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From: Sasha P. <sa...@ph...> - 2005-04-21 17:47:45
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Hello, fellow xpiloteers. You may or may not remember me, I used to go by 'Mo', and after that 'Drunken Russian'. I've been playing on/off for the last seven or eight years, and now an opportunity for hosting an xpilot server (with an extremely good connection) comes knocking, so now I'm reacquainting myself with this mistress I call xpilot. I disagree with a lot of what Throat says. " Whose first idea when starting a new game would be to use "a" and "s" to turn and use left or right shift keys to thrust?! I mean... the shift key? " As opposed to? The mouse? How often do you install a new game and find yourself instantly comfortable with the controls, knowing which button does what? Initial controls (as they have been since I've been playing) are fine, what is necessary is a readme file or a replay tutorial and an easy-on-the-eyes first-time client configuration program. " Most people won"t even regard the shift key as something that can be a separate event, not only a modifier to the other keys... " Most people? What kind of these people are we looking for? Ones for which xpilot is their first game or people who've already played computer games? The percentage who've come across xpilot before any other game is extremely low, and the people who have played other games can fully 'regard' the shift key as a 'separate event'. Short of the arrow keys (how they're binded default now is counter-intuitive), and possibly the mouse (who started playing xpilot with the mouse anyway?), there are no keys 'intuitive' other than the biggest ones (shift and enter). " There are many other things making the life of a potential new xpilot player a misery " When I first booted up NG (as opposed to bucko's xpilot5 or the .org's 454), my first misery was all the multicolored flashing things everywhere. from the turn speed/fuel/whatever gauges on the top right to the radar HUD to the square but oddly textured 'walls' and blinding cyan message text. what happened to windowed xpilot? xpilot isnt going to replace half life 2 or doom 3 or whatever other high intensity games people sit at home and play for hours, its going to give people something quick and light to do at the office while they're bored. that means its going to be able to be windowed, minimized, shrunk, and closed quickly. you guys have done an impressive job with NG, no doubt, but the defaults are set too flashy, and getting at the right options is too complex. its a lot less intimidating for new players to start off with little flash and be able to customize than be eye-candy assaulted and have to browse through to find a way to turn it all off. NG and 4.5.4 are very very different creatures. I think the .org site should get updated with a link to the sourceforge site and a description, but I think that new players would be more comfortable with XPwho. anyhow, tell me what y'all think.. i'll post some suggestions on the sf site. for xpilot, sasha |
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From: Sasha P. <sa...@ph...> - 2005-04-22 14:35:44
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Wow I just reread what I had posted and I sounded like quite the critical wino. Yeah, I remember when I just started off playing xpilot I played on my dad's trusty sparcstation, with that "tdkinterface" or something program, but moved to windows when the possibility arose. The computer which I have set up for xpilot will be dedicated, so what distro do you guys think I should run? I'm not very fluent in linux/unix, but there is always google, so I should be able to manage. What map with what settings would you guys like running? " "multicolored flashing things"? No idea what you mean. Do you have anything against colors? Do you want a black&white game? " The radar HUD, for example. Its in the defaults, I s'pose, but like I said I think it'd be easier for new players to start off with the basic display, no gauges (short of fuel), no radar HUD, etc. Then once they crawl through options they can turn off and on what they feel necessary. " Anyone volunteering? " Yeah I have a handful of graduate students I can get on this :) " remapping the keys with the new start center is childs play. " Errrr, maybe we can sort them better, because while I agree it is easy, im not sure the font and the alternate settings are the first things a newbie would want to change... Plus how do you go back to the main menu from that screen? I should post this under the 'suggestions' or 'features' part of the sf.net site, but I need confirmation that you guys still check on those occasionally :) Sasha |
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From: Darel C. <da...@gm...> - 2005-04-23 08:30:11
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> " > remapping the keys with the new start center is childs play. > " > Errrr, maybe we can sort them better, because while I agree it is easy, > im not sure the font and the alternate settings are the first things a ne= wbie > would want to change... Plus how do you go back to the main menu from tha= t screen? > I should post this under the 'suggestions' or 'features' part of the sf.n= et site, > but I need confirmation that you guys still check on those occasionally := ) The back button missing on that window is actually a known bug - the button is there, just not shown, (its the same place and size as the back button that normally appears in that area). I think its a bug in python windows wxwindows according to baron.. which distro to use for your server is a tough question.. if you are new its probably better sticking to something like Mandrake, or Fedora, as it will find your hardware for you and set itself up better.. you can download them for free.. if you need any help just give us a posting.. we all hang out on #xpilot on irc.freenode.net also, we usually are idling there so if you need any help setting up a server just ask. It is always a good idea to start several servers with different maps and settings, they will just sleep if there is noone on anyway, and that gives people the ability to choose one they want. With XPilotNG you can change all the server settings from the normal xpilot client via the talk window too which is a nice bonus.. :-) |
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From: Sasha P. <sa...@ph...> - 2005-04-25 16:15:18
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Hmmm well the servers will be running on a 1.3ghz duron with 768 megs of ram. How many servers do you think I can run off this machine without experiencing slowdown? I'm going with fedora and will not be running any other applications. Sasha |
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From: <xph...@sp...> - 2005-04-25 18:59:46
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On Mon, 25 Apr 2005, Sasha Panasyuk - sa...@ph... wrote: > Hmmm well the servers will be running on a 1.3ghz duron with 768 megs of > ram. How many servers do you think I can run off this machine without > experiencing slowdown? I'm going with fedora and will not be running any > other applications. Not more than a 100 or so ;) Just kidding - of course it will depend (quite) a bit on what you want to run, but with an Athlon 2600+, I normally see usually... perhaps 1-2% CPU usage at maximum. Running a server with an item map with lots of nukes etc. reflecting walls and what not will of course use up more resources. Still, I think you need not as much worry about the CPU used, but over the bandwidth of the connection. A normal modem connection can take one or 2 players, I think. I always wanted to measure how much bandwidth per player is used, but somehow never came around to do it, so I can't supply you with a better estimate than that. Karsten |
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From: Erik A. <de...@ho...> - 2005-04-25 19:15:46
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On Mon, 25 Apr 2005 12:15:03 -0400 Sasha Panasyuk <sa...@ph...> wrote: > Hmmm well the servers will be running on a 1.3ghz duron with 768 megs of > ram. How many servers do you think I can run off this machine without > experiencing slowdown? I'm going with fedora and will not be running any > other applications. > > Sasha a couple of hundred. ;) it's more a question of how many players there are, and how many objects they cause to move. If you allow full nukes with reflecting walls it'll be noticable perhaps rather quickly. With the number of active players now Id say you could have 5 diverse servers quite easily. Some example maps are: Polygon Bloods Music Circle Cannon Dodgers New(bie) Dark Hell SpaceBall Tourmination /virus |
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From: <xph...@sp...> - 2005-04-26 12:41:05
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Hi again, What I forgot to mention - not only that bandwidth will be the more noticeable factor, it is also IMVVHO not "friendly" to run more than... well perhaps 5, at the very most 10 servers at once, as this clutters the meta server list (it might be, that the meta server does not accept more than a certain amount of servers from one IP, but this remains a secret together with the code of the meta server program itself) If I may ask - what type of connection will you have and where exactly are you located? Karsten |
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From: Sasha P. <sa...@ph...> - 2005-04-26 13:51:04
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'If I may ask - what type of connection will you have and where exactly are you located?' Hmmm well well this thing http://www.wugnet.com/myspeed/speedtest.asp says my download speed is 31.9Mbps and upload is 20.1Mbps :) I'm in the harvard university physics department, in cambridge MA USA, so I s'pose our connection is quite decent. |
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From: Darel C. <da...@gm...> - 2005-04-22 07:09:06
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Hi Sasha, > You may or may not remember me, I used to go by 'Mo', and after that > 'Drunken Russian'. I've been playing on/off for the last seven or eight > years, and now an opportunity for hosting an xpilot server (with an > extremely good connection) comes knocking, so now I'm reacquainting > myself with this mistress I call xpilot. Of course we remember you :D [snip discussion about default bindings] I think the default bindings are a bit of a red herring, you can always remap them. remapping the keys with the new start center is childs play. remapping keys for experienced xpilot player is a no-brainer. =20 > When I first booted up NG (as opposed to bucko's xpilot5 or the .org's 45= 4), > my first misery was all the multicolored flashing things everywhere. > from the turn speed/fuel/whatever gauges on the top right to the radar HU= D > to the square but oddly textured 'walls' and blinding cyan message text. Oops.. I guess you are just using the Windows SDL platform. You have to know that the "old" fashioned X11 client still works (and works fantastically well) in a window you can make it look just like your old X11 client (check out the screen shots on the website). The reason the Windows SDL platform takes the fullscreen is because sadly SDL/Windows doesn't correct redraw the drawing surfaces.. a bug we can't really do that much about. The SDL platform works well in a window on the Unix/Linux platform. No doubt the Windows/SDL platform will work someday and we can change the one line of code that makes it only work in full screen mode (you do know that you can ALT-TAB back and forward to your desktop if you must). The thing is, we have tried very hard to cater for everyone, every OS, every distribution. Heck I think even buckos old MFC window client compiles still (Baron put a lot of work in to keep it working). I seriously suggest you try out the Linux X11 and Linux SDL clients. (you can even just pop in a Knoppix CD, download and compile the source if you don't want to install Linux/Unix). > you guys have done an impressive job with NG, no doubt, but the defaults = are set too > flashy, and getting at the right options is too complex. Defaults are always open for discussion, help of the community is a nice th= ing. getting the right options is easy in the SDL client (click the configure button or use the start center). > the sourceforge site and a description, but I think that new players woul= d be more comfortable with > XPwho. If you want you can use XPwho with the windows client, just point it at the windows binary - easy. (however I suggest trying the start center , the meta listing in that is very easy). > anyhow, tell me what y'all think.. i'll post some suggestions on the sf s= ite. Try out some of the things above :) Good to have you back, If you can run a decent bloods server in the US then I think xpilot could get a bit of a revivial , because at the moment its usually all the elite euro wussies hanging around, if we had a decent server in the US we could come kick some butt in the US for a change :) (the few US players have to come to europe and then whine about lag blah blah). |
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