2025 Server change requests

[joeblow]

Very sorry about the server being down. I have wanted to write this up for a while but lost my notes.

5 points. Here it goes. Apologize for my bad English as always.

1. Tick rate on the server needs to be lowered maybe 5 points. Im guessing its set between 45 and 50. Its fine on big maps but the small maps with tight spawn points people are spawning all the time at nodes that are being full blown attacked. There some unregs also that I think a slightly lower tick rate would help.

2. The balancer, and by that I mean the Titan team fix must be off or something, We are getting alot of matches with the player count is lop sided by two players or more. This is with lower player counts of 10-12. People are leaving due to this. No one wants to play 2 players down. I got a bunch of screen shots if needed. Its hurting the slower server times alot.

The next 3 are mostly in game play or map related.

3. The flying tanks need the mini gun removed or mini gun damage addressed, you can down a Mino tank in less than 45 secs with little way to attack a flyer if hiding in the cloud cover( AKA fog off/Open gl) just few players abuse this but it needs to addressed. Nevermore map is the big one.

4. Turret damage on nodes. Get rid of this. Again ruins maps like Bitch slap and Captains with people seeing across the map and shooting nodes others cant see thru the fog. Bitch slap its just stupid the turret has direct line of sight to the middle node. Game was never setup that way.

5. What happened to the 30 of so new maps we tried out last year. I think one made it in? Needs an update.

Thanks for looking!

[EmanReleipS]

Hi Joe, thanks for the suggestions.

1. Tick rate on the server needs to be lowered maybe 5 points. Im guessing its set between 45 and 50. Its fine on big maps but the small maps with tight spawn points people are spawning all the time at nodes that are being full blown attacked. There some unregs also that I think a slightly lower tick rate would help.

We are at a tick rate of 50 right now. I can easily adjust this down by 5 points and see if that helps. I'll let you know once it is changed.

2. The balancer, and by that I mean the Titan team fix must be off or something, We are getting alot of matches with the player count is lop sided by two players or more. This is with lower player counts of 10-12. People are leaving due to this. No one wants to play 2 players down. I got a bunch of screen shots if needed. Its hurting the slower server times alot.

It's on. We could try turning it off and also try letting EvenMatch balance during matches instead of just at the start, to see if this is a bit better. I think the main bulk of this discussion is in this topic here.

3. The flying tanks need the mini gun removed or mini gun damage addressed, you can down a Mino tank in less than 45 secs with little way to attack a flyer if hiding in the cloud cover( AKA fog off/Open gl) just few players abuse this but it needs to addressed. Nevermore map is the big one.

I don't know how to remove the mini guns, sorry.
I can potentially decrease their damage and save the flying tank again as a new vehicle with a modified name, but it would only affect that one map.
Another idea would be to swap them with a different vehicle, or to change Nevermore to another edit. There's a version called ONS-Nevermore-ECE-T32-2019CAE, which is much nicer in my opinion and has a more standard vehicle selection. Unfortunately the tank crowd seems to prefer the TankMeUp version that we currently have online. What do you think?

4. Turret damage on nodes. Get rid of this. Again ruins maps like Bitch slap and Captains with people seeing across the map and shooting nodes others cant see thru the fog. Bitch slap its just stupid the turret has direct line of sight to the middle node. Game was never setup that way.

I can check in the editor if it is possible to make the nodes immune to the damage type of the turrets, but I'm unsure if this would affect the player guns as well.

At least for Bitch Slap, I think adding a shield or wall to protect the door entrance of the middle node would be a good idea in general. Occasionally tanks will shoot directly into the room, killing everyone who spawns in there. This is much less of a problem since the doors can no longer be destroyed with the "exploding manta inside door" bug, but the doors will still open frequently enough that it is possible to shoot into the room with vehicles or with the turrets.

Which turrets are the problem on CaptainSors? Is it the ones at the bases or the ones on top of the middle primaries? Which nodes are they shooting at?

5. What happened to the 30 of so new maps we tried out last year. I think one made it in? Needs an update.

Two of them are on the roster now: ONS-DG-Meadowland-C-V1-32p & ONS-Julia-C-V2-12p.

The short answer is that I compiled a list of maps to edit based on the public testing.

The longer answer is here:

Map Testing Summary.JPG

After comparing the amount of players on each map, how often they were played, and how long the matches went, I isolated the green maps on the right side as the most promising ones for an edit. The idea behind the public testing was to both receive ideas about what should be changed, but also to figure out if these maps would be accepted well by our player base. In the past, our mappers have poured countless hours into maps that people simply never played, so we were hoping to avoid this in the future.
At the same time, the metrics that I used are also a bit flawed, because they are highly dependent on how well optimized a map already was at the time of the public testing, and the average play time is especially dependent on the node setup/layout, which is often one of the major or first things that we edit. So I did not exclusively limit myself to looking into the maps on the far right side.

Meadowlands is the one the received an edit first, because it was also one of the qualitively best ones and seemed to be liked well.
Downtown seems great, but I haven't figured out yet which pre-existing edit would be the best as a basis for an edit for us. There are a few edits out there already, with some weird differences (textures looking great in one version and shit in another). I need to do more groundwork before I can tackle that one.
IronFist is oddly familiar to me and I'm hoping there is already an edit of it floating around, but I can't find anything.
I decided to edit Julia despite it not being on the list on the right side because I personally liked it a lot, and had many ideas for an edit.
ONS-FBU-Stonehaven was one that our players seemed to like based on the in-game chat, but the main verdict was "it is too big" and I haven't been able to figure out how to shrink a map in the editor...

The problem is that I'm the only left doing any editing for CEONSS, so while the maps from the testing are "next in line" for an edit, they will only receive one when I can get around to it, and only if I have the necessary editing skills to make the changes.

I considered posting a long analysis of the testing results in the testing thread, but no one seemed too interested in the topic. And I also didn't feel like potentially arguing about the metrics that I used to come up with the list of maps to edit if I'm effectively the only one doing any work anyway. I decided to be less strict about only editing the green maps on the right side and decided that the "motivation of the editor to edit this map" needed to play a bigger role as well, and that is how we got ONS-Julia.

In the end, I will just pick maps that seem reasonably worthwhile to me from the testing project for my next edits. In the meantime I received an offer to use a map from OMNI that would need to be "de-omnified" but might make a nice addition to the server. I'm hoping I can do some editing once I'm on maternity leave, but realistically new maps will be few and far between.

On that note, if you have a personal favorite among the maps that we tested, Joe, and you read this entire block of text by some miracle, let me know and I will take a look at that map next.

[joeblow]

Thanks for the time Ema

The balancer was as to player count. its been 7 vs 5 all afternoon. I just read your last post on that other thread. I totally missed it. I suspect the blue team was getting stacked. Good grab on that. I just played at 6 pm EST on tank me up and it seemed to be switching fast but there were 24 players on.

As far as EDIT Energy turrets doing damage to nodes. Its every map. Not sure when that was modified. Wild guess same as the mini gun flyer deal. I dont like Nevermore map but that ECE one is better. I think Miaz55555 made the mods might ask him.

Thanks again getting the server back up.

[EmanReleipS]

ONS-Nevermore-ECE-T32-2019CAE has replaced ONS-Nevermore-TankMeUp-RC1-SP2.

I've lowered the tickrate from 50 to 45. Please let me know if that helps.

I read your in-game chat and I also remember that the energy turrets could not damage nodes for many years. I've tested it offline and the energy turrets on CaptainSors do damage the nodes, so it's nothing specific to our server per se. But after testing it in the editor on Stock Primeval, I found that the stock nodes do not take damage from energy turrets, but the OnslaughtSpecial nodes that we are using in the vast majority of our maps on CEONSS do take damage from energy turrets. So we are not collectively hallucinating that something has changed.

The OnslaughtSpecials bring a bunch of benefits with them, so I will certainly keep using them for future edits and I'm not going to remove them from edits because of this. I also find it more intuitive that the turrets are able to damage nodes, rather than there being exceptions to what can get damaged from them.

But I will need to come up with some ideas now for CaptainSors. Again, please let me know which turrets are the problem here and which nodes they are shooting at. CaptainSors' design is deliberately quite open, so I think adding shields around nodes would go against the concept of the map, but maybe moving the position of the turrets would be an idea.

[joeblow]

Thanks again for looking. Do you ever sleep? Have Daly double the foot rubs from here in out.

Yeah the problem is its just a few maps that an Energy turret has direct aim on a node. Personally I just hate it like mentioned above. I guess that makes me a purist.

On Captain Gordons its the turret on top of the bones. It has clear vision of the other node (bones) and 3 other wing nodes. One player like E bola,Sana or Elect(belldonna) with there fog turned off can control the whole map by keeping those 3 nodes down.

Bitch slap map the turrets are just right on top of the node and the turret respawn time is very very low. There easy to destroy but pop right back up.

Again thanks for looking and I do apologize for my language on the server last night.

[joeblow]

https://unrealarchive.org/unreal-tourna ... cbbdd.html


https://unrealarchive.org/unreal-tourna ... f5567.html

24 spider mine payout make the CPU beg to go offline.

[EmanReleipS]

Thanks again for looking. Do you ever sleep? Have Daly double the foot rubs from here in out.

Thanks, I actually need a lot more sleep these days, but the quality is unfortunately quite bad.

Yeah the problem is its just a few maps that an Energy turret has direct aim on a node. Personally I just hate it like mentioned above. I guess that makes me a purist.

On Captain Gordons its the turret on top of the bones. It has clear vision of the other node (bones) and 3 other wing nodes. One player like E bola,Sana or Elect(belldonna) with there fog turned off can control the whole map by keeping those 3 nodes down.

Thanks, I will need to brainstorm a bit to see what can be done about this.

Those players might not have their fog turned off, though. Hate to say it, but you might be playing on a toaster.

I have fog turned on but the fog distance is set to maximum (slider is all the way to the right side), and I can also see all 3 nodes from the turret without any problems. If I reduce the fog distance to minimum (slider all the way to the left side), then I can only see 1 node.

With fog on but set to maximum distance:

Fogon.jpg

Fogon2.jpg

This is the slider setting for the above screenshots:

Fogon3.jpg

With the fog distance slider all the way to the right side, I can only see 1 node:

Fogon4.jpg

Which setting are you at? Are you able to adjust the slider all the way to the right side in the settings or will your PC struggle?

[joeblow]

Getting off topic...

viewtopic.php?t=323&hilit=Sana&start=10

page 2 they posted her build in public.

Log: Enter SetRes: 1920x1080 Fullscreen 1
Log: Using pixel format 7
Log: GL_VENDOR : NVIDIA Corporation
Log: GL_RENDERER : GeForce GTX 650/PCIe/SSE2
Log: GL_VERSION : 4.4.0
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_EXT_bgra
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_ARB_texture_compression
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_ARB_texture_cube_map
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_ARB_texture_env_combine
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_NV_texture_env_combine4
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_ARB_multitexture
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_NV_vertex_array_range
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_NV_vertex_array_range2
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_ARB_multisample
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_NV_multisample_filter_hint
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: WGL_EXT_swap_control
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_ARB_fragment_program
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_ARB_vertex_program
Log: OpenGL: Device supports: GL_EXT_framebuffer_object
Log: OpenGL: C32 RGB888 Z24 S0


There is nothing wrong with playing UT2004 with Open GL EXCEPT you can turn your fog off on maps. The game was sent using DDr3. You cant do it in that mode.

Thats why some players like the maps with the fog...they have an edge. Again free country and all.

I actually bought this same exact video card to do it to but I cant get the driver to go on my XP setup...and Sana wont help me...very sad.

My suggestion when this came up on the DW ONS server 15 years ago is remove or reduce the fog in game to make it fair for me with my XP box and 3 gigs of ram vs Dave with his 32 gigs of ran 8 core, 64 bit patched every way but sideways,1000 dollar videocard and 16 ping. But hey thats me.

[EmanReleipS]

Getting off topic...

Off topic, but I'll bite.

There is nothing wrong with playing UT2004 with Open GL EXCEPT you can turn your fog off on maps. The game was sent using DDr3. You cant do it in that mode.

We don't know Sana's reasons for using Open GL. I'm not very knowledgeable about the different drivers and what Open GL does, but some people claim it improves the performance/fps. Assuming that she is still using the GeForce GTX 650 from that 5 year old error log, she may just have been after improving her performance. We don't know, nor does it matter too much because it isn't against the server rules to turn off the fog.

My suggestion when this came up on the DW ONS server 15 years ago is remove or reduce the fog in game to make it fair for me with my XP box and 3 gigs of ram vs Dave with his 32 gigs of ran 8 core, 64 bit patched every way but sideways,1000 dollar videocard and 16 ping. But hey thats me.

Removing the fog server-side is a bad idea. The fog isn't purely decorative, it also helps to improve game performance, especially for players like you who are playing on toasters. The fog limits the information that the game needs to render for you. That is why most games include some adjustable setting for distance fog/draw distance. If we were to remove the fog server-side, we'd risk tanking the performance of those maps for anyone on lower spec pcs, but without giving them the option of putting it back. It is much better if players adjust these settings on their own accord, based on what their pcs can handle.

Have you tried moving that fog distance slider all the way to the right side to maximize the fog distance? If that already tanks your fps, then turning the fog off would only be worse.

XP box and 3 gigs of ram vs Dave with his 32 gigs of ran 8 core, 64 bit patched every way but sideways,1000 dollar videocard and 16 ping

Things will never be "fair" unless all players played on the exact same pc builds with the exact same settings and ideally sitting in the exact same house near the server's location in Frankfurt, Germany, to rule out any ping differences. Anything less and you will get variations in the in-game performance.

Hate to say it, but there is no way of making this completely fair in this regard (unless you move in with Dave and borrow his pc).