Hey.. just wanted to bring up the attention of how the auto join in ctf works. I only ask about that auto thing as we already discussed team balancing and that crap and I don't wanna start another thread with the same topic.

In my beliefs it works like this: If there's equal players on both sides and the next player that presses the auto button, he goes to the red side. If there isn't equal players then go goes to that side with less players.

The reason why I bring this up is cause just recently I and OC (perhaps some other guys too) where talking about this in the NO NASTY COW PR0N server and we have different beliefs, I think that people confuses this auto join with team balancing. Now.. am I right or wrong?

Cause many people say to choose auto, and I wonder if I have been mislead by the government. In another matter I never press auto cause I choose whichever team that has less players or if I know the players and I go with the side which I think will have disadvantage. For example if I know on red team theres 3 very good players but blue team has 5 not so good or newbies, then I choose the blue side to even it out. And I don't think this auto knows that. I always choose the weaker side.

EDIT: Oh and I forgot, ain't pressing space the same thing as pressing auto? I always thought that, but I might be wrong, some games have options of which color you prefer and then automatically join it when you connect to a game (if not the auto team balance kicks in)

The auto-balancing at the beginning of games is very primitive, but it does the basic job of dividing up people into teams. It doesn't do that based on any information about the players. This idea was discussed in another thread on here, but I don't remember the name of it. It would require some sort of basic player stat tracking. Not sure if that would be worth the hassle.

The in-game auto-balancing is horrible. If the teams are unbalanced (not in number, but in terms of skill) I often try to switch from the winning team to the losing team to help balance out the competition. The problem is that the auto-balancer prevents me from doing this. For some reason, if there are 9 people (4 on blue, 5 on red) and I am trying to switch from red to blue team, it won't let me. I can switch to blue, but it will switch me back to red. It's like the auto-balancer favors the red team for some reason. Sometimes, it seems to include spectators as members of the team, but I may be mistaken about that.

I'm not sure what the solution would be aside from player tracking, but I wouldn't mind discussing possible improvements to the auto-balancing mechanism.

First of all, I don't wanna get into talking about auto team balance, only the function "auto" when you press F5 in a TDM, CTF game. Cause these are not the same thing and this is what, I think, people confuse it with.

Dokujisan wrote:The in-game auto-balancing is horrible. If the teams are unbalanced (not in number, but in terms of skill) I often try to switch from the winning team to the losing team to help balance out the competition. The problem is that the auto-balancer prevents me from doing this. For some reason, if there are 9 people (4 on blue, 5 on red) and I am trying to switch from red to blue team, it won't let me. I can switch to blue, but it will switch me back to red. It's like the auto-balancer favors the red team for some reason. Sometimes, it seems to include spectators as members of the team, but I may be mistaken about that.

Yes, this is also what I was trying to say in my previews post, that when you click "auto" it goes to the red team if there's equal amount of players. The reason (if you haven't fivgured it out already) is that when you switch from a team (4 vs 5, you switch from where there are 5 players) you go into spectator mode first without knowing it (or the game at least calculates that way obviously of how it works. And then when you are in spec mode the player stats will be 4 vs 4 that's why it won't allow you to change to blue when there's 4 vs 5 (5 on red, if there are 5 blue and 4 red you can change to the red side, or more likely you will go to the red side no matter what color you choose).

This is basicly how the auto works, the team balancing just prevents, or overrules, that auto command. Which is what I am trying to make people understand. But alas, if I'm wrong let me know, most likely the devs knows, but I'm very sure that I am right. So with other words that "auto" is totaly worthless, and it's the same as pressing space bar when entering a game.

As i understand it both the F5 team menu and the auto-join (on connect and the 'live' one) use the same code to determine the team to join. But i'm not sure if it really favors the red team. But you are right it somehow does favor a team in a bad way while it SHOULD either be the smaller one or the one with fewer points when equal in size. That needs to be changed.
I think having auto-join on connect is good as its a start to have people get onto a team. (On connect is active when you press jump and you do not get a teammenu but join some team).
Having 'live'-auto-balance is BAD though. Its just more of a PITA then useful Maybe this 'live' option and code should even be removed..

I'm not sure what that auto button in F5 rly means... But I almost always just press space in teammenu and I always end up in the red team for some reason...

You mean pressing space while the teammenu is shown? I never did that.. it could be that it just presses the first button on the menu which is the red one. It never occured to me to do such a thing i just use the mouse to press the auto button on this menu Is there any reason to think different? If there is maybe its possible to change the layout of this menu so that the 'auto' button is the first?
The only time when 'space' does put you on a team is when the server is configured so that you get put on a team automatically but then you do not see the team-menu unless you press F5..

Hmm. Some good points all around. As I've said before, my preferred option would be auto-balance when joining a game by default but then allow people to switch. However, there's also something that might be worth looking into.

I've said, as have others, that the servers would require player stats to have a better team balance when the maps change but I'm wondering if that's really true.

Think about it for a minute. Surely it's not beyond the wit of us to come up with an algorithm - even a simple one - that allocates new players according to some predetermined concepts of a 'fair game' at various points. Actually, in this case, simplest is best IMHO.

How about this for starters.

1. How longs the game been going? If only, say, 60 seconds then lowest number of players on a team.
2. Longer than 60 secs but less than, say, 3 mins? Team with lowest number of points as long as, a) It doesn't put the discrepancy between number of players above, say, 25% and, b), the difference between the number of points is greater than 25%. Otherwise player numbers.
3. Longer than 3 mins? Lowest number of points as long as spread in players and points is greater than 10%. Otherwise player numbers again.

Obviously, this is just a first stab. It needs refining but I'm just giving it as a starting point. Don't forget we're only talking about NEW players joining here. People can still 'jump' any time if they want.

Any ideas?

esteel wrote:But i'm not sure if it really favors the red team. But you are right it somehow does favor a team in a bad way while it SHOULD either be the smaller one or the one with fewer points when equal in size. That needs to be changed.

Yup, just tried it one more time, even though there are equal players in the teams and the blue team is losing, next player will be red. So I was right all the time.
It's true though that having auto on (not being able to choose color) is good in one way, but it's still worthless, as if you know how to change teams you prob will end up choosing which team to join, and if you're a good guy, joining the losing team. Cause with not being able to choose which team to join, and there are equal players on the sides and blue side is losing, with this system you would join red anyway which is not a good thing, thus makes this worthless.
Sometimes of course this might not be the case and it turns out for the better, but IMO it's much better to choose from the very beginning so you won't have to change teams all the time at the start of a game.

ai wrote:Yup, just tried it one more time, even though there are equal players in the teams and the blue team is losing, next player will be red. So I was right all the time.

Yes. I just tried it as well and it seems to be the same as pressing the first button which, presumably, is the red one. I always use the auto button and, like es, assumed the space bar did the same thing without ever really trying it.

Not really relevant I suppose but interesting nevertheless.

ai wrote:It's true though that having auto on (not being able to choose color) is good in one way, but it's still worthless, as if you know how to change teams you prob will end up choosing which team to join, and if you're a good guy, joining the losing team. Cause with not being able to choose which team to join, and there are equal players on the sides and blue side is losing, with this system you would join red anyway which is not a good thing, thus makes this worthless.

Well, as it stands it's not what's required. If it's altered in line with es's idea of making the auto the default button it's exactly what's needed as an initial first step.

ai wrote:Sometimes of course this might not be the case and it turns out for the better, but IMO it's much better to choose from the very beginning so you won't have to change teams all the time at the start of a game.

I don't really understand what you mean. Surely, if auto, (at least by numbers of players), is the default when joining that implies LESS moving as the teams are established... not more.

On the other hand if people wait until the games underway they can make a better decision I suppose.

I suppose the real point is that people do different things. The other thing is that people tend to join within a second or so of each other. I think it's better to let the server figure out at least an approximation of balance. As long as it allows people to change afterwards I think that's probably OK.

I'll take a stab at an algorithm to divvy up the players who are joining the game:

At the start of the game, randomly distribute the players so that each team is balanced in number and continue to do so with new players joining the game after it starts.

Keep track of each team's percentage of the total number of frags (e.g. if red has 120 frags and blue has 80 frags, red has 120/200=60% of the total frags).

Once the total number of frags is greater than X and one team's percentage is greater than Y, ignore player number and put new players on the losing team as long as these conditions are met.

If players leave or the imbalance becomes too great, automatic suggestions of who should switch teams could pop up, or just a general message such as "team imbalance: someone switch to the blue team"


You could also have a routine which would determine if the best players are clustered together on one team (e.g. if the top three players in blue all have x% more frags than the top player in red). In such a case, a suggestion could be made that one of the three should change teams.


Also, I agree that players should always be able to change teams if they want to... the system should only determine where players end up when they join the game, but be able to point out when it is imbalanced.








This go me thinking about something else actually...

How difficult would it be to implement a different scoring system as follows:
add a "tactics" variable for each player
add a "flag capture counter" variable for each player
add a "team score" variable for the team
add a "total flag capture counter" variable for the team


All variables should be visible on the scoreboard.

If you capture the flag, you get tactic points
If you pick up the enemy flag, you get tactic points
If you die with the flag but someone from your team picks it up before the enemy team returns it, you get tactic points (maye in proportion to how far from the enemy base you were when you died)
If you kill the enemy flag carrier, you get tactic points.
If you kill enemies in your base, you get tactic points.
If you kill enemies in the enemy base, you get tactic points.
If you kill the enemy flag carrier in the enemy base, you get even more tactic points.
Returning the flag gives you tactic points, in proportion to how far from your base the flag was.

And maybe...
If the enemy flag is at the enemy base and no one on your team has entered the base for x minutes, the team score is reduced by x.
Somehow get tactic points when working together to frag the enemy/protect someone on your team... not sure how that could be implemented, but I'm writing off of the top head here.

Tactic points would immediately go to the team score. Frags would be separate and there would be an option to determine if they should count towards tactics and team score. A player changing teams would keep his frags but they would not be added to the new team's score (hence why the team score should be an independent variable). Also, when people leave the game, their frags and tactics will not be distributed among the other players, which means that players would maintain their own scores throughout the game. Games could be set up in different ways, such as "first to 400 tactic points or 15 flag captures wins"... it could create some interesting dynamics.

I think that this would focus the game on more tactical play rather than "first one to the enemy base wins" in the "every man for himself" fashion of most ctf games. This system could easily be adapted to domination and maybe even "bombing run" games.

Blah blah blah, then again, I'm new and tired, so if these ideas are horrible, or have already been discussed, etc. Sorry if that's the case.

Buy my cereal!

old_codger wrote:

ai wrote:Yup, just tried it one more time, even though there are equal players in the teams and the blue team is losing, next player will be red. So I was right all the time.

Yes. I just tried it as well and it seems to be the same as pressing the first button which, presumably, is the red one. I always use the auto button and, like es, assumed the space bar did the same thing without ever really trying it.

Tried it again tonight. It DOES select blue if there are less blue players so it clearly isn't the same as pressing the first, (red?), button. It must just put you in the lowest number of players catergory or red if there the same. However, it obviously doesn't take any account of score or anything else... as we thought.

old_codger wrote:Tried it again tonight. It DOES select blue if there are less blue players so it clearly isn't the same as pressing the first, (red?), button. It must just put you in the lowest number of players catergory or red if there the same. However, it obviously doesn't take any account of score or anything else... as we thought.

First button? The red one? I'm talking about the auto button (space). And yup if there's less players (red or blue) in one team it goes to that team when pressing auto (space).

AFAIK. Auto might not be Space. Space might be red... Can someone look at the code?

Yes, red was the default button. Fixed in next release.

ai wrote:First button? The red one? I'm talking about the auto button (space). And yup if there's less players (red or blue) in one team it goes to that team when pressing auto (space).

No, I know. ES suggested it might just select the red team as being the first button but that's not the case and I just wanted to confirm your observation before I forgot.

Hey! it was late, y'know?

divVerent wrote:Yes, red was the default button. Fixed in next release.

When you say 'fixed' do you mean it will take account of scores when allocating players as we've discussed above?

No he just means that 'pressing space while the team selection menu is shown' will trigger the auto button and the autojoin function instead of the red button and joining team red..
The other thing is a bug that needs seperate fixing.

Just pressing space does indeed put you on the red team, for a very simple reason: space just "presses" the highlighted button and if you don't change anything, the "red team" button is highlighted when the menu is created.

I changed the menu code in SVN to select the "auto" button by default...

The other thing actually isn't a bug but a quite complicated feature that we would all like but nobody knows exactly how to do it.

Please tell me some methods for that decision, maybe one can get in, but probably not into 2.2. However, the RBI server will try them out.

Well it should simply put the new player on the smaller team or if they are equal in numbers in the team with less scores. Right now it seems to prefer the red team if they are equal in numbers.
Maybe thats easy to change, i'll take a look at the code in a few hours.

Yes, that would be a start... actually, I would like some formulas for deciding which team to put the player in based on:

- c1, c2, ... cn: absolute number of players each team
- s1, s2, ... sn: absolute scores of the teams
- alpha: how much of the game has been played (that is, max{t/timelimit, s1/fraglimit, s2/fraglimit, ..., sn/fraglimit})

The higher alpha is, the more you want to use the si and not the ci for deciding which team to put the new player in. But which formulas work well for that?

divVerent wrote:Yes, that would be a start... actually, I would like some formulas for deciding which team to put the player in based on:

- c1, c2, ... cn: absolute number of players each team
- s1, s2, ... sn: absolute scores of the teams
- alpha: how much of the game has been played (that is, max{t/timelimit, s1/fraglimit, s2/fraglimit, ..., sn/fraglimit})

The higher alpha is, the more you want to use the si and not the ci for deciding which team to put the new player in. But which formulas work well for that?

My initial idea a few posts above is a reasonable approximation I would have thought.. Time is the initial factor, as you suggest, then player numbers, then team scores but the significance of the various factors alters as the time goes on.

For 2.2 it was easier to just 'fix' the automatic team assignment to choose the smallest team or if the teams are equal in size the one with lower score which should already make this feature better.

esteel wrote:For 2.2 it was easier to just 'fix' the automatic team assignment to choose the smallest team or if the teams are equal in size the one with lower score which should already make this feature better.

Well that would certainly be a big improvement. Much appreciated

You're welcome . Hope you all enjoy 2.2 when its out, i think it will deliver a quite new and fresh look and feel..