Armagetron is NOT dead, here's why and how to keep growing

[compguygene]

I couldn't agree more. What's been nice to see is that people have been playing more in some of the regular Low Rubber servers out there, which has been drawing out some players from the past, and some new ones. I think that it's interesting when a sumo/fort player that really hasn't played in a regular Low Rubber server comes in and gives up because it's just not sumo.

[Swampy]

Can't see the forest for the trees.

Here's the problem: With a fresh install of a game, all of the online servers say "Experience is suggested for this server".

You want to attract more players? Offer servers to new players. When my new cable modem gets here, I'll set one up, but it's a slow internet connection (by today's standards, it screams compared to the connection I originally ran Breakfast in Hell on).

Also, my cockpit apparently doesn't work.

In any case, I believe Z-man's original misgivings about that feature have proven to be well-grounded, and maybe a bit prescient.

Hey Lucifer! - You're still suffering from a crap Internet connection? Do you at least have a decent "server" to run things on? I remember back to when I was hosting Swampland (with a lot of help from you!) and we tried hosting BiH on my box for a little while. I guess things don't change much in Texas?

[sinewav]

I guess things don't change much in Texas?

...Except for Austin getting Google Fiber...

[Lucifer]

Swampy! You old Ferengi! What have you been up to? Everything going well with the missus?

Um, I've got a crap internet connection that's as good as any we had in 2006, but it's the basic connection offered by TWC.

But I have a raging awesome server. For a 32-bit server. (Those who'd like to see me put together a 64bit server should send me memory, cpu, and at least one SATA hard drive, and a PCI-IDE card. I forget the socket, though, so you should ask before sending )

Interested in rebooting the Breakfast franchise as a zones v2 work?

Or is this another one of your more-than-famous drive-by's?

[Swampy]

Missus is good, life's been good and busy. It's hard to believe it's been 10 years since I found this game and go into hosting a server for the first time. It seems fitting for a reboot. What the heck is v2 zones? Can I grind on it? hahaha

[Word]

What the heck is v2 zones? Can I grind on it? hahaha

That's a great idea for zones v3. But as I know kyle and Voodoo, that function is already hidden somewhere...

[Lucifer]

Missus is good, life's been good and busy. It's hard to believe it's been 10 years since I found this game and go into hosting a server for the first time. It seems fitting for a reboot. What the heck is v2 zones? Can I grind on it? hahaha

Zones V2 is the Big Feature in the 0.4 release. The cockpit is the "other" big feature, but it's been available in 0.3.0 since it was released, so lots of people have seen it.

Essentially, Zones V2 is a complete rewrite of how zones work to make everything a zone of some sort. So you can have zones that speed up the player, deplete his rubber, or whatever. There's ownership of zones and stuff. It's quite flexible.

Unfortunately, the documentation doesn't match my memory. The docs says that only circles are supported, and I specifically remember helping philippeqc test triangles and squares. I think he'd settled on only doing regular polygons, but I don't know where it went after that. He disappeared for awhile, showed up out of nowhere to finish what he was doing, passed it all to wrtlprnft, and disappeared again.

Also, Z-man said there would be no 0.4 release until current game modes were supported. Zones v2 has the beginnings of the kind of CTF support we'd like, and lays down groundwork for it, but didn't have fortress/sumo implemented yet. I don't think we even had the old winzone/killzone added back to zones v2.

Currently trying to find out, but it's getting late and I'm getting fish-eyed.

Anyway, my idea for a Breakfast reboot is to take the old Swampland settings and start from there, adding zones to make the game more competitive. The zones should stay within the core server concept, which was basically to have a really competitive deathmatch. So the zone(s) we add should basically add topography. I'm also interested in making a match-based map rotation, so that every match gets a new topography.

So, zones as gimmicks: no. Zones should add gameplay and make it overall more challenging and competitive, but still be reasonably accessible to new players.

We'll let the other servers that want to work with the new zones add the gimmicky zones.

[compguygene]

Luke-jr for the longest time had a spinning rectangle server up. If you touched the border of the rectangle, you died.

[/dev/null]

Luke-jr for the longest time had a spinning rectangle server up. If you touched the border of the rectangle, you died.

off-topic, but lukejr can eat my sack. **** him.

[Lucifer]

so your cockpit, Playroom (which I have loved for about 4 years now) works!

Whoah, someone else uses my cockpit? REALLY?

[Lucifer]

That reminds me. Can you send me the settings you've got for Bebop in Harlem? I'm going to run a new server, and I'm going to call it Breakfast in Hell (currently it's Breakfast in Austin), and I know I want it to be derivative of the original. But based on what you say here, I shouldn't just clone my clone, know what I mean?

Mine isn't a clone, though. It has deviated quit a bit from your original settings. I'm not sure you would even find it recognizable.

So, you're somewhat vague here—what exactly are you wanting to accomplish? Don't you have some of your own original Breakfast in Hell settings?

I didn't see this before, and I honestly don't know if I actually answered it or not in some other way in another thread.

I have my own original settings, they're included in the default distribution (but I don't know if they ever made it into 0.2.8, but they're in the trunk, and 0.4). I wanted yours (and am grateful you've sent them to me, even if I haven't done anything with them yet) because you, of all people, would make changes that would be true to the original concept of everything called Breakfast. Every time you argue against arbitrary game rules, zone-based gameplay, and the other things you argue about, you're arguing from a solid Breakfast base. So even if I disagree with settings changes you might make (dunno for sure, I haven't looked at the files), I can rely on you staying true to the idea.

You want us to go back to basics, and I want to set up a server that does exactly that, using the new features in 0.4. Simple as that.

[*16]

I think it would help too that everyone who takes 5 minutes time to write here what should be done, should rather just go play tron instead of being here and reading/writing what's already been read/written...

On another topic, I wanted to bring Brawl back in February, but no longer on a monthly basis.

[Amaso]

On another topic, I wanted to bring Brawl back in February, but no longer on a monthly basis.

Leave it dead. CTF reconstruction would be better.

[Amaso]

Side note fort has idiots who will vote just because a poll is up. ggs

[Lucifer]

@Lucifer:

Your post is evidence to my disclaimer I haven't given it much of an honest chance, as you alluded.

It's mostly my fault. I just felt like throwing my 'first impression' for 0.4 out there. I'm sure with a little bit of motivation and "want-to" I could make it as enjoyable to play on as 0.2.8.3.2, but perhaps that's why I don't. I'm just lazy. When I do have time for tron I usually play a round or two -- not so much worry about the experience on my end. The only "problem" I have with tron at all is lag, and that's hardly anything to do with development or my client. My frames are out the roof, anywhere from 1000 to 3000 so I'm not sure that 0.4 would affect the game visually for me. Again, I may be wrong!

I also keep forgetting to mention that I don't believe the current 0.4 cockpit is the right one for release. I'll update my branch and check out these 0.2.8-ish cockpits and pick one to make the default for now, but I'd like to see a design competition for a sleek, smooth, and useful cockpit fresh for the 0.4 release.

Maybe I'm just retarded, but I also always have a ton of dependency errors and other problems when I try to compile the game from source (on both Linux and Windows).

I think we're lacking a current dedicated Windows builder. In another thread, I saw talk about getting nightly builds running, and then it was broken, and then, hell, I don't know. But now that I've got a reliable server running, maybe I can look into setting up the BuildBot again.

If I did that, would you be able to run a Windows build machine?