Maprotation Quality

[tempest]

No, I can't. For example, both arid and aqueous are licensed under cc-by-nc-nd. Of course, I could ask the authors for permission, but... "Hey, your map totally sucks, let me at least remove the flags!" ;D

[Cemer]

No, I can't. For example, both arid and aqueous are licensed under cc-by-nc-nd. Of course, I could ask the authors for permission, but... "Hey, your map totally sucks, let me at least remove the flags!" ;D

* Cemer calls vote: Get tempest to ask *

[Nightmare]

Ok thanks, Tempest. :D

[vern]

...

[tempest]

<3

[Zarjio]

Some people may be surprised by this...
But I really think the map quality requisites should be removed.

I remember back in the day, when this discussion was first made, the following arguments were presented:
1. It's the devs game, they can do what they like
2. People join AC, see nothing but gemas and emjezvilles, play for a few days, and then quit because they think the game sucks
3. These maps make the game look ugly

I would like to present some counter-arguments:
1. Most games that had active players for a long time thrived on community-made content. Generally speaking, this content was not monitored, and people recognized easily enough what was quality and what was not. Neverwinter Nights is a good example. Halo: Reach just released some community-made maps into the main map rotation.
2. Lots of people who play nothing but emjezville will eventually move on to trying TOSOK on other maps, and then eventually play some other modes and maps (and on these very forums we have seen the evolution of some of these clans). Remember the HI-SKILL servers, probably widely considered some of the best servers by AC? They ran endless rotations of CTF on power, shine, and sunset. Some people get bored with that. One man's trash is another man's treasure.
3. Yes, most of these maps are horrendously ugly. However, I don't think most of the 12 year old kids who are playing on them are very concerned about how pretty they are. And even with the quality requisites, it is still possible to create an awful map. One of the main complaints with emjezville was the textures. You can still make maps like that (ever seen zj_concrete_facility)?

[Ronald_Reagan]

2. Use me as an example, my AC upbringing was all about rabins oasis, old village and ezgemville.

[Zarjio]

2. Use me as an example, my AC upbringing was all about rabins oasis, old village and ezgemville.

And certainly rabin's oasis and old village, while considered "garbage" by some, while actually quite nice maps that did a great job with the cube engine.

[jamz]

Originally...

...this is only meant to be a poll to gauge the community's opinion.

Bukz brought up the number of servers running ...@camper maps. I wanted to know what the contributing community thought about them. If there was 80%+ against them being in maprots, I'd have started contacting server owners. However, less than 70% of you have voted to ditch it and, IMO, that's not enough, especially when you consider it's only 61 votes out of over 1,500 views.
Thank you for your votes and opinions, and it's not like ...@camper wouldn't have been replaced by the next EzJemVille, HeadshotCity, TwinTowers, etc. If you're dead-set against ...@camper maps, get together in IRC or on TS and (peacefully) organise a flash-mob CTF ac_depot vote in the server; you could join as ac_yournick, so you can recognise each other. Or not. w/e :D

[Bukz]

IMO, views means nothing, the same people come back to view the thread on a daily basis, each of them are not unique users checking this thread for the first time. 80%+? That's not much of a democracy. Whatever happened to majority rules? :s

[Frogulis]

These maps are going to keep on coming back regardless of what we do.
@camper will be replaced with MEGATWINTOWERS (it's happening as we speak) which will be replaced with whatever extreme map comes next. Stopping one is just inviting the next.

---

On a not quite related note, does anybody have the map file for ezjemville so I can see what everyone's talking about?

[Ronald_Reagan]

Frogulis, download 1004 now :D

Meet in IRC!

[tempest]

This discussion is probably irrelevant as the bug which allowed sniper@camper et al. is now fixed. Probably.

EDIT: that is, once the next release comes out.

[Bukz]

I do think it is still relevant, since the problem will continue to exist. (at least until the next release)

I have no issue with the maps themselves but believe wholeheartedly that maps appearing in the maprotations on servers listed on the public MS should hold some standard level of quality.

e.g. Is created, understanding and respecting the limitations of this engine and the style of gameplay this game was meant to have.

[Frogulis]

Frogulis, download 1004 now :D

Meet in IRC!

If only it was that easy...
*sigh*

---

tempest: If you are referring to the maximum possible height bug where the engine thinks the height is 0 (or something like that)...good job :D

I have a feeling that this may unfortunately lead to the makers of these extreme maps simply switching to the non-bug methods of making ridiculously large maps (more emphasis on average height and the way that the game finds the square cubage of a particular area.)

I've made a small attempt at creating a similar map and with a bit of planning it becomes annoyingly easy to do. While mine is considerably smaller than your typical @camper, it still is long and ugly, and with more low ceiling areas it could be made a whole lot taller.

[tempest]

tempest: If you are referring to the maximum possible height bug where the engine thinks the height is 0 (or something like that)...good job :D

Brahma fixed that, not me, so give him the cookie ;)

As for the rest of your post: you're completely right, and that's the problem. Until now, the main reasoning behind (and the technical foundation that enabled) banning those maps was that the engine couldn't handle them (i.e. excessive heights and overly large open areas). But that should be fixed (=banned :P) now, and the remaining issue are maps that look horrible, don't play well, etc. Not only can those not be banned by technical means, but it'd also be quite hard to get an agreement on where to set the line between ban and not-ban.

[vern]

@Brahma

******The ZERO problem is still there. If you raise the ceiling as high as it will go, and lower the floor a low as it will go, it will not trigger MAXHEIGHT hits, it will pass(as long as the MAXHEIGHT HITS are under 6000).****** Yes, I'm talking about the MOST up to date SVN.

Yes, you don't have to care or listen. Yes, ofc I'm wrong, and ofc the rest are right.

[jamz]

Vern, do you think he'd make the commits at all if he didn't care? You could at least show respect where someone is listening to you.

[tempest]

^^ btw, I wasn't able to reconstruct that. I got

MAP CHECK FAIL: The overall ceil height is too high (255.0 cubes)

[Hellspell]

Of course people should be able to use maps such as the @camper ones. Im no fan of them myself (the lss_brasil maps were always more my scene) but by not allowing them to be used you limit variety within maprotations. Hell, most people don't know how to change the maprotation as it is but by telling the one's who do that they can't put the map they want in it defeats the point of having an editable maprot file in the first place. You just get another server with the same old routine; dm on scaffold, ctf with a near empty server on ac_power....

Sure you could stop people putting maps some may consider 'nooby' in their maprot, but at the end of that day it's just an opinion that that map is nooby, just as it is the server owner's opinion that it is good, and it is their server.

Lastly by not allowing people to put whatever they want in the maprot of their server, you defeat the point of the quality requisites. If a map meets the requisites and you still say 'no you can't do what you want with your map on your server' then what good are they?

I hate the restrictions enough already, I'd hate them even more if they became pointless as well as stupid.

[Frogulis]

@Brahma:
*schnip!*

Are you building your own from the source? I have a feeling that the binaries (especially the Windows one) are probably weeks old.

[tempest]

Right now, the windows ones are 16 hours old.
Linux 32-bit bins were last updated 4 weeks ago (might do that again right now), 64bit - 6 weeks.

[Ronald_Reagan]

You can always find the newest mac .dmg (that I made) Here.

[DeafieGamer]

Is gema maps similar or completely different from @camper maps, I host server that is not 24/7 at all.... and it contains a lot of gema maps.

I am looking for good maps that fits in my maprot files and probaly create some of abandoned house maps for my server

[JamJamTheCalcMan]

i think the restrictions are silly, imho. god i remember back to the 1.0 days.
* JamJamTheCalcMan reminisces
no worries, just map and go. i have to admit, i miss those days. :/

dont get me wrong, ladies and gents, but dont you think there is alot of over-reacting going on? sure, the camper maps are ugly, but every time i load multi, the entire first page of servers is nothing but official. part of the second as well. i see maybe the remainder of the page with custom maps.

if everyone is entirely against the idea of horrendous maps, may i make a suggestion? eliminate the use of symbols in map names. that would at least clean up the masterserver list. ofc, you can't eliminate the underscore, it would defeat the purpose.

little side note: i checked my 1.0.4 map directory, and im pretty sure i saw ~100 maps that started with an exclamation point, or several of them. lol kinda freaked me out.

bugboy: the minute i get back on to my windows computer, i will upload the copies of the maps i have, or at least some images of them, so you get an idea of what people are talking about.

[Bukz]

If the (unnecessarily long and cryptic looking) names of the maps were only the problem that'd be a great solution. :s

[JamJamTheCalcMan]

maybe you could set a limit on how long the name of the map can be? if the name is horrendously long, remove the server from the masterserver for that period of time, until another map is loaded. or is that possible? :/

[Bukz]

Of course it is probably possible, but maybe not the best solution. Either way, the map names are just a minor portion of the overall problems these kind of maps suffer from.

Tbh, if it is a good map, I don't care what it's named, as long as it is relatively easy to vote for manually. (I rarely use menus. :p)

[Iguana]

I'm running a server that provides access to more than 800 maps(almost 900 soon ^.^) and in my maprot I don't have any @camper maps or any really long narrow @camper type maps, the two closest maps I have to @camper maps are MEGATWINTOWERS, MEGATWINTOWERS_X3, and MEGATWINS i think though there not as bad because they actually looks sorta realistic in my opinion, there are two other megatwintower maps, but there not in my maprot, because they look too much like an @camper map such as MEGATWINTOWERS_REWIND looks just like an @camper map and it invites too many abusive voteing noobs to my bl :$, so that y I dont host @camper type maps.. even without @camper maps I still manage to provide hundreds of maps to the public XD

anyway, i just hope these new quality requisits stuff doesn't kill most of my hosted maps to unplayable x-x

[Hellspell]

i think the restrictions are silly, imho. god i remember back to the 1.0 days.
* JamJamTheCalcMan reminisces
no worries, just map and go. i have to admit, i miss those days. :/

you're not the only one