Rifleman

lol

Just stopping by to see if anyone remembered me Correct! Looks like you dared to!

I vote ?go #test8 for new pub.

You`d rather want people staying in safe with the flag? Safe doesen`t rid you of the flag, speccing does -Rifle

Bounty records are reset to the way they were before any flag game screwed them up. Additionally, the 9k flag victory bug has been fixed. Personally, I like the movable flag.. It gives those who are out 'just' to kill others a possibility to earn team points. When the jackpot gets high (70k`ish), it will get proportionally more challenging to kill the flag carrier as more teammates protect him. Who can say the old non-movable flags had more interest? Flags in center - I like the idea, but I feel the flag fight would be a bit random.. only a test would show KOTH back - Sure.. it was fun for a while, but I got tired of it very quickly when groups of cloakers popped out just to kill me :\ As for a 'spree-bot'.. it will be considered, but not likely implemented. Yes, it is fun.. though it focuses on individual performance (killing), whereas I would like to keep 17th as a team zone. Note : All opinions in my post do not represent all sysop opinions.

We had a votebot which worked, but it had a bug where players entering the arena for the 3rd time after the vote was set up, could vote again. I haven`t looked at the code yet, but it will eventually be revived. As for the bot that fixes a few side-effects for the flaggame.. here`s what`s done and is going to be done : Implemented : -grants bounty back to players who lose it for 2 sec after a flag victory -restores original ship status after a flag victory -settings-independant, bot will work whetever ship settings are changed or not Todo : -Fix flag game granting players of the winning team a bounty of 0->9000 at a flag victory. (Discovered today). The updated bot is expected to be in place asap, as in 12-48 hours if it is possible to do. The if depends on whetever my idea for the fix is correct, which it may or may not be. Stay tuned Possible drawbacks : -If BOT>ScoreBot goes down, all the flag bugs will happen at flag game end. -If BOT>ScoreBot is very laggy, it might take a few more seconds to get your items/bounce back. -Rifle

Link to the map was broken, so I made a simple map editor today which takes text files so I could make a similar map. Anyways, here`s a zip with the level file.. #`s refer to tiles mentioned in specialtiles.txt ( thanks goes to Kilo & Hyperspace ) Note : making maps in notepad is not good for health -Rifleman Tiles.zip

You were a great !@#$%^&*et to this zone, MMaverick, and I truly hate to see you go. I`ve seen many staff members in my time, and I`d rank you as one of the best, if not THE best staff member I`ve seen. Words cannot describe how much you have done for this zone. Many people seem to think of MMav as "the guy who did bots and decided to become an !@#$%^&*hole". I have 2 words which desbribes those people : Ignorant and immature. I pity you cannot see the countless good things MMaverick did for this zone. Goodbye MMaverick, but know I am not disappointed by your decision in any way. -Rifleman

The time has come to cast your vote - keep the colored javs... or ditch them! The image quality can be improved greatly, and the current rumble javs are compatible with custom shipsets. The poll will end on January the 4th. The results either make or break colored ships in Rumble. -Rifle

That sounds like a good solution... Should`ve thought of that As for custom alert commands, we use subgame. Server.ini : AlertCommand=Cheater,Help,Illegal,Host,Advert,die Rifleman>?die All of you! Die: (Rifleman) (Public 0): All of you! Message has been sent to online moderators -Rifle

After reading you latest post, I admit I`ve misunderstood what you said. However, it all boils down to 2 questions : Question 1: Should pub have priority over events? You say no, because you mean players come online just to play those events. I say yes, because I think a dead pub would hurt 17th more than large events would give new players. My logic is the following : Fact : Events can be hugely popular. Fact : Events can be hosted for hours at a time Fact : Events are hosted when many people are online to increase the probability of players showing up to them. Theory : If all players in 17th went off to play games like JavWar, Rumble and SblBall for hours, then how can we gain more population when all the new players leave the zone once they enter a dead pub? If pub is dead during peak hours, the problem grows even larger. How much would it hurt the events if hosts had to wait until there was a 4v4-5v5 in pub? I`d say.. Not much Do hosts generally advertise for manually hosted events when there are few players in pub? No. Then how could waiting for a few more players affect the event players so much? Conclusion : The rules. Now, my solution requires that my theory is correct, just as your theory says 'players come online to play events'. This brings us to question 2, which would tell us which theory to pursue. Question 2: Would a active pub and less events cause a larger player growth than what a dead pub and many events being hosted would? Which brings us back to the start. Neither of us can possibly knows for sure who of us is right. The only way to truly answer this critical question would be by : 1) Trying each theory out for a month each and compare the results. -Hard to set up, takes time, unreliable results 2) Hold a vote with a representative selection of 17th. -Would be fair, but who would pick the reps? The reps themselves could be biased as well. 3) Try to sink eachothers theory. -Takes time, Leads back to question 2. 4) Hold a quick vote in upperstaff. -The old way. Not democratic. Generally a very bad way of deciding most things. Final note/summary : I agree that events contribute very much to 17th, but making it replace pub is a losing formula as well. -Rifleman

By commands, I meant commands like f.ex ?help and ?modinfo, not bot commands. If a command is at 2 letters, like ?hi, the bot will crash when it recieves that command. -- Spectating a different player every 500ms is a way to do it, but it makes the bot unable to host games which requires nearly instant detection of where players are. I made a similar way of detecting player positions, but I found a few flaws with it . Situation : I made a module for an event where players capture hills.. 1)Player must be at a hill spot for 7 seconds 2)If a player moves out of the hill spot, the timer is reset. The bot would react slower to item 2 as the number of players increased (logically). Using the unofficial core fix did not make any difference, possibly due to missing some other file I guess. I like the way the fix was meant to work though. It could give it a nice advantage over mervbot when it comes to conserving bandwidth/avoiding packet flooding when multiple bots are hosted by one person. Still, those 'bugs' do not mean much in the whole picture, it`s still a good bot and I`ll look forward to the next release [Edit] You were correct regarding the Autoloader [/Edit] -Rifleman

TWCore 0.89 mainly has 2 bad bugs, and 1 annyoing. 1 : Short messages for staff such as "Rifleman>?bye bot" will cause the core to incorrectly parse the message and get an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException. It`s easily fixable by adding a try{}catch(){} in message.java (still waiting for a release which will fix this, so I haven`t bothered to fix it myself) 2 : The bot doesen`t recieve player position packets outside of center In order to recieve position packets from all players, the bot has to switch spectating players at a interval given in arena settings (sendPositionDelay I believe). However, TWCore doesen`t currently download any arena settings in any way that I know of, so it has no idea how quickly it can move on to specating the next player. If it does it too fast, the server interprets it as packet flooding, and kicks all bots + bot host off the server and blocks that IP for 2-5 minutes. If it does it too slow, the bot will run normally, but would be sluggish compared to Mervbot. This bug is fixable if a arena settings parser is added to the next release of TWCore, or if you add it yourself. 3 : At random times, some bots will fail to log in (Bot setup time : 5007), so the bot has to be spawned from the hub bot. Not a serious bug, but more of a annoyance. Other than that, I think TWCore is great. It misses some of the features of Mervbot, but is pretty easy to understand and customize to your own liking. -Rifleman

I do not know where you got the idea where the new rule forces players to play events or pub. The rules are staff rules, not player rules. Pub isn`t worth protecting? Losing possible new players means losing possible new event players in the future. Cause and effect. If you read my post in the staff forum before posting, you would see that Rumble is an exception to the rule. If you have read it, you haven`t read it closely enough. If pub is low on players, it means if pub is low on active, playing players, not dead speccers. -Rifleman

By hosting, I do NOT mean Rumble. Rumble is not hosted by ERs, but by a bot. For the record, advertising for Rumble doesen`t count as hosting a event. -Rifle

The current rules are these : 1) Keep pub active at all costs. 2) Do not advertise in pub if pub have few active players. 3) Host less popular events if the event hosted becomes a pub-killer. 4) Do not host more than 1 event at the same time. Those rules will be repeated and replace a few old rules. -Rifle

Good idea, but /*setfreq (which the bot uses) does not work the same way when you do = in a safe spot. Instead of preserving your bounty and specials, *setfreq in safe will reset your ship. -Rifle

Good idea <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It works that way with = while in safe, but with *setfreq.. bounce/anti/etc. the specials will be lost regardless of safe or not. -Rifle

cya soon!

I wish you good luck with uni, Tempest Don`t worry about not finishing the mod protocol, I`ll find some way to complete it. -Rifleman

ditto.

The first attach bot I made did that, although the repels are a bit too powerful for it to be used... unless a attachment "room" is added to the map :\ Good news is - no enemy players could reach it in the test. (except using ufo and super) -Rifle

I could go on battling Delic and Reload`s arguments for centuries. Literally. Instead of wasting time on that ( yes I know you won`t change your minds no matter what I say or how true it is ), I`ll just agree 100% with above. Same goes for why I never reply to settings "discussions". -Rifle

Upper staff cares for the zone. If we didn`t, we would remain status quo for pub settings. Luckily, we`ve seen that most of the players want : 1) Map changed 2) Settings changed 1.a ) I thought everyone knew about this by now. Apparently not. We test maps each friday. Most maps reach about 30-40% "I like it", while a minority reach 60-70% "I like it". Hopefully one of those maps will be accepted enough to have a chance at becoming the new pub map. Yes - We do polls about them. Would you rather have it like the old times where maps were served every other day, hoping players would like it? 2.a ) Fact is - change settings either back or develop them will only get you lynched by pub or discouraged by the zone owner. I`ve seen way too many good names being dragged through the dirt while improving pub as sysops. I`ve seen them being backstabbed by the very players they sought to help, and it makes me sick to the bone. Thus, I`ve found the following conclusions : 1.b ) Settings must be changed little by little - if the sysop is going to have any chance of actually changing them. 2.b ) Sysops should not take pub criticism too seriously, as pub players are very divided in their opinions, and way too biased when it comes to being "new" or "vet". As for "the good old times" - Yes, the past always look golden when you`re older. For me, "the good old times" was 5-6 years ago in TW. However, while rewieving logs I`ve made back then, I only discovered those times were not so different than now. Among the other logs, I found some old ones for 17th as well. Guess what I found? "Change the weasel!", "Remove terr mines!", "Spider is useless on this map!". Old times were just as scarred as these times. Looking back at "old times" as "good times" is just a side effect from growing older. Delic - Old settings will never happen because of 2.a, such a radical change would never be accepted by the majority of the players. Reload - Attempting to please 100% of the playerbase is impossible. If you are not pleased with the settings - I`m sorry, but we have to think of the majority. Utopia is not possible in this world, same goes for Continuum. -Rifle

Cool. Then quit. -Rifle