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Lately, my creative spark has been flowing and I need an outlet for that. I was going to mod Doom II and make my own single player mission on it, but apparently you can't mess with Doom II via Gtk/NetRadiant. So, instead, I thought maybe I'd come back to this place and map some more.

But there's a problem. Has the population of OA dwindled away? I'm not game for mapping for OA if there aren't going to be a decent amount of people to play the maps.

I saw only three servers with players in them, and they were all instagib or allrockets bullshit. What ever happened to the good days of all-day classic CTF?

TL;DR: I want to map again, but I'm not going to unless it's worth my time. If I hear a "no" to the question "Is there still a decent population?", I'm just going to get to work on making my own single player game I've had in mind.

This can be moved to general discussion if anyone desires it be moved, because this thread doesn't contain a single map. I'm just not sure where to start and looking for feedback.

there were 76 players online at one point on the 24th. i think they're mostly european and so are offline by 2 am anywhere in the US.

Dpmaster at the moment reports 23 players only (but in Europe it's saturday morning!).

We need some ways to attract more people to the game. We lack a coordinated advertising strategy. Every help in that direction would be appreciated. Within few weeks, a new release of the game will come out... maybe after that we may invent something to promote it?

I wrote a small prog to count the number of players with ping > 0 and < 200 (to eliminate bots  ::)). It runs every 15 minutes and records its results in a basic log file:

http://sookee.dyndns.org/oatab/oaplayers.log  :)

Format is: unixtime space integer newline

The results might be interesting.  ???

PS. I love me that "instagib bullshit" :P

Ah, yes, the population varies depending on time of day. It seems most servers are Euro, which kind of sucks for me because I'm from the US and most populated servers I come across will have >200 ping, so it's hard to play anyway.

I haven't kept up with the news much, but with a new version of OA supposedly coming out soon, that's going to /kill/ the population unless the news about its release is made /really/ obvious. There's just a lot of dumb people who don't realize that their current version of OA is outdated, probably because they bummed the game from a friend and never bothered to check out the forums.

Anyway, do you guys think I should go ahead and make a map or two? Maybe I could even get one in before the next release. I've got some ideas, but I'm not starting until I get the O.K. from somebody that it's worth my time.

... at any rate, I'd be contributing to the community in some form. If I do this, I sure hope the map(s) don't suck! Haha

For me, it's no problem if you think you can manage to finish and test a map in a week. But maybe you should ask Fromhell. In theory, deadline for svn commits to get in 0.8.8 is already expired... but since we found some problems with RC1, maybe there could be some more time.

In the past, Fromhell seemed to be pretty quick about getting my maps in, but my memory is probably distorted, so...

On another note, what the hell happened to "leileilol?" Did somebody get mad about the name and it had to be changed? Kind of depressing, really.


Edit: if I don't end up contributing some map content within a week to this thread, it should probably just be moved to either General or Multiplayer, and then I'll just make a new thread for the map. Not that I really care either way, I guess some people could get butthurt about a thread in the maps section without map content.

the reason of the name is in my custom title.

Anyway, for Doom II I use Doom Builder 2.0 but that's Windows-dependent visual basic stuff. I don't know how SLADE is doing though...

OA isn't dead but it does have that pro indundation that kind of destroyed some of the original audience. Development of OA has been slow since I was left to be the only md3 artist....


I should probably mention the content freeze for 0.8.8 happened 6 days ago, all that's coming into the pk3s afterwards will be minor changes. I'm just waiting on engine binaries of the modified engine I did.... and I really want to get to OA3 already (summing it up, model and sound folder reboot for consistency and optimal performance, attempting to desuckify the feel, make it less of a mishmashed laughing stock, having a quality control)

Welcome back. :)

What about giving a polish to ps5ctf (http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=4075.0)? :P

Anyway, you could always do stuff for DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/OA3]OA3 (http://([b). It's where OA is moving.

Ah, that's shitty with the trademarking thing. Sucks.

I tried a doom map editor but I couldn't stand it. I just wanted so badly to be able to use Gtk/NetRadiant to map for it because I'm so skilled with the editor, but when I realized it was impossible, I turned to OA. I had an entire game in mind, but I probably don't even have enough coding knowledge at this point to get something rolling.

I've got plans for this map I'm going to start here very soon. I hope it turns out well. Hint: It's going to be a bit of a mindf**k. (PG13 hell yeah)

Fromhell,
after hearing wind of this new OA (which is first, a new version of /this/ OA or OA3?) coming out soon, when would I have to have this map completely done to get it in on the next version? Not that you have to reveal any details or even accept the map for that matter, but I'm just curious.

Thanks, Neon_Night. It's been a while.

I wasn't aware of this OA3 stuff, but if I'm still hanging around here by the time that gets rolling, I'd be happy to contribute to the best of my ability. I skimmed through your OA3 link and liked the part about consistency in the maps and characters and whatnot, plus the x2 texture details. It'd look sweet, I'd imagine.

In regard to ps5ctf, that map is long gone, data-wise. I could probably find a download and decompile it, but I feel as if the map just isn't great enough to be worth editing at this point--I'd rather just make a new map than try to improve a bad map, you know?

Another hint on the theme of the map I'm working on: Technologic. But not like Daft Punk rainbows technologic. Just... techno-esque. And not over-the-top.

Interesting. :)

What about writing time in a "more human" format (and possibly specifying the time zone?) .
And why did you exclude 56k or intercontinental players, that may have 250-300 pings? Maybe you could exclude pings over 500-600 (where I suppose the game would really be unplayable), instead.

Sounds like a nifty program.  However, I personally disagree with your ping logic.  Almost every server I play on I have a ping in the range of 220-250 typically, so if I understand it correctly your script wouldn't include me in its count.  I guess that's one more downside of being an American playing on mostly European servers.

Not meaning to offend or be negative, just wanting to let you know that some of us are not bots and just happen to have lousy pings.  ;)

Okay, I changed the program to report ping < 500.

With respect to the time format I left it in unixtime because I think the data will be best understood after processing it. Using unixtime makes it easier to read using a script or program.

The time stamp is GMT (UTC).

Maybe I'll knock up some kind of script or something to convert the data into CSV format that can be easily imported into a spreadsheet.

Well, maybe you could write two colums, one with the unix time, and one with a more human time...

PS: now it has recorded 99 players... good. :)

I thought about two columns but I am semi-alergic to redundant information  :'(. So what I did was make a script to convert the data into human readable, spreadsheet friendly format  ;D.

http://sookee.dyndns.org/oatab/oaplayers.csv  ;D

if you want a specific time format, let me know and I'll make it how you like.  :)

EDIT: Also there is the whole argument over how to write the date properly being that our American cousins always do it wrong  :P

I guess that the jpn ppl do it the best way: year, month, day.
but i am also fine with the day, month, year format.
Worst is month, day, year <- wtf??? shuffeling to make all things weired?

Here in Italy, we use day/month/year.

A nice mid-way between human and machine formats is yearmonthday (e.g. 20111126 for today), that allows you to understand the date with a little effort, and to order the list (and to do "greater than" and limilar tests) as a simple numeric list in programs like spreadsheets and databases.

Anyway, for me your current format (e.g. 2011-11-26 15:45,99) is okay. I don't know if someone is planning to put it in a real database, keep an history if it and do statistics out if it... in that case, his needs would be more important!

I use year month day personally, mostly for habit of sorting files.

I'm partial to yyyy-mm-dd (ISO) format for my own use, but living in the US exposes me to a lot of mm/dd/yyyy.  I got bit by that when a customer had a computer with dd/mm/yyyy format hitting a database on another computer with mm/dd/yyyy format (or vice versa) for their internationalization.  That was not fun to rework.

Preview of things to come:

To do:

• Flag area
• Detail brushes and theme-ing up the map
• etc

(http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/6549/screenyp.png)

Might have this complete within a week from now. I think it's coming out good so far, and it's definitely far more intricate and complex than my older maps (it has been a year or two since I've mapped...). I'm hoping to execute a nice OA theme mixed with techno-y stuff and gothic stuff at the same time. At any rate, it'll be red and blue :D

pretty cool! your maps rock, when finished I will put it on Metalnet East (actually the server has like 2-3 of your maps)

Looking forward,
Cheers!

Cool. It'll be cool to have it running on servers; that's the best way to playtest a map, anyway.

Making progress on the map. Might have it complete in a few days, depending on sleep and whatnot. I've got to texture every surface and add lots of details to the map, then the usual compiling and making it into a .pk3. Fun, fun.

looks good so far, i'd like to see it when it's lit.

btw, i have a map with 20 staircases in it. ;)

Alright, I'm making progress with the map, until ...

WARNING: ProjectSurfaceLightmap: Chose a 0 valued axis

... shows up during the lightmap compiling. I've never had to deal with it before, and it's not pointing out what exactly the problem is. I've gathered that a brush or patch with only one dimension (basically invisible) causes the problem... but, what the hell? It won't even get over it, it just spams that error and can't finish compiling. Argh. Anyone know what's going on?

so maybe just press backspace to delete after the compile fails?

It's not selecting anything, but I think I've isolated the cause, somewhat...

For whatever damn reason, some of the evil8 textures that generate light (the pretty light trims like in ps9ctf) cause a LOT of those 0 axis errors. I replaced every evil8 trim with a dsi trim and the map can compile with lighting just fine. I found this out because I tested a compile on a very simple map with the same textures, same results when changed on the big map.

The new trims look pretty anyway. Looks like it's going to be a nighttime map.
Gotta finish lighting, then weapons/entities/spawns/etc. Then it should be good to go!

... thought I'd include a preview:
(http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/3439/shot0000r.png)

Talk about DM-DarkMatch from Unreal Tournament III. :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5isTDLizNE

Okay, so maybe I'm just lazy, but I'm starting to not like this map I'm making very much... it seems too complex for CTF and just doesn't seem to be my "style" of consistency across the map. The flag areas are pretty bad. I was very deprived on sleep when I went about making the layout of the map, anyway, lol.

... however, I am back into it (mapping for OA). There will be some content from moi, and whenever it's done is when it will be seen.

But yeah, I'm certainly lazy, so it could be a little while. There will be a new thread when I do make the new map.

That's a shame  :'( because the styling looks awesom! But I'll keep my eyes peeled for the new thread when it arrives  8) .

For those curious, I made a simple graph of the accumulated OA player usage data that I have been collecting:

http://sookee.dyndns.org/oatab/oaplayers.png

EDIT:

Looking at it, it reminds me of a sound wave. Some time I will look into converting it into WAV format just to see what it sounds like  ;D

Nice. Having some hour indication in the graph would be nice, too.  :)