Planning thread for June donation drive

[Tharine]

Umm, amateur question, but, If we help build the base and such, are we still allowed to play in the event, or must we moderate?

I'd like to do both, but would rather play more than build if I had to choose. (odd for a C mod, I know.)

 

You're still fine to play 

 

As an additional question, does anyone have any good links/screenshots of the base design we had for the first CTF? I'd love to compare the designs we used for both CTFs and see how we can improve upon either of them.

[buzzie71]

Just wanted to emphasize the importance of avoiding a stalemate situation; as part of Red team last CTF I am aware of how we held all other flags within our inner base and literally held the game hostage until we got the other teams' complete and total surrender. :P  Would it be possible to get the flag to drop as soon as someone enters the inner base?  I'm a bit hesitant to have a timer on the wool carrying because, say, a player decided to take a treacherous path across the map and needs more time to traverse it than someone who takes an easy path.

[AvengerOfThings]

 

 

People who have volunteered - please feel free to proceed with any tasks you signed up to help with - and recruit other mods/admins to help out!  Perhaps we should try to meet up next weekend to see what we have so far / discuss ideas / gather a big group to work on things?

 

 

 

I can talk anytime in the American evening this week. Would need a bit more heads up for the weekend, but will be generally open! I do think getting together, possibly on mumble, would be very beneficial.

[totemo]

Since Deaygo has stated that he and slide23 are working on CutePVP, I'm leaving that to them.  The first thing I'm doing is the mob disguise feature as a plugin layering on top of probably DisguiseCraft, since MobDisguise doesn't appear to have been maintained.  It will have a simple API, basically just requiring CutePVP to tell it what team a player is in.

[MasterCommaThe]

What if one team was mobs at night, and the other team was mobs during the day!?

[slide]

In regards to players being disguised as mobs, I would prefer being able to choose what mob type you are, essentially make it a 'class' system so you can either select your new class before you die or after you die (go back to a mob selector room and enter a doorway to become a specific mob) or something like that. Care would obviously have to be taken to attempt to balance all the classes. Like maybe

 

Player: All normal

Enderman: Unlimited enderpearls (with cooldown), no armor

Spider: Jumping, no armor

Skeleton: Unlimited arrow, armor, slower

Zombie: Stength, armor, slower

 

etc.

[MasterCommaThe]

Creeper: 1 TNT, slower, no armor, no weapons

Cow/Pig/Sheep (The Spy): no armor, slower

Chicken/Pony (The Minelayer): armor, no weapons, unlimited poison blocks (opposing team wool) with short cooldown

Ghast (The Blimp): slower, fly, unlimited arrows with cooldown,

 

I would revise Enderman to:
Enderman: Unlimited enderpearls (with cooldown), armor, melee fist only

This is closer to the normal mob, and is not an overpowered assassin. Might make a good spy as well.

 

All of the mobs in this post should be special rewards for a mini-game.

[schererererer]

I could help with map/base building.

[Ludeman84]

If we do decide to go with players-as-mobs (which would be a lot of fun), let's please make sure that it's beta-tested to hell and back, and easily explained.  We've tried class-based events in the (distant) past, only to have them quickly fall apart due to plugin issues and general player confusion.

 

As an additional question, does anyone have any good links/screenshots of the base design we had for the first CTF? I'd love to compare the designs we used for both CTFs and see how we can improve upon either of them.

 

Here's an album of every screenshot I found from the first CTF - you should be able to ascertain most of the base design from some of the shots.  I can chat with you more about it tonight if some aspects aren't clear.

 

I can talk anytime in the American evening this week. Would need a bit more heads up for the weekend, but will be generally open! I do think getting together, possibly on mumble, would be very beneficial.

 

Maybe we can see if folks are around Friday late afternoon/evening (US eastern time)?

 

EDIT: I won't be around to help, but it'd still be good for folks to gather every so often (maybe starting on Friday) to see how things are going and work on them as a group.  Weekends are usually easiest for such things.

[kitcatbar]

Maybe we can see if folks are around Friday late afternoon/evening (US eastern time)?

 

At the moment, I'm pretty sure I would be available.

 

Edit: My plans got moved around, so Friday is iffy. The afternoon and early evening should be ok.

 

Edit #2: I'm leaving at 7:30 PM EST, I can talk before then.

[cab417]

I would definitely be up for helping out with map and base building.

[MasterCommaThe]

My idea for the Undead Survival map has gotten a little more detailed in my head, and since most of ya'll aren't psychic, I'm going to write out the text of the signs I suggest putting at a hospital spawn and base.

"The undead outbreak is real,.Your outpost where you defend against the horde is an old hospital. Doctors fleeing from a nearby hospital have informed you that it was the location the Z-virus was developed and "tested". A militant group got wind of its development, took over the hospital and released the virus resulting in the worldwide epidemic. Your outpost is in a position to steal the medical records and and use your facilities to find a cure for this horrific disease, ending this nightmare. Protect your scientists, and prevent theirs from distributing it further."

 

So each team gets this same message/perspective of the other team. Each hospital has 3 wings, Cafeteria (supply depot and storage), Patient Rooms (Spawn on the helipad on the roof of this wing), and OR/ICU (Flag area). The OR/ICU will have one of the OR rooms (different for each team) converted to be a lab for R&D. The R&D papers (Flag) will be stolen by killing the Scientist (Villager) in the lab. The flag is returned by bringing the R&D papers back to your own "lab".

The exterior of the hospital will be a parking lot and gardens, surrounded by barbed wire (2m high chain with spider web on top and a line of spider web on the ground outside) In the lot will be various cars and a couple of tanks.

 

For fun, there will be a morgue with a few zombie & skele spawners.

[ROCKONN]

I'm all for map building, already have one in the works I'd be happy to contribute. Also have a server we can use to build on.

[MasterCommaThe]

I'm about to finish up another project and would like to help build the maps and bases. Let me know if its worth creating "The Hospital".

[ROCKONN]

The main basis for my map, so far, is as follows:

300x300 land base

40-50 layers underground full of sewers, water filters, varying tunnels, etc etc.

Above this, i dunno, can be anything. A town, a castle complex, pretty much anything. Will post a link to images, if i get the okay

[kitcatbar]

The main basis for my map, so far, is as follows:

300x300 land base

40-50 layers underground full of sewers, water filters, varying tunnels, etc etc.

Above this, i dunno, can be anything. A town, a castle complex, pretty much anything. Will post a link to images, if i get the okay

 

I'm just worried about the bases being too built up. We still need players to have some freedom to build on their own, and have untouched area underground to mine/hopefully find dungeons.

[MasterCommaThe]

Rockonn, you said you had this on a separate server. Would you mind PM'ing the address to me so I can join and see? I'd also be happy to start helping to build if it is related to our CTF.

[ROCKONN]

I'm just worried about the bases being too built up. We still need players to have some freedom to build on their own, and have untouched area underground to mine/hopefully find dungeons.

The plan for this one is to be a non-build ctf map

[MasterCommaThe]

"non-build"? So the flag area is the only pre-built structure?

[ROCKONN]

By non-build I meant pre-set, as in everything on the map is set up already, players cannot edit it. Players spawn with an iron sword, full leather armor, and a bow/arrows. The idea is to have 2 or 4 teams total for this map... eh it's easier to show you. Setting up the map now.

[WickedCoolSteve]

Rockonn, are you working on just the bases or the map as a whole?

[slide]

So a little info on what I want to accomplish with the actual event. We are wanting to test out a new 'Lobby' feature for possible future use. For normal non events, we would have C, S, P and the new Lobby server. You would still be able to connect directly to all 4 servers, however if you connect directly to just 'nerd.nu' you would be spawned in the lobby. Once connected to any server, you would be able to switch to another server simply by typing /server pve or if setup, walk through a special portal. So for the event, I'm wanting to have multiple servers running like we normally would in order to stress test it all.

 

My idea for the CTF with this setup is having a lobby server, a red team server and a blue team server. Once the event starts everyone connects and starts in the lobby, where we could do some team selection or use randomized like we've always done. I know people have felt teams were uneven in the past (Though last time the losing teams had the MOST people). So perhaps 1 initial team choosing and then after the event officially starts you are automatically put onto the team that needs players.

 

As for the map. I was thinking surrounding 0,0 would be the team base, surrounding that would be an uneditable (cleared/flat?) area where the flag would be. I was thinking having like 12 podiums evenly spaced, where the flag randomly went to a new one after being capture, to stop one team from constantly capturing the flag and immediately picking it up again, though it might make it harder to defend as well. we can play test this if people like it. Outside of this area would be a wild terrain, possibly high mountains etc where anyone can build. Lastly, outside that area would be the 'No Mans Land' this is the area where the teams would build portals to go to the enemy teams server. They are 2 way so when opening up a good spot on their map you are opening up an entry into your own.

 

Let me know what y'all think.

[totemo]

My idea for the CTF with this setup is having a lobby server, a red team server and a blue team server.

 

Is it really necessary to have a separate server for each team?  Are they really separate servers or is it something like Multiverse Portals? How do you plan on synchronising team membership state between the servers?  What about shared global chat?  Does the code for all that already exist?

 

I've been looking at what the Bukkit API provides for managing teams and scores - the Scoreboard API.  There are pros and cons.  On the plus side, the underlying vanilla Minecraft code manages team membership persistence.  On the minus side, scoreboards in the sidebar refuse to display if more than 15 players have scores set for a particular objective.

 

I need to push on with the players-as-mobs plugin so I am going to be building a team abstraction today that allows team membership information to be taken from the Scoreboard API (I need to efficiently map from Player to team for event handlers, might end up just being metadata).  That will allow me to do testing without having an updated CutePVP plugin and I can manage teams with the /scoreboard command.  And if another team management mechanism gets written I can just swap out that abstraction.

 

The way I now understand the Scoreboard API it's unsuited for actually tracking scores (kills, deaths, flag captures) in events of this size because when you add the complete information for all players, you suddenly can't show the scoreboard.  Instead I think it's more like a broadcast billboard that we can put up on vanilla clients.  Every few minutes, fill in a scoreboard with a subset of the total score information (at most 15 entries), show that to the players for 30 seconds or so, and then clear it off their screens.  Probably implement a command to let players opt out of that.  It's a nicety, but something I'd like to work on once I've got the main features of the plugin in a completed state.  It's also possible to abuse the Scoreboard mechanism to show total scores; you create an OfflinePlayer called Red and another called Blue, and then you can add objectives and set the score values to be the total for the whole team.

 

[ROCKONN]

Rockonn, are you working on just the bases or the map as a whole?

Map as a whole. Having some trouble getting the map to load up on my server, keeps rendering oddly. Anyone have a working version of MCEdit they could use to export it?

[slide]

Is it really necessary to have a separate server for each team?  Are they really separate servers or is it something like Multiverse Portals? How do you plan on synchronising team membership state between the servers?  What about shared global chat?  Does the code for all that already exist?

 

It is not necessary, but here are my 2 main reasons for wanting to do it that way.

1. A single server with 150 or so people on it will run much slower than 2 servers with 75 people on them
2. To test out a new lobby/relay system to ensure it can handle the load of multiple servers and having people switch back and forth.

They would in fact be separate servers. I haven't settled on a communication method yet but what I will probably do is have 1 server (the lobby server) act as the master. The other servers will connect and share info in real time. There isn't a whole lot of info that needs to be moved about all the much, mostly just location information and flag state changes. Adding chat to that wouldn't be very hard.

 

CutePVP does have a TeamManager class and I'm currently working on cleaning it up and making it all configurable since atm it is hard coded for specific teams. I can easily expose team and player information that way. What info do you need from the teams specifically?

 

I will be working on it throughout the weekend and testing on a few servers. Once I get that all running I will let y'all know what the info is to help test.