Spectator mode

[nifrek]

I know there is IRC, but still. Would be nice to join a server and spectate a duel and then when match is finished, ask if you can play. One player goes spectator and you can then get in and get the spot (or get a teamgame going if more spectators join !!). Yes, you can do that on servers that have maxplayers set higher, however that means anybody can join the server and start playing mid-game, messing things up.

Also, that way ladder-servers wouldnt need to be private. Believe me, some newbie joining a server and spectating a duel between k0jak and Morfar is gonna be a lot more impressed by the game then by joining a ffa server filled with newbies who have no idea what they're doing. I'm quite sure this would get Nexuiz more activity and make it more addictive because then newbies would see what kind of skill you can get to if you keep playing more and more. It will make them want to progress and get as good as those players. And what better way to learn than by watching?

Right now Nexuiz kinda has this "underground" feel. Like you can join most public servers (one of the 3 servers that actually have people on it and not bots) and pretty much finish first all maps easily because they're filled with newbies. At the same time you keep hearing about some players who are awesome but you never actually see them play. It's easy to think "anybody can be good at this, it's way too newbie friendly". How many of those people who installed the game actually got as far as to go on IRC and ask good players to play? Unless you get your ass on irc where those good players hang out and ask them for a duel (get your ass kicked 50-0 ), you'll never know what is possible with this game.

That's pretty much what happened to me. I installed the game last week but didnt like it (almost hated it actually). Then I was bored and wondered what a duel would look like in this "newbie" game. When I played k0jak I suddenly got out of boredom.

Ladder rules don't allow spectators for a reason: someone could use another client to "spy" on his opponent. So ladder servers should always have maxplayers set to 2, regardless of how many spectators/players are allowed...
And if you wanna have duells with spectators, the arena gamemode is more fun imho

Hi, sorry about bringing up an old thread. I actually don't remember posting this. This was last year, I played Nexuiz about 3 weeks then stopped for various reasons, including this one probably. Strangely, almost exactly 1 year later I installed the game again. Gotta say I did'nt remember anything other than one map so I had to relearn everything.

Anyway, I'd like to bring this up again, I was gonna post the exact same thing I did last year and I reread the thread and thought about ideas how this could work. First, read what I've quoted in my post before if you skipped it (which explains why I'm suggesting this) and then this:

A way this could work could be to have a setting on the server (accessible by vote) that enables or disables spectators. So for official matches, player could simply disable them.

I guess it might be complicated on the programming side although I know nothing about it, maybe it would be easier to code it not by changing the maxplayers settings but by making spectators "blind" or something like that. So if you join an official game you won't be able to see anything other than a blank screen with death messages and chat talk. If you join a duel played for fun you could watch (but not join, of course).

Every time I mention on various public servers that "I wish I could spectate duels" plenty of other players repsond by "me too".

And no, demos don't do the trick (and there's no real place to get them), real-time is the real deal.

Seems to me this could work. Any opinions?


...
And to add even more to this, just think how cool it would be if when you came back home from work or whatever and check on irc and see that some people talked minutes earlier about dueling, you could join the server and watch them play, smoke a cigarette and comment on the match with other spectators and maybe challenge the winner when they're done playing. Wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't that kinda thing help the community and get newbies to start playing seriously and not just "hide and snipe"?

[nifrek]

Okay nevermind then.

[GreEn`mArine]

I already suggested this. No interest on the developers side because developers don't play 1on1s. Forget it, it won't come, unless you do it yourself. I've asked for this a dozen times. If I had time I would learn and do it, but I don't have any more free time to spend on Nexuiz.

[morfar]

I want Arena mode changed. Simply by changing the rules to timelimit 15 instead of "first frag wins". This makes Arena mode more like Duel mode. It allready allows spectators and a queue system.

If someone can code a NexTV proxy thats cool too

[divVerent]

That would be boring, because it'd only make sense if the server runs always on the same map. 15 minutes per arena ROUND... no thanks. Would make a full arena game where everyone had his chance take a day.

[divVerent]

I already suggested this. No interest on the developers side because developers don't play 1on1s. Forget it, it won't come, unless you do it yourself. I've asked for this a dozen times. If I had time I would learn and do it, but I don't have any more free time to spend on Nexuiz.

Exactly. First of all, "disabling spectators", how is that going to work. What to do with connections that are neither players nor spectators? Impossible.

What you MEAN would be the following: a way to change maxplayers on the fly, and a QC mod to only let two players actually play. But even that would be annoying, if after a map change the wrong one joined the game. So forget that too. What we would REALLY need for that is a second listening port on the server, one with maxplayers 2, one with maybe maxplayers 14, and the QC code could find out which port someone came from.

If we hadn't more important things to do, this would be a possibility - IIRC the engine can already open up multiple listening ports (one local:1, and one UDP port), so adding a second UDP port would be easy to do, and it shouldn't be hard to also add a field to the QC code so it knows which port a player connected to. Maybe someone else can take up this idea. I propose it like this:

maxplayers 16
ports "0.0.0.0:26000 2 0.0.0.0:26001 13 127.0.0.1:26002 1"

That would mean: 16 player slots total. From "any ethernet card" 26000, 2 can come (the duelers). From "any ethernet card" 26001, 13 can come (the spectators). From localhost port 26002, one can always join (the admin). QC should then be able to see a string that indicates which of these sockets was used, like, player.netaddress_local, which would either contain one of 0.0.0.0:26000, 0.0.0.0:26001, 127.0.0.1:26002.

Note that the numbers do not need to add up to maxplayers - for example, you can allow a total of 16, but only 12 to join per port, so the other 4 have to come in through the other port.

Also, it would be cool to make it possible that the different ports get different hostnames. But no idea how to store that, so sorry - someone else has to find a working way for that and implement it.

[nifrek]

I've taken a look at the code (even tho I don't really understand) I can see a lot of the same functions are used in most modes and some have unique ones like arena_roundbased and such, so I "suppose" that making a new mode could be pretty easy (as in "not take 100 hours of work") to do by using bits of code from here and there. Then compile a new progs.dat and voilà?

Actually, goddammit, I would be willing to donate 50$USD using paypal to anyone that will do this:

Create a new mode (no idea what it could be called, maybe Tournament or something like that). In this mode, it would work like this: Teamplay needs to be enabled. When people join the server they can join a team or stay observer, like on any server with ongoing games. At first the server is in "warmup mode", which is what duel servers use right now (you can frag each other and stuff until all players are "ready" and then map restarts). So when all players that want to play have joined a team and are "ready", the map restarts. Server is now in "match mode". Observers and people who connect after the game has started have to stay observers until timelimit is reached. Then the map restarts and it's warmup time again, people can go back to observer or join a team again.

That way, the same server could be used for duel, 2on2, 3on3, 4on4, etc. without random people joining mid-game and ruin everything by unbalancing the teams. It would be nice to play REAL TEAMPLAY without having to join a clan.

Does that make sens? My english is not so good so if it's clear I can try to explain better.

Anyone interested?

//EDIT: I didn't see your post, divVerent. Yes that would definatly work. Actually I believe that's how Quakeworld works which is a modified Quake client/server that is also open-source. Maybe it would be possible/easier for someone to adapt that code?

[morfar]

That would be boring, because it'd only make sense if the server runs always on the same map. 15 minutes per arena ROUND... no thanks. Would make a full arena game where everyone had his chance take a day.

A "public" 1on1 mode with ladder rules and queue system would be nice Why not call it Duel Mode.. sure it can be tiresome to sit and watch someone else play but some might learn stuff.

[GreEn`mArine]

nifreK : i posted exactly the same in january 2007 already.

http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=1151

[divVerent]

That would be boring, because it'd only make sense if the server runs always on the same map. 15 minutes per arena ROUND... no thanks. Would make a full arena game where everyone had his chance take a day.

A "public" 1on1 mode with ladder rules and queue system would be nice Why not call it Duel Mode.. sure it can be tiresome to sit and watch someone else play but some might learn stuff.

If a round takes 15 minutes and many people can join, wouldn't it mean it takes hours till it's your turn? Who would want THAT?

No, that's not going to happen. What's more likely is multiple ports, and different "access rights" and player counts on them, so there could be a "private" port number for the duelers, and a "public" port number for the crowd to spectate from. So, for example:

connect 1.2.3.4:5678 = duelist (max 2)
connect 1.2.3.4:26000 = spectator (max 13)
connect 127.0.0.1:26001 = admin (max: 1)

It probably wouldn't be hard to add THAT - it will however be hard to register them all to the master server. Just registering the spectator port should be easy however.