OpenArena Message Boards

Why the hell are there more people on this forum than in game ? How attract people to play OA ?? cause OA seems dying ... less clans than before etc etc :/

There are more contributors than before, but there are much less active people in this forum than in the game, believe me.

The community isn't dying (this has been said for years and years and never happened), but it just needs some emulation, either competitive or by a new release. The latter one will happen soon enough.

The games is just fine it’s not dying, it’s just that most of the people on the forum seem to enjoy the creative aspect of OA a little more that playing so they mostly create stuff we can enjoy such as maps, models or textures.

Speaking strictly for myself: I rarely play on the public servers, I mainly play private games.  Now that I have my new laptop up, I may change that.

hm true maybe there will be a little more people when the new release is out .

Maybe a short video about 0.88 and OA gameplay&models&officialmaps on  this homepage would be cool but also like an invitation for newbies to attract them...

Does someone know a good conversion tool to convert to ogg/ogv format?

Not for mass conversion, but Audacity can do it, and probably mediaconverter.org.

Probably the best tool for video conversion is avidemux, for CLI option ffmpeg.

Media Coder (http://www.mediacoderhq.com/)

Opensource, multiplatform, optimized, and easy to use. (there's an AudioCoder version to only convert audio files)

I'll take a look when I have some time. OGV would allow to host a video directly on Wikia...

true...


look at the clans list ..

theres basicly no clans active anymore


OpenArena Clan Book (http://teammega.tk/forum/5-15-1#70)

OA is really better than QL or so :/ don't understand why there are less people  ???

anyone in for helping me promote?

Media Encoder: maybe it's me that missed some conversion settngs... but the output ogg file makes my Windows Explorer (to crash if I open the folder).

Avidemux: it encounters an error and it does not start.

how about we give a copy of our oa's to people in our home towns?


The more people you give it too the more they will try to test it


Tell them to give it to there friends too!

If Avidemux can't start then you certainly have a big problem, you should take a look on this before continuing.

Anyway, media encoder can be pretty tricky to use since it does not safeguard anything, every parameter is accessible.

If you want a simple encoding software, you can try AutoGordianKnot, it encodes videos well but only in either DivX or XviD, but it's really almost fully automatic.

And as a last resort there's also VirtualDub, but this is also complicated to use but pretty efficient.

Also, did you install the codecs? I don't think media coder installs them.

VirtualDub and complicated in one sentence? O_o

You might try ffdcodec as codec, it can open everything (well, everything I tried and even some I didn't knew would be complicated).

Or K-Lite Mega Codec Pack (only for Windows):

http://www.codecguide.com/download_mega.htm

For Linux, just use your package manager to download every required codec.

I'm quite sure I already have k-Lite codec pack...

Then check that it's the Mega codec pack and that you checked Full installation with encoders in the installer.

There are still quite a few clans (atleast from my observation) just that most of them are EU clans. Granted OA being a small populated game you can't expect many :p.

Now in NA there aren't really many NA based clans. You only really have /N/. But they don't play competively anymore.

there the only FULL north american clan left

but there not fully NA either they have a few from argentina or at least 1 and 1 from spain i believe

MY CLAN (Mega Clan (http://teammega.tk/))

is NA but not fully either alot of NA players dont play openarena


5 USA players


lets face it europeans rule the population of OA

or any game for that matter really. Counter-Strike and TF2's much bigger in Europe than NA believe it or not lol

true europeans love games :-)


but i think we (NA) produce better players


just my opnion

I wouldnt go as far as saying NA players are better. Just check latest pro games - CS, LoL, SC 2, QL - EU + Russia rule them all minus koreans in SC2 :)

In OA lack of good admined server is problematic for me. CTF maps on servers are not chosen based on quality. There are some good servers but.... Same goes with TDM, Elimination, mods attract clans and competitive play.

i wonder ...


maybe a euro vs NA?

Only way for trying this is on LAN :) So we get together few sponsors who give 100k+ $/€ and we fly guys from around the globe to some place and play it out :P

lol that is the only way it will be fair :)

It will never be fair.

Let's say the odds of a really great player is 1 in 100 people. Someone with talent I mean, not just someone who practices more than the rest. Where do you think it's more likely a good player will play OA, in NA where there are fewer players or in EU where there are plenty? (Let's for the moment assume that what is said above is true). In the EU of course, if we have 1000 players and you 500, you would, statistically seen, have half the number of great players we got.

The thing to measure here is the odds. If you had 500 players and we 1000 and you would be able to produce 6 players which are really great and we only 8, that would mean you indeed have better players because your great_players/total_players ratio is higher. 6/5 vs 8/10 is still possible to be random though, it is all just chance.

Other variables play too by the way. If there is a chance of 1 in 20 that a given OA player has plenty of time to practice nearly every evening, then the same problem arises again. NA would have less people with much time, which also decreases the chance that you will get a great player + player with much time combination.

I don't think we can accurately measure this without turning it into an entire study. Also I don't think EU players are worse than NA ones. What actually makes you think that?

Meh... even RMF with his deductive reasoning is wrong.  The fact is, players from all seven continents suck, suck, suck!  Any person with a scintilla of intellect knows that only Arctic players rock!

ofc, you will never see their stats on GameTracker, Steam, XFire, etc, but that's because those buggers are crafty.  Subterfuge, deception and misdirection comprise just three of their non-lethal arsenal.  Why, you could be playing against a player you think is from Poland or Serbia but in reality... BAM!, he's from the circle!

Trust me, these guys are so below the radar that earthworms are above them.  Beware!

Not necessarily. First, we now have delag for all hitscans weapons directly integrated into OA. Plus, some mods even provide full delag (delag for all weapons: hitscans + projectiles), so this balances even more. Plus fixed-physics now.

If you want to have an even more balanced game, you can further take the step of installing two servers: one located on a EU host, and another one on NA, and organize the matchs so that the first match is on EU and the second one on NA. This method was actually used for the OpenArena Clans League of 2010.

Fair competition can be organized, but you need a good organization, a good set of fair rules and a good technical staff.


And I would further add that the timezone shift imply that NA players are less likely to have the chance to train since they are playing at times when EU players usually don't play. Less competition = lower level.

GrosBedo I was joking. Of course we can do your kind of competition.

This'd still require the exact same network conditions during both matches. Let's just assume that Level3 (or any other carrier for that matter) is overloaded while NA plays on EU, they'd get even worse pings.
This can only be avoided in a LAN, even more so with the exact same equipment for everyone.

@grey matter: you are talking about hazards, which can also happen in LAN games.

Of course, it would have more impact in the setup I described, but it still would be a fair game, since NA players would still have an advantage over EU players (because even if the host is overloaded and lagging, NA players will have a lower ping anyway than EU players).

What matters here is not a perfect situation, but a fair game. If one team has an advantage in a game, give the same advantage to the other team next game.

But indeed a perfect game in a perfect situation would be played in a LAN.

Actually I wouldn't mind meeting some of the US players in real life ^^

lol @RMF

We already met some european players, i got some old NA friends that i would enjoy to meet.

I'm in South Carolina.  The problem with meeting US players is we're scattered over a HUGE area.

True, i know some canadians, some from arizona/florida/etc :o

I had a dream ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Open Arena Con. It could happen some day, I hope. :) :) :) :) :) :)

OACon sounds like a blast!

There was Open Arena supeR,Lan last july for 4 days in Blotzheim ( in france, near switzerland  ;)

Impressive, I can only dream of going to France. :'( :'( :'(

http://oa-chs.warsforum.com/t29-mp4ct-s-fragmovies#1044  new AS fragmovie :P

I am a strong advocate of there being a Clans page on the main OA website, and having an "official Open Arena tourney" I think having a little more unity in the sense of clans will help spark competition again. Either way, NA is just about dead... oaN members still hop on and play. But we do so very little and usually alias :0. Most NA players either have stopped or moved on to QL!  ::)

This is why what ive been meaning to say for years!


the offical site needs to take action

thanks wii

Just like q3a's site should constantly maintain a list of clans?

Just like Q3A still has more players than OA even without any official community? :P

Maybe there should be a "Getting started with OA" wiki page which you could then link more prominently on openarena.ws? This way you don't really need to bother with content updates, as they are maintained by the community (that is; Gig :D ).

As far as "official tourney" goes; this is quite a bunch of work just for fromhell alone. How about having one of the pros (bros?) like WaspKiller plan such as thing and then just label it as official? This naturally requires quite some effort from their side, but I'm sure they're willing to help.

If OA player base is dropping it's most definitely because of poorly moderated servers and bad community

A lot of players need to see difference between DM and CTF, camping on CTF is over done in OA, and the people who camp usually also trash talk and annoy the fair players.. I have been playing OA for like 3+ years, and I've seen only one moderated server out there (GeM's instagib).. And it's like the only server I play..

I go to ROFL - All rockets just because I love all rockets.. But I've been pushed away from that server by the players who are usually on there.. You can't have one game without a camper who is just sitting in base shooting at flag, and since the server doesn't have bright skins, it's sometimes hard to notice that there's somebody waiting for you in the base.. And to make it even worse, those campers play better than like 80% of players on the server, so they really ruin the potential fun the server has. I got on it yesterday, and there were Assrape, Joker camping their bases, until Palas came it was alright since Assrape kept getting kicked (3-1 votes), but since Palas came he would vote not to kick Assrape so votes were 3-2 and would always fail, Assrape was camping red base, Joker was camping blue base, until literally everybody left. The server had like 8 players on it, then I left and in like 2 mins I came back to record the campers, but unfortunately the server was already empty..

On other servers situation is even worse though, I've played plenty of 2v5 games in which all 5 enemy players were about my skill .. And there's really no moderator to say "hey, hey how about play fair?"..  On a lot of ctf servers people just spectate until they get a chance to team up with other good players and play against "noobs", so they dominate like 8-0.. And then they trash talk calling you names and saying you have 0 skill..

The only reason I play OA is because of that one well moderated server I mentioned, every other server is horribly moderated, and the community in general is filled with players who are afraid of challenge and refuse to play fair, yet they think highly of themselves..

Maybe there could be more moderating around on servers, but that doesn't take away that most maps which are in OA really look awful, even compared to a Quake 3 maps. This has been improved since the last patches, but a lot of them still aren't having a proper balance between gameplay, flow, texturing, lighting, detailing and geometry. For example, ps37ctf2 is a very open map with nearly any cover and depth. It just asks to be camped on.
So I think it's too simple to blame moderation only the fact OA has a very small playing community.

P.S.
It would be bigger if I could connect to multiplayer xS.

it was worse. At one point there were lots of servers running the oa_base maps X(

I made a youtube video showing the issue OA servers have with campers !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEaFdsGe3MI

This video is a parody, showing campers, not really best OA players, but the reason for the title is because all of these players were #1 players in their teams, with higher scores than the whole enemy team together, and most of the time they end up harassing other players how bad their scores are.. And the song "Got to keep on moving" is on purpose too, since these players aren't going anywhere but to hug their own flag/base.

This is what i call "hardcore camper".
But not as dramatic as i thought ;) (ok, it can be annoying if assrape is inside his base, but this is because of my bad rocket skills).

What about offering rocket-only deathmatch or any other mode which isn't having a certain few hotspots like a flag? It's just retarded to blame those guys only, as the server creates the environment.

Ok I can see you point on some of them a little but what got be that was not addressed is the 2 vs 1 insta gib against unamedplayer. When it’s 2 vs 1, the 1 lone player has to do at least a little camping because he has to both defend his base and get the flag. These types of games in a way force a little camping to defend the base  because if the team with less players did not they  would get run over.

For Unnamed video, you should have paid attention to the scores, Unnamed was camping the whole game against El Tonto 1v1 (9 mins), he had 70+ kills when Tonto had 20.. So Satanist Ru joined to help El Tonto.. Later on you can see Unnamed has 150 kills, Tonto has 30 and Satanist has 16..
On the video you can also see Unnamed killing both of the enemies from the tunnel, and still going back to base to 'Defend'.. And he was getting killing spree killing them from the tunnel spot, and still didn't decide to get out of the tunnel and do some attacking..
I understand that it was 2v1, but he brought himself in that position by sitting in the tunnel getting three times higher score than his opponent, and later on 3 times bigger score than his opponents score together lol..

Well, individual score in CTF counts little... team flag captures really count!

Indeed, but most players just take care of their own score.

I give up on openarena

I don't have OA installed anymore, or any other games for the matter. Last time I played was in 2009.

The only USA server that always seems to attract players is "ciggaweed - no bitchassness". I love DM so this is okay with me. The reason it's a success is because it requires no downloads, runs 0.8.1 (0.8.8 is ok too but there are some annoying changes), the maps are very well picked and aside from cheating, players are allowed to play however they want. Even those lame newbies with rocket jump binds aren't kicked for doing so. My RJ's are real and I still don't care, and I will never care to get rcon on this server.

Too many rules, too many downloads, and a poor map balance can empty any server.

I give up on openarena

I will certainly agree on some of the [081] baseoa maps being poorly designed sniper festivals with zero cover, or maps that encourage whoring in other ways like putting powerups, weapons, and health too close together. That ruins the flow of an otherwise well-made map, causing everyone to go towards a choke point. The sad fact is that many players like these kinds of maps and MarquisDeSade has done an excellent job picking a list of maps that the best and the worst of us will enjoy playing on. Something must be said for a server that continues to fill night after night.

That map which you play on in the last tier is also a very good example of a,map which just lacks flow and is a jumppad festival (not even speaking of it's poor lighting; you seriously can't see a thing).

I am currently launching a pack of new community servers (based on the concept of community self management, anyone can become a moderator, but that will be described later in a dedicated post).

After your comment, I decided to make available a CTF rockets only server with anticamp and full delag (rockets included).

It is called OAC CTF Rockets NoCamp, IP: 188.165.182.177:27985

Let me know if you have any feedbacks (things to enhance, etc.):
http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/d?k=01GZ465xAGD3iYJctswfJhqg==&c=Hbb30vgeDX9ABQVBv3x-Wa525q6OKq9AaBebFjdnXns=

I just checked the server out, it's really good !
shows stats, shows time it took to capture and it has camp protection !!

I'll try to get some people to play on this server :)

OAC CTF Rockets NoCamp all the way !

@BlueBoy: thank you for your kind feedback :)

There are a lot more to come, like online stats and the public release of the config (because the system is meant to be fully opensource - except for the passwords of course) and a full-blown website.

Meanwhile you can check out the online tools, sourcecode, news and feedback on twitter from the official website (to avoid being off-topic here):
http://oa-community.com/

LOL BlueBoy you are good player but this video oh rofl, really stop complaing about campers , this players are good. Public is and will always without "rules", anyone play how he want. You just like run so you think always must like run ? heh ? I also like sometime defend flag. Dont make of public something more than it is. Only what open arena needs is competition.

Hey GrosBedo!

I checked the site, especially the maplist: extensive!

One minor problem. I tried to log in to the "OAC Fair DM" server and received the "this is a Quake3Arena server" error.
I ran into this before when I was running OA 0.8.1. I am running 0.8.8 now and other servers that were inaccessible are now open to me.

Is there something I'm missing?