Feature Priorities

punkUser · Post by **punkUser** » 26 Jun 2013, 00:35

Ok guys I thought I'd start a discussion on what priority various metaserver features are so I can prioritize implementation.

A few notes up front... some of these features are obviously going to take longer than others, so in the interest of not blocking implementing smaller features, I may not strictly respect the requested ordering. That said, if you guys absolutely think that something like metaserver routing is way more important than all of the short-term stuff and I should devote 100% of my time to that, that's useful for me to know too.

Also note that features that require changes to the myth client (i.e. the game EXE) will necessarily take longer to be rolled out, since they depend on the release schedule of the client itself. A lot of the most compelling features do require client changes though, so don't let it really affect your ordering, just your expectations.

I'll roughly sort them into whether they are likely to be short, medium or longer-term features (in terms of how long they will take to implement). Of course the longer term stuff is harder to speculate on exact timeline as well.

Please also feel free to add your own items to this list, but let me get a few out of the way right off the bat that are unlikely:

Changing nicknames using the same login - we've been over this one in other threads
Gimmicky stuff like .bacon, .floyn, etc. - seriously, I don't think this is a good use of my time compared to all the real stuff
Stuff that can be just as easily accomplished elsewhere, so for instance stuff like the "messages" and inboxes on MariusNet. Forum PMs are a better solution for that and the metaserver will already inform you when you login if you have unread PMs in a blue bar.

Ok now for the real stuff, in no particular order (so far, may reorganize later).

Short:

Wank
Replay download counter
Tournament team stats (in addition to player stats)
Custom tournament team scoring (requires team stats)
Ingame stats (http://games.gateofstorms.net/users in the "Stats" screen) - implemented
Who's online - implemented - raw data at http://gateofstorms.net:8080/status.json
Integrate articles archive (from TheGjol) into forum posts - done
Tourney replay renaming on download - implemented
Coop time started - implemented via ".games"
Custom tournament player scoring - implemented
Rank icons as "rewards" for tourney wins, etc. - implemented

Medium:

Spectate films/live from metaserver
Metaserver routing (anyone can host, adds some latency) - implemented, requires 1.8.1 client
Ranking system (of some form) - implemented

Long:

Multiplayer "cloud" save games (on metaserver)

So have it. Sort that into your personal priority list and add stuff that's missing.

GodzFire · Post by **GodzFire** » 26 Jun 2013, 02:58

Can you please point me to the thread where the changing nickname has been discussed? That's my biggest request as I always felt this was a unique feature with Bungie/Marius.Net.

EDIT: I forgot, would chat Select/Copy/Paste require a bunch of client work?

punkUser · Post by **punkUser** » 26 Jun 2013, 03:05

GodzFire wrote:Can you please point me to the thread where the changing nickname has been discussed? That's my biggest request as I always felt this was a unique feature with Bungie/Marius.Net.

It's over a bunch of places, just do a search in the forums. Suffice it to say, it's not designed to work that way, but guests will always be allowed to use any unregistered name with no real restrictions.

GodzFire wrote: EDIT: I forgot, would chat Select/Copy/Paste require a bunch of client work?

That's entirely client.

NewMutator · Post by **NewMutator** » 26 Jun 2013, 04:43

Spectate films
Metaserver Routing
Tourny Team Stats
Replay DL counter
Multiplayer Save
Replay renaming
Who's Online
Ingame Stats
Rank icons / system
Coop Time Started
Article Integration
Wank
Afk

But I'm biased.

dac · Post by **dac** » 26 Jun 2013, 04:55

copy/paste/follow links in lobby.

i want hits for my porn sites

Giant Killer General · Post by **Giant Killer General** » 26 Jun 2013, 18:17

100% agree on the useless feature requests mentioned that should not be implemented.

as far as priorities, I would err on the side of doing the short stuff first, and whatever you (punk) feel like coding at the particular time. If you have ideas on how to code something, and feel like tackling that first, then go for it. Only if you are indifferent would I consult the community's opinions here on priorities. I am sure this is what you kind of already had in mind anyway.

Just a nice trickle of new stuff every now and then would keep things fresh and add a little excitement for everyone. It seems like you have a good handle on it here, I don't see any really dumb features that would be a waste.

punkUser · Post by **punkUser** » 26 Jun 2013, 18:28

Giant Killer General wrote: as far as priorities, I would err on the side of doing the short stuff first, and whatever you (punk) feel like coding at the particular time. If you have ideas on how to code something, and feel like tackling that first, then go for it. Only if you are indifferent would I consult the community's opinions here on priorities. I am sure this is what you kind of already had in mind anyway.

Yeah I was sort of getting at that with my comment about "even if you all love the medium/long-term stuff, I might not let that completely block doing some of the easier stuff as well".

So I'd still love some prioritized lists just for feedback purposes, but let me as a few more specific questions... how much do people care about:
- Ghol articles: I have them, but they are all HTML-formatted (and quite heavily) so I need to reformat them to bbcode for the forums. Mostly busy-work, but if people really care I can do it at some point.
- Wank: some people strongly want this, others don't really care. It's not trivial, but it's not terribly hard, so looking for a rough idea on how much people care.
- Afk: pretty easy, but makes a few things a bit messy in the code. Is dimming your name really that important, especially since it can't really be done automatically anyways? Even people who are not dimmed are often afk, so how useful is it really?
- Coop time started: fairly easy, but the time will probably be inconsistent with the .time output which was changed to EDT recently to match MariusNet (but the server is really PDT). Do people care about the discrepancy? After MWC is it reasonable to set the .time output back to PDT to make it align better?

Also looking for some input on what to do with rank icons. It's pretty easy to use them as "rewards" for tournaments for instance, but should we make them timed rewards or similar? What about people who win multiple tournaments? Should we start people out at lower icons (daggers) and move up as they get more wins or something? All speculative, but I know people like icons and stuff like that so I figured it might be a fun way to use them and some motivation to participate in tournaments in the meantime.

Rest of the stuff is pretty clear that I'll implement at some point, but if there's a feature that is way more important to people sooner rather than later, that's useful to know.

Note as well that the web site can be improved too (a fair bit), but that's mostly someone else doing it (and how much time he puts in is up to him of course) so I'm not really including that stuff on this list.

Pyro · Post by **Pyro** » 26 Jun 2013, 18:43

I would imagine a lot of the players simply don't feel too strongly about a lot of these items as it doesn't stop them from playing. For example, the afk command is not that useful if people who don't use it already go afk. Wank is useful to some but that means less players can play, maybe a good idea not to add that one quickly.

The coop time is only useful in really long games to judge if a game just started or if its nearly over due to winning or increased chance of failure. So only useful for a small part of games. Does it really matter what timezone the server time truly belongs on? Could keep it EDT for the players that can't keep up or even move it to something more universal like GMT. I'm sure some players already know what +/- hours from GMT their timezone is on.

Giant Killer General · Post by **Giant Killer General** » 26 Jun 2013, 19:03

This is the order that I would loosely suggest.

Tournament season priorities: try to get these in for the tourney season over the next 3 months. more time-sensitive
1) tournament team stats - since MWC has started, this is the most time-critical (though not the most important)
2) tourney replay renaming on download - this is pretty important, I would download a shitload more films if they were already named and organized well for me. as it is now, it is too much of a pain in the ass.
3) in-game stats - I don't fully understand what it entails, but if it is short, and adds stats functionality, well worth it. Stats features should take priority during mwc season for tournaments.
4) replay download counter - again, an interesting stat that might add interest / use to the website, sorting by most downloaded games, etc. This combined with the replay renaming, would be very very useful.
5) Rank icons as "rewards" for tourney wins, etc. NOTE: Might get superseded once there's a ranking system down the road. - this should tried to be scheduled in for soon after the tournaments (mwc and mfc) wrap up.

Off season priorities: these are still important, but not time-sensitive at all really
6) Who's online - since it is short, and I feel like it would add value, get people accustomed to using the new site, etc.
7) integrate articles
8) wank
9) afk
10) coop time started
11) Spectate films/live from metaserver
12) metaserver routing
13) ranking system
14) multiplayer cloud save games on metaserver (not sure what this is)

adrenaline · Post by **adrenaline** » 27 Jun 2013, 14:41

- a new color/pattern for contested flags (i.e. checkered -- been asking for this for years!)
- replay download counter -- this would be interesting to see!
- the rest... whatever. all would be nice to see eventually.

punkUser · Post by **punkUser** » 27 Jun 2013, 18:28

adrenaline wrote:- a new color/pattern for contested flags (i.e. checkered -- been asking for this for years!)

Yep, that's a Myth client feature, but it's definitely known by Project Magma. Will see if I can bring it up again and figure out how easy/hard it is to do.

dac · Post by **dac** » 27 Jun 2013, 18:33

1 Spectate films/live from metaserver
2 Tournament team stats (in addition to play stats)
3 Who's online (likely tied in to spongefile's app/web site)
4 Integrate articles archive (from TheGjol) into forum posts
(if its heavy html format thats killing you let me know and I'll try to squeeze time in to write a script to convert it)
5 Ingame stats (http://games.gateofstorms.net/users in the "Stats" screen)
6 Tourney replay renaming on download
7 Replay download counter
8 Metaserver routing (anyone can host, adds some latency if you would otherwise have been unable to)
9 Multiplayer "cloud" save games (on metaserver)
10 Ranking system (of some form)
11 Wank
12 Afk
13 Coop time started (modify game name or similar like Mnet does)
14 Rank icons as "rewards" for tourney wins, etc. NOTE: Might get superseded once there's a ranking system down the road.

new feature request on client: allow films to be saved in folders as recordings. would be awesome to group films so it's not such a huge clusterfuck and you wont have to start their names with your organization system. this is an enhancement of course on the renaming on download.

NewMutator · Post by **NewMutator** » 27 Jun 2013, 20:11

Another feature request: Join a game in progress.

Not sure how difficult that would be but something that could be considered.

punkUser · Post by **punkUser** » 27 Jun 2013, 20:30

dac wrote: new feature request on client: allow films to be saved in folders as recordings. would be awesome to group films so it's not such a huge clusterfuck and you wont have to start their names with your organization system. this is an enhancement of course on the renaming on download.

Yeah one thing we're going to do in the short term is allow double-clicking on films or similar to open up myth and view them without them having to be within the specific directory. This is easier than adding UI to navigate directory structures to the game for the short term, and you'll notice we've already added a ".m2rec" extension to the files downloaded from GoS.

NewMutator wrote:Another feature request: Join a game in progress.

Yes I should have had that one in the initial list in the "long term" category.

NewMutator · Post by **NewMutator** » 27 Jun 2013, 20:50

Oh, also, allow chat amongst observers. Not sure if that's client or not but that's a standard for other games from what I can tell.

dac · Post by **dac** » 27 Jun 2013, 22:10

what ln said x10000.

hosting as an observer punishes you by not being able to interact with anybody, even other observers.

i want there to be an option for the neutral observer & teammates to shout to the whole game and whisper amongst themselves.

and if anybody's going to cheat they're going to use vent or mumble or any of the other hundreds of chat programs so thats an invalid argument.

punkUser · Post by **punkUser** » 27 Jun 2013, 22:56

NewMutator wrote:Oh, also, allow chat amongst observers. Not sure if that's client or not but that's a standard for other games from what I can tell.

Yes that's client, like everything ingame.

I may be able to slip something to that end into an upcoming 1.8 hotfix though... will take a look. And yeah, the entire observer interface needs and overhaul, but at least in the meantime chat among observers seems desirable.

Assuming I don't have time to add host UI regarding chatting to all, is that really necessary these days? If people are going to cheat like that it's obvious to both teams, and it's easy enough to cheat that way out of the game if you really wanted to (VOIP, IM, etc). Seems better to just remove the restrictions on chatting IMHO so they can whisper to other spectators or shout to everyone.

[Edit] Oh I see dac is already saying the same thing as me

Will look into it.

One other thing I want to look into in the client update related to the metaserver is removing the silly restrictions about >4 players to play in "ranked" rooms. If it wasn't for that, we could use ranked rooms for something much more interesting.

Arsenal · Post by **Arsenal** » 28 Jun 2013, 04:22

MWC season
1) Team stats
2) Captain stats. I remember in years past people tallied Captain stats, those were always fun.
3) Watch replays online with other people. Have someone host the game and people can join and watch the same replay at the same time and chat.

Non-MWC
1) Ranks. I'm a sucker for something shiny next to my name. I always really enjoying the Myth ranks. I want a damn crown.
2) In game stats
3) Rooms that don't record stats. Sometimes I just want to screw around and not have my dmg ratios drop.
4) Who's online

Giant Killer General · Post by **Giant Killer General** » 28 Jun 2013, 04:25

When you do implement a ranked system, I would recommend splitting it up into different categories, something like this:

1v1
2v2
3v3-4v4
5v5-6v6
7v7-8v8
FFA (normal)
TFFA (normal)
FFA (50% weighted for dmg)
TFFA (50% weighted for dmg)

I think some way of implementing categorical ranks like this would be way more important than the way you implement the actual scoring of it, which is much more open to debate. I would suggest something like how bungie had it separated by gametype, but instead of separating it by gametype which is dumb, separate it by these categories. So it adds up your points or whatever from each category to create your overall rank. But still being able to see the categorical ranks is valuable information too.

And yes, there needs to be an option to allow FFA to be 50% weighted towards dmg to remove all the politics from it. It would be played a lot more often with this kind of option.

Anyway, just my 2 cents for later when this does get implemented down the road, before I forget.

Isolder · Post by **Isolder** » 28 Jun 2013, 04:39

adrenaline wrote:- a new color/pattern for contested flags (i.e. checkered -- been asking for this for years!)

Fuck that shit. You want to ruin the mayhem and chaos that happens in Sudden Death with one fell swoop.

adrenaline · Post by **adrenaline** » 28 Jun 2013, 12:37

No, I want to avoid those shitty anticlimactic games that end prematurely because some idiot has the exact same color as a contested flag. And what the fuck do you care? Do you play anything other than Mazz?

Dantski · Post by **Dantski** » 28 Jun 2013, 12:48

Please disregard everything said about ranked in this thread except what Arsenal posted.

Seriously

Giant Killer General · Post by **Giant Killer General** » 28 Jun 2013, 16:18

Nice contribution to the conversation Dantski.

Please disregard people who will passive aggressively complain without offering any solutions of their own.

Seriously.

Dantski · Post by **Dantski** » 28 Jun 2013, 18:09

Nice contribution to the conversation Dantski.

Please disregard people who will passive aggressively complain without offering any solutions of their own.

Seriously.

yawn

change the channel

rank is more important than spectating live games, period.

Giant Killer General · Post by **Giant Killer General** » 28 Jun 2013, 18:12

i don't think anyone was holding an opinion on that one way or another. I certainly don't have a preference.

zagon · Post by **zagon** » 28 Jun 2013, 19:04

buddylist? Dont think i read that anywhere yea theres never more than 50 tops on, but sometimes its handy

.zagon What can i say every server needs this feature

a rank system would be nice always good to gauge your stats against others

NewMutator · Post by **NewMutator** » 28 Jun 2013, 19:59

I don't think this thread is about arguing which features are more important than others but just stating your personal preference so that Punk can get a sense of what people most want and prioritize those features first.

Dantski · Post by **Dantski** » 28 Jun 2013, 21:09

NewMutator wrote:I don't think this thread is about arguing which features are more important than others but just stating your personal preference so that Punk can get a sense of what people most want and prioritize those features first.

Really? I think discussion should be a must for matters of this nature unless PunkUser has already decided on what he's doing. However he did post this right at the start of the thread...

PunkUser wrote:Ok guys I thought I'd start a discussion on what priority various metaserver features are so I can prioritize implementation.

I'm not saying arguing will necessarily help but this community seems to do little else so might as well go with it and see what useful information we can obtain from it.

Now I'll go down PunkUser's list and give my opinion on how he should prioritize on a 1-3 scale, 1 being more immediate and 3 being long term.

Short:
•Integrate articles archive (from TheGjol) into forum posts - Not immediately important 2-3
•Who's online (likely tied in to spongefile's app/web site) - Did people actually use the who's online feature on mariusnet? To me its a 3
•Wank - If its easy to implement 1, otherwise don't worry about it too much.
•Afk - Don't think its even needed TBH 3
•Coop time started (modify game name or similar like Mnet does) - A nice addition but I kinda feel like it can be put off for other more important things 2
•Ingame stats (http://games.gateofstorms.net/users in the "Stats" screen) - So this is like the complete game report on marius? I'll let you clarify but I don't think its urgent 2
•Replay download counter - Kinda like forum thread views, its unimportant 3
•Tourney replay renaming on download - Hasn't been necessary upto now so again not a priority 3
•Tournament team stats (in addition to play stats) - Nice but its not important really 2
•Rank icons as "rewards" for tourney wins, etc. NOTE: Might get superseded once there's a ranking system down the road.- Total luxury, should be done when you have nothing better to do IMO 3

Medium:
•Spectate films/live from metaserver - We haven't needed it for 15 years and we'll survive without it. Would it be possible to host a game and run a saved film so you could watch it with people? 2
•Ranking system (of some form) - Although I don't care about rank some people still do and would've liked to play in ranked rooms on marius. Because its MWC time we can survive without it, but I'd get it in place before August 1-2
•Metaserver routing (anyone can host, adds some latency if you would otherwise have been unable to) - Hmmmm!!!! This is really interesting but begs the question of how much latency would be added? If its small then 1

Long:
•Multiplayer "cloud" save games (on metaserver) - Can you explain further, like everyone else I have to ask "What is cloud gaming?"

I haven't really followed other threads to know your stance on changing nicknames, but if you're firmly against it consider that without it we won't have nice team tags for MWC!

On the subject of server inboxes and dot commands, I agree that they can be ignored for now and you can come back to them if you feel like it another time.

NewMutator · Post by **NewMutator** » 28 Jun 2013, 21:20

Dantski wrote:
NewMutator wrote:I don't think this thread is about arguing which features are more important than others but just stating your personal preference so that Punk can get a sense of what people most want and prioritize those features first.
Really?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y[/youtube]

punkUser · Post by **punkUser** » 28 Jun 2013, 21:36

Dantski wrote: •Ingame stats (http://games.gateofstorms.net/users in the "Stats" screen) - So this is like the complete game report on marius? I'll let you clarify but I don't think its urgent 2

Sure. It's stats for players over all games they have played. It's already available at that link, but people like to be able to see (some of) it when double-clicking people's names ingame as well.

Dantski wrote: •Rank icons as "rewards" for tourney wins, etc. NOTE: Might get superseded once there's a ranking system down the road.- Total luxury, should be done when you have nothing better to do IMO 3

Right, although I've been told that people really like icons next to their names, and it seems like a sorta-cool reward for tournaments, etc. It's quite easy for me to do which is why I mentioned it.

Dantski wrote:Would it be possible to host a game and run a saved film so you could watch it with people? 2

Yes this is possible, but an additional feature. Not sure whether it would work via hosting a film game or just synchronized viewing on the metaserver... in both cases it might not be feasible to have chatting between players who are watching it, but I'll investigate at some point.

Dantski wrote: •Ranking system (of some form) - Although I don't care about rank some people still do and would've liked to play in ranked rooms on marius. Because its MWC time we can survive without it, but I'd get it in place before August 1-2

Not totally clear what can be put in place that quickly. It's hard to come up with a ranking system that isn't trivially exploitable but yet still makes sense and is enjoyable to the players. Since people didn't like the MariusNet one apparently, that makes it even tougher; at the very least I guess I want to understand what people didn't like about their roughly-ELO-style points system. Perhaps a discussion for another thread.

Dantski wrote: •Metaserver routing (anyone can host, adds some latency if you would otherwise have been unable to) - Hmmmm!!!! This is really interesting but begs the question of how much latency would be added? If its small then 1

It all depends on how close people are to the metaserver (which is west coast USA). If the host or player is fairly close to it, it doesn't add much latency at all. If both the host and players are in Europe then it will add quite a lot of latency compared to if one of the players could have hosted directly. Basically each packet has to travel from the host to the metaserver, then from the metaserver to the player instead of directly between the host and players.

Still, it's better than not being able to host/play at all.

Dantski wrote: •Multiplayer "cloud" save games (on metaserver) - Can you explain further, like everyone else I have to ask "What is cloud gaming?"

This would be something like being able to "save" your game while playing on the metaserver, then come back to it later. There wouldn't need to be a file on your hard driver, the save is conceptually on the metaserver itself. Then you can resume the game at any time from any other computer, etc.

Dantski wrote: I haven't really followed other threads to know your stance on changing nicknames, but if you're firmly against it consider that without it we won't have nice team tags for MWC!

tl/dr it doesn't fit into the server design well.

Thanks for the feedback so far!

NewMutator · Post by **NewMutator** » 28 Jun 2013, 21:37

Punk should probably weigh in on this to clarify but my impression is that multiplayer cloud saving is essentially the ability to "save" a multiplayer game and load it again later. Obviously useful for cooperative games like Mazz, but perhaps it can even be used for competitive matches, to see if one could change the outcome after a certain point. Could be a good way to test all those "I would have won..." claims.

As for spectating films from the metaserver, pretty sure this allows multiple people to spectate the same film at once. It would be nice if the observer chat functionality worked here too -- allowing film observers to chat on top of an already played game.

Edit: Beaten.

Isolder · Post by **Isolder** » 28 Jun 2013, 23:57

adrenaline wrote:No, I want to avoid those shitty anticlimactic games that end prematurely because some idiot has the exact same color as a contested flag. And what the fuck do you care? Do you play anything other than Mazz?

lol you think i'm a mazzer. Those games that end prematurely are what make the game so goddamn great sometimes. So fuck your checkered flags.

Dantski · Post by **Dantski** » 29 Jun 2013, 00:17

LN wrote: It would be nice if the observer chat functionality worked here too -- allowing film observers to chat on top of an already played game.

Sounds tricky to implement though, you'd have the ingame chat running as well so where would you envisage the current chat between the players watching the game appearing? Maybe in a separate box at the bottom of the screen like you can have the formations. It does sound like a job for magma instead of GoS though.

NewMutator · Post by **NewMutator** » 29 Jun 2013, 00:42

I don't know how tricky it would be or what would be involved. My understanding is that the film is essentially like playing a game where all the actions are scripted, so I imagine the chat could just work as normal, only with the appropriate sound designating it's occurring in real-time (chat sounds -- "Hey!" or "psst!" -- do not currently play in films).

Like I said, would be great, but it may not be easy to implement or a practical use of resources. Just a suggestion to look into.

Isolder · Post by **Isolder** » 29 Jun 2013, 01:03

- ability to message the host to request entry on a passworded game. Ought to be some way for the metaserver to send a message packet into a hosted game lobby. Can't be much different from the ability for people to chat in a game already.

- command to get list of host <-> game correlations. Just a complete listing of any games in the lobby would work.

Arsenal · Post by **Arsenal** » 29 Jun 2013, 07:05

On the topic of meta game hosting, is it possible to setup a dedicated server on another box? Say I have a box at a data center, could I set it up to host a game?

punkUser · Post by **punkUser** » 29 Jun 2013, 18:01

You can use autohost for that Ars, but it's basically just automation so you can't run it head-less or anything.

dac · Post by **dac** » 29 Jun 2013, 21:08

you can use an auto-it type script to take information submitted from somewhere (you'd have to setup something pretty impressive to do this) and make it change gametype/plugs on an autohosted type game. of course it wouldn't be "autohost" necessarily, but it would run like a bot with inputs coming from some third party source.

it's a shitton of work and how do you control who gives the input? you would have to generate a random passkey every time and PM it to the person on top of the room every time it changed or something like that.

drunken_deer · Post by **drunken_deer** » 02 Jul 2013, 14:44

Id really like to see a order list back up.

It would be a great incentive to keep team forums up like for my team with the same members as well as establishing pre-set teams for tournaments. Encouraging new players to join existing teams and older ones
to form their own slowly.

If this is implemented It would be mandatory that the player logs in 2 and a half years on that team or be default kicked out, a captain being kicked out as well but given the reins to the 2nd existing player. This would make
graveyard orders not clutter up like marius.net did.

Would also mean because we can not change our display names directly like marius.net our team logo could easily distinguish players on that team and not some dummy/guest account.

NewMutator · Post by **NewMutator** » 04 Jul 2013, 20:07

I don't care too much about a "who's online" feature but I think it could be useful to see if there are games in progress, how many people are in those, and so forth. Maybe tie in "who's online" with the games being currently hosted, since, generally speaking, players idling in the lobby isn't really a good indication of server activity anyway.

Professional Killer · Post by **Professional Killer** » 04 Jul 2013, 20:56

I used whos online fuction alot. I wish to see it back aswell with games in progress.

If games in progress are coming back will it be so much more work to include a whos online fuction?

punkUser · Post by **punkUser** » 04 Jul 2013, 21:00

I should be clear that "who's online" and what games are going on is all the same feature. i.e. real-time monitoring of metaserver state from the web or public API.

par73 · Post by **par73** » 30 Sep 2013, 22:41

Your time is definitely better off spent working on unique stuff for the server and other necessary stuff, than .floyn and .bacon which are basic obby functions of past metaservers.

and i would value .floyn (it's actually kind of neat to have a function that changes your colors at random) higher than .bacon (this only encourages spamming).

c⁄J⁄Iılk c⁄J⁄Iån ◊§t◊ · 12 Oct 2013, 00:42

I second (third? fourth?) the return of orders.

Codex · Post by **Codex** » 06 Nov 2013, 20:59

I think it would be great if "Player Icons" were implemented somehow into GoS website. I know that player icon next to the players name remains the same every time the player logs in on any machine if the "Update Server Appearance" box is left unchecked. I was wondering how the Metaserver stores the player icons? This reminds me how little I understand about how the GoS Metaserver actually operates. I know in '99 someone was able to get the player icons off the Metaserver (which was bungie.net at the time) and use them for the MWC website http://macobserver.com/mwc99/dynamic/teams/civil/. I guess the main question is - does anybody know how they managed to get the images off the server back then and if it is still be possible anymore?

punkUser · Post by **punkUser** » 06 Nov 2013, 21:52

It's not hard to know which image a player is using. See for instance MariusNet:
http://www.mariusnet.com/ubbthreads.php ... =sbrplayer

The problem is that the images are colorized by the primary and secondary colors, which is not something particularly suitable for doing on a web server/client. Notice that the MariusNet icons are all greyscale. It's something that I've considered in conjunction with the Who's Online panel, but given the relatively low important of the icon relative to just the player color (which is already shown) and the high complexity of doing colorized icons, it's not high on the priority list.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

PS: I'm almost certain the icons from the mwc99 page were done by just taking screenshots of the lobby/players. You'll notice that there's just one image per player that includes both icon and name. For instance: http://www.macobserver.com/mwc99/static ... tinger.gif. There's even some taken from low-bit-rate color implementations like http://www.macobserver.com/mwc99/dynamic/teams/ni/

i.e. someone just did it manually.

Codex · Post by **Codex** » 06 Nov 2013, 23:04

Thanks for the reply. I was almost going to suggest that the icons were screenshots but I wasn't sure. It defiantly would have been alot of work to take that many screenshots! I agree that greyscale isn't really worth having but maybe eventually the myth client can be modified to support web colours for the player icons. That would seem the easiest way of getting around it but it probably isn't even worth the effort for what it is. Good work on what you have accomplished so far! Thanks for keeping this community alive

jason_ac · Post by **jason_ac** » 21 Jan 2014, 18:54

#1 Hosting solutions seem like the most important thing. People won't stay if they can't play what they like. Whether it's metaserver routing, or something else.

#2 I'd be happy if a "wank" lasted just 24hrs. I can probably forgive anyone anything, if they shape-up, and even if I can't, it's not a big deal to have to wank them once/day (assuming I'm even playing daily, & they keep bugging me).

#3 Ranking seems like a fun motivator. But those systems are so hard to do well, and we have such a small community, it hardly seems worth it. And people will cheat the system and make it meaningless. How about instead of that, "personal ranking"...give us extensive stat-tracking/graphing on the site, so we can see how our win/loss ratio is trending (& break it out by game type, CTF, LMOTH, etc), how our KDR is trending (& break it out by unit type, thrall, Trow, etc), our damage ratio (break it out by unit type), top 5 players we've done most damage to over time, top 5 players who's damaged us the most over time, top 5 players we've played most often, total miles walked (& other fun/silly stats...graph of total molotovs thrown, etc), our 10 most-played maps, graphs on how often we do FFA vs team vs captain-ing, graphs of average number of players in our games, unit counts (graph showing how many thrall/archers/etc you've used over time...after your first few games, just 40 thrall, but you see it trending up fast over time, while your fetch count is low, etc.)

Bury us in every kind of stat we can think of, we can enjoy perusing them.

Then you'll see things like "hmmm, I use thrall a lot more than I realized, and I'm getting better with Fetch, but I don't often use warlocks, I should play with them more". It will show rivalries. It will show you who likes the same maps and gametypes you do.

Maybe this is something where you (punkuser) can supply the raw data feed, but someone else could do the coding.

If anyone implements this, before doing any coding, I'd suggest mocking-up the pages using a paint program or HTML, then let players look at the proposed stats and their presentation. There will be suggestions of what to tweak/add/remove.

People can get respect for their skillz when people see your stats and see you have a good win ratio across a lot of gametypes.

And if you ever implement ranking, these stats will help expose the people who are gaming the system.

punkUser · Post by **punkUser** » 21 Jan 2014, 19:10

Cool idea on some of the web site graph stuff. Unfortunately per-unit stuff is not possible right now as the client doesn't send any of that data to the metaserver (it only sends the totals). If you're curious about the data that is possible to use, it's roughly what is in this example JSON file. Some discussion in this thread: http://forum.gateofstorms.net/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1216.

Definitely some stuff like graphs of what game types you play and stats over time should be possible to some extent. I will look into it a bit when I get some time as that should be mostly web site work that I can get others to help with in parallel with more core work that I'm doing.

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. I'm curious from others about the priority of wank. It's fairly simple but given guests it's a bit finicky and would need to use IPs and some approximations. If it's high priority to folks I can whip something together but always good to know how broadly people want it.

And yes, to reiterate the other thread, ranking is still on the table (and indeed stuff like the work I did on tournament scoring lays some groundwork) it's just a large feature and will take a while. Given my pretty limited time these days, I'm just being realistic.

jason_ac · Post by **jason_ac** » 21 Jan 2014, 19:30

punkUser wrote:Cool idea on some of the web site graph stuff. Unfortunately per-unit stuff is not possible right now as the client doesn't send any of that data to the metaserver (it only sends the totals).

I guess if anyone really wants one of those other kinds of stats, they should head to Magma & post it as a feature request? At this point I don't care enough to do so myself. I post a lot of stuff there already

>I'm curious from others about the priority of wank. It's fairly simple but given guests it's a bit finicky and would need to use IPs and some approximations.

Even if all it did was keep someone out based on their name, that would help. It would stop registered users, and sure, all a guest would have to do is leave and log back in with a new name, but that would mean they couldn't re-join your room LITERALLY every second to annoy you. And if the guest is as dumb as some of them seem to be, and don't read these forums, they might not realize (right away?) that is all it takes to get around the ban. And if the ban message just says "the host has temporarily banned you from their room", they may not think twice about the fact that later they can get in again. They'll just think the ban expired.