Breakfast in Hell settings update

Post by **Lucifer** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 11:10 pm

I've lowered the rubber over in Hell to 4. We tried 2,3,4,5, and 6, and I thought 4 was the closest approximation to the original breakfast settings from 0.2.6.0. So check it out and let me know what you guys think!

Also, if there are other settings affected by the recent server upgrade, please note them so I can investigate. I think rubber is the only setting affected, but I could just be smoking crack.

If you're still not running 0.2.7.1, you will have trouble with the new rubber setting. I don't want to limit earlier clients from the server, but please don't complain. You don't have to upgrade, and Swampy's got Swampland still running the older server. I tested the new rubber settings with people running a variety of clients, and the older clients reported it was invariably more difficult to play, but not impossible. Meanwhile, everyone running the newer client agreed it was "right" again.

If 4 is the magic number, I'd like to hear what other server admins who upgrade experience for their changes. The old setting was 8, and 8/4=2, so it seems like you want to reduce your rubber by a factor of 2 to restore original gameplay. I think that the fact that we have to lower the rubber shows us that the server is doing a better job of giving us realtime information and that we are seeing a better representation of what's really happening than we were and that this is overall an improvement. (So, yeah, I'm not downgrading my server, don't bother asking, I'm sick of hearing it, and I don't know that I"ll bother responding)

The only remaining issue I have with 0.2.7.1 is the fact that pings are generally twice what they were before the upgrade. But with more accurate information, it balances out, for the most part. So relax your gut that tells you your ping is unplayable, because it is very much playable.

eggcozy · Post by **eggcozy** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 5:35 am

The only thing I don't like about 2.7.1 is that you can do so many darn 180's. It's sick. People end up 180ing 3 or more times just to get the close grind (im guillty of it too ... it works) .... or ... just to build up speed. Yeah, it's pretty easy to ignore it, it just bugs the hell (pun) out of me for some reason (am I starting to sound like anti-dbers?). People end up running straight for the wall and 180 8 times .. camp for a bit, and zoom out.

I'm not sure what could be done to change it (nor if anyone would even want it changed).
I messed around with the windows version of 2.7.1 ... yeah yeah ... it still seems to play much better than the previous windows versions. It seemed like CYCLE_RUBBER_MINADJUST would help, but that seemed to create a weird effect ... i think I might have set it to 1 or 2 ...

Asside from that annoyance, Hell is much more playable than it used to be for me. Turns are more crisp and there is hardly any slide. I'm not sure what was up with Swampy's when he upgraded ... and I'm not sure if I was the only one ... but it just seemed more consistently laggy than his 2.7.0

Conclusion - old hell vrs new hell :-)

old hell - slides are nice in a nastalgic sort of way.
new hell - new hotness? .. hehe .. pun

Seeker · Post by **Seeker** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 6:08 am

I think im guilty of massive 180 overload. I was in there when lucifer was playing with settings and did 22 180's in a row.

Post by **Lucifer** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 6:12 am

I don't like all the 180s either. In fact, it was some prick just sitting there and doing the 180s over and over (it wasn't seeker, but he was there

) that finally motivated me to adjust the rubber.

Now I think the most anyone's gotten (that I've heard of) out of the new rubber is about 6 180s, and there's a standing suggestion to increase cycle_delay to compensate. I'm thinking about screwing with it, but I don't want to screw it up for double-binding.

For now, let's see what happens.

I'm willing to nudge the rubber to 5 if needed to get back to the original feel, but I'd prefer to stay at 4 for awhile. Let's just see if the 180s become a problem with the new rubber (the players that were doing it are currently discovering they can't do so many anymore and are at "free point" status until they finally figure it out).

Seeker · Post by **Seeker** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 6:17 am

lucifer:

I honestly think the settings are great, if anything cut the rubber down a hair (will 3.5 work? ) to keep DB performance. I dont normally try more than 3 or 4 now, but I could go to 6 or more (did 7 earlier tonight by starting small and working out from the center to build rubber).

Website · Post by **Z-Man** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 7:42 am

There's an easy way to recode the rubber logic to completely disable 180s and wall adjusts: just disable the rubber protection completely shortly after a turn until you can do your next turn legally ( after CYCLE_DELAY ). In fact, this code was in the first release candidates, but as you can guess people complained

. I can put it back in and make it tunable. It'll also be possible to just increase the rubber consumption when doing 180s, this will reduce the number of repeats possible without changing normal gameplay. Does this sound good?

Seeker · Post by **Seeker** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 1:48 pm

Sounds like a good deal to me...I just play to have fun, But I see alot of people who will have to rethink their stratigies

n54 · Post by **n54** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 7:09 pm

I played it with rubber 4 (yesterday i think) and it was good in my opinion (very close to the original feel), perhaps one could try 3.5 like suggested or even 3 but if it doesn't work i think 4 will do nicely

Post by **Lucifer** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:48 pm

n54 wrote:I played it with rubber 4 (yesterday i think) and it was good in my opinion (very close to the original feel), perhaps one could try 3.5 like suggested or even 3 but if it doesn't work i think 4 will do nicely

I don't know about 3.5, which is why I haven't tried it yet.

I thought 4 was a little weak and 5 was a little much and was actually thinking 4.5 myself. I'll leave it at 4 and see how it goes. It might even be better to run it at 4 through the next upgrade and then reevaluate.

I think the change is having a larger affect.

More people are playing and longer, and that's good. Whenever I've gone in the master server browser recently I'm finding swampland either full or close to it, and hell over half full. Haven't seen them both full at the same time yet, if someone sees it say something.

(I'm just looking for an excuse to bring Teams back, now that I've got my laptop my love for the game doesn't cause me to run too many servers that I can't play anymore)

Post by **Lucifer** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:53 pm

z-man wrote:There's an easy way to recode the rubber logic to completely disable 180s and wall adjusts: just disable the rubber protection completely shortly after a turn until you can do your next turn legally ( after CYCLE_DELAY ). In fact, this code was in the first release candidates, but as you can guess people complained . I can put it back in and make it tunable. It'll also be possible to just increase the rubber consumption when doing 180s, this will reduce the number of repeats possible without changing normal gameplay. Does this sound good?

How about reducing the effect of rubber with each turn by a factor, and with the wearing-off effect? So you'd set your factor to 1 to get old behavior, less than 1 *increases* the effect of rubber, and greater than 1 decreases rubber. And of course, it should wear off and have another setting for that.

That would directly address some server admin's concerns about double-binding and 180s. I figure that on a regular clone of Breakfast Burrito, a person at about mid-speed should reasonably expect to be able to make 1 180 on the wall, but more than that is pushing it. The 180 on the wall is a valid tactic when you're being chased by someone in the tunnel, so I'd like to keep that around. (Not that I'm trying to argue what tactics are valid and what tactics aren't, just that this particular tactic is more widely-used than doublebinding itself is)

Seeker:

I'm happy to hear you're liking it.

In fact, all of the feedback on the change so far has been very positive, both here and on the grid, so I'm pretty happy about that too.

I'm generally not concerned about more experienced players abusing 180s on the wall, it's the newer folks that use it as a crutch that I'm concerned about. The more experienced players know better and can generally do it in a way that doesn't screw up the game for anyone, it's just the newer players who don't yet have a concept of how other people experience the game that concern me, naturally because I want it to be fun for everybody, not just a few that like a particular tactical niche.

Post by **Lucifer** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 4:01 am

Lucifer wrote: I think the change is having a larger affect. More people are playing and longer, and that's good. Whenever I've gone in the master server browser recently I'm finding swampland either full or close to it, and hell over half full. Haven't seen them both full at the same time yet, if someone sees it say something.

Just saw it.

Website · Post by **Z-Man** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 5:27 am

Lucifer wrote:How about reducing the effect of rubber with each turn by a factor, and with the wearing-off effect? So you'd set your factor to 1 to get old behavior, less than 1 *increases* the effect of rubber, and greater than 1 decreases rubber. And of course, it should wear off and have another setting for that.

You mean, make it so that right after the first turn, you use up twice the normal amount of rubber for the same maneover? Yes, with suitable fine tuning, this could work.

Website · Post by **Z-Man** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 12:20 pm

I added both anti-180-abuse rubber change ideas to current CVS. The new settings are experimental and can be found and explained on top of config/settings.cfg. Additionally, it is already possible to set CYCLE_RUBBER_MINDISTANCE to small negative values ( and _RATIO to 0 ) to make the timing of close grinds critical, wait too long and you die.

Post by **Lucifer** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 11:57 pm

Cool! Can't wait for the new version.

Let me know when you're ready to start beta-testing, if you haven't already. I might be able to drop the team server and make a test server based on the regular server. (Depends on one major thing: how easy is it to change the name of the executable for testing? Can we get a armagetronadCVS-dedicated installation?)

Website · Post by **Z-Man** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 9:46 am

A current public test version can be found here:
http://guru3.sytes.net/viewtopic.php?t=1755&highlight=