Eddie's Armathenticated Fortress

For things that have to do with those crazy test servers... and yeah. By request of z-man, and, of course, you gotta obey...

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epsy
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Post by epsy »

I hate how you're associating "Authentication" with "Locked", that's just misleading.
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ed
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Post by ed »

In a way it is locked, to players who are able to armathenticate.
This often prevents the server from filling up. Which is a shame.
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hoop
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Post by hoop »

First: I like the features you provide, the team auto balancing is nice and adds unpredictableness to the game. I don't care much of the ladder, but it seems well designed.
But: I don't like being forced to auth to play, and I don't think it's only me.
IMO auth should only be used as addition for users who frequently play it, like: "login to be allowed shuffling up and to enter/view the ladder, etc..." or something similar.
Newbies will just leavebefore even trying to play: (sarcasm out) that's not good!
Also many people just don't like to register anywhere, or don't like the idea of being part of a web comunity (and I wouldn't despise that), in short they just want to play.
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sol
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Post by sol »

that's why Ed made two servers - open/authenticated. you have the choice. hate it and go open. like it and go authenticated. that's it.
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Post by epsy »

sol wrote:open/authenticated
open and authenticated aren't antonyms, please stop with your euphemisms

this should not be called "authenticated" but rather LOCKED, I can't call a server that gives out the liberty of choice something else than "locked"

so, I chose to not play on that server, like you suggested, for this, and also because of the ban ed put on me

but still, as part of the armagetronad community and as developer, i'm outraged by the way you're assimilating "authenticated" to "locked"
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sol
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Post by sol »

I'm fine with 'authenticated' cause 'locked' sounds like 'do not enter'.
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Post by epsy »

Having a server being locked to @forums indeed does not sound good, but that's what you have done.
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ed
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Post by ed »

It is an experimental server. That is, a fortress server with a half decent ladder running off the back of it.
In order to be as accurate as possible it needed a few things in place, in an attempt to fix some of the shortfalls of the ctwf ladder, upon which it is based:

Authentication: so the ladder knows who you are, whatever name you use on the grid.

locked to @forums: so players don't have multiple identities on the ladder. eg ed@forums, ed@ct, ed@ddl etc. Plus, it keeps the ladder a lot tidier so I can remove @forums from the ladder webpage and console messages.
It is true that players can sign up to these forums with a second name to start a new identity. But this hasn't happened a great deal, and I don't believe any of these were for the sake of the ladder.

ladder scoring for zones: so attacking players have as good a chance as defenders.

team balancing: teams are balanced at the end of each match. so it's unlikely there's a superstar team versus others scenario for long, so it's more difficult (and obvious) to join the best team merely to help your ladder.

I think the ladder worked out well. The best players, the consistant ones at least, made their way to the top of the ladder.
There can never be perfect ladder for fortress, it's a team game, but we can try ;)

What let it down is the lack of players. For an number of different reasons.
Saying that, I have played some cracking matches there. Most of the players know each other, the atmosphere is friendly and the quality of play is high.
I think that if fortress had 5 times the number of players it does, the server would be highly sucessful.

@epsy, don't get upset. It's just a server. There's plenty of servers out there I don't enjoy. I just go to somewhere else.
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Post by sinewav »

I 100% support the Armathenticated Fortress server, although I do understand the argument against it. The few times I've played there have been really fun. One reason is because the players are more "serious" about the game and generally more experienced. And, the team balancing is a really great feature. All the matches I've played there have been really close.

I think this server solves more problems than it creates. It's nice to play in a place where you don't have a kick vote every round. And, as mentioned above, there is no lack of unauthenticated servers if you don't like it.

Besides, wasn't the rise of authentication a solution to a problem in the first place? It's been posted about for three years or more. Why have this discussion now?
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Post by Monkey »

Having a server locked to forums is a great idea.
Nice one ed.
Playing since December 2006
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Post by Corn1 »

Well honestly i love the fact that you have to be authenticated, but really saying that is anti new comer is wrong because it doesnt take a rocket scientist to authenticate.. i mean you dont even have to go to the wiki. just type /help auth and it gives you 4 easy steps. If you arent willing to follow those steps to be able to play i dont see why you'd be willing to learn how to play fortress.
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Post by epsy »

I'm not willing to be forced to choose this[PS: or anything else] for authenticating, trough I can play fortress fine.
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ed
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Re: Eddie's Armathenticated Fortress

Post by ed »

Eddie's Armathenticated Fortress is back!

Nothing major has changed since last time. I will summarise some features of the server.

Standard fortress settings. Max players per team 7.
max players 15 (so one spectator).
The winning team must have 100 points and be a clear 10 points ahead of the other team to win.
You will need to have a forum account here in order to play there. Typing:

Code: Select all

/login myname@forums
replacing "myname" with your forum login and filling in your forum password when promted should do it.
type "/help auth" on the server for more info.
The only authority accepted on this server is @forums.

There is a ladder here. At time of writing it is empty as players need to have played at least 100 rounds before they appear on the ladder.
There needs to be at least 4 people on the grid before the ladder gets written.
There are a few custom commands on the server like:

Code: Select all

/cmd ladder 
-show your place on the ladder
/cmd ladder 10
-display the ladder top 10
/cmd ladder players
-display the ladder scores of each player currently authenticated.
type "/help" on the server for more info.

There is team shuffling at the end of each match to try and balance teams based on each player's ladder score.

Hopefully we can get some good matches there as I remember there once were. Aside from tournaments, that can be a bit hit and miss these days.
Last edited by ed on Thu Feb 24, 2011 3:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Z-Man
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Re: Eddie's Armathenticated Fortress

Post by Z-Man »

ed wrote:The winning team must have 100 points and be a clear 10 points ahead of the other team to win.
Groovy, that's something we wanted in the main source for a while. Got patch?
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ed
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Re: Eddie's Armathenticated Fortress

Post by ed »

hmm. There's this...
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~armagetron ... vision/637
but I was in a state of confusion when I called the setting "SCORE_DIFF_WIN".
I was thinking that SCORE_WIN was the score needed for a team to win a match. It's not, SCORE_WIN is the round score. So SCORE_DIFF_WIN doesn't make sense.
LIMIT_SCORE was what the new setting should have been based upon.

Don't trust my code. I have no view of the overall picture of arma code. I just play with stuff, sometimes it works. In this case, for my scenario, it did.
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