win the 8th tronic ladle from speeders

[Z-Man]

I can't help but laugh...

[0] Players from IP 24.5.239.53 are banned for 600000 minutes. Reason: You're a certified asshole.
[0] Players from IP 24.7.31.49 are banned for 600000 minutes. Reason: You're a certified asshole.

Heh, that's PIMP, the two incarnations of him. I never bother to find out whether it's the same guy or just two minds thinking alike. Umm, the IP's are now snipped, sorry, I forgot about that earlier.

What is the score table supposed to prove? What I see is that when there were most specators, your (TµÎ¬ßåll§å¢k? At least that was the one screaming DDMJ!, but that could have been a distraction) was lowest when most spectators were online.

There is one fairnes problem with spectators and the current code, I admit that: their ping charity is taken just like the ping charity of the players, and the effect is global. Meaning: even if all players max their charity out, a single spectator with zero ping charity and low ping can force the ping charity down. We can take care of that bug.

HellBlade: what kind of hardware (CPU + GPU) and OS (Vista????) do you have? First thing I do when rendering speed is a problem is disable sparks (explosions aren't that much of a problem), alpha blending and high walls. Those are the main fillrate eaters, I get the cap of 60fps even on my crappiest hardware as long as it's accelerated.

[~*PsYkO*~]

i've always played with 10 FPS man...i tried fixing it for like 2 months if any of you remembe3r when I went from 300 ping to 150 ping but then i just gave up

[DDMJ]

Z-man, I admit my ping is pretty stable in your server, but when there were more spectators in the server, my FPS decreased and I slid more often. It could be just a coincidence that when the score logs were recorded, my ping had gone done. However, when spectators joined in wrtl's server, I could really tell the difference.

[~*PsYkO*~]

Z-man, I admit my ping is pretty stable in your server, but when there were more spectators in the server, my FPS decreased and I slid more often. It could be just a coincidence that when the score logs were recorded, my ping had gone done. However, when spectators joined in wrtl's server, I could really tell the difference.

i just say who cares if it changes the ping or clarity or w/e...it should be the two teams, the team's players that aren't playing, the server admin, and the tournament director...

[Z-Man]

I'll add you to the list of people who don't want spectators, but think the reasons are so obvious that there is no need to explain them.

Durka: I don't see any technical reason why spectators should influence your FPS. They just sit there in the list of players and do nothing. The few places where they do get included in calculations (the HUD score display, for example) are negligible compared to the game simulation.

[HellBlade]

CPU: 1 GHz
GPU: Chipset Model: GeForce FX Go5200 32MB
Type: Display
Bus: AGP
VRAM (Total): 32 MB
Vendor: nVIDIA (0x10de)
OS: Mac OSX v10.4.8

[Ricochet]

no wonder you get shit all fps then

[Z-Man]

Very helpful, Ricochet

Well, two possible problems with that config: the first one is the GPU. The 5200 has a very low fillrate, lower in fact than the earlier GeForce4Go (I think, at least it was that way in the desktop segment); the reason is that it spends all its transistors on the fancy new shader model introduced at that time and not too many on speed. You really want to save on fillrate by disabling floor and high walls.

The second problem is that at least some of our Mac builds are unoptimized to get better bug reports from crashes. I haven't checked on this for lack of time yet; ideally, we'd only do this on beta/development builds. It could be that 0.2.8.2.1 is optimized and produces less CPU load for you than 0.3.0. I also don't know how big the performance hit of not optimizing is on the Mac; on my roughly equally powered (maybe 50% faster CPU) Intel laptop in Linux, it's not so big and I usually play an unoptimized version as well.

[2020]

thanks all
admins and players

first
i still have to go round to a friend's house to access the net
i only made it 10mins before the first games
and i was most heartened to find that players are using their own initiative
to organise themselves

second
thanks to sticky and |x| for inviting me onto their team
although we didn't win
this has been the first ladle competition i have enjoyed for a long while
since i could just get on and play the game

third
congratulations to tui
and consolation to subzero and infamous who played like champions for x

fourth
sounds about right for me zman
regarding 6 mins for the winning zone thing

fifth
regarding recordings:
please can we have recordings that i can manipulate!
i like producing these vids
to show people the depth of the game and the skill
i have managed to record stuff and edit completely before
please can a consistent solution be found!

sixth
spectators

this is essential

is it totally out of the question
to turn a server into a mirror server?
that is
i would happily turn 2020 teamchallenge
into a mirror server for the finals
so that spectators can view the finals
play around with views
chat amoungst themselves
record the game
and what have you
without influencing the game

is this in some kind of pipeline or trunk or something?
since it would solve many a problem
and avoid what is happening now

we had about 10 players turn up throughout the semi
and although occassionally players were polite about explanations
it escalates very quickly to kicking
which is no way to show off how excellent the game is


we have a problem with fortress:
there are a bunch of regulars who are used to fortress settings
which means there is quite a jump in skill levels

i believe having vids of games and a mirror-server
may show the depth of the game and heights of individual skill


again
thanks to all
and i look forward to playing against the champions tui in the next one

edit:
and seventh
hopefully the tronic monkeys will show in the 9th ladle...

[Z-Man]

please can we have recordings that i can manipulate!

Manipulation in the sense of arbitrarily cutting stuff is out of the question. It's technically possible, but far too big in scope. What I'm actively thinking about, however, are network only recordings. A network recording would contain all the stuff sent to a purely spectating client. It may be possible to automatically create them from the server and have them automatically broken down to single rounds and/or matches. The client playing them back could run the simulation at its own pace (not locked to the framerate of the recorder as with the debug recordings) and could use its own configuration (not the one of the recorder) so you can move the camera like you're used to. The recording wouldn't break as easily as the debug recording, a recording done with 0.2.8.3 could be played back with 0.3.1. It may even be possible to rearrange the network messages in time so that the playback would show what really happened, not what the clients or the server saw; in other words, playback could be lag free. It's all theory for now, though.

is it totally out of the question to turn a server into a mirror server?

It's difficult and hacky, but theoretically possible. Definitely possible would be to have a dumb mirror that does not allow interaction between the spectators; for that, all you have to do is relay all network packets from the real server to the spectating clients and ignore packets from the client. The network recordings, published immediately when they're done recording, would do the same thing with just one round delay, so I'd say it's not worth bothering with if network recordings get done.

[2020]

sounds good zman

a recording that allows me to alter camera views etc
(and perhaps can be transfered into another format
so i can use a vid-editor)

the game is good because we are playing together in teams in realtime
and i think
spectating has to have this realtime interaction too

still
any progress along these lines would be most appreciated

[oO.k3nNy]

what happened to the challenge board?

(http://wiki.armagetronad.net/index.php/ ... enge_Board)

[2020]

i was trialling another format
since people seemed to be confused with the previous one...

is it more clear
or should i revert to the old one?
what do you think?

[oO.k3nNy]

i was looking at the challenge board just a few sec ago, and i cant c a difference? (or what did u change?)

[2020]

the challenge board contains the server

this reduces the number of tables from 3 to 2

at some point in the future
it may be possible to dispense with team lists
and just have the challenge board...
it should have times
teams
stages of the tournament
and servers
all on one simple to read board...