Cloning the classics - attempting to bring back the userbase

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Seeker
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Cloning the classics - attempting to bring back the userbase

Post by Seeker »

OK..... time for the dusty old guy to start making general observations after being gone for almost 2 years.

>WHERE IS EVERYONE???

I have just been browsing threw the forums, and the quality of the posts has gone down dramatically. I dont know what has happened since November 2008, but it looks bad. The servers seem to be empty most of the time that I have been playing this weekend (I am up to almost 30 hrs). Is it just me, or are there almost NO classic style servers (think Lobstercage, ish + goshdarn..etc - look them up if you dont know them). Those servers were FULL nearly 100% of the time. How is it that we (yes people, I can say we... I am old and previously active enough to do it) can go from cloning a few servers over and over just to keep up with the huge wave of players, to having a huge number of "special settings" servers that sit realatively idol (EMPTY) and I guess maybe 30 players TOTAL across them all?

I personally have been overwhelmed with my life in general, from the global economic downturn that saw me loose my job for over a year, to personal family health issues. I was hoping to come back to a bustling community, full of development and competition, only to find a virtual ghost of the community I remember and loved. I had many friends, and enjoyed putting together servers to test settings that made players happy as possible. Most of what I see now are a bunch of servers that have cryptic names and oddball rules that are enforced without being explained ( I was kicked from one server last night because I wasnt playing by the propper rules - no warning, just kicked). I dont think many of the present server admins really care what the players think of "THEIR" servers, they just want a server that does what they want - which is fine - but Arma cant survive with 20 players, no matter how many distros include it. If new players are treated the way I was during my not so glorious return last night, they will probably NEVER return to play, or find our once great community.


> WHAT I WANT TO TRY......

I am now on a quest to find the server configs from some of the greatest classic armagetron servers that have existed. NO OFFENCE TO THE NEW SERVERS....... you just dont stack up to the massively popular servers of years past.

I need some of the older members (Lucifer, DocJoe, Tank, Z-Man...etc..) to dig deep and try to find any of your old server configs that may be hiding somewhere on an old floppy or forgotten archive, and post them up here in this thread. If you can, contact any of the old server admins that you still have contact info for, and ask them to email you (or me directly) and get those configs up here too. I hate to be the one to say it, but we need to do some spring cleaning of the forums (purge old junk, remove old one and two post members, and create new-member friendly areas).

Please help me try to bring our community back to the way it once was.

(Oh, and sorry for the long, ranting post....)

Tim Edwards
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Re: Cloning the classics - attempting to bring back the userbase

Post by Phytotron »

Agreed.

In the meantime, if you were playing up until 2008 (I thought you quit earlier than that...::shrug::...I myself took a 3-year hiatus between 2006-09), you're surely familiar with Shrunkland, yeah? It's back and I'm back running it. (Be sure to only play the authentic one, not the recent clanboy ripoff.) I've also got a server called Bebop in Harlem, which is my rendition of Breakfast in Hell.

Tank's got his "Guru3's Server" running. Lobster Cage went down when Doc quit playing, and he's incommunicado, as far as I know. Don't know if there are -ish settings anywhere (just checked some old posts, and IshAdmin claimed he had posted them somewhere, but I didn't see them).

And, as has been rumored for months now, I will eventually be getting around to doing up a 'goshdarn "clone." And to repeat what I say every time it's mentioned, once I do get around to it I'm calling upon all these people who've been clamoring all these years that they want 'goshdarn back to step up and actually come play it!
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Re: Cloning the classics - attempting to bring back the userbase

Post by kyle »

Well I don't remember you but your observations seams pretty close to true.
anyway here are some of the things you asked for

Tank's Speed Blastthere are also some other older servers hanging around here

Dr. Joe does not hang around here anymore :(
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Lord Pein
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Re: Cloning the classics - attempting to bring back the userbase

Post by Lord Pein »

Welcome back, Seeker. I am an old player as well (you may (or may not) remember me as mecca), the popular game-style has changed drastically. You were most likely kicked from a dog fight server, that is the only game mode I can think of that has player defined rules.

I would like to see more "classic" servers come back as well, but the demand for them just isn't high enough at the moment.

You should take a look at some of the other game modes (I am mainly talking about sumo and fortress), they are pretty fun (no matter how "gimmicky" they may appear to be).
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Re: Cloning the classics - attempting to bring back the userbase

Post by Seeker »

hey fellas... yea, I remember all of that...

I used to play the breakfast and shrunken servers!! I know the "POPULAR" gameplay has changed, and I remember testing the fortress and sumo gameplay modes before I left. As much as I want to believe that those new modes are popular, I cant help but notice a distinct lack of players. I did notice that there were maybe 50 players playing after I wrote this post, but thats a drop in the bucket from where we have come from before.

I think that if we can pull up some of those forgotten servers ( I may even have some of the old configs laying around since I was working on modified server configs with a few server admins before I left - including Doc... who was my color twin on the grid :) ) we may be able to boost the player numbers. I remember the powerful comeradery we all built on those servers. We were pretty noob fiendy back then.

And YES....it was a dogfight server that began my disappointment with the present server admin attitude.
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Re: Cloning the classics - attempting to bring back the userbase

Post by DDMJ »

I somewhat agree with your post. I, for one, will be bringing back DDL which was a very popular "noob" (or whatever you want to call it) server from 2006-2009.

On the other hand, I'd like to point out that there is actually a strong community, albeit this community revolves around the game mode of Fortress. I urge you to take a look at the Past Ladles page on the wiki to see how far we've actually come in the last few years from the first Ladles.
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Re: Cloning the classics - attempting to bring back the userbase

Post by LucK »

DDMJ wrote:I somewhat agree with your post. I, for one, will be bringing back DDL which was a very popular "noob" (or whatever you want to call it) server from 2006-2009.
Sick. I hope the server gets popular again it was mad fun.
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Re: Cloning the classics - attempting to bring back the userbase

Post by Nelhybel »

DDMJ wrote:I somewhat agree with your post. I, for one, will be bringing back DDL which was a very popular "noob" (or whatever you want to call it) server from 2006-2009.
Please hurry! :)

Welcome back Seek! I've been playing on and off for four and a half years, though I didn't come to these forums until about a year ago. Your name seems to ring a bell in my head from DDL and Norm's place a few years back, but I can't recall.

Anyways, I disagree with you about the number of players playing - though I never wrote down statistics, so I could be way off. About 5 years ago, I was introduced to this game at a children's computer camp called iD Tech camps. I don't remember nearly as many people playing back then as I see today. Not to mention the wild success of ladle and bunches of other tournaments.

This is the analogy I would like to think about:
The Classic Modes are like classical music.
Classical music was the preferred music style for centuries for hundreds or years - largely because it was the only available type of music, but also because many people found it enjoyable. As more music styles popped up over the ages, especially in the 65 years since WWII, classical music has lost popularity to the point where only a slim part of society actively enjoys it. As people grow tired of pop or simply wish to explore "new" music types (many young people have hardly any exposure to classical music), classical music will one day be revived as a competing type of music that will be respected alongside other pop music. It will never again return to it's sole dominance of everyone's musical interest, but it will recover from the lack respect it has suffered during recent history.

The same will apply to classical game modes. It was the preferred game mode for a long time, largely because it was the sole option. Yet, with the coming of the manipulation of zones (I'm not sure where we can pin-point a WWII in tron, but I guess we can say the invention of fortress?), classic game modes have lost peoples interest over time to the point now where there is only a fringe part of arma society that prefers them. But, as people tire of fort, or simply wish to seek out "new" game modes (because many of the newer players have never even been exposed to classic game modes), Classic servers will be respected along side their gimmicky counterparts. The classic game mode will never return to it's sole dominance of all tronners' grid interests, but it will recover from the lack of respect it has suffered during recent armagetron history.

Again, welcome back Seek!
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Re: Cloning the classics - attempting to bring back the userbase

Post by Seeker »

Nelhybel wrote: The classic game mode will never return to it's sole dominance of all tronners' grid interests, but it will recover from the lack of respect it has suffered during recent armagetron history.

Thats what I want. I want the choice to be there, and I want those choices to be as good as.....or better than they were. I want the diversity in servers that was here a few years ago. I know that if there are no changes, things will stagnate quickly, but there will always be those that remember and love the "old style" game modes (like me). I wasnt thrilled at the prospect of adding multiple axises to the game, but we needed the infusion of new possibilities. I have been jumping in and out of the servers all weekend, and have found a couple that have some of the feel of those older servers, and that gives me hope that we can continue to keep them alive.
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Re: Cloning the classics - attempting to bring back the userbase

Post by Mkay1 »

I have just been browsing threw the forums, and the quality of the posts has gone down dramatically.
I was gone for a week two days and browsed the forums. Of the 20 or so new topics posted in, there were very few of quality, mostly garbage.

Granit I was uninterested in some of the topics, but there aren't too many people who make great posts.
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Re: Cloning the classics - attempting to bring back the userbase

Post by custang »

DDMJ wrote:I somewhat agree with your post. I, for one, will be bringing back DDL which was a very popular "noob" (or whatever you want to call it) server from 2006-2009.
SUPER :star: !!!! Those were the days! I actually wish it were the same!
bring back ddl!
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Re: Cloning the classics - attempting to bring back the userbase

Post by Tank Program »

Things have indeed undergone a bit of a shift. I think the shear number of servers makes it difficult to pick out the good ones. I know there are goshdarn settings floating around. Tigers Network was a victim of changing clients while I couldn't work out settings on new server versions that matched the old experience. Then this happened as well. I still run Guru3's Server which is effectively Classic Play, but not quite. I have talked to some of the older players about it and it seems to be OK. I was sort of working on a scheme similar to yours to bring it back, but couldn't pull it through. University.

All it may take is two people who play in one of the classic servers all the time...
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Re: Cloning the classics - attempting to bring back the userbase

Post by Jip »

Once again the suggestion to create category tabs in the server browser. Like Fortress, Sumo, Dogfight, CTF, Classic etc.
It would give more overview and also gives new players a good orientation for the different modes.

sry for the offtopic post
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Re: Cloning the classics - attempting to bring back the userbase

Post by Seeker »

Tank: I will grab those config files, and see what I can build out of them when I get my virtual servers in line on my machine this week - names will start with Seeker Testing, followed by the old server name in the master browser as I get them up and running.

JIP: Off topic as it may be, that is still a great suggestion. I had a thought along those same lines, along with the possibility of adding a voting system to sort by popularity (with IP filtering to keep spam voting to a minimum), but I need to see how difficult my suggestion would be to implement. Your basic suggestion may be the faster/easier route for now.
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Re: Cloning the classics - attempting to bring back the userbase

Post by sinewav »

Seeker wrote:I will grab those config files, and see what I can build out of them when I get my virtual servers in line on my machine this week...
Phytotron/Oscilloscope has noticed that servers built with the 0.2.8+ dedicated don't necessarily "feel" the same as older versions, given the same configurations. He has spent quite a lot of time trying to get a "classic" feel out of new code. Your experience as an older player will be valuable in making clones that capture the essence of the original.

As someone relatively new to the scene, and someone who is very enthusiastic about Armagetron in general, I hope to get a taste of what came before. And I also hope all you "olds" can work together in some capacity to resurrect these historically important servers.

:) Good luck.
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