Fortress Test Server

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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Rain
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Fortress Test Server

Post by Rain »

well, since some weeks im working on a project. the idea was born from fortress tie breaking topic and after some weeks thinking on it i decided to start a test server with the help of wrtlprnft.
Fortress Test Server is hosted on same machine of Fortress Café and Sumo Bar.
the meaning of it is to look forward to the future of "fortress" style. unfortunately fortress evolution stalled since cvs was shut down and following players get used to a sort of a "standard fortress" and they are always more susceptible about that. this server doesn't want to be a better fortress server, but only a testing one. there players are supposed to try new settings and then to give feedbacks here, to build, step by step, an interesting interpretation of fortress style.
today i started it with new score settings and a time limit.

it actually consists in:
0 <- kills
-1 <- get killed
-1 <- suicide
10 <- conquer a zone
0 <- win a round

and after 200s a huge death zone kills everybody in a tie and gives 1 point to each player killed.

also there isn't the wall shrink and to play you have to join a team.
im still looking for differences from café, anybody who cares can help me.

here my feedbacks:

- 1 versus X situations have the problem defending player is not supposed to be able to conquer the enemy zone, so it seems not so fair, even if to defend is surely easier than to attack
- players seem to complain very much about negative points: in fact a player cannot show positive points since it doesn't gain points anyhow. imho this malaise that they feel is affected by a habit to see scores in another way. i think it is natural that in a test server something differs from standard ones, so be patients please.
- happens that a team conquer a zone just few seconds after the other team. with these settings both teams recive points. im thinking about it. to solve or not to solve? what do you think?
- the match can end in lot different scores, negative or positive, high or low. it depends on how that match has been played. I think this is interesting and funny. what is your opinion?
- it never happend yet to get the "time limit" death zone, so dont know about it.

please send constructive feedbacks
thanks

rain
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Z-Man
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Post by Z-Man »

About the negative scores: We could add a SCORE_SURVIVE setting that would be awarded to each player who managed to survive through a round. The difference being that the negative death score penalizes large teams, while the survivor score awards large teams.
Set the round win score to zero and even the good old winzone gets to be an attractive option for server admins again, the player taking it will get the same points as the other survivors.

I don't think it's a problem that both teams can score for the fortress conquest in the same round. Sounds only fair to me.
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Rain
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Post by Rain »

UPDATING:

it actually consists in:
1 <- kill
-1 <- die
5 <- conquer a zone
5 <- win a round

thanks sasha and vanhayes for suggestions

i personally find it better. try it please!

@z-man: yea, we added 1 for kill yesterday night to balance scores. so 1 kill, 0 survive, -1 die. it seems fair to me.
about win-zone: actually there is a death zone that makes it end in a tie giving 1 point to each player killed, since we set round win to 5 i find it better, what do you think?

also i've temporary added 0.5 shrink, but i think shrink needs to be voted here, because points of view differ a lot about it.

give feedbacks!

thx

EDIT: oh, i was forgetting. 5 winning and 5 conquering a zone settings seem to solve 1 vs X situations.
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Post by Lackadaisical »

I haven't played at the server, but I think there should always be some shrink. The way I see it, it's just much more intuitive. From a players perspective there's no real difference between your own wall and someone elses, so why should it behave differently when hitting the end of your own tail and hitting someone elses.

Just my €0.02
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Post by Rain »

today's suggestions:

1) Player 1: chatbot going just straight line
2) madmax: no shrink, to make life hard
3) P4: maybe cycle_turn_speed_factor 0.75 and a bit faster speed

-----

1) good idea! working on...
2) done. actually cycle_rubber_wall_shrink is set to 0. waiting for feedbacks about it, maybe a poll.
3) couldn't this "deviates" (a verb that P4 likes a lot :D) too much from fortress? anyway interesting, we will try it out.

still waiting more feedbacks

thx
~*PsYkO*~

Post by ~*PsYkO*~ »

Well, for one, I think it is necessary to have a fortress community server, rubber is starting to take over fortress again.

Secondly I know my ideal scoring is way off of this one lol but it is

kills - 5
get killed - -2
suicide - -1
conquer zone - 8
win round - 8

The idea being that kills are very important, it will increase the amount of "dog fighting" in tournaments drastically and will improve the overall skill of players
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Post by Jonathan »

Lackadaisical wrote:I haven't played at the server, but I think there should always be some shrink. The way I see it, it's just much more intuitive. From a players perspective there's no real difference between your own wall and someone elses, so why should it behave differently when hitting the end of your own tail and hitting someone elses.
Walls of others normally also stay where they are if the corresponding cycle is stationary.

Reminds me of the HUD map - does it support shrink one way or another?
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Rain
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Post by Rain »

another suggestion by Player 1 is to make little hole with explosion. to make it harder to use them.

EDIT: G5 suggests to set rubber to be more fair counting pings. usually the best ping playing is aroud 50, because less gives you very few rubber and more affects the lag.
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Post by wrtlprnft »

Jonathan wrote:Reminds me of the HUD map - does it support shrink one way or another?
Z-man added that quite a while ago, so now it always displays the correct length of walls (also accounts for the wall growth if you get respawned)
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Post by Lackadaisical »

Thank you, Jonathan. But if you know you can ride through other peoples tails, you don't expect to become stationary when you try to ride through your own.

And yes, I know you don't actually ride through someones tail, and you do get stopped. But with the settings on fortress (or any other low rubber environment) it looks much more like a little bump in the road, not like an impenetrable wall that completely stops you.
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Post by Rain »

PsYkO wrote:The idea being that kills are very important, it will increase the amount of "dog fighting" in tournaments drastically and will improve the overall skill of players
frankly, i only partially agree with psyko. in my point of view final objective for a round is to conquer the enemy zone and hold yours, this particulary makes fortress differ from classic style, where to kill more enemy as you can is the objective.
skills of each player are important, but not that important as the team skills, meaning the team work capacities, indeed the main malaise felt by players in Fortress Test Server (FTS from now) was exactly to view their personal scores going negative or very lower than usual. obviously negative scores do not represent a logical or mathematical problem, but only a human interpretation problem, where negativity assumes the value of "bad" while instead positivity assumes the value of "good". i think it is only a question of habit, players should be patients for some weeks to let themselves to get used to new scores. finally this could help players to understand main team score is more important than personal ones, that IMHO should be only an indicative instrument for each player to know how is the ratio between killings and deaths of itself. indeed to conquer enemy zone, winning every round, holding your own defence means to finish the match with 100 points. and this is the work required to a team. killing and deaths, instead, are needed only to give a more detailed score for the general trend of the teams, useful to declaim a winner in extremely balanced situations.

@lack: about the shrink the topic goes really hard. it seems players have completely different opinions about it, more than about holes and holing... in old steam machine server and after in °°ps arena, when it was still fortress, i used to set the shrink to 0.5 and it worked really fine to me: tail jumps were more contained and playing with your tail was more instinctive. 0.5 could be the final intermediation between the two main opinions, or it could be a third one, but i find it a balanced solution. even if, as madmax reminded, fortress needs a harder life for players, in this way he suggested to set 0 shrink. indeed no shirk could solve that problem, but maybe are there other ways to? I did not find yet a solution, maybe it will need a poll.

about cycle_turn_speed_factor: well, i tried it. as i think fortress cycle_turn_speed_factor (currently 0.95) is one of the distinctive settings of fortress. most of usual moves of players are based on it: "escamotage" to find a way to escape, ways to gain more speed, to use less space as possible to survive when you are boxed, victory dances and so on. sure we can try it, but, don't you think it will consistly change fortress to another game? will not it look like a CTWF round? (with all respect for CTWF, but that is totally another thing)

about tighter holes: IMO could be interesting to try this, then we will decide with a poll, it could also partially satisfy holes haters ;)

TODAY UPDATINGS:

i'll set in the afternoon cycle_explosion_radius to 1 (EDITED: sorry, i have typed the wrong command and the wrond value), then we could try less.

kisses,

rain

P.S. suggest! imagine! give your feedbacks! help! thx
~*PsYkO*~

Post by ~*PsYkO*~ »

Rain wrote:
PsYkO wrote:The idea being that kills are very important, it will increase the amount of "dog fighting" in tournaments drastically and will improve the overall skill of players
obviously negative scores do not represent a logical or mathematical problem, but only a human interpretation problem, where negativity assumes the value of "bad" while instead positivity assumes the value of "good".
Now you are traveling to my area of expertise ;)

The same idea goes for both since the greater number = the assumption you are playing better and helping the team more. 30 is higher than 15, -2 is higher than -8. What you are saying would be true if the goal would be for the players, as well as the teams, aim for the lowest score possible; as per golf.
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Post by Lucifer »

PsYkO wrote:
Rain wrote:
PsYkO wrote:The idea being that kills are very important, it will increase the amount of "dog fighting" in tournaments drastically and will improve the overall skill of players
obviously negative scores do not represent a logical or mathematical problem, but only a human interpretation problem, where negativity assumes the value of "bad" while instead positivity assumes the value of "good".
Now you are traveling to my area of expertise ;)

The same idea goes for both since the greater number = the assumption you are playing better and helping the team more. 30 is higher than 15, -2 is higher than -8. What you are saying would be true if the goal would be for the players, as well as the teams, aim for the lowest score possible; as per golf.
What you'll lose by emphasizing kills in this way is zone defense. Not "fortress zone defence", just "zone defence". People who choose to defend will go to man-to-man instead, if anybody chooses to defend anymore.

I'd rather go the other way and not give any individual reward. Too often, the person who makes the difference between a won round and a lost match is a guy/girl who didn't get any points for their action.
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Post by Rain »

PsYkO wrote:What you are saying would be true if the goal would be for the players, as well as the teams, aim for the lowest score possible; as per golf.
well, i really find no correspondence between that and what i said. indeed the goal is aim for the highest score as possible, but it doesn't mean everything happens in the grid has to have a positive value for the game process. for example if you die your act takes a negative meaning for your team, because you cannot help it anymore and you were expected to. so you failed. otherwise if you kill an enemy your act takes a positive meaning for your team, because you simplified the reaching of the objective: conquer the enemy zone.
also it doesn't mean you, as administrator of the game style, cannot decide or direct players depending on what is the objective, what is the best way to spend the few seconds you have to help your team gaining points every round, etc.. since you decided the objective is to conquer the enemy zone, you will distribute points as you think they will best direct players to act for that objective.
as you said to have a greater number means you are playing better and helping a team more. indeed dying doesn't help your team (not considering tactics like holing, that anyway have to have a cost IMO), in fact in gives -1. otherwise killing an enemy player do help your team, in fact it gives +1.
i find it fair and right for the aim.
maybe you misunderstood me?
really, could you specify what made you think about "golf" stuff?


EDIT: /me just read Lucifer post and agrees
~*PsYkO*~

Post by ~*PsYkO*~ »

Rain wrote:
PsYkO wrote:What you are saying would be true if the goal would be for the players, as well as the teams, aim for the lowest score possible; as per golf.
well, i really find no correspondence between that and what i said. indeed the goal is aim for the highest score as possible, but it doesn't mean everything happens in the grid has to have a positive value for the game process. for example if you die your act takes a negative meaning for your team, because you cannot help it anymore and you were expected to. so you failed. otherwise if you kill an enemy your act takes a positive meaning for your team, because you simplified the reaching of the objective: conquer the enemy zone.
also it doesn't mean you, as administrator of the game style, cannot decide or direct players depending on what is the objective, what is the best way to spend the few seconds you have to help your team gaining points every round, etc.. since you decided the objective is to conquer the enemy zone, you will distribute points as you think they will best direct players to act for that objective.
as you said to have a greater number means you are playing better and helping a team more. indeed dying doesn't help your team (not considering tactics like holing, that anyway have to have a cost IMO), in fact in gives -1. otherwise killing an enemy player do help your team, in fact it gives +1.
i find it fair and right for the aim.
maybe you misunderstood me?
really, could you specify what made you think about "golf" stuff?


EDIT: /me just read Lucifer post and agrees
I misunderstood and am still misunderstanding :P hehe my point I think was very clear and I can't really expand on it without taking effort that I would rather put forth playing tron lol

Lucifer - I waited for someone to say this. It seems a common argument among fortress players is have the defenders adapted so well (no one in particular, just an overall improvement) that offense can't keep up. The way fortress is set up, it can reach a point where you can not get into a defense without holing or doing moves that only a very very select few players can perform. There wouldn't be a less of a need for defense with what you are saying, just probably a +1 differential on offense, and a -1 differential on defense (A sweeper becomes an attacker for instance)

All of what we are saying is pure speculative, however, since we will never know what happens until the scoring method is implemented for weeks at a time.
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