Here, the first results of the EXTRA MAP POPULARITY CONTEST:

On 10th place, the newcomer "vita mea" by my very own dumb self with 22.1 player hours.

On 9th place, the once more popular map fragcity by Morphed with 22.7 player hours. What happened to it?

On 8th place, the surprising brain-twister flipzone, again by my very own dumb self, with 23.8 player hours.

On 7th place, the big ugly grey but fun map dmtower (BTW a nice laser climbing training ground), done by need2kill, our great CS gamer and a good friend of Mista "in de bobbes" Evil, with 26.5 player hours. Great job!

On 6th place, ctf_nexface_b2 by C.Brutail with 50.6 player hours. But this is just the beginning.

On 5th place, mentalspace by tZork with 83.6 player hours. People often complain about it, most probably because of it's campability, but others love it for that.

On 4th place, ctf_greatwall_rev2 by Shoe with 125.8 player hours. Watch out for the invasion of the shotgun turrets!

On 3rd place, there's tZork's creation tznex03 which he plans a new version of with 145.9 player hours.

On second place, the simple and fun box map eggandbacon, again by my very own dumb self - with 587.8 player hours. Could anyone read the signs on it BTW?

On first place...

the one you were all waiting for...

with an astoundishing total of 1302.0 player hours...

is none other than...

the map, completed by C.Brutail...

a remake of a well-known UT99 map...

the ultimate spawncamping map...

*drumroll*

facing_worlds_nex_b1k!


Note: the player hours are calculated using a qstat search over the public server list. n players on a server for a time of t hours are n*t server hours if n is larger than one, or zero otherwise.

Alle Angaben ohne Gewehr. Der Rächweg ist ausgeschlossen, der Linksweg eine Sackgasse. Eltern verhaften ihre Kinder. Nur echt mit 52 Fehlern. Sie sind nicht berechtigt, unberechtigte Kopien dieses Datenträgers anzufertigen. Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again. THIS SIGN HAS SHARP EDGES.

hehe nice 1300 hours impressive

Vociferous wrote:hehe nice 1300 hours impressive

Well, it's player hours, so it could for example be 130 hours with 10 players.

Still, it is something...

BTW, I reset the counter and will look again in about two weeks.

wow

Btw. thanx for hosting a server that plays custom-maps. This is very important for home-cooked levels. Feedback is always welcomed for amateur mappers like me. Gj for all, let's ake more custom maps for nexuiz!

If these maps are so popular, can we expect to see them in Nexuiz in the future? Particularly if there is such a lack of CTF maps.

Well, we'd love to e.g. ship with that facing worlds map. We can't, though, because it uses models and textures that are not GPLed.

Now imagine we wouldn't have map downloading.... /me hugs that feature

Ed wrote:If these maps are so popular, can we expect to see them in Nexuiz in the future? Particularly if there is such a lack of CTF maps.

Apart from what was said, most of these don't fit Nexuiz in style, for example eggandbacon and fragcity. tznex03 IMHO is a good candidate, but tZork is currently working on improving it.

ctf_greatwall_rev2 is visually and technically anything but good but a funny map, it IMHO needs a remake - and could be good then.

mentalspace - I like it, but I doubt it would be good to include a map so many people hate.

dmtower - it is a fun map, but ugly. And I doubt just retexturing would fix it...

flipzone - obviously a joke map

vita mea - not in Nexuiz style, and retexturing and extendind its height would lose the whole point of the map.

divVerent wrote:ctf_greatwall_rev2 is visually and technically anything but good but a funny map, it IMHO needs a remake - and could be good then..

I'm working on a new release that adds a bit more to make it more varied, but yes, it could definitely use the touch of an experienced mapper to make it really feel cohesive

Last month's results:

• 10. fragcity (200.5Ph)
• 9. dmtower (207.2Ph)
• 8, cbctf1 - CuBeOwL's newcomer map, an -ish of a well-known Q3A CTF map (304.9Ph)
• 7. vitamea (311.8Ph)
• 6. tznex03 (361.8Ph)
• 5. ctf_greatwall (367.5Ph)
• 4. controlfactor (435.7Ph)
• 3. eggandbacon (1526.4Ph)
• 2. capturecity (1618.9Ph)
• 1. facing worlds nex (2923.3Ph for b1k, 2416.9Ph for final, a total of 5340.2Ph!)

The top "included" Nexuiz map has been silvercity with 1174.0Ph, which means facing worlds nex, capturecity and eggandbacon are the only maps that managed to beat the already included maps...

and the only "included" Nexuiz maps below controlfactor's score are dismal with 281.4Ph and basementctf with 229.6Ph, both being just too small in my opinion... bluesky is the third from the bottom with 471.1Ph, but already beat controlfactor.

1. facing worlds nex (2923.3Ph for b1k, 2416.9Ph for final, a total of 5340.2Ph!)

On Herforst it is facing worlds all the time because with the grappling hook
the other maps end after 2 minutes in average. I always wondered why
people prefer Herforst over [RBI] (or any other CTF server without the
grappling hook and lots of maps in the cycle) but then again I guess,
it's group dynamics.

I wonder why no one has converted any of the Q1 Team Fortress maps
to Nexuiz. There were quite a few maps, most of them for lots
of players, as TF matches were usually played 10 vs 10.
Most of them had a 2-Forts style similar to facing worlds, so they might
be accepted in the Nexuiz community as well.

ZWERG wrote:

1. facing worlds nex (2923.3Ph for b1k, 2416.9Ph for final, a total of 5340.2Ph!)

On Herforst it is facing worlds all the time because with the grappling hook
the other maps end after 2 minutes in average. I always wondered why
people prefer Herforst over [RBI] (or any other CTF server without the
grappling hook and lots of maps in the cycle) but then again I guess,
it's group dynamics.

I wonder why no one has converted any of the Q1 Team Fortress maps
to Nexuiz. There were quite a few maps, most of them for lots
of players, as TF matches were usually played 10 vs 10.
Most of them had a 2-Forts style similar to facing worlds, so they might
be accepted in the Nexuiz community as well.

Can't nexuiz run quake1, 2 and 3 maps directly? And with the quake retexturing project (fully GPL) we have all the quake GFX basically for the levels that use them (could a PK3 be made of the Quake retexturing project and posted on the downloads page as a possible addition the nexuiz player might want to dl (also could a link be made to the attic and additional maps mirror)).

It can run Q1 maps with small bugs (healthpacks being at odd places, not all Nexuiz weapons available) that can be fixed using .ent files - and it can run some (not all) Q3A maps (it depends on if DP's shader support suffices - for the Padman maps for example it does not suffice).

Of course, ignoring the legal issues...

divVerent wrote:It can run Q1 maps with small bugs (healthpacks being at odd places, not all Nexuiz weapons available) that can be fixed using .ent files - and it can run some (not all) Q3A maps (it depends on if DP's shader support suffices - for the Padman maps for example it does not suffice).

Of course, ignoring the legal issues...

Romero released the Q1 sources under GPL just a few weeks ago, so y'know.
http://rome.ro/2006/10/quake-map-sources-released.html

This doesn't make the TEXTURES free... and the retexturing project textures - are they really "independent" enough from the Q1 textures so that you can actually use them without a Quake license?

I was under the impression that the Quake Retexturing Project was GPL. I can't seem to find the site to verify this, though.

Of course, we could always wait two or three years for Khedrin's Quake 10 Year project and use those resources, since he's GPLing them

That the projects release the textures under the terms of the GPL does not mean they are legally created.

If you for example just scale up and filter an existing texture, it is certainly NOT free to use... and even if I take one as reference and make my own that looks similar but higher resolution, that can very well be a derived work.

ZWERG wrote:I always wondered why people prefer Herforst over [RBI] (or any other CTF server without the grappling hook and lots of maps in the cycle) but then again I guess, it's group dynamics.

I wrote in some other thread:

esteel wrote:I think one of the reasons why herforst is so popular is the (too large) number of players on the server. The more people there are the less each single player has to do and the less important is it how good a player is. Thats good for beginners but its bad for gameplay in general and i have not written my CTF guide because i like bad gameplay. I'd just wish i could help more except writing such a guide. Also imo the hook is popular for the same reason. It changes the maps and makes things more equal. If one can grapple around the map there is no need to be a good aimer or have teammates protecting you.
Sorry if this might sounds harsh to anyone but herforst is a bloody-beginners server and its popular for that very reason. Well maybe this does mean Nexuiz is too hard? Or do we need to instruct people better?

But actually you can only 'blame' the players for this not the server. People like it and this will not change just because i do not really like the resulting gameplay. It seems Herforst gives them what they want..

ZWERG wrote:I wonder why no one has converted any of the Q1 Team Fortress maps to Nexuiz. There were quite a few maps, most of them for lots of players, as TF matches were usually played 10 vs 10. Most of them had a 2-Forts style similar to facing worlds, so they might be accepted in the Nexuiz community as well.

Basicly divVerent is right, Nexuiz can run the MAPS but the textures remain a (legal) problem. Strahlemann prepared a mappack of ~30 maps and it seems it could become part of Nexuiz. Only 2 or 3 of them are CTF maps however but those and the two remakes of greatwall will be a nice addition.

esteel wrote:Sorry if this might sounds harsh to anyone but herforst is a bloody-beginners server.

I've seen yourself and several others say this. Does herforst mean something in German?... or is it just by custom that beginners used it a first and it became associated with them?

Not that i knew about.. The only thing i found was this: http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&near=he ... %20germany

Well yeah it was the or at least one of the first ctf servers and it was really fun when it begun. The gravitiy, the hook and facingworlds were kinda new and the maxplayers of 12 were much better then now if you were to ask me.
But as i said it seems other people like those new settings or else they would play on the other servers. Herforst would be not full all the time if people did not like it. I sometimes go onto the other servers and wait a few minutes for players to join when i'm not in the mood for bad fps, too many people and the resulting bad teamplay . And others join very fast then so people also enjoy other servers and settings. Its hard to tell if herforst is full because they are used to it.

Maybe someone can setup a page similar to this ( http://delight.vapor.com/maplist.php ) for herforst. Some short url that could be displayed in the sv_motd..

On the general point of map popularity I think the ctf servers and maps are popular precisely because beginners, (or people who are clueless, like me), can play a part in a victory, however small. If they go to the dm, rune or other servers they end up getting wiped out pretty damned quick and it's not much fun.

I freely admit my aims not particularly good, my reactions are slow, (well, now, anyway ), and in a straight fight with the best players I don't stand much of a chance but in ctf I can go 'barrelling in' like a raving nutcase and possibly grab the flag. In other words I can contribute something. Even when I lose I can stil say, 'Well, it was my team-mates who let me down'. HEY! It works for me, OK?

I'm saying all this because I'm not sure the map popularity figures above are that accurate. I bet if you analysed the figures you'd find the herforst ctf server accounts for a large slice of the data. It probably also implies that the grappling hook is the most popular option and I doubt that's true.

Code: Select all

         Map       | player hours |  play time | host time | play percentage | avg players
-------------------+--------------+------------+-----------+-----------------+-------------
facing_worlds_nex  |    4045.4    |    437.3   |   913.1   |    47.9         |    9.25
eggandbacon        |    1062.2    |    157.2   |   991.8   |    15.8         |    6.76
greatwall_reloaded |     609.4    |     62.2   |   210.7   |    29.5         |    9.80
tznex03            |     498.6    |     46.6   |    76.6   |    60.8         |   10.70
capturecity_v1     |     410.3    |     49.7   |   215.2   |    23.1         |    8.26
controlfactor_v2r3 |     281.5    |     35.8   |    70.3   |    50.9         |    7.87
dastower40         |     192.6    |    113.8   |   228.6   |    49.8         |    1.69
mIKEctf2           |     188.4    |     17.2   |    25.7   |    66.9         |   10.98
blueamuse80        |     176.6    |    106.8   |   232.8   |    45.9         |    1.65
dusty              |     164.7    |     24.8   |    43.0   |    57.8         |    6.63
                                             
aggressor          |     528.4    |    164.1   |  1074.1   |    15.3         |    3.22
aneurysm           |     488.9    |    157.1   |   757.8   |    20.7         |    3.11

runningmanctf      |     307.8    |     58.3   |   435.1   |    13.4         |    5.28
bluesky            |     283.4    |     95.4   |   937.3   |    10.2         |    2.97
basement           |     275.8    |     97.8   |   681.3   |    14.3         |    2.82
dismal             |      62.5    |     21.6   |   258.5   |     8.3         |    2.90
basementctf        |      54.8    |     20.6   |   275.3   |     7.5         |    2.66

Note the maps that have less than two players on them on average... wonder how that can happen... and setting bot_join_empty 1 to appear higher in the server list is some kind of cheating too and results in disqualification.