Daxter

that caoffee pause you mentioned shouldn't be difficult to implement. during the map rotation where players can vote for a map, ya could have a button that literally says coffee pause or so. it could be matched with the auto balancer so it knows that you are taking a 5 minute break and during the game you will see a timer running down starting with 5 minutes. and once the time's over the auto balancer registers you as a player and from then on counts your damage per minute. as you said however it can impact the balancing. how should the auto balancer balance players who take a 5 minute break? should it it try to balance the teams out after the 5 minute break by putting the returning players to each team as balanced as possible (if you switch already playing players oyu would just cause ruckus) or should it balance things out right at the start, placing even the pausing players into a team? that however would cause balance issues for the first 5 minutes. i personally think it would have to do a mix of both. e.g. once you have more than 4 players using the pause the auto balancer should place pausing players after the 5 minute mark and if it's 4 or less players it should place the pausing players right at the start into a team (cause 4 players / or 2 each team won't cause too many balance issues). i could also see the pause button used like a "map vote". if enough people vote for the pause the map rotation will go to stand by for 5 minutes. afterwards it will restart the map voting as usual. about point three. yeah that is a slight concern. but we should strive for some balanc before we go to utter perfection ^^. a map specific data collection would be needed here to get precies information what player plays what role on what map. orders of a commander aren't that big of a deal in my opinion. rushes don't take that long and let's be honest, who listens to a commander who shouts: GET TANKS ASAP? those who like to use tanks anyway, right?

got pm'ed and asked to give my opinion about this stuff, so here i am... first of all nerfing specific classes won't do dogshit. right now the classes are extremely well balanced (better balanced than they were months ago). it wont help against stomping matches either. snipers can be anoying for the losing team, but ultimately tanks and engis will destroy ya buildings, not snipers. the abaility to change a team should be removed and ONLY be enabled when a team has more players than the other. once both teams are even the option to change a team should be greyed out. i agree with ryz here that we need an auto balancer. i thought about it for some time nad i came to the conclusion that it will be tough to implement, especially if we don't force players to choose a name and stick with it. 'cause the auto balancer needs to adress our play style and save our stats. here is how i think it could work: the auto balancer checks what class you like to play the most and how much damage per minute /or repairs per minute if you play tech, you do the most. only damage that shouldn't count is building damage or else spammers will be ranked higher than they should. repairing a building however counts! the balancer will also register the damage you do with other classes and will flow into the final point result. but to highlight the major class the damage per minute you do with a certain class will be devided with the time you played in total in percentage. to make it more clear: let's say you play sak or havoc 70% of your time and do around 2000 damage per minute (the damage you do on a soldier has to be recalibrated to match the damage output you do on a lightly armored vehicle). 30% of your other time you play as a med doing 1500 damage. 2000 x 0.7 = 1400 1500 x 0.3 = 450 1400 + 450 = 1950. thats your final points. you will be classed as 70% sniper (infantry) and 30% med (tank). in this case the auto balancer will mark the player as a sniper that also plays tanks. he will balance the team by giving the other team a sniper with roughly the same percentage and damage output or at least give the other teams players that played sniper roles and then sums it up. this way it's impossible to have stacked snipers / tankers / repairs on one team. now you will say: oiii, but if i lose hon/bar or dont have any money left i can only play with shitty soldiers and that will screw my points! yep, that's why i think it's the best to exclude simple soldiers from the point system. all the other classes obv. need an alternation to their damage output. its a lot easier to do damage with a mobius than with a gatling gun,so the damage output registration needs to be adjusted for the auto balancer. it sounds like a lot of work, but finding the right algorith to balance the damage output isn't actually that difficult. just let the system run for a week without any adjustments, collect all the data (the damage output) for each class and calculate the avarage out of it. the biggest problem i see would be the ability to change your names and whatnot. maybe binding the data to an ip would help, but players like akai use vpn so hm... dunno if binding the data to hardware would be a possible solution, 'cause privacy is valuable and stuff. now if you think my idea is shite, feel free to do so, but also come up with a better idea and explain why idea xy is so shit. at the end of the day we are here to make things better and not to stomp over everything. we alr. have sotmping matches, no need to stomp on ideas too. cheers.

biggest flaw where you could actually balance the game out is the way exp are contributed to the players. whenever a team loses in a fight and is under siege, the other team gets lots of exp by e.g. destroying the harvy multiple times, getting lots of exp attacking buildings and getting HUGE amounts of exp when destroying a building. this in turn makes it even more difficult for the losing team to strike back. not only did they lose a building, the enemy is often one rank higher due to the amount of exp they got when destroying a building. this system really favors the stronger ones and not the weaker ones. since the introduction of this system we face a lot more stomping matches than before. next up are the ratings of a player. the system doesn't recognize who plays e.g. a hottie or a sniper a lot. more often than not you might have one team with lots of hottie / tech players and on the other team a lot of lone wolf snipers or tank drivers that don't have any hottie / tech players at all. a K/d, tank and repair score would help out a lot to determine what the players strong abilities are.

erks i dont get why so many people are misunderstanding me... i didnt had any lags at all. everything worked fluently, but the temperature of my graphiccard went dangerously high. in the internet i found out that real time is actually causing the problem... this wierd "bug" was confirmed by the makers. anway... worked on the map a bit and fooled around a bit. i was able to change the colors of the rocks... but it doesnnt look satisfying yet so i wont save the colorsheme. changed the size of the side-mountains. made a small road on the two main mountains to give each fraction a 3rd verhicle-route. but honestly i dont know i will keep the 3rd way or vanish it.

Do you see something south of Nod that can be a problem ?. maybe, i need a better look at it though. make a nice screenshot or so. maybe me or someone else might have a good idea that also might appeal ya ^^.

uf, difficult to accomplish. if you give nod too much space (in x and y axis) the arties will love it. too narrow and flamers might be too strong. too many ways and stanks will have their way with the gdi base if there arent enough defences around there. mrls might suck but if they are in a safe place to attack the buildings, they will ravage em. looking forward to some SS. so far m only tip /wish would be that you really should stick to that mountain stuff and make it the main attraction in your map (vehicles on mountains are kickass and kinda unique in ren-x) ^^. oh nad maybe this could be of some use for you, just for lolz or so: http://renegade-x.com/forums/viewtopic. ... 38&t=75852

lol, im a newbie too. i was only a pro at civ3, civ4 and stronghold 2 (loved the map editors there <3; especially civ 3 was just kickass). hm, i also thought about if too many rocks would drop the fps... but im quite certain that the lightings are lot more gpu demanding than rocks. think of the map canyon... it has a lot of rocks in it and you can still play it without lags. is it the map-part east of your gdi base (south of your nod base) you are unsure about?

i know its a plain idea but, why not just asking around on newgrounds.com. if you need an artist newgrounds might be the best place to search for one. the community there is quite huge.

hm interesting, the way you fill a map. i will take the way where i paint my map, make hills and than i place rocks around my hill like a mantlet. how is it going btw.? making good progress? show us some pics (i wanna learn something ya know ;D).

this repair pad, when finished, will help a lot of mappers bringing in a new building. i so hope for it in the future ^^.

SOLVED IT. some threads actually showed this "bug". the creator of that program is aware of that... oh well. its really easy actually. i just had to disable real time (that little joystick on the top left of ya window). and suddenly everything was stable again. only when i move around the gpu heats up a bit. but thats normal. without moving the gpu is at 0%. perfect! so for everyone who has the same problem: disable real time (the joystick on the top left of ya window). finally... another problem solved, hurray. tomorrow or so i will go on with my work .

to bananas: i always save my stuff before exiting, but i just dont know where to. but your tip with the folder environments worked and now i have my color back. the tiny problem is solved. still the big problem is giving me a headache... 'cause it just looks odd. i know my computer and i know pretty good how much i can do with it... and i know that bugs exist where programs demand more and more memory 'cause they dump it full of shit along with other bugs that demand more power of the gpu even though it just doesnt need it (already had it once which was confirmed as a bug from the maker). anyway, to show you guys why im so concerned and dont think the problem is natural i screenshoted two pics. the first one shows the editor just normally. dont mind the temperature, i just had the editor on for one minute to make the pics. just look at the gpu. it shows ya 99%. in the next pic you see that i just right clicked on the editor... and suddenly my gpu cools down and gets down to 0% . the program is still running in the background so why the heck is my gpu cooling down then? im kinda out of words for this. in the internet i found a low res ini file for udk but unfortunately it didnt work . gotta search for another solution in the internet... and reinstall udk (who knows... maybe it works). as i said, yesterday everything worked perfectly fine without any issues.

okay... another problems...duh. this time its kinda heavy and prevents me from working on. the first problem which is kinda tiny, is, that i saved my snow color (cause i made it myself). i just let the editor decide where to save...which was a big mistake. when i open my map again he just cant find the color again and sets the parameter to NULL, meaning: no snow on the ground. actually, i found my own stuff... in the binaries/win32 folder. i know it shouldnt be there... but i also dont know where to put in? i guess i have to put it somewhere in the udk game folder or something, but heck i cant find out where to, 'cause of my second way bigger problem that prevents me from working on my work longer than 3 minutes. i dunno why, but my gpu HATES this program... or the other way round. opening the editor is fine, opening a full map or even my map is horrible. the temeperature of my gpu raises instantly and just doesnt want to cool down again. also my cores where critically high (funny fact: not in the test map: canyon, there it was pretty stable with 60 degrees; at 70 degrees it can get dangerous for my cores as far as i read). i stopped working with the editor when i saw that my gpu was already 85 degrees... raising every few seconds. i installed a fan control software and increaased the working progress of my fan... but it just cant cool my gpu enough. my gpu, a gtx 650 with 2 gb, should however handle this program. it handles falloout 3 with all mods and so on, handles far cry 3 on full hd, it handles warthunder... and so on and so on. and its not my first map editor either im using...duh. i found out that whenever im loading my map my gpu work progress raises instantly to 99% and sticks to it. same with the map canyon. however i also found out when pressing the right mouse button my gpu drops to 0% and cools down . seriously, this program can't be so gpu demanding without anything like moving tanks and so on. all you have are placements. i suggest its a heavy bug that keeps my gpu running like crazy even though it shouldnt work that much. if it really needs 99% of my gpu than it would lag like crazy, 'cause the work wouldnt be done fast enough. and why the heck does it drop to 0% when i just press the right mousebutton? i can still see everything...yesterday everything was fine by the way. i cant work like this and have to find a solution. i know that my gpu can handle up to 100 degrees... but seriously, i dont wanna grill my pc for that shit. everything in there is fully packed and i just have one extern fan in there. so having such high degrees...isnt too healthy for the other parts. i will check out what google says ^^, till then im open for any suggestions you might have. i will keep ya informed when i found out what the heck's wrong.

thanks, i will try it out tomorrow if i have the time (gotta do a hospitalvisit and that takes time). well, if it IS easy to create own colors for rocks i will definitely check it out. i love the mesa rocks but i would like to change their colors if possible. . just think of those mesa rocks in pure light blue with white blace or so. also i will try out ruuds little trick to change the shape of buildings. i wanna have a kinda frozen look the wf with a bit of snow on the wall or so. but this will take a lot of time... coffee... kenz vids... ruuds tips... and a lot of crashes.... and so on x). tomoorow i will try out these rock stuffs. i will also reshape the two mountains and add a road in it. cudakers map in progress gave me this nice idea ;D.

duh, i dont wanna imagine...