute their time and sometimes their hard earned money to make this game fun.
What do you do besides complain and spread your negative attitude where ever you go.
Don't bother to reply as I won't read it.
It's kind of funny how different people view things differently. I really consider Phytotron's voice to be a needed one! His willingness to just say "yuck, that's stupid" sometimes provides a needed Devil's Advocate. I could point to several recent threads where Phytotron's dissent drew out a discussion to the point that people engaging in debate with him has not only drawn out a discussion, but brought it up to a level that can be very informative to future people searching these forums for information.
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Re: Is there an an old school server you want brought back

Post by saragei »

A slap in the face stays a slap in the face even if followed by eloquent remarks relating to the actual topic.
Never trust a species that grins all the time. It’s up to something. —Terry Pratchett, Pyramids
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Re: Is there an an old school server you want brought back

Post by Swampy »

I was glancing through the thread and Phytotron is fairly accurate about the history of the Breakfast servers. One thing to note is that Lucifer discovered a server of mine I was toying with and he offered some help to get me up and running on a Linux server. There wasn't any catches, but he did ask that it be branded as a Breakfast server, so in fact Swampland was orignally called "Swampland, a Breakfast server". That name stuck for a while, but eventually we decided that we would come up with our own brand since it was felt that our configurations of servers weren't the Breakfast type any longer.

So much time has past since I shut my servers down that I don't remember the play by play, but I can say that I've been very appreciative of Ca$h stepping up and hosting Swampland.

Lastly, I fired up a BIH server tonight. These are the settings as they were when Lucifer hosted it. It's been a while since I played around with hosting so I might have forgot something, but have fun if it's actually working.
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Re: Is there an an old school server you want brought back

Post by Phytotron »

Ah, I never saw the "Swampland, a Breakfast server," or at least don't recall it.

As to your firing up a 0.2.7.1 BiH, what Gene and I are proposing here is, if Lucifer didn't have any strong objection, Gene would host a BiH in (whatever the most recent of 0.2.8.x is) gratis, as he's doing with 'goshdarn and Shrunkland already. Because 0.2.7.1 is bad, very very bad man (Babu Bhatt impression).

Then I'll get in there and work with the settings to get it feeling good. (I already posted a couple of the little tweaks I had in mind. The main ones are the cycle_delay, _timebased, and the _rubber_delay settings; the deal with _rubber and _rubber_time is my own thing for local game and can be disregarded in favor of the original 4/10, respectively.)

I think I'll load up my old 0.2.7.1 client (0.2.8.x clients act really whack in 0.2.7.1 servers—another reason to not do that) and play in the one you've brought up for a bit, though, just for reminders. Complete with having to turn all my graphics off, heh.

::stomps foot:: I say again, where is Fonkay?!
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Re: Is there an an old school server you want brought back

Post by Phytotron »

Wow, 0.2.7.1 is more messed up than I remembered. I've connected using both an 0.2.7.1 client and 0.2.8.x clients, and it's just wacky. Of course, I remember how half-assed 180's and adjusts would be more successful than a straight grind, but there were a couple other rubber behaviours I had forgotten.

I don't remember this deal where following a grind you shoot off with boost in speed (or if it's not a boost, then it's the cycle looking like it's skipping ahead as it's getting placed at a new location). Maybe my FPS was so bad back then that I just didn't notice? Actually, this still happens sometimes in 0.2.8.x (it'll be either a boost or speed cut—what the hell?), seemingly randomly (I can't pin down how to predictably reproduce one or the other behaviour), but with 0.2.7.1 it was every single grind.

And while I can't recall if I was aware of it back then, I noticed how the rubber meter will reach full and then you get that little stall out before you actually explode, as compared to now where the top is the end.

Then Swampy came in at one point and, of course he was sitting on top of the server, but every turn he made his cycle was jumping back. (So, he would look like he was going straight, then you'd see that his turn was actually several cycle-lengths back.) I saw this with a few other players as well. I think this is what used to be called redraw?

Well, that's all pretty irrelevant since we know the rubber behaviour in current version is preferable over 0.2.7.1, with which I think Lucifer would agree. (I recall he was always trying to mimic pre-0.2.7.1 behaviour with 0.2.7.1, and then actually being there when he switched to 0.2.8 and was fiddling and putting in 180/adjust prevention and whatnot.)

But then there was something else I noticed. I swear that acceleration picks up a lot more quickly in 0.2.7.1 than it does now with the same values (compared locally). Example: I make a simple spiral. In 0.2.7.1, as I come out I'm getting flung against the tunnel's outer walls, whereas in 0.2.8.x I am able to control better and stay in the middle of the tunnel because I don't get going as fast. But even just regular driving around I notice I'm getting up there and flying around a lot more quickly than in current version. Can this be verified, or is there some other explanation?
(And then the other part of this is that in 0.2.7.1 I'm able to ricochet around with impunity, thanks to that stall-out, while doing the same in 0.2.8.x I 'splode.)


At any rate, there are so many other reasons beyond rubber behaviour to use the latest version. But I do also want to try to get back to pre-0.2.7.1 feel, to the extent that's possible—0.2.8.x's take on 0.2.6 rubber, as it were.


All that said, I do appreciate you (Swampy) putting that up for awhile so's I can get some reminder of what it was like. You think sometime (not imminently) you could do the same with Shrunkland in 0.2.7.0, if you still happen to have the config? Just for a few days, so I can get a reminder.
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Re: Is there an an old school server you want brought back

Post by Swampy »

I have all the configs for the servers I've hosted, but I don't remember having Shrunkland on 2.7.0. It would have been on 2.7.1 since I actually just changed a few settings on Swampland and renamed it and Shrunk was born.
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Re: Is there an an old school server you want brought back

Post by Phytotron »

Shrunkland was never 0.2.7.1, that was part of the appeal. You dug out your original copy of Swampland in 0.2.7.0 then modified that. I recall all this clearly, and there are also references to it in older posts (including stuff about bounce and "t-bones"). I think if and when you resurface it, you'll find it's 0.2.7.0. :)
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Re: Is there an an old school server you want brought back

Post by Phytotron »

Bebop in Harlem :D
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Re: Is there an an old school server you want brought back

Post by compguygene »

Considering that I am hosting swampland and other servers, that could be a very good name!
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Re: Is there an an old school server you want brought back

Post by Phytotron »

So you're going to do a Swampland clone as well, after all? Well, like I said, in my opinion it'd be a bit redundant with BiH and that Mud Puddle out there, and the Master Server List already has an abundance of redundancy. But, I suppose if you've got someone really wanting to do it, by all means....
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Re: Is there an an old school server you want brought back

Post by compguygene »

No, not a swampland clone...I thought we were thinking of doing a take on BIH (Breakfast in Hell). I agree that there is no reason to do a swampland clone!
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Re: Is there an an old school server you want brought back

Post by Phytotron »

Hmm, I supposed I misunderstood "...I am hosting Swampland....." :?

Yeah, Bebop in Harlem should have been so obvious to me (being a jazz fan), but only recently came up with it as a possible rename while retaining the acronym (server description should still acknowledge Breakfast in Hell). Then, where Lucifer had renamed all his AI with metal bands and such, I'd rename them with Bebop standouts. :D
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Re: Is there an an old school server you want brought back

Post by Lucifer »

I didn't read the whole discussion, but Swampy *did* hand over his server to someone else. I've assumed that whoever's got it now is whoever got it with his blessing.

I object to the vanilla use of the name Breakfast in Hell for a new server using the old settings. The reason is because a game server is more than it's settings. I worked pretty hard to make that server what it was, which was fairly reliable, players could expect a certain level of treatment and responsiveness from me, etc. There were certain policies about how the server was run, and so forth. It had its own personality that a clone isn't going to have, and using the name unchanged would be dishonest then. ;)

If you want to use the name as part of a larger name to show people you've brought back the settings under different management, I'm fine with that.

Also, as Phytotron pointed out, we didn't color server names for the most part back then, even though we could, because that's lame. :)

The "Breakfast" part came from eggcozy, and I have no idea where he got it from (other than the obvious breakfast cereal reference). For awhile he didn't claim any ownership of the franchise, but people still came to expect stuff associated with the name, like how admins treated them, the level of competition available, and so forth. I asked him permission to use that part of the name.

And to answer the unasked question: what killed the Crack Pipe? New map dtds. :) By the time 0.2.8.0 was released, I didn't have time to keep it up anymore (mostly the problems that led to my divorce were seriously asserting themselves, so if you want a timeline......).

Right now I can't run a game server because I don't have a client I can connect to a server with. Once I get that taken care of, I'm going to start up another server. I'm considering starting with the basic Crack Pipe setup and moving from there. But we'll see what kind of mood I'm in when I finally do it.

Edit: For the record, I didnt' rename my AIs after metal bands. They were named from my old worn out copy of the Satanic Bible. There's a page in there that lists lesser/greater demons, and I picked from there. Later I dug through lists on Christian websites of sins and stuff and used those. All in keeping with the "Hell" theme, obviously. ;)
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Re: Is there an an old school server you want brought back

Post by Lucifer »

Phytotron wrote: And most of us who were BiH regulars migrated over to Shrunkland when BiH shut down, so there was a player base commonality there. And it might serve to further differentiate from the Mud Puddle deal. The onus there really should be on Ca$h and them, but I highly doubt he/they would relinquish the Swampland name association/drop. Plus, with this Shrunkland potentially being a "redux/remaster/director's cut" rather than exact clone (on which I'll elaborate further once we're all sorted), it might be good for differentiating it from...itself, heh. In fact, I had been thinking it might be fun to periodically swap the settings out for a "Shrunkland in Hell" experience where I'd put all the BiH speed and rubber settings into the Shrunkland arena and let people go berserk, hehe.
As I recall, Shrunkland and BiH had the same size grid already.

BiH started as a straight up clone of Breakfast of Champions, because BoC wasn't terribly reliable. When BoC got more reliable, I switched out to a team server for a littler while, then went back to single play and experimented with settings. What I ended up with as the longest running BiH, the one people remember the most, was a much smaller arena (-2 iirc), with CYCLE_WALL_NEAR tweaked up a bit. The speed/rubber were kept the same, as well as CYCLE_ACCEL, but CYCLE_WALL_NEAR had a dramatic effect on everything, making everything much faster (meant that if you were stuck in a tunnel, you accelerated, in general). Basically, it was much more challenging than BoC, so a lot of players on BoC that used various tricks and whatnot to say they were the best couldn't hang on BiH, but the rest of us played just fine. ;) Also, don't forget the round message "Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast". :lol:

I'm not entirely sure how Shrunkland started, I just remember Swampy mentioning to me that he was fooling with a small arena too, but he didn't want to clone BiH, he wanted to do something new, but I have a pretty strong memory of Shrunkland having the same arena as BiH. ;)

The last version of BiH settings is in the examples directory, has been for awhile. The Lobster boost is in there too. I don't think we ever managed to get the Lobster physics from Joe, and last I heard his computer crashed and there was no backup, so those are lost to the ages.
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