Lets spice it up a bit.

[ritalin]

Ok so I may get some backlash for saying this, but here goes. I think we should do away with the beginners server all together.

The reason is two part:

1: Flawed Gameplay
For those that know me by one of many names(Ritalin,HARE, BR'ER, QLAB, Bunny....) You know that I have no need to be in the beginners server, short of acting as admin. My time spent there has shown me just how flawed PS=ON, FF=OFF gameplay is. The largest problem is by far fiendlyfire off, anyone with half a brain in their skull should realize pretty quick that all you need to do is sit and wait with a friend for the hidden to attach and just light your friend up, as he is being attacked. This problem is compounded when it is a small team of shot-gunners in a close quarters map like Sewers. This defeats the purpose of a game that is pretty well ballanced and swings the scale to far in the IRIS's advantage. I know that its for beginners and they need an edge as the IRIS, so they can get a go at the hidden side. Well in truth this same thing could be accomplished by making the server random. But what about when a new player gets ahold of the Hidden? OH, he has the PigStick to even out his noobish playing field you say? Well we can go round and round about the PS, but the bottom line is, the PS is not fun for anyone short of the player wielding it. Thats why its being ALMOST completely removed. So with out taking up much more room, there you have my feelings on the flawed game play of the beginners server.

Lets move on to the fun stuff, shall we.

2: Replace it with something better.
Have you ever thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if these laser trip wires were actually usefull?"? I know I have. Well what if I told you that we could turn them into laser trip MINES? How about making the 303 something more then a small nuisance? What if we could add a homing beacon to it? There are a few examples of such scripts listed here (http://forum.hidden-source.com/showthread.php?t=7871).

What I suggest is that we have one Classic server (Expert Server) and one Custom server (Beginners Server). The hidden community is small as we all know, but taking a look at the server list will show you that there is no shortage of PS=on,FF=Off server out there. I say we add some spice to our server selections.

What do you guys think?

[YO_MA_MA]

i like the idea, i never was that good at being the hidden, or finding him for that matter, but i do know the Pig Stick blows to the point i would only play beginner if the regular one was full. would be nice to see some custom hidden settings but if i recall porting them to work for the hidden isnt the easiest task even though squirrl is insanely awesome at stuff like that it would take some time if they arent ported already.

[The Pirate Wench]

First of all..... 303's annoying? That's just wrong. :)

ok onto the topic at hand.

Beginner Server... my thoughts on this is if we are trying to tech people to be better players at hidden, why are we encouraging them to use PS? I despise PS and just think it's useless.

I like Ritalin's idea of making more variety on a server. Look at the list, there are tons of servers, and majority of them are the same or very similar. It gets boring. I especially like the trip mine idea. But definately NO homing beacons on 303's :P

But if and when you do make these changes :) I'd like to say I want a reserver slot dangit. :P When this server gets even more popular I am so not waiting for an hour to get in :)

Just my two cents, now gimme my change.
Wenchy

[Silent-Er@sEr]

Well first off we have 2 servers for a reason. i like ps on ff off and silversquirrl likes ps off ff on. "I will admit i only play rarely as of right now but that is the reason there is 2 servers.
i do not care if ps is on or off but i do mind if FF is on.
i am all for customizing but now that i am back working days i will not have time to figure out the plugin's

[ritalin]

Well first off we have 2 servers for a reason. i like ps on ff off and silversquirrl likes ps off ff on. "I will admit i only play rarely as of right now but that is the reason there is 2 servers.
i do not care if ps is on or off but i do mind if FF is on.
i am all for customizing but now that i am back working days i will not have time to figure out the plugin's

Well if its your server, its your server and I am not going to argue about it. I would like to ask if I may why you are so strong on your opinion of friendly fire? Surly its not that your worried about TKing pricks, as you have ban, kick and payback options available to you. Just a question.

As far as the plugins Im not sure of how hard they are to implement, I do know that those listed above are ment for Hidden. Since the update cycle for hidden is quite slow (biggest understatement EVER) their chances of breaking are not as high as other mods. If I were to play around on my end and get a few of them working, would you consider implementing them with my help?

[Unknown]

The Subject 619 mode sounds sort of fun.

I can't stand it when a player pigsticks like crazy, but I have the worst luck with FF. Can a script be made to make it so pigstick is unusable unless you have very low health? (Yes, I know that's coming in the next release, but I'm impatient.)

My argument about PS:Ping-pong is no fun if you don't have a paddle. Why give one side an uber-paddle?

[SilverSquirrl]

Yeah, the beginner server was originally created for silent to manage. But he was hardly on, so I kept making changes to it as I saw necessary ultimately evolving to a beginner and expert server setup. He does have first dibs on changes he wants to make to the beginner server(like alltalk being off, thats all him..).

I have looked at those scripts before and would love to implement them. the only reason why i haven't so far is that they were old, and have a high rate of crashing the server. I have talked to the guy that developed those plugins and he's working on updating the scripts.

I'm really hoping in another 2-3 months of adding another server (box) to the mix and running 2 or 3 hidden servers on a linux box. This would allow me to have some more variety plus bring back origin and decay to the map rotation. (we'll have to see what happens with that)

As far as reserved slots go, if you donate 5 bucks a month, I'll give you a reserved slot and some basic admin vote commands (votekick, voteban, votemap). This is standard with all of the 2f4f servers. I have thought about adding another round of admins to the servers. There are a couple of you that I've been keeping an eye on for this.


One of my biggest problems with running the hidden servers is that the managament programs are still very beta and have a lot of bugs. I just don't have the time or talent to do alot of the extra coding needed to make things work together.

If someone is good with coding, I'll be interested in bringing them onboard to help customize/fix plugins that would work for the servers. The end goal is to run only sourcemod and plugins that are based off of it. I want to get away from mani and event scripts. At this time, that is not possible with what is out there.

[Unknown]

Have problems? Are you still using SM or do you have mani now?

[SilverSquirrl]

I'm running:

w2k3 server
hlds
Hidden
metamod
sourcemod
mani
eventscripts
sourcebans
modified weight - eventscript
atacs - sourcemod

and some misc other sourcemod plugins.
rank and next map voteing is going through mani.

[Unknown]

Well, that explains the crashes. I'll look into SM and see if I can help some time if you run into trouble.

[ritalin]

I'm really hoping in another 2-3 months of adding another server (box) to the mix and running 2 or 3 hidden servers on a linux box. This would allow me to have some more variety plus bring back origin and decay to the map rotation.


3 cheers for Linux.

Im no linux pro, but im not a total noob either. If there is anything you want to test out or want me to look into and test just give the word.