I have a minor announcement, more of a fair warning announcement
For a couple weeks now, I've been thinking of and wanting to do a BetaMapFest, where the MG server goes into an all beta map rotation for a period of hours, or maybe even a day. NO default maps! I have a couple of reasons for wanting to do this:
1. To get everyone out of the patterns that we all get into when playing the standard maps. We all think of our own special places to attack, or build bases, etc. Many times I've noticed that people get stuck in habits, not experimenting like they should, myself included. Trying different maps will get you to look at things from a different perspective. It will help to get us to play on the fly, as opposed to playing to a maps strengths and weaknesses.
2. To get everyone trying out these maps, and familiar with them! The more people that try them out, the more problems will be located and cleaned up before they go into standard release. Some of these maps you may never see in common rotation on the popular servers, but some will in one form or another. Who better to test these maps out than the clan systems?
3. New maps are challenging. I can run around the walls of Niveus very quickly with great precision cause I know em like the back of my hand! Not true of the beta maps, I'll bet the same is true of you.
4. Because they are FUN! If you like atcs, you will love UTCSb2! marsbase is huge, and looks like a great battleground. And the marsbase colors are different from any map I've seen, it's a nice change. If you haven't tried pulse, you really should. It is as unique as marsbase, and might be equally as large if not larger, and the video/button room is very cool, as are the double level elevators!
You can play these maps and more on the }MG{ Clan server right now by voting for them. BUT, anyone who does not already have them downloaded WILL BE KICKED BY THE SERVER! I haven't set up autodownload yet, so if YOU don't have the map, YOU WILL BE KICKED! Sorry for the caps, I just don't want any surprises
Where can you get these great maps? In the downloads section of
http://tremulous.infoSome are pretty big, so getting them ahead of time or you'll be waiting! Plus, the autodownload feature of tremulous is very slow, I've gotten download speeds of 3kbps! Don't expect to get these maps before the end of a match through autodownload.
The big question for me is, will the existing server handle the load? You've all seen the clipping in some of the big areas, that's a server having problems handling the load. The }MG{ server handles the present load ok, but I've noticed that on uncreation, the load goes up considerably and it gets laggy, even though ping times don't change. So much so that I'm considering taking it out of the rotation for the time being. Who knows how it will handle the load of the beta maps!
Oh, but I have a solution in the works
A new computer is on order that will make the existing server look like a horse and buggy (which isn't hard, frankly!) It will have no problems handling the load of beta maps!
To celebrate when it goes online, I would like to have BetaMapFest! But you must prepare. Playing matches on beta maps is no fun when noone else has the map
and I certainly don't want anyone kicked on a map change. A list of the maps presently on the server is below.
arachnid2
atcs
dark
derelictb-beta03
gloom2beta2
gloom3t
karith
marsbase_b2
meep_b2
nexus6
niveus
powergrid_b25
pulse-beta3
transit
tremor
uncreation
UTCSb2
HAVE FUN!
