Shameless server plug

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ShaiHulud
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Shameless server plug

Post by ShaiHulud »

Server IP: 173.199.105.150 (standard ports)

I spent quite a bit of time in the summer and autumn of last year playing around with UnrealScript to create a ComboGib server. At the moment I'm planning to retire it around the end of February (ish). Plans might change, but my finances have had to be diverted elsewhere. I'll probably put the whole thing on GitHub at some point (script and INI files) in case there's anything in there that might be of interest. My main PC suffered a motherboard failure a couple of weeks ago (which caused the Windows install to bork), so I don't have access to any of it on the drive in there at the moment. I'm hoping to slave it on this backup PC eventually. I haven't touched uScript for about 6 weeks and already feel quite rusty.

But I'll mention a few of the features in case anyone fancies dropping by to have a look at the live article.
  • "Cue cards": a little visual prompt that appears toward the bottom-right of the screen upon connection. They're currently configured to appear on every sixth server join, but this number is configurable server-side. I use them for nudging players about available keybinds, and they stop appearing once a keybind has been set. Really they ought to scale with screen dimensions, but I've left that as a to-do. There's a little border animation that I call "chasing dots" - a bit like the kind of thing you'd see in a web page loading overlay, or one of Microsoft's little activity indicators to draw attention to them.

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  • Bot rating: this doesn't actually work quite as intended. There's an event - I can't remember what it's called at the moment - which fires when a bot notices a player. The idea was that a bot would scale its ability level based upon a player's AutoTeamBalance rating. With the regular UT bot skill scaling, the bots adjust their ability according to a sort of floating average for all of the players on the opposite team. I wanted each bot to choose a rating on a player-by-player basis. Not sure why it doesn't work, but it doesn't. Bots randomly retain ratings for previously seen players. But bots are rated from 1 to 6 - where 1 is the lowest ability level and 6 is the highest (the "R" stands for "Rating" or "Rated").

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  • Damage count: a HUD mutator that shows a numerical representation of the amount of hit damage inflicted upon an opponent. It... sorta looks like what I had in mind, but it's not quite there. I've recently noticed that behaviour is particularly odd under OpenGL, where the numbers zip off-screen much more quickly then under D3D.

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  • Team-mate locator: another HUD mutator that allows you to see team mates through walls. Inspired partly by watching a Let's Play of Horizon Zero Dawn, and also one of Kelly's projects with a high-vis textures. The idea was that it would allow players to make better strategic decisions about co-ordinating attacks or flag runs.

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  • Anti-camper: it doesn't prevent camping, but shows a HUD mutator message on the screen of the "camper", and displays a tent icon in SmartCTF. So it's more of a shaming strategy. Until the camper moves, the player is also visble through the walls to players of the opposing team (in a way that's distinct from the team-mate locator mutator). I don't have a screenshot of this latter feature.

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  • Anti-backshot: works something like this - 6 consecutive "back shots", or when 25% of total shots are "back shots" - the player is punished by the server rejecting all of their hit damage for 20 seconds. There's a sort of decision tree of about a dozen factors that are considered in determining when a "backshot" has occured, but they revolve around the orientation of the shooter to their own flag, together with map location and proximity to other players. Backshooters also receive a custom icon in SmartCTF for the duration of the game.

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  • Talking bots: you can speak to any of the bots in the server. They're actually a bit too talkative sometimes. It works something like this: if no bot is currently the "conversation target" (involved in a conversation) then a bot will become the conversation target (reply to any Say messages) for a 30 second window after it has killed or been killed. Once the 30 seconds are up, it stops listening for player Say messages. You can also make a bot the current "conversation target" by using its name in a Say message (the special bot "tag" can be ignored when typing a bot name). It's not the most scintillating conversation, but for the most part they can carry on a simple dialog. You can also chat to them using the Nexgen PM feature. I don't know, it's kind of amusing sometimes.

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  • Other misc: I added Kelly's cool weather effects, although these can only be triggered by a server admin. I used elements of Higor's awesome LCWeapons, but with the shock rifle stripped out of the weapon package and customised so that I could do things like allow team colours to be user-configurable in Nexgen; likewise whether plasma balls explode on contact with other plasma balls or pass through them (or even pass through other players). Unfortunately in a way that isn't easily portable in LCWeapons, so I'm deviating from Higor's terms of use a bit there (sorry Higor). Actually most of the non-standard visual effects can be disable in Nexgen for each player.
    There are also a few seasonal mutators active at the moment. One automatically overrides all player voice taunts with some "Christmas" themed alternatives. This will all deactivate automatically once we pass Twelfth Night, hence the timing of this forum post - in case you want to see any of that stuff by January 5th.

    Bot grappling - the bots use the grapple. More or less.

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Bugs: there are a few. There seem to be some issues with setting keybinds using my custom Nexgen build, for example. Opening the UT options menu while in the server is very slow - again, I've no idea why this should be. Also there's a 15MB Christmas music file download at the moment. I'll probably remove that from ServerPackages after Jan 5th.

Firefox isn't displaying typos, so this might be littered with cringe-inducing errors.

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Feralidragon
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Re: Shameless server plug

Post by Feralidragon »

This sounds very interesting. Some of the things I wanted to do later on were things to avoid/clarify backshooting and display damage, so I guess I don't need to do any of those anymore, nice job. :gj:

Some remarks however, mainly based on the screenshots you provided:

1 - The damage number seems way too big. If you didn't try it, I would suggest you to try another Unreal Engine game called Paladins. It's a very good game and is F2P, and it displays the hit damage, but it's clear enough so you know how much damage you're giving, but it's small enough so it doesn't clutter the screen.

2 - The team-mate locator seems also to be way too big. On this case I would say for you to check out the cybots or mines in NW3, since I did a similar one for them.
At first I did just like you did, but it became very obvious when they were far away that the indicator was too bothersome. Therefore, instead, I made the indicator to scale with the distance, and the result is that you're still able to locate them, but the indicators do not fill up the screen, while at the same time giving you a good sense about how far they are.

3 - Backshooting: this has always been a rather controversial and confusing concept, which has led to many bans especially in instagib servers. Even I was banned once over it.
For all veteran players out there: please understand that new players do NOT understand your jargon.
"Backshooting" was an alien concept even for me, who's been at the game for several years, and when I thought I was somewhat respecting the rule, someone came along and temporarily banned me for it.
So I had to go to a greater length than I should have to get a perfectly clear explanation about all the implications of what it meant "backshooting", and allow me to tell you, it isn't as simple as it sounds.

Therefore, rather than heavily punishing and shaming backshooters, perhaps you could find a way in your plugin to properly and perfectly explain what exactly you mean with "backshooting" first, because after all this is a concept only existent in a few servers in UT99, and not even UT2004 has such a rule in instagib servers which I also play on, nor any other game that I know of for that matter.
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Re: Shameless server plug

Post by papercoffee »

Ok? What is Backshooting?
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Barbie
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Re: Shameless server plug

Post by Barbie »

Never heard of that, too. It may be a punishment for players who shoots others into the back? Image
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Chamberly
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Re: Shameless server plug

Post by Chamberly »

papercoffee wrote:Ok? What is Backshooting?
This occurs when you pass a player as you saw them but turn around and shoot them after you crossed them.

It's one of the rules for some CTF players who play online and depending on where that enforces that rule and some other rule.
Mostly noticeable at UnrealKillers. http://www.unrealkillers.com/showthread ... AGIB-RULES
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OjitroC
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Re: Shameless server plug

Post by OjitroC »

Lots of contention about backshooting as well on the (almost dead) Owned Well forum - used to have iCTF leagues and pugs hence the concern over it.

Seems a bit odd to me (what's wrong with it in CTF) and difficult to define, thus leading to contention.
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Re: Shameless server plug

Post by papercoffee »

Chamberly wrote:
papercoffee wrote:Ok? What is Backshooting?
This occurs when you pass a player as you saw them but turn around and shoot them after you crossed them.
:noidea I don't get it.
Why should player pass each other and not frag at sight?
And if you where blind for a second and then turn around to shoot that player then you have to wait till he turns around and faces you??
How does this work in CTF?
"Oh that guy has our flagg ...wait till he turns around, then we can gib him... oh fnuck, he'd run back into his base without looking back." :omfg:
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Feralidragon
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Re: Shameless server plug

Post by Feralidragon »

That's the thing paper, the "no backshooting" rule has exceptions.
It works like this:
- if you see an enemy, you're always free to try to frag him/her, no problem;
- unless you go past each other, in direction of the opposite base, at which point you're not allowed to turn to attempt the frag;
- except if any flags are taken, at which point you're allowed to do so to kill or protect the flag carrier or others trying to protect or kill him/her, or to close or open the base with the same intent.

This rule makes some sense in CTF games, especially in instagib matches, otherwise they easily devolve into DM matches instead. Hence this rule is simply to make people focused in getting the flag rather than just fragging.
However, a new player has no way to know this, so many get banned because the admins will warn with "don't backshoot", but then the player won't understand exactly what he/she's doing wrong, while others which got a clue how it works, will be confused when suddenly everyone is doing it when the flags are taken, which depending on the flow of the game and the maps, may be always.

That's why I mentioned that, rather than punishing, how about actually make the effort in explaining what backshooting is and what it means in the context of these servers, given that most players are veterans nowadays and they forget or do not understand that new players have no way to know how this works.
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papercoffee
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Re: Shameless server plug

Post by papercoffee »

Ok ...say you play on Face (which version ever) and you encounter an opponent on the stone bridge thingy. Now you are allowed to shoot him/her down but if the opponent is able to get behind you ...you are not allowed to shoot at him/her... until the opponent grabs the flag ...now can everyone shoot him in the back and frag him to dust.

I know what this rule should do, but that way it's not working. It's just over complicated and doesn't fit with a normal players mind.
Shoot opponent, shoot if he runs, shoot if he tries to enter the base, shoot when he tries to leave it. :ironic:
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SilverSound
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Re: Shameless server plug

Post by SilverSound »

Ehh...Thanks for plugging a server. Now I know the rules and probably won't join it. Not a fan of weird rules. Back-shooting thing just sounds stupid. The camping thing is indeed dumb. Just kill the camper. large numbers are just no.

But other than that it's ok I guess.
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ShaiHulud
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Re: Shameless server plug

Post by ShaiHulud »

Thanks Ferali, that's some really great feedback! There were quite a few things that I'm hoping to go back and add or update, so your suggestions are very helpful in that regard.

About "backshooting" - I understand the controversy. I've become habitualised to considering this during time spent on other servers in the recent past, so I added this feature for parity with what I imagined might be a majority of player expectations around the issue. It's relatively easy to switch on and off with an ini file boolean setting.
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Chamberly
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Re: Shameless server plug

Post by Chamberly »

That's the best part, having the ability to enable and disable such feature. Nice!
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Terraniux
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Re: Shameless server plug

Post by Terraniux »

Cool stuff! There only option missing, that makes it perfect , and absolutely golden-- is the ANTI-KIDDO script.

Like say the f-word / c- / v- word etc saying in a bad way, he should be immobilized. losing all weapons and turn into a clown or chicken or something humiliating . :thuup:
Just anti -- " I can't accept defeat attitude dudes. "


I will play on your server soon! thanks for sharing! :thuup: :agree1:
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Feralidragon
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Re: Shameless server plug

Post by Feralidragon »

ShaiHulud wrote: About "backshooting" - I understand the controversy. I've become habitualised to considering this during time spent on other servers in the recent past, so I added this feature for parity with what I imagined might be a majority of player expectations around the issue. It's relatively easy to switch on and off with an ini file boolean setting.
I mostly meant that such a rule should be explained. For instance, your very first screenshot is about tips you give to the player, so something similar, but more relevant to force the player to actually read and accept, explaining how the backshooting stuff works, would be ideal.
From there, if the explanation is clear enough, and you make sure the player reads it, then you would be free to "punish" said player in case he/she disrespects the rule anyway.
ShaiHulud
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Re: Shameless server plug

Post by ShaiHulud »

Thanks for the follow-up comments guys - and again for the suggestion Ferali.

I did consider a profanity filter, I know that there are drop-in mutators available for this. At the moment I've limited language control to the bots only. Which might sound a strange idea - but each bot has what I chose to call (for want of a better name at the time) a "saltiness" level. When a bot dies, this increases by some percentage. When a bot scores a kill, it is reduced fairly significantly. When a bot dies several times in a row without scoring any kills itself, it scales up quite quickly. Above a certain threshold the bot will make a call to a PHP script to retrieve a random "insult sentence" from a web hosted database that I don't control. Some of these insults are quite witty. Others are extremely crude.
I've also had requests for Valhalla. These things are all to-do'd. I've compiled every mutator together into a single file (well, apart from the Christmas music) so that players only ever have a single (large-ish) download.

I'm afraid that the server is empty of players 95% of the time, so honestly you're not likely to get much of a match if you visit. But the bots provide limited amusement for a short period of time.

Other things I've planned to do (but not gotten around to yet) are: try to reduce bot "clumping". It bothers me that when bots happen to be in the same area together, they all charge forward in a group. I'd like to force them to spread out and possibly take alternative paths. I fiddled with the triple-jump mutator too. It always bothered me that a regular jump was necessary to "reset" things between triple-jumps, so this is no longer required.
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