Misc Questions.

(The 4th Horseman) #1

Sorry the search feature is not working for me for whatever reason. I keep getting a bunch of spam for response so I figured I would create a pot pourri post. This is obviously in regards to ET:QW

Now, I belong to Moongamers.com, we are a gaming community with 3,000 registered forum members. While I realize that is not that large it still isn’t an insignificant amount of people. We currently run a CoD2 server, 2 BF 43 servers, 3 ranked BF2 servers, 1 unranked BF2 server and a CS:S server.

So, most of my questions will be in regards to the server but some with actual gameplay. I was a huge fan of RTCW and then ET. I prefer the WW2 games myself but gameplay above all is the most important thing to me. Atleast, it was until I got into the server side aspect. I’m just going to list off some questions and if some of you could fill in the blanks I would really appreciate it. I want to have a QW server for our community since this game will be based on the rewards/gameplay of ET.

Alot of this was things I learned while have the CoD2 server. If none of you own this game I don’t think you could quite understand what IW is doing to this game through it’s definition of support. I just want to know the same thing doesn’t happen with this game.

  1. Linux bins - Will these be released at the same time as Windows? We have always ran Windows and are currently thinking of going Linux due to the efficiency.

  2. Updates - Will you force everyone to update and stay on the same version AKA Steam? This one is a biggy. We see so much of the community fragmenting in CoD and we don’t wish a repeat of this. Please consider forcing updates.

  3. Map Tools - I saw in an interview that the maptools were going to try to be released right after the game is released. Is that still the goal? Yeah, I dabble in mapping so this one is more personal.
    3a. A friendlier interface for the map tools. I was spoiled a bit by the Hammer Editor will you be making radiant as friendly?

  4. Activision Servers - I’m so tired of our servers becoming unlisted in the server browser. Will Activision be apart of this, if so, can you fix this major server admin headache?

  5. AntiCheat - I have no problem begging for this on release. I can’t imagine one player not wanting this. Please, have it included out of the box. I can’t stress this one enough.

  6. Multithread - Is the game multithreaded? We run our servers on 3.4 xeons currently and it’s a shame to only be able to use 1 cpu. Also, I’ve read that this game will not have a 64 player cap but will be up to how many people your server can physically handled. Is this true because I truly hope it is. CoD2 currently only uses 40 percent of our CPU (with 64 players) and using that as a base we could be having 128 players which would be actual WAR finally.

  7. Communication - I hope you will be telling us what you have in the pipeline and a very rough idea of the whens of things. I’m new to this forum obviously but I’ll be reading it nonstop after the game is released. I just hope I won’t be as disappointed as I am with CoD2.

To those that answer the above questions thank you for taking the time to read through this post. I only tried to touch on those things that are of the biggest concern to me offhand. I’m sure I forgot a few in here but I think the above are quite relevant to server admins and players alike.

(datoo) #2

I would highly recommend you read both parts of this interview: http://www.gamearena.com.au/pc/news/read/3641727 , they discuss a lot of server related issues.

I can tell you that there will almost certainly be linux bins, and expect strong support for modding (Splash Damage was started in the Q3 mod community and they are constantly reiterating this in interviews), also they will probably have punkbuster support or something similar (as in W:ET).

(Ciabs) #3
  1. Multithread - Is the game multithreaded? We run our servers on 3.4 xeons currently and it’s a shame to only be able to use 1 cpu. Also, I’ve read that this game will not have a 64 player cap but will be up to how many people your server can physically handled. Is this true because I truly hope it is. CoD2 currently only uses 40 percent of our CPU (with 64 players) and using that as a base we could be having 128 players which would be actual WAR finally.

yeah, you could kinda do “war” with 128 players, but forget going tactical or being able to do objectives with so many people in there…

remember, the maps are huge, but they’re played in push-style, so only a part of the map is key at any moment, meaning all the fight is going to happen there, and it’s gonna be balanced for 24-32 players at most, while anything more will mean a fragfest with almost-sure win for the defending team because of impossibility to accomplish objectives in such a messy environment… :slight_smile:

(DG) #4

IMHO of course:

  1. linux servers are a dead cert. I’d normally say so would the client but then Prey isnt going to get a linux client so that gives me a slight doubt, but I’d still be surprised not to see a linux client very shortly after release.

  2. this is a near cert negative. Regardless updates for RTCW and ET were a trivial problem for like a few days after release, the exception being for mod compatibility, where the problem was people updating when they should have waited, not the other way round.

  3. map tools near release time is a near dead cert. doubt they’ll coddle you into it though, tbh I assume they’ll release the tools they use and leave you to get on with it.

  4. id software handle the ingame server browser as they have done since Quake. Some people have had problems getting listed but I’ve never found any correctly configured that didnt appear after being up with people in it for a day or so.

  5. I’m expecting Punkbuster either on release or very shortly thereafter

  6. doubt it, though anyway if 64 = 40% i doubt you could get 128, even if the code and/or OS doesnt fall over with that many the cpu and bandwidth utilisation per player increases with the playercount.