Spring RTS Engine

A few suggestions for game hosting \o/

1) Auto-Balance/Cbalance : when big games are a bit slow to get all the needed players, theres a lot of player that join/left, and the game host have to re-balance everytime someone joins. This option would re-balance automatically when a player joins or leaves.

2) Comsharing considered as 1 player : When two players share the same team, they are still considered as 2 distinct players for the team balances. I think its one of the reasons comsharing isnt used much.

3) Auto balances breaks the comsharing alliances. I guess its because when two players join a game at the same time they tend to come with the same ID. I suggest to add an auto check at the moment they join so they dont get the same ID as another player present/joining. So the only way two players could share the same ID is because they decided it, and autobalance wouldnt have to change IDs.

4) Engagement : Im not sure if its the right word. Im not sure if its a good idea either, but here it is : Its a pain when you wait for the last player to join and some impatient player leave the lobby. There could be an option at the battle room creation like rank limit : "minimum wait". You choose a wait in minutes (like 5 minutes) and players joining the battle would have a notice asking if they agree on this wait engagement. If they do, they cant leave the battle before x mins, (or they cant join another battle, information being saved into the player account so even quitting server / rejoining wouldnt allow the player to get in a new game - the delay being reseted if the battle starts / is closed / is locked).

5) Fixed position setting : Ability to set the "order" value of a player like you can change his team or ID. Usefull to play 1vsX AI.

6) $Local sorting : Players list sorting doesnt work on the $Local tab.

7) Player Status Icon visual : Maybe a little selfish, but since I am colorblind, player status icons in player list are hard to read : I cant tell the difference between "free" and "participating in a battle" icons. Maybe set different shapes for those icons ?

8) Player / Game notice : Maybe that already exist but I dont know where : Having a sound / message notice when selected player get online or exits a game (so you can chat), and a notice when selected game is open/unlocked - so you know when autohost are opened again (the bigger games are usually on those).

9) Player search mode modification : when issuing a search order in the player list, only the first occurence is highlighted. I think a constant input zone could be more convenient : type your search string and only player names including that search string are included.
Also you could use spaces to have multiple keywords, which would allow to show only players from clans "[AAA]" and clan "[BBB]".

10) Multiple selection in Replays menu : So you can delete multiples files at once without using OS file system.

I think thats all for now :D

Yatta wrote: Player / Game notice : Maybe that already exist but I dont know where : Having a sound / message notice when selected player get online or exits a game (so you can chat), and a notice when selected game is open/unlocked - so you know when autohost are opened again (the bigger games are usually on those).

You can use StatServ bot for this. For example sending "!monitor endgame playerName" in private to StatServ will notify you by a private message when "playerName" exits his game.
Details here.

6) $Local sorting : Players list sorting doesnt work on the $Local tab.

Read through the options pages before making suggestions.

4) Engagement : Im not sure if its the right word. Im not sure if its a good idea either, but here it is : Its a pain when you wait for the last player to join and some impatient player leave the lobby. There could be an option at the battle room creation like rank limit : "minimum wait". You choose a wait in minutes (like 5 minutes) and players joining the battle would have a notice asking if they agree on this wait engagement. If they do, they cant leave the battle before x mins, (or they cant join another battle, information being saved into the player account so even quitting server / rejoining wouldnt allow the player to get in a new game - the delay being reseted if the battle starts / is closed / is locked).

Just not a good idea.

thanks bibim

1) i guess you'll be able to do that with scripting soon, i'll add balance api, fix colors api etc (you can still make it but you'll have to make your own balance algorithm in python)

2) the team balance have 2parameters : team and players per team i won't change that (adding special case each time is bad)

3) see 2

4) you can't force people to stay ... if you have 11 players and are waiting for the 12th, just ring until only one player is not ready and kick him balance and go :)

5) for player vs ai use the SP skirmish mode (maybe i'll add the select start pos in lobby later)

6) it's optional now, check your interface options

7) i'll make new ones later (or give me new nice icons)

make groups, right click on someone, add to groups, then manage the groups and check the options you want (don't forget you can join battles by clicking on notifications msg)

you can also add your own notification using scripts

9) i'll see if i can do that, it's not a bad idea

10) for now selecting a battle show the options on that battle : displaying information, grade, rename etc, i'd have to change a lot of stuff to make multiple selection possible, anyway there is a "delete all visible" button, if you can manage to make a filter that only show the replay you want to delete then use it (for exemple you can show only replay with file size < 100kB and delete them)

for now the features are frozen until 0.77 get released, you can still report bugs

I think it would be cool to put more emphasis on the map rating system. We have such a huge amount of maps available now, it is hard to browse them and to find the good ones. Currently the map rating system is barely used and only a few maps have a decent amount of votes.

How about showing a map's rating and the button to rate a map directly in the battle room (maybe beside the minimap)? While waiting for the game to start the players could give their rating which could IMHO greatly increase the number of votes for the maps.
I know it is atm already possible to give map votes while waiting for a game to start but apparently its not used very frequently.

from the server perspective, I hate the current map rating system and want it to go away

From my perspective, I like cookies and I want one

what do you mean? why is that bad in server perspective?

right now, client sends a huge list of map hashes and server returns a similarly huge list (with global ratings) when you sync map hashes

from my perspective, we either use a better system or it is removed from the server

Letting it work for just the map that is currently used would be much better.

then you must select a map to see the grade?

You dont have to update it everytime you go check maps, the number can be rounded to number.otherNumber and then you just let it only update the ones which rounded rating changed and/or have got more than x ratings.

you have never written a game lobby server

Wow, how did you know?

Random feature request: Put a description box under the "My options" box, there's a lot of space there that's used for nothing and imo, servers need a seperate area for constant messages. Spamming the description each time someone joins gets a bit annoying.

On the negative side, it isn't exactly a logical place to put it.

Yatta wrote: 6) $Local sorting : Players list sorting doesnt work on the $Local tab.

Get the latest beta client, where you do have the option to sort.

And oh yeah, can we PLEASE get some sort of map organization system going? Ie, sort by size, area, recommended players, start positions, etc...

You can sort by size, name and rating already.

the rating system should be available for download website, caching the result and updating it every 2hours, so people would vote in the lobby and if you don't have the map you can see the best rated maps on springfiles etc

Satirik wrote:the rating system should be available for download website, caching the result and updating it every 2hours, so people would vote in the lobby and if you don't have the map you can see the best rated maps on springfiles etc

++

Tasclient interfears with everything, it makes firefox slow, and games (non spring) crash / freeze, please, fix it, it's very annoying.