Nepenthe Update - Early October 2006

[Flitterkill]

We are in all likelihood no more than 6 months away from the UT2K7 demo - perhaps 4 even.

 

As we ride out these last few months before the change over (the idea is to flip to the 2K7 demo immediately when it drops though that might change depending on ???), I'll try to dredge out maps from the ancient days of Summer/Fall 2004.

 

So, for now:

 

1) Primeval can stay.

For now. It makes the annoyingly dangerous Bushwack happy. Did you know that someone made a Primeval Winters? Same map, no veggies. Might flip that in for std. Primeval at some time in the future. Or swap with Frostbite.

 

 

2) I am open to flipping the jolt link setups back on for Arctic Stronghold and Dria.

Let me know what you think.

 

 

3) With jolt setups (and my custom link setups - see below) the front page of the gc website will no longer display the happy little thumbnail pic of the current map.

This is becuase when a non-std link setup is used, the map name has an "*" appended to the end of the name for server browsing purposes. The code that grabs that information sees a given map not as ONS-Arctic Stronghold but as ONS-Arctic Stronghold* - You can imagine how that * wreaks havoc with filesystems attempting to match the thumbnail pic

 

Regardless - the thumbnail stuff has been disabled for most of the CS servers for a while now (security issue?) so no big deal.

 

 

4) Current rotation as of October 3rd.

 

Torlan

Severance

Chain Isle 2

Dria

Blue Summit <NEW>

Crossfire

Primeval

Dawn

UP-Camo <NEW>

Arctic Stronghold

IronFist5N <NEW>

 

Of course, by new, I mean old but new here.

 

 

UP-Camo you will probably vaguely remember. Hey - want avrils? Take the jump pad in front of the hill right in front of your base. Not only does a raptor live up there but also avrils galore and the classic sniper rifle!

 

 

BlueSummit and IronFist5N you probably will not remember. These two have had thier node configs adjusted to be a bit more competitive (two paths to respective bases with ability to cut off via middle path)

 

 

BlueSummit is your generic hilly terrain - Room to move - Room to frag.

 

 

 

IronFist5N seems really good - more play might show some big flaws but after a run thru or two it seems like a more than solid map.

 

Both maps - There is shock but not in every locker - hit them all to better your odds.

 

5) Server size is 18, however, as some of you have noted, occasionally we have 20 or 22 playing. So what gives?

 

Recall that our reserves are now of the expand # of slots variety. If the server is full and you have a reserve, server size bumps to 19 and in you come. Another GC wants in? Server size now 20. Non-GC leaves? Back to 19. Etc.

 

6) Halloween loadout soon.

 

Zombies were fun but that takes us non-std. In a week or so, ONS-Halloween goes into rotation along with Halloween Masks mutator (we remain on Std. servers list)

 

As for candy, I haven't found a mutator that would allow bonus drops that is whitelisted (stay std. server) yet. I'll keep looking though...

 

-Fk

[Dingy]

Interesting.

I might be a minority, but I kind of liked the jolt links. Makes everything a bit more of a pain.

The one thing I did notice though is that with the "alternate" maps, we didn't seem to get as

many folks playing (or is it just me)?

 

BTW - How hard would it be to enable the translocators? After all, they do make a pretty good

weapon when you have nothing else to use (well, that and the shield).

Edited October 5, 2006 by Dingy

[bushwack]

Thanks for the Primeval Flittr. Good thing about Prime is if the teams are off the game will only last a minute -not enough time for people to complain about the teams being uneven. Also seems last night the server was somewhat empty untill Primeval came up, then the server was packed, and was so for a few maps untill BlueSummit came up. Guess people didn't want to load a new map or like me didn't care for it (I don't ). The Camo map is good with a full server but those pesky side node turrets can reach the bridge lol.

 

The Holloween mod is cool just don't over do the power-ups and monsters.

[Tek-Almighty]

Change is good and new mapage is gooder.

 

Thanks for all your hard work, FK!

[Flitterkill]

No monsters, probably no candy either.

 

Just the halloween map and masks.

 

As usual, as far as the maps go, one checks the logs and get equal measures of "this map is teh suckage" and "this is great".

 

Blue Summit is nothing special at all, Ironfist I think is interesting, and Camo is definately a more difficult change of pace. I think the turrets reaching the bridge is on purpose - at least they can't hurt the nodes like they used to long ago.

 

You guys want to stick with 2 point per map or go back to 3?

 

-Fk

[bushwack]

You guys want to stick with 2 point per map or go back to 3?

 

-Fk

The 2 point win works on longer maps that go into overtime like Dria when you could play it like 5 times...I've seen it happen, lol I've seen Dria go well past an hour. Or Severence when your primary goes down the first minute then there is 9 more minutes of pain with no hope of comming back, even on the next try. (you know Red Planet is the same way but worse)

 

But some people want a rematch, and at anytime more join and can change the game.

 

But I don't care, six of one, a half dozen of the other.

[Lex]

You guys want to stick with 2 point per map or go back to 3?

 

 

Stick with 2 points please. I enjoy not having to play a map for more then 50 mins.

[Flitterkill]

Radical thought...

 

What if we went with 5 minute rounds?

 

<whispers in the air> He's insane! take his admin access away before he does it! </whispers in the air>

 

With 5 minute rounds *and* 2 points ftw that would mean that more of the maps would clip into overtime - however - we still would not have ginormous length matches. Figure it takes a couple of minutes to drain cores - worst case another 5+ minutes if both cores are still at full. With 5 minute rounds, 3 rounds of Dria (5 min + OT, alternating sides win, 3 times around) would chime in at a bit over 30 minutes.

 

Could even set the time to... say... 7 minutes - and prob achieve the same thing. Guarantees an extra play or two on the same map, but, keeps the total map length down to 30 minutes or less.

 

Thoughts? I too would sometimes like another stab at Torlan or the new maps but they do seem to go quik these days...

 

-Fk

[Dingy]

Hmm. Interesting thought Flitter. Might be worth looking at.

BTW - I take it that you are going as Dr. Evil for Haloween?