Messages

1

General Discussion / Surftimer Plugin

« on: Today at 05:22:17 PM »

With the recent news of the IT servers ending (thanks for all you have done klanana, especially when I randomly added you to get plugins!), thought it would be good to clear up some stuff about the surftimer many of you have seen and heard about.

What is it: An Eventscripts plugin that does map, stage, checkpoint, bonus times, player points and ranking for surf maps (+ way more). Comparable to what KSF is running and as far as I know there is nothing that comes close to it in TF2, apart from skillsrank, but i'll touch on that later.

You can try it out on an AUS surf skill server I run: 103.23.148.107:27115

Features:
- All menus systems are in game, this means you navigate top times, player profiles, map profiles almost instantly aside of course from your ping to the server
- Speedcap system that stops people from prehopping any starting zones (start for linears, and any stage stops for staged)
- Points for stage, map, bonus completition, and more points for top 10 map, or 1st in stage or bonus. Points may be revisted
- It takes me about 3 min to setup a linear map with the zones, and about 10 min for a staged map. Except classics...
- Admins can delete maps, map/stage/bonus times, players all from in-game menu
- Chat ranking system. Everyone has a tag next to their name (like [casual]) and color based on their rank
- Hud elements = Current time, stage, WR for stage, your PR for stage and WR for stage, time between these two

Potential features
- Very easy to integrate all stats onto a website running on python (according to Absolute can easily reuse same code)
- Absolute is working on a plugin that spawns a bot that mimics player actions. This could be set up so a Bot is constantly, or on demand, doing the WR run for a map. The bot can be used so players always feel slow, or spec'd to see the routes!

How did I get it: Maybe 6 months ago contacted a guy called Absolute on the ES forums who is the genius behind it. I had no idea if it would work for tf2 or not. I bought the plugin off him (plugins this good don't come free), and ofc it didn't work. However, a couple small modifications with tf2 vs css vars and we were able to get it going exactly as it runs in css.

I've been spending the last months modifying the plugin to add some features, redo some things and adjust it for how tf2 surfing is (importantly the speedcap)

So its perfect? No. The surftimer version on my server uses sqlite, which is local database storage for 1 server only. Works great. However, Absolute is working on changing everything to run off mysql (multiple servers with only 1 database). However, this is a massive change, that introduces a lot of issues. So it is not ready atm, but is being worked on. I will try get an estimated finish from him, but it's very difficult to do with all the unexpected problems that come with scripting.

Lastly, it's worth noting any server wanting to run this plugin would also need to buy the plugin off Absolute, as I did. I paid 80 euros for the sqlite surftimer, but he will probably want to put the price up for the mysql version. His price also varies with the demand for the timer. More customers means he can lower his price. He's been working at least the last month on it, and probably several more weeks. I will try lock this down with him later . He has put hundreds of hours into this plugin, so I had no issues with paying a couple hours of my work for it. I will not be giving it out to anyone for free, and hope others who buy the plugin have the same respect for him.

Jump timer? In the way future, I am looking at how we can modify this surf timer into a jump timer. The admins don't even have skillsrank running on AusJump, so I can't really speak as to how it compares, but I get the impression we are due for a change. Again, this is very long term, so I'm not even thinking about it atm.

So i guess to summarise:

- Surftimer for 1 server is running fine and you can try it out (103.23.148.107:27115), or ask me any questions here

- Surftimer for multiple servers is in dev, but is taking longer than expected. I was hoping done this week, but will take much longer, will try to get ETA but it's hard to predict.

- In the future, server owners would need to pay Absolute to get this plugin. So this isn't an ideal plugin for ppl looking to just host a cheap server for their friends. I imagine long term we will have a small number of servers around the world, all connected to same DB

- Jump timer is a long term goal, so no promises but that is definitely something i'm aiming for. I'm bad at surf

2

General Discussion / Re: Beginnings 2013

« on: November 27, 2013, 07:06:46 AM »

One of the big issues is difficulty in normal map run vs speedrun strats. I feel like my void map matched sexydev pretty well, for any normal runs. However, I put in a lot of tough strats, particularly after seeing how orbital played out. I personally prefer seeing a top 10 with larger gaps, so that run #1 actually looks and is way more impressive than #5 or something. I was happy to see QuBa get a great run that stood out. I probably should have clarified earlier with AG whether normal or speedrun difficulty was supposed to match.

Obviously this pissed off a lot of players when hitting every strat would require crazy grinding. Testing the map was also difficult with it being all closed off. I had about 3 mates who don't speedrun test it, as the better jumpers would have wanted to run it. I gave AG the map about 12 hours in advance, and implemented every suggestion he gave me (full map regen, a seamless tele for the triple, and a couple other small things), to only find him later call it a shit map on stream. Ofc I expected a lot of these responses with people grinding a map a week straight, but it just shows there's probs a better way to run this and help mappers.

Biggest complaint i've had is my use of func_nogrenades. Majority are 16 unit thick (bad)because I was in a rush at the end, however, I stand by the majority of my placements. Final void version will have a couple more solid walls at the start, but if you go through every jump, shootable walls would render many of them way too easy. I didn't want to totally sacrifice the value of the map for normal jumpers, just so people can have an easier speedrun.

Overall it would have been good to have a couple players that are responsible for testing every map, so us map makers know what to adjust. All that being said, 12 new maps in 6 weeks, big efame on youtube and decent donations to the comp is great to see.

3

Sourcemod Information / Re: Bounce Checker Plugin

« on: November 19, 2013, 05:15:00 PM »

Thanks to QuBA for finding how broken this is. Now displays the proper height and bounces. Will probably do another release soon to include crouchwalk bounces

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General Discussion / Re: Beginnings 2013

« on: November 16, 2013, 08:22:29 PM »

Void is quite the jump in difficulty. 

I'd say it's slightly more difficult than annex v2 blue side.

Yea I was told to aim for jump_sexydev difficulty on this thread:
http://forums.tf2jump.com/index.php/topic,2201.0.html

So it's aimed to be just slightly more difficult than annex blue. Always going to be an issue with massive differences in skill, and spreading a 6 week comp to cover the curve equally, when in reality majority of jumpers would be in the week 1->2 area.

If it really is an issue, i could release a b2 made to be easier, but I think that will just make the week 2->3 gap worse. I also haven't seen or played week 3 map, so no idea how it compares.

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Jump IT / JuJump iT / Re: Admins, look into this/

« on: October 27, 2013, 10:02:59 PM »

Yea there is saves per class and per team, but there's a short sequence of cmds that u can glitch it with.

Eg. go blue soldier ~ do some commands

go red/blue and any class ~ do some commands and you will get the original save point.

Not posting the sequence here obviously. People been abusing it a bit on Aus Jump, guess not so much in the US. But I remember verifying that i could revert to a soldier save from demo on Jump IT.

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Sourcemod Information / Re: Bounce Checker Plugin

« on: October 27, 2013, 06:30:20 PM »

Damn, I was working on something like this for JB!

Feel free to use what i've done or add me. Happy to help

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Jump IT / JuJump iT / Re: Admins, look into this/

« on: October 26, 2013, 08:44:28 PM »

People probably are using the tele glitch in JA to go from red to blue areas and vice versa. So not necessarily the mapper's fault. Unless JA gets fixed then teamset stuff is best way to deal with it.

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Sourcemod Information / Bounce Checker Plugin

« on: October 15, 2013, 04:53:06 AM »

Made a small plugin that checks the height of where you are standing vs. surface you are looking at. Gives the height and a list of all 6 bounce methods, and which will work.

Note: Plugin doesn't check for tele's at all. Checking for a 1-unit tele over complicated this more than i wanted. I'm hoping people have a feeling for 1-unit tele's, or can use showtriggers_toggle

Possible values are all based on this thread:
http://forums.tf2jump.com/index.php?topic=1498.0

So it only supports from 1 to 1800 units. I might try get in touch with jamien to expand this.

Command is !bcheck or /bcheck

Screenshot: http://puu.sh/4QD1A.jpg

Download:
https://mega.co.nz/#!N0k3GSgD!VwN4XSrMUPCxHU-iDqNcGHg5AUxzmSHr0WL4tw2Q9D4

.sp is included, lazy code so lower expectations

Enjoy!

Changelog
1.0 - release
1.1 - fixed height to actually be useful

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Jump IT / JuJump iT / Re: List of Jump IT user commands

« on: October 04, 2013, 12:50:49 AM »

I just went into JuJumpIT and did:

bind f "say /reset"

Works fine for me, doesn't show up in chat and sends me back.

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New Maps / Re: Jump_nmotion

« on: September 30, 2013, 10:56:08 PM »

Looking better already. Still a number of things worth changing however:

1. Too dark, more lights please. Or make more use of the sky box environment lighting. I pretty much felt every jump was too dark, and on 12 I couldn't even see

2. On 13 raise the starting platform so tele isn't at same height as where u walk, makes it annoying to walk off. Also maybe mess around with the glass so it's more visible. More lighting may help this, but atm it's kinda hard to see the glass

3. Still inconsistency with textures and nogrenades. Try make it so all shootable walls are one texture, and all func_nogrenades walls are a diff texture

Good improvement from the prev version i played. Just need to make it more jumper friendly, so they can see where they're going!

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New Maps / Re: Jump_nmotion

« on: September 28, 2013, 09:27:02 PM »

There are a couple simple things you can do to really improve this map:

- Almost always have a different texture for the floor and walls. Lots of times I thought i was looking at a wall when it was actually an platform

- Use a different texture wherever you are using func nogrenades.

- If you feel up to it add a light environment and puts lights and/or a skybox around the map. Makes everything look so much better, and will help with the walls vs. floor confusion i was having

- Put jump numbers in (use afterglows mapping pack, or just use roman numerals if you want to do it quicker)

Otherwise some nice simple jumps 

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General Discussion / Re: Ctap from cp_badlands mid to the 2nd resup wooden bridge

« on: September 14, 2013, 08:45:44 PM »

Just tried this out. Was able to do it a couple times but no where near consistently. Others can probably can do better

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Surf iT / SuSurf iT / Re: Prehopping

« on: September 09, 2013, 12:00:34 AM »

I'm sure something can be coded from es. Problem is, well, it's es.

Just curious, what do you find bad about es? I've got es + sourcemod running on a server for a couple things. Can't say either has been better/worse for me

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Jump Help / Re: Timer for local servers!

« on: August 30, 2013, 06:01:31 PM »

Just copied the text and got this running. Not sure why it isn't working for other people. Make sure you are naming them timer.cfg, timer1.cfg, timer2.cfg and timer3.cfg. Also need sv_cheats = 1

Also found that this timer runs slightly slow, each 1 min took 3 seconds too long, so it might not be the best solution. Impressive script nonetheless.

Installing a plugin for offline timing is much more effort than it's worth, just use xntimer or any other one which can stay overlayed with tf2.

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New Maps / Re: jump_deserted_b1

« on: August 29, 2013, 10:05:55 PM »

...

Thanks! Also for the mapping tutorial, was the first resource i used to get started. 

I tried to brighten that C2 level, but I agree it's probably still too dark. Will fix in next version

The bounce heights are all good according to that spreadsheet that was floating around the forum. There's 1 walk-off crouch, 1 ctap then crouch, and a couple jump and crouch ones. Wasn't sure how much to hint at them, since the secrets in most maps get found out then shared pretty quick.