Suggestions for future release

[Joki]

Here are a few suggestions for a future release:

- add selected cvars from the OSP-mod like:
  - referee-system
  - complete control on client cvars-range (like server_timenudge_max -20: if a clien uses cl_timenudge -30 it will automatically change to -20 to get in allowed range)
  - timeout-system
  - cg_enemymodel
  - more custommizeable HUD
  - alt graphics especially for those hard to see grenades

(taken from this old post of me

- please try to add some decent maps. OpenArena itself is done fine, but some of the maps are really just insulting to the eye and to playability.
  sites like LvlWorld have such a big pool of maps that its really not hard to get inspiration.
maps like czest1dm, fan, oa_dm5 (its just way too tight that you can dodge at all, leaving the map to turn into a a total spam-as-much-as-you-can-luck-fest), oa_pvomit or suspended and also most of these plain HORRIBLE designed ctf-maps are no advertisement for openarena at all. luckily there are a few good ones to name oa_rpg3dm2, oa_shine and maybe oadm4ish.

- why exactly was the compatibility with Q3 Pr 1.32 (protocol 68) broken?

- edit: add a command to directly use irc from within the client, like QIRC.

- change the audio for "pick up armor", "pick up quad/powerup", "power up spawned" to louder, unique ones, that are actually hearable. suckt to have to play with zzzq3sounds.pk3 all the time

- a few default-values are really unpleasent. for instance change /cl_allowdownload 1 /cg_delag 1 /rate 25000 /cl_maxpackets 125

[Neon_Knight]

Hi, before doing some of those suggestions, I suggest you to read this, just to avoid any problems:
(DO NOT LINK) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/NOTTODO

EDIT: Check also this, if you have suggestions to do regarding to maps: (DO NOT LINK) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Maps. There're links to their topics, so you can drop your suggestions there instead of just saying "maps sucks" and nothing more.

[Falkland]

Hi, before doing some of those suggestions, I suggest you to read this, just to avoid any problems:
(DO NOT LINK) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/NOTTODO

EDIT: Check also this, if you have suggestions to do regarding to maps: (DO NOT LINK) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Maps. There're links to their topics, so you can drop your suggestions there instead of just saying "maps sucks" and nothing more.

Really you can only be disappointed with Joki. only about the section in which he posted this one , since there is a specific topic about suggestion ;-)

- add selected cvars from the OSP-mod like:
  - referee-system
  - complete control on client cvars-range (like server_timenudge_max -20: if a clien uses cl_timenudge -30 it will automatically change to -20 to get in allowed range)
  - timeout-system
  - cg_enemymodel
  - more custommizeable HUD
  - alt graphics especially for those hard to see grenades

referee system , control over client cvars range ( control over cl_maxpackets, snaps , rate ... I've proposed also to lock cl_yawspeed and cl_pitchspeed to their default value but they can be controlled server side to avoid scripts abuse .... conditioned delag activation according to the player's real ping - delag forced to 0 if ping is <= 50 ) , timeout system were all proposed in that topic and all WOULD NOT apport real changes in the gameplay ( even if OAX has introduced some changes , adds to the vanilla gameplay )

Ive proprosed to implement the CPMA SuperHud ( which should come as an independent system and its activation should be managed by a cvar like cg_enablesuperHud 1 ) to have the possibility of customizing HUD which doesn't mean necessarily to not have the default HUD.

Enemymodel , brighskins/PM-like skins and alt graphichs for some weapons to increase general visibility and general performances are also a good idea else we will continue to blame pro-like and pseudo-pro-like players that still want to use vertex light and their lego-quake-style config.

maps like czest1dm, fan, oa_dm5 (its just way too tight that you can dodge at all, leaving the map to turn into a a total spam-as-much-as-you-can-luck-fest), oa_pvomit or suspended and also most of these plain HORRIBLE designed ctf-maps are no advertisement for openarena at all. luckily there are a few good ones to name oa_rpg3dm2, oa_shine and maybe oadm4ish.

...

- change the audio for "pick up armor", "pick up quad/powerup", "power up spawned" to louder, unique ones, that are actually hearable. suckt to have to play with zzzq3sounds.pk3 all the time

I vote for removing cbctf1 , czest1tourney , fan and suspended : gameplay is really horrible ... I do not agree with you about czest1dm , oa_pvomit which are still acceptable.

About oa_dm5 and dm6ish : the OA071 versions are better than newer one . The old oa_dm5 looks really worse than newer but as a paradox ( or not ) I found it more playable than newer because general visibility was better without having to increase gamma and *overbrightbits . The retexturized version looks better but it's terribly darker. The same for old dm6ish.

This thing about the audio should be revised too because you can see also in some ( not so few ) videos that many players uses some q3 sounds ( eg ... in the latest I've seen I can hear clearly Keel and Xaero footsteps sounds )

[Joki]

Ok. Here is why i think some of the maps have flaws in their design

-> IMAGES

Please keep in mind, that this is my opinion about gameplay problems.
Most times the problem is:

- The floors are to small, giving players no option to avoid enemies' shots
- The floors are so small, players who have learnt some strafe-jumping and became better are punished
- The floors are so small, you feel like being thrown in prison
- The map layout doesn't really give players a choice of a route to take
  (HERE is a very good guide how to design maps)
  It doesn't matter if the maps are technically simple, as long as players have a decent choice where to go and items are distributed well
- Some times Red Armor and Mega Health are placed next to each other, while the rest (of a sometimes huge) of the map is not interesting for the player
  This leads to all the players suspending in 1 area while the rest of the map remains empty
- On some (especially space maps) maps the floor texture is so much overbright, its a challenge to see your (white) crosshair
- I know it's freeware and all, but it just looks like some of the maps were made without real dedication.

Edit:
- I'm not just being "negative". There are good ones too. For instance oa_rpg3dm2 is designed very well. The items are distributed very well, the layout is really nice,
allowing the player to chose from many routes from most points in the map, plus and the map looks good!

[Neon_Knight]

Here's a map I'm trying to do with competitive play in mind. I've entirely redone it from scratch, since I didn't liked too how it ended being.
http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=2860.0

[Joki]

It looks really nice. Hopefully your 2-layer-idea will work out.

[chaoticsoldier]

  - alt graphics especially for those hard to see grenades

That reminds me of something I created about a year ago.

Have a little fun with these in the meantime: http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=2386.msg18662#msg18662 

(but seriously, grenades were never meant to be really obvious).

[SharpestTool]

Falkland...

We've built in an admin system into OAX and which will be released in 0.8.5.  It should provide plenty of flexibility to function as the referee roll.  

Several commands that lend themselves to the "referee" roll.
!slap -- does a specified amount of damage to the specified player.  If the player is dead, it respawns the player and gibs them. (This is to seal up the possibility of a player using "/kill" to avoid the punishment.)

!disorient -- flips the screen of the specified player upside down/sideways or whatever.  (the undo command for this is of course !orient)

!warn -- Plays a whistle sound (currently not made), displays the warning to the player (and broadcasts its occurence to the others).  After a certain number of warnings the player is automatically kicked.  The max warnings and duration of the kick are both set by CVAR...(which I cant remember at this moment)

!lock -- locks the specified team from having players join.  This command can also lock out non-team games from being joined-since in the code players in these games are all part of the same team (team free).  

!mute -- mutes the specified player from chatting, using vsays (in missionpack), calling votes, and changing his/her name.  

!passvote/!cancelvote -- allows the admin to override the potential outcome of a vote.

Joki

2 Things.

1.  This project was meant to build a "free" game.  As a result we are unable to include maps, textures, models, sounds, and code which have a proprietary license--all contributions must be made under the GPLv2 license.  Maps are getting a lot better, and have progressed light-years from where they first were.   

2.  The decision to break compatibility with protocol 68 was one based on development requirements--not using a cd-key/pak0 check system. (plus a whole bunch of other reasons which I won't stand on a soap box about here!!! )

[fromhell]

You're missing !dance which forces the specified player to dance for a full minute. To make this look like (idiotic) dancing, one would have to make the legs play the turn animation indefinitely, while looping the death animation for the torso.

* fromhell misses the joyful Tribes HavocMod days

[SharpestTool]

lol...fromhell that could be done.

!dance SharpestTool 60

Finds a client number match for string SharpestTool
Overrides SharpestTool's gentity_t's "think" to use a function "g_checkDanceTime"
Sets SharpestTool's playerstate's "legsAnim" to the turn animation
Sets SharpestTool's playerstate's "legsTimer" to 60000 + level.time.

g_checkDanceTime would check current level.time versus the legsTimer, if its not greater than it...

KEEP DANCING!!!

And Falkland...what do you mean by a "Timeout" system?

We can implement a !timeout command where the specified player is put to spec for a certain period of time.  Or do you mean an Anti-camping system?

Most of the options that modify gameplay can be implemented...they just wont ever be turned on by default. 
For example in OA 0.8.5, we've put in killing sprees, death sprees, and multikills.   They have to be specified by the server though, and the server has to supply their own sounds. 

[sago007]

And Falkland...what do you mean by a "Timeout" system?

I think the idea is to pause the game during an online match (only relevant to clan matches, in public matches it would be abused), for team discussion or toilet break. The current pause system is not good enough in this case because it breaks all network transmissions too. (Letting the admin use pause would have been the easy solution)

I am not going to implement this because I am not going to use it. And if you don't use a function yourself you are bound to get it wrong.

[cosmo]

lol- Why not going to toilet or discussing a strategy BEFORE the match? Adding such a timeout feature will bring abusive things too.

@SharpestTool and sago: Is there a documentation for all the new stuff so server admins can enable and configure it? After Neon_Knight edited and reorganized the mapping stuff in OA wiki it got pretty inconsistent and confusing.

[sago007]

@cosmo: Such a function should obvious be disabled by default and implemented by someone who knows its true purpose.

http://code.google.com/p/oax/w/list has some information about the admin system although that wiki is not sorted so some pages are relevant to admins and some of it is only relevant to developers.

Information should properly be copied to the official wiki once it is implemented in the official release (but not before or it will create big confusion).

[Neon_Knight]

AFAIK, timeout can be used in tournaments when someone suddenly disconnects (losses his/her connection to the server and/or exits from the game for X or Y reason) and the match is stopped until the disconnected player is back or a certain amount of time has passed. After the latter, the match is resumed and the teams/players can play as always, with the exiting player coming back ASAP or being "banned" from the match until it ends.

Many local tournaments and clanwars/clanmatches I've played in UT2004 had that rule. (The servers used UTComp, which included that function, UTComp's code is GPL, but I don't know if that'll be usable on OA. Also, the site has closed on february of this year T_T)

EDIT: The source code for UTComp is available and downloadable on the page that I've linked.

[Falkland]

And Falkland...what do you mean by a "Timeout" system?

/timeout -> frezes the game for a tot seconds
/timein -> accelerate countdown to reprise the game before the timeout time interval is passed

It's used in duels ( at least I've used only in duels ) for example to modify settings if something is going wrong with them or to check the stats of your opponent ( catching for an eventual LG accuracy of 55 % ... LOL )

BTW some more controls over client cvars range should be implemented ( cl_maxpackets, snaps , rate , cl_yawspeed, cl_pitchspeed )

Something like this :

Quoted by xbattle setting : http://q3eu.com/docs-xbattle/xbattle-server-vars.html

...
- server_maxpackets_min - cl_maxpackets min. for the client : default 0 ( no limit, except the minimum limit of 30 )
- server_maxpackets_max - cl_maxpackets max. for the clients : default 0 ( no limit, except the maximum limit of 125 )
...
- server_rate_max - defines the maximum rate clients can vote via the maxrate vote option : default 25000
- server_rate_min - defines the minimum rate clients can vote via the maxrate vote option : default 3000
...

cl_timenudge is already forced by ioquake3 engine to the range -30 -- +30 which it seems reasonable enough.

Snaps should be always tuned with server's sv_fps ( client snaps == server's sv_fps )

EDIT : it seems that there are some magic values for sv_fps/snaps that minimize game snapshots loss : http://forums.urbanterror.net/topic/19188-wierd-behavior-of-the-engine-snapss-perhaps-important/

cl_yawspeed and cl_pitchspeed default value is 140 : this two cvars are used in an incredible amounts of scripts expecially RJ , CJ and STRAFE scripts . Forcing them to the default value will make all this script completely dumb ( REF : http://www.q3df.org/board/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=62&sid=ea837b955dfabcbd40f1399c5f1d56f2 )

EDIT2 : xbattle has also a control over unlagged netcode :

...
g_maxDelagPing       controls the delag netcode. n specify the max. delagping in ms the delagcode tries
              to compensate. this can help to reduce the sideeffects of delag, like get railed
              around the corner etc if the ping difference of the target and the attacker is too
              high.
              default 0 - max. compensation

              This command is only active when g_delagHitscan is '1' !

              example : g_maxDelagPing 150 - if a player has a ping of 200 then the delag netcode
                     only compensate 150 ms of the ping before doing the hitscan.
...

EDIT3 : sv_fps/snaps = 25 seems effectively to be the best value ... I've played a bit on my test server and I've made an empiric test ( sv_lanforcerate set to 0 ) trying with sv_fps/snaps lower , equal and higher than 25 ( max possible sv_fps is 30 for CPMA ) and the server cpu load seems to have the lowest value when sv_fps/snaps is 25. Also the client seems to run in a more accurate way.

A check of the CPU load in bigger servers using different sv_fps values while a higher number of clients is connected ( which all should have snaps equal to server sv_fps ) should be done to confirm this thing : better do the test on a clan/private server ( so to be sure having all client with snaps set equal to server sv_fps ) ; the server has to be restarted after changing sv_fps and the clients should reconnect after changing snaps accordly to the new sv_fps value.