Hmm, very little traffic 'round here lately, huh? Everyone died all at once or what :s? Personally, aside from post army RL matters, I've been busy UT-wise with my campaign to download all the maps I was missing from other popular ONS servers, go through and evaluate 'em all so I could suggest adding the better ones to our own roster and, hopefully, boost the variety of experiences we can get when switching from map to map.
Thing is, after having gone through ~70% of this now, trying maps online and off and keeping notes of my observations (I only have half of the DW maps left), I got to thinking about how messy, subjective and hard it is for a player - let alone an entire community as a whole - to evaluate maps and reach a consensus about their value that could very easily tell the admin what people want and what shouldn't be in the maplist. Without such a method, any suggestion I made could easily be debunked by the next poster who decided to try the map and found it as much crappy as I found it good (or vice versa) and the whole process becomes useless to everyone else. So, I took a break from my daily hide n' seek lurking routine until all players would sign off from those popular servers and I could go in to hijack them for my own nefarious purposes to sit down, think about this for a while and see if I could organize my own thoughts about standards and criteria of what makes a map working, acceptable or even good into a more concise list that might help automate the process for others. What follows below are the parameters I've categorized and concluded are the various pillars on which a map must stand and prove itself for most of us (players and mappers, although mostly the former) to deem it good, even if we sometimes overlook a few of those criteria as obvious and expect 'em to be there in all cases (trust me, there's at least one map in our roster that violates each and every one of 'em!).

So... here goes:


ONS Map Evaluation Categories

Presentation:

Theme / Atmoshpere (taste & mood, lighting & gamma, weather, skybox, fog, music, particleFX, SFX (areas & surfaces):
- quality
- novelty
- thematic consistency/suitability
- bug-free?

Solid looks (static/animated textures, static meshes & volumes):
- quality
- novelty
- variety
- thematic suitability
- bug-free?

Gameplay:

Weapons:
- variety
- weap.locker placement & ammo sufficiency
- balance
- novelty
- bug-free?

Vehicles:
- variety
- sufficiency (core loadout can fit >75% of team?)
- balance (across regular/custom)
- novelty & cross-map consistency (e.g. badgers behave differently on different maps?)
- bug-free?

Traveling:
- core/node playerstarts (enough, teleportable, weap.lockers & enemy orientation)
- navigability (sign posts, needless mazes?), fast travel options for peds (a few for l33t movers even?)
- radar map (representative image, well-proportioned node graph)
- lift/jumppad/teleporter appearance & behaviour
- unproblematic geometry/meshes (e.g. no invisible walls, collisionless surfaces, terrain/BSP holes, HOM visuals, "sticky" meshes for tanks/flyers)

Tactical/strategic design:
- logical number of nodes
- core/node defense (static cover, # of turrets) & offense (vehicles: start-heavy vs. center-heavy [comeback-related])
- weaps/vecs/powerups planning (suitable for map? antispam: WGS/ions/minos in small rooms, SSRs in corridors, supers at core; Xloc?)
- alternate routes & link setup planning (eternal chokepoints? ground-only combat?)
- z-axis use (node placement, moving, fighting)
- areas of fighting ad-/disadvantage (exposed vs. safer, risk vs. reward)
- appropriate & understandable mechanics/novelties (lighting strength, low-grav, movers [e.g. hovering platforms, sliding doors], boost areas, water volumes, passable portals {& player orientation exiting], karma objects [hittable beach balls, rubber duck, etc.], blocking areas [e.g. flying to top of map w/ raptor], text messages, healing/damage areas, autoturrets, booby traps, special powerups [jumpboots, Relics], node shields, special nodes w/ scripted events, unusual/Escher grav, etc.)

Bot behaviour:
- properly pathed/skypathed
- special vehicle-/physics-/cases savvy

Performance:
- crash/warning-free map?
- decent avg framerate
- CPU-heavy items (st.meshes, polys & collision w/ st.meshes)
- BW-heavy items (channels: spiders, HP/ammo pickup merging)
- use of anti-portals, zones
- synced relevant pawns (players, movers, kObjects)?
- filesize (map & misc. resources)


My hope is, by applying something like this to a voting process for maps - say, asking ppl to rate them on each category from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) - we can end up with a numerical representation of our opinions that will be clear and helpful to Foibos. Lemme hear whatever comments and suggestions you got on this, see if we can make it better; then see if we can even start applying it to current TechCom maps and deal with the recurring mess that frequent map culling requests turn into .

I think some people will already be scared away by the tl;dr moment that comes with your posts. And the other half of players is not visiting this forum regularly or at all, what will be the opposition's main argument here, I guess.

crusha_k_rool wrote:
I think some people will already be scared away by the tl;dr moment that comes with your posts. And the other half of players is not visiting this forum regularly or at all, what will be the opposition's main argument here, I guess.

Agree

The tl;dr "mentality" is only a problem if you see it as one. People who don't care to read my posts are exactly the kind of people whose opinions I don't care to read either. Neat symmetry, huh?

Now then, back on topic...

Edit: Nice, but complicated. Less maps will make better server? "As for turfing a map; if you don't like it, don't play it. If it gets voted in (or not voted out of) then obviously there are enough people that like it. A map being on the server doesn't hurt it. Shit, I could delete the last 30maps and not many would notice as the scramble to play one the "golden 10" for the 6,348th time." (c) CD.

Foibo, sorry for the late reply, a few things kept me busy most of yesterday. I also saw you edited your post, so let me first give you a quick answer to these assumptions before getting back to explaining my idea.

A server's strength is its public image, the way players perceive its features if you will. One aspect is its community and player base and I believe we're quite strong there (we have many skilled players and most ppl are mature/civil individuals IMO). Another is the customization, like mutators and special scripts that help and expand the gameplay experience; we're also doing pretty well there, although I could suggest we try (harder?) to add the brightskins and hitsounds if possible since I've seen them used on other whitelist servers lately and their effects are only beneficial/informative. Last part - and possibly one of the most important - are the maps played and, by extension, the map roster where I also believe we're doing better than "the competition" since our horizons are quite expanded and keep expanding even today thanks to new and promising mappers/scripters (even though we too have favourites, we don't play the same 10 maps all the time like it happens on the server whose admin you're quoting).
So, no, the argument isn't that, as an absolute number, more maps or less maps make the server better or worse; it's the quality of the maps and what mix of great vs poor maps are available for the players to choose from. I hope you'll agree, a server that offers 40 great maps and 10 average ones is better than one that has 30 good ones and another 30 that are below average even if the latter's total roster is greater. Those maps are there, but they're not real choices that anyone would ever make. Instead of making the place look better, they're actually dragging it down and making it look like a tasteless dumping ground (or a place its admin has no time to tend to anymore like it's happened to other places I know). Trimming off dead weight can help.

To sum up here, I believe this becomes a question of what message we're willing to send out to newcomers and our established community alike: "we'll add anything new because it'll make our maplist bigger and that's what we care about" or "we'll test new content, but only keep what we deem actually worth it for us and for ONS"? IMO the latter is the wiser road to choose and, if we do, it then passes through the occasional discussions and re-examinations of what we have, what we should add/improve and what we could drop for the better of our server. That last part is where I want to help with by trying to form a community-accepted map rating method.

Edit: Sorry again, I'm out of time for now. Following post later today - promise.

But then again I wonder if "guest" players on the server do actually make such thoughts about the "quality" of a server or if they just want to have some fun with whatever is up next as long as there are players to play with.

And in the end such a map-voting method can't be efficient if we have to rely only on the stuff we currently have in this board. Do you really want to count everyone's pro and contra opinions or wouldn't it be better to have some poll service that would make things easier? But that on the other hand might be more effort than some want to afford (if it needs registration, which might be the case to prevent abuse of the system).


For hitsounds and brightskins: they pretty much ruin the ONS experience for me because it feels too competitive then, just like yet another iCTF server. It's not like the Mino-whores need additional help in spotting their targets. I personally never came into a situation where I wouldn't have seen any player and on the other hand is the darkness in some maps part of the gameplay, for example the tunnels in BiggerBeerBattle. And hitsounds? Always make me feel like I was in some Japanese dojo. It's not like you would get any advantage by that, seeing that the enemy bleeds/lights up green or purple/burns/is electrified is way enough for me.

Crusha, every one-time visitor is a prospective regular. What separates the latter from the former is the knowledge of the server's quality which builds up the more they stay to find out all that's to enjoy and eventually be won over; biggest reason to stick with a server is having fun there. Even if someone comes in looking only to have a quick match, they're bound to start evaluating their experience and compare it to other places from the first minute, even if only subconsciously at first. That comparison is based on the fun they're having and fun itself is a function of quality. Can you imagine enjoying yourself on a server that's populated by annoying, immature players, features plain vanilla, 6 year-old untouched ONS, or offers only Torlan constantly? I can't - not for more than a match or two anyway. The better the server, the more fun you have. Demo servers aren't trying to make a name for themselves or build a community around 'em and that's exactly why you don't want to be using their methods as a guide if you're aiming to achieve and maintain those two things, like TechCom does. One-timers may not care about such things, but I believe we do and it's such issues that this convo is all about. Coming up with the best way to get quantifiable feedback on maps at the biggest possible scale - whether by poll or php questionnaire form - can help everyone (Foibos, the mappers and all the rest of us) express exactly what we want, what we don't and why. I hope working toward such a tool is worth at least trying.

To address your brightskins/hitsounds misgivings now, I find both mutators help by being, as I already mentioned, informative. There are cases - 90% of the time while on foot - when it's impossible to really know if you hit your target, or if they're really there in the first place. Most common example would be for targets near the draw distance limit, especially if the fog in a particular map's also heavy, matches the sky colour and, thus, hinders sight (Dreamus, StarReach, nightly Minus, etc.). How about trying to hit a red team pedestrian from high above in RedPlanet? Even if you believe that poor lighting is a gameplay feature (usually sloppy mapping actually), I'd like to know how you rationalize the fact that not all skins are even equally bright when fully lit to begin with. Mine's bright enough, but a skin like the one Thommy/K uses is considerably darker for example; among 2 players of equal skill fighting in a shady environment, the one with the darker character will always have an advantage. Is that fair? Perhaps you may be gifted with the eyesight of a hawk, but for the life of me, when I played Rail yesterday as blue, half my non spammy (shombo, bio) kills were out of pure luck because I couldn't tell my opponents apart from all the other reddish/brownish... meshes and backdrop. Is that by design too? Is it a gameplay feature I should learn to appreciate?
Point is, there are many variables that determine the outcome of PvP fights like skill, reflexes, weap/vec knowledge (and luck), but not being able to distinguish your opponent when they're close because they're camping in the shade or their team colour matches the background's shouldn't be one of them. IMO this has been a long-standing problem with UT and brightskins is a very elegant fix that doesn't require messing with the ini files and visually (aesthetically?) compromising by making all allies/enemies have the same skin. In the end, if you don't like it, you can always turn it off at your end, but why force the choice for everyone else?

Following the same reasoning, how can you tell how many of your shock hits to a damaged, fleeing flyer registered when you can barely follow its disappearing silhouette through the fog without hearing a hitsound? Also, if you think getting sound feedback of your enemies being hit isn't an advantage (consider the case where you happen to fire a shot at random, turn a corner and then hear a hitsound; wouldn't you want to know someone's closer than you thought?), how come you see so many people highlighting in guides the importance of having your music turned down or completely off so you can hear enemy footsteps and weapon effects? Hitsounds helps and I believe that too can be turned off client-side if the user believes it doesn't. I bet many ppl on TechCom turn off music and/or knowingly don't pick the most vivid-looking skin out there so they'll have a slight edge, maybe you do too. So... an old "tradition" like that is considered normal, but hitsounds and brightskins make things too "competitive"? How's that for double standards? Anyway, IMO such "arguments" range from completely subjective to just absurd; competitiveness is in the eye of the beholder (and their mentality too) and neither of these very renowned and widespread mutators risk turning our server and its gametype into iCTF for a number of obvious reasons, the most eye-popping of which being we're ONS, not iCTF!

I'm sorry, but as far as I can see, none of the objections you've raised here so far constitute a valid argument against using the HS/BS mutators. I'd like to hear Foibos' take on this too, of course.

Tired now, more tomorrow...

When I think of guest players, I am thinking more of people like my father when he plays Modern Warfare: he doesn't care at all which server he is on and probably don't even remembers the name of good ones. He just picks the one playing a particular gametype or map that he currently likes to play, then later switch to another and always a server that has a reasonable amount of players (too many players can also be freaky, for example 56 players on a map that doesn't even have enough spawn places to accommodate that and with bullets that penetrate walls).


Of course are the hitsounds and brightskins something that lies on the user end, my opinion is just that a certain level of stealth belongs to the game (and on some maps to my play style.. sneaking into the enemy's back by using routes where I am harder to spot.. such stuff). I also like about America's Army 3 that you don't get instant feedback about hits and kills. Dead enemies need to be confirmed in order to receive a kill message. It can be a tactical advantage for the one under fire if the enemy doesn't know if killed me or if I just crouched into cover.
I sometimes have situations in UT where I am around a corner and an enemy tank shell explodes right in front of me. I usually survive that and with a not too little chance won't the enemy fire a second time. However, if the hitsound tells him that I am behind the wall although he surely could not know about it from his location, then the system is more than just feedback about the hit of your Shock Rifle and especially with the modded vehicles and their large damage radius a kinda bad feature to me.


Offtopic: I play with this skin because I like it, because it's cute. Not because I could potentially be harder seen with it. And my music is always at half volume and don't really care about enemy footsteps. I don't think I play worse that way than I would without music.

crusha_k_rool wrote:
[...]I play with this skin because I like it, because it's cute.[...]

Same here with ClanLord skin, skaarjs in Unreal Tournament 2004 are cute indeed.

My opinion is that I don't want Brightskins nor Hitsounds. This "every skin has different brightness and the one with the darker one has more chance of winning in a fight" is ridiculous to me, even the darkest skin in the most unlit area can be seen in this game. Pegasus, you think that every player chooses skins based on their brigthness and/or how stealthy, how "good in battle" they are? Every skin is the same in battle, the outcome is based mostly on the player. And players choose skins based on their liking. Okay sorry I said these like you wouldn't know, you chose Xan because you like that skin I guess.

About hitsounds: Let's see the situation in which there's a Goliath, a corner and a Pedestrian. The Pedestrian turns in the corner while the Goliath shoots at it, but doesn't kill the Pedestrian. The Goliath doesn't even know if the Pedestrian is injured or not. The hitsound would help the Goliath in this case. BUT, the Goliath already has more chance to win the battle than the Pedestrian so hitsound would make this fight even more uneven. Also, note how stupid would it sound if you'd shoot an enemy with minigun/minigun turret. About the situation with the fleeing flyer + Pedestrian with Shock Rifle: What's the point if the flyer flees anyways? This doesn't change the outcome of the battle and your score ehem ehem =P

Also, my short opinion about this Rating itself: Every map may have different and unique fun factors that can't be sorted in categories; Otherwise nice categorization.

Oh, another thing is the "turning off music in order to hear footsteps". I'd never turn off the precious musics of maps in order to hear footsteps. I can be succesful even without hearing them.

This potential increasing with skins and music is stupid I think. It's like winning at ANY cost.