A Slight Revision: IMPORTANT for DXMP. Rant 2

[anax]

All my maps so far since 2011 have been about learning how to map for DXMP, i can say my newest map DXMP_Knifeworld is my best one thus far, but it is built for Machete's server as a Low-Tec-only alternative to iceworld. Not so good for real DX.

The first map i made was promising in terms of dynamics (read cool room aesthetics), but had too many winding hall ways, the only stand out feature was custom biobot holes which Ste seemed to like. But my weapon boards were total metabolic end product. And i had yet to learn proper item placement.

Ste and Monkee helped me to initially learn, or at least begin to learn object placement.. i also observed more from how Ricci helped Ste to develop his maps, like the balanced edit of Cathedral.

In the light of that, the map i am working on currently will be made exclusively for ATDM, and takes design inspiration directly from classic maps and Drydock, which i did give input to before release, but of the wrong kind, you can thank me for those columns under the indoors bridge
it was a good thing Ste did not take my suggestion to place more of them under the outside bridges because that would be disgusting for anyone fighting.

So far, the map i have in progress feels like a mix between Silo, Drydock and Area. I can confidently say it does feel more like DXMP than my oldest maps.

[Poor]

I have a hard time believing that Smuggler is more suited for augs than chin's Stalkyard. I don't need to be good at augs to know that Smuggler isn't a good map yet it is popular. The other popular map, Smuggles, has some serious design flaws, especially with the spawn rooms. So I've come to think that players care more about map familiarity than quality. 0A had the same problem with Smuggler and Iceworld but then the FGS 0A server forced players to play some quality maps that they were unfamiliar with. Pool, Minidust, Snow, Stalkyard came to be popular and appreciated, which wouldn't have happened if old familiar maps like Iceworld and Smuggler were allowed to dominate the map vote. I don't recall an aug server ever trying this.

[ShadowRunner]

There is nothing wrong either with Prodigy for augs, it is definitely about map familiarity. I would agree about one or two of Chin's maps being perfectly playable for augs.

It's excruciating also to hear Ken's reports of DXMP sometimes, for example, Anax is a relatively new person to mapping and so far has mapped for two gametypes possibly. You see the world very much how you want to, accusing me of refusing your help, but whatever, it is yet another negative statement. I think also it is inaccurate to say Chin has more experience and you're pitting the community against each other by your words. Chin's made half of one RPG city, while there are mappers that have years of experience in several gametypes. It is predictable that you would mention Sike and Ste's maps but still haven't tried any others in augs. Also another piece of metabol is that I don't/can't play augs, in fact I actually do play augs and sometimes I win.

What Poor is saying I have known for years, that you build a good map for augs and it will not get played. I haven't built many, but I know at least two maps are perfectly good for augs.

There was an aug server with only custom maps, it was called "Factory", but the settings were not ATDM, it had 4 augs on start. Having said all this, I would encourage Anax to map for augs and to trust his instincts, don't be swayed. Would be nice to see one day an aug map that allows all types of play.

[Cozmo]

I still lurk here, so random post time

There's actually not a lot you can do for the default gametypes with simple modding. While there are a few things worth tweaking, DXMP is already pretty well balanced, and a lot of players don't like change. I remember when some server hosts were considering dropping Deja's MTL extension with good spectating etc just because he rebalanced targ damage from *1.12 to *1.14. Crazy.

The only new generation coder that has seriously played DXMP is Cozmo, but he never seemed particularly impressed by it, and as such his agenda likely lies with the UED and not necessarily with the DXMP itself. And he played pretty well.

I actually played a lot, but I always aliased on ATDM/ADM because I got quite a few genius comments about how I should go back to playing "RPG city", or just crappy responses to my frags like "ugh". I never got this when I aliased. It's like no-one remembers I've been here since late 2004.

About interests: You know that I'd like to port the game to Unity (UE3 onwards feels unsuitable) because of unfixable engine bugs - I definitely wouldn't bother if I didn't think DXMP had anything special going for it.

About newest MTL: Deja did a good job somehow getting TimeDilation to work clientside-only, but it causes too many problems and is definitely not a minority thing. For me, this has made DXMP unplayable, giving me random bursts of speedhax when I lag, putting hitboxes in seemingly random locations, making movement feel like I'm playing in 200 ping etc. I couldn't get the game to feel good on my laptop or desktop, and this is actually what stopped me from playing the game shortly before Gamespy went down. The worst part: it doesn't stop speedhax, and in fact makes it easier. All you have to do to be Phant now, is make a laggy bind and the game will do the speedup for you. Idk if it still disallows firing too fast, but it's still a HUGE advantage with weapon switching times, weapon accuracy timers etc.

Edit: some other random thoughts quickly: with Gamespy down, we no longer have to worry about new vanilla players and can edit DeusEx.u and texture files directly without conflicts, which gives us some more options. ANNA has the best netcode in DXMP by far, and I wish people would start using that again. Yard8 by Chees is amazing, and could be slightly tweaked to work well in augs too. With Nobody's help, I actually had a way to detect a client running too quickly back in 2012, but had no way to reasonably deal with them because it's usually accidental. In retrospect, we should have just made the scoreboard note it with "noob fps" or something.

[synthetic]

miniMTL made competitive gaming possible, and for me who plays on fairly bad internet connection and not very close to the servers (on a crap PC at that), miniMTL server seemed better than the old tickrate steroid servers. Yes, it felt different, but not necessarily in a bad way. I felt less lag with movement and shooting. So I can report both its urgency (nobody else developed something that would fix the easy-to-use speedhacking!), as well as its impact to a veteran player.

Some players reported you being quite upset about the patch so I am inclined to believe that the issue lies more on your end, although it doesn't undo the already mentioned shortcomings.

Those things said, I already mentioned that the method it uses is too brutal to be considered a serious patch, and all those issues you mentioned can and will happen if line is lagged, or perhaps when server is. On top of that, demorecs are broken.

So you need to look at both why it was absolutely necessary to develop it, as well as see its shortcomings. If we have (had) no fix what so ever, you think DXMP benefitted from everybody and their mother playing with 3x faster fire rate? You didn't even need to tweak anything for that to be possible. Get a good PC and youre cheating.

[Cozmo]

Oh I know why it was necessary, and again - props to Deja for figuring something out for it. It's just kind of alarming when I can't get a playable game on two different machines on a good connection, and it's definitely frustrating that I can't play anymore.

I have considered that it might have been my settings (100fps, Kentie's and OpenGL) but vanilla install feels bad too so I ... really have no idea.

[ShadowRunner]

miniMTL had an unethical beginning, I am led to believe it exists because someone hacked someone.

Also it had bugs like not being able to plant in water and although there are some cool features it hasn't stopped people messing around, I still see people doing things faster than me.

I didn't mean to sound like I was detracting from Chinny's mapping, it's true he dominates the fight mapping these days, but in terms of the skills and experience within our community, Face is always overlooked along with others. The fact that you weren't invited to private servers, does not mean the work wasn't hosted or enjoyed or others learned from it, none of the modders have been able to consistently devote time in recent years, everyone gets older. Chees is a good mapper too. Seems to be human nature to have politics in everything. What Cozmo is doing avoids that, takes control and it can build from scratch. I would like to see it as a kickstarter with a huge media campaign.

Chees maps are great in their own way, same as Chinny's maps are great in their way, but Chees had a rough ride from hosters simply because it was perceived not to be a fight map, when in fact as Cozmo said, a lot of them actually seem suited to augs. Even in 0-augs his maps were excluded at times. Same with Prodigy, there's nothing really wrong with that map, other than it is hosted on the wrong gametype usually. What's good is to see people hosting Ste's work and not burying it like some other maps.

[anax]

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[synthetic]

Oh I know why it was necessary, and again - props to Deja for figuring something out for it. It's just kind of alarming when I can't get a playable game on two different machines on a good connection, and it's definitely frustrating that I can't play anymore.

I have considered that it might have been my settings (100fps, Kentie's and OpenGL) but vanilla install feels bad too so I ... really have no idea.

Well I (we) can probably offer some suggestions as to what the issue might be, but other than that I think the point we're discussing is elsewhere. miniMTL is a motivated solo effort by a strong coder in dead game. The issues we experience range from the fact that it was only one person developing it with not enough testing time or testers, to the duration of that said motivation. It was released at the time where my clan had a simple choice: host miniMTL on server or quit game because everything else was useless.

Likewise, behind the scenes we have Alex to thank for seeing and being able to host visible servers with theoretically 100% reliability.

So we have or had 2 people putting something on the table. What are the rest doing?


As for smuggler being bad map: go make better one. Its one of the absolutely best DXMP maps in the game. Please, make better one, entire community will be happy, and this is meant with no sarcasm.
To any trolls: any godz maps or derivants are not DXMP maps, they are strictly lololine maps for super snipers and noob herds.

[DaniSaggenza]

So we have or had 2 people putting something on the table. What are the rest doing?

We were killing DX with the 100 euro hax


I used wallhax but dont tell that to anybody

[ShadowRunner]

duplicate post sorry, the indicator that i need a new mouse.

[ShadowRunner]

No-one is suggesting Godz maps are useful to auggers.

1: it is too symmetrical in layout.

lol like Silo?

2: too many boxes which obscure indoor floor areas for fighting.
Smuggler has a balance between open floor areas and decoration brushes.

lol FYI Smuggler was never finished, in particular the car park was intended to feature more decoration than it does.
Secondly, because I am not a "good" player, I don't know what the problem is actually with having some boxes in a room.

3: The location of biobots and cabinets is not fully optimal for a balanced AUG fighting map...The med and bio bots of Smuggler are not too far away nor too close to spawns.

Designed for 0-aug, you're probably right, but Smuggler has a medbot and biobot opposite each other just outside a spawn.

So we have or had 2 people putting something on the table. What are the rest doing?

If the table means this forum and a couple of clan forums, then it is not surprising. When working on Hengsha, I was constantly approached by people outside this community who wanted to get involved, but usually in other engines.

Also you are discounting other suggestions. People close to EM were willing to discuss making an approach to EM regarding an update of the game and I brought this to the community, but the discussion never happened. To answer your question, my plan was to host servers with unique content like WW2 and Hengsha, make an aug map and generate social media.

While it is impressive you are searching technical solutions, we still have the issue not only of recruiting/marketing but also how to integrate complete beginners into a game played by people binding and with 10 year old skill sets. It's almost totally pointless to discuss anything, make any plan or do anything, if only some of the issues are going to be addressed. I still think security needs modernization and in future registration and non-aliasing servers will be the only way a fight server will have any peace. I feel even the most hardened gamer is not going to take a serious challenge, if the other players are far from serious.

[anax]

Silo isn't symmetrical, what the actual heck lmfao.

do you actually play Deus Ex?

Also, i never said having boxes was bad, i said it's better to not have too many of them.
Stop putting words in other peoples mouths lol.

The amount of decorations in Smuggler are more balanced.

The bots of Smuggler may well be "right outside" the spawns, but at least they are not directly opposite weapon boards.
In fact, the way they are arranged is balanced, IMO for a small map of its size, whilst being played on ATDM.

[anax]

if you really want to be excruciatingly picky about it you could say Silo is semi-symmetrical.. around the outside edge.

Symmetry means that one side or portion of something can be mirrored and still be an exact copy of the other side.

[[FGS]Chees]

Nothing to read here!