Newbie question

nitus · Post by **nitus** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 6:00 am

All of this makes some sense.

I guess you're right, in that 4 or 5 may not be too much depending on <A> my ping, and <B> other rubber settings as well as cycle_delay when it comes to making an s-turn onto a wall.

I have found a few servers now where 4 feels quite good, and others where it feels like a bit too much, and I assume the difference must be cycle_ping_rubber settings being higher in some cases than others.

Thanks to all who posted with suggestions for servers I might like. Playing on such servers with higher skilled players makes me feel like a newb - as it should.

Stormcrow · Post by **Stormcrow** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 2:29 pm

Try my servers: Stormcrow's Tower, Stormcrow's Dungeon, and Desperation! They've been down for a couple of days because I wasn't paying attention, but they're back up now. Rubber = 1. The closer you are to New York City, the better your ping will be.

nitus · Post by **nitus** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:14 am

I'm in Alberta, so my ping to New York should be fairly good. You'd think I'd ping better to US west from here, but I seem to ping best to the northeastern US for some reason.

Is there any way to get a readout of the server settings? I'm a bit curious as to what makes a rubber of, say, 4 playable on some servers yet feel like too much on others. I'm sure it must be the fine-tuning options that can affect rubber feel, and I'd really like to compare different servers' settings.

Post by **Lucifer** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:44 am

You get the readout of what changes when you join the server, and that's pretty much it, sorry.

HEXadecimal · Post by **HEXadecimal** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 4:42 am

what exactly are you trying to accomplish?

nitus · Post by **nitus** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:09 am

I want to find the "perfect" low rubber setup, which the default settings aren't quite.

I've already figured out that you need to drop the cycle_delay - at default, it's slower than most people can execute a single-bind maneuver, especially with s-turns. Cycle_rubber at 2, and cycle_ping_rubber at 3 seems to give enough responsiveness for the twitchy-fingered.

The settings I'm curious about are the mindistance settings - even at rubber 2, with a decent ping you can "drive into" the wall for a little bit, enough that you can escape an enclosure if your opponent didn't push his wall in deep enough.

It's kind of moot, though, since I'm starting to get user to 5 rubber on some servers - I still don't like it much for straight-up LMS, but it seems to work great on fortress-oriented maps, ctf or sumo.

I guess my main beef was a newbie beef, namely that I'm not skilled enough to dump players in a direct confrontation. Low rubber makes it difficult for players to pull of the standard entrapment maneuvers, and it makes it easier for me to play strategicially (by boxing players in).

I switched my nick to avoid hazing resulting from this forum post (friendly hazing) and I'm starting to develop some skill. I still do a lot better on low rubber, but I'm learning.

A cool feature would be if you could use the average or minimum ping of players as a variable in the server config, and set cycle_rubber with something like 1 + ping, you know what I mean?

Anyway, thanks for all your help. I'm learning, gradually. There are some highly skilled players, but I hope to reach a decent level of skill before too much longer.

hoop · Post by **hoop** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 2:03 am

nitus wrote:I want to find the "perfect" low rubber setup, which the default settings aren't quite.

You may see the question like so:
if you'd play any videogame having only one chance to survive and win, you'd be frustrated the first times you try it, getting a sad sequence of game overs. Then you probably got bored of it and stop to play.
To avoid that, developers introduced the life reservoir, to make games more playable, then easier to sell, of course.

In armagetron, when you grind a wall and then, by circumstances, you are constricted to double-grind into the space between without crashing, that was your second chance to survive.
If you are so skilled to find a way to get rid of a box alive (allowed by CYCLE_RUBBER_MINDISTANCE value), after a while (RUBBER_TIME setting) you got "forgiven" for your strategic mistake.
We may consider the combination of rubber amount and rubber refill time, as the level of your life reservoir, even the difficult level of the game.

I believe that in a game (as in life) a second chance is enough.
More chances are given to newbies (as to kids), to let them learn gradually.
So, fortress-sumo is probably one of the best amazing setting to play armagetron.
High rubber settings, instead (relatively to speed, I mean) allow a player to escape cowardly to the rim walls, or to trap the enemy inside a complicated box, instead of fighting. I must say that, by this way, the game becomes boring and mechanic.
The truth is that a player skilled in low rubber games will be skilled in high rubber games too, even if he never played them. Not viceversa.
Probably many people won't agree my opinion... well they are free to do so, of course.

-hoop

owned · Post by **owned** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 2:04 am

nitus wrote:A cool feature would be if you could use the average or minimum ping of players as a variable in the server config, and set cycle_rubber with something like 1 + ping, you know what I mean?

they already have something like that, I forgot the command tho

if they set it with 1 + ping tho, ppl would have like 180 rubber

Jonathan · Post by **Jonathan** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:26 pm

If you assume it's in milliseconds and allow that term to vanish.