hey guys

i run anarchic-x.com and we're running tuchola beta1 in our current rotation. we have a lot of users and matches that get up to 40+ during peak hours. instead of making all of our users register over here i've set up a feedback thread on our forums. HOWEVER, i have posted the link to this forum in that thread as indicated in the readme. i hope you find any feedback they provide as helpful. they have been directed to post any comments, screenshots, or demos in that thread.

here is the thread link:
http://www.anarchic-x.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8055

thanks alot
-logik

Sweet, I'll come check on that periodically. Make sure ya'll grab the server-side fix to block the one exploit hole.

http://www.mobclan.com/forums/upload/index...ndpost&p=103745

I'll fix that hole for good in next week's Beta2, but I didn't want to make everyone download the map again this week.

good to know, thanks for the timely response

Good feedback over there. There are still some map sections that aren't done (non-playable area). As they don't interfere with play, we rolled into beta1 and will touch up the details in later betas.

...

There are (7) paks on the map, one for each base and the Russians get a bonus pak that guards the SE bridge.

G1 pak40 - Currently sitting naked on the hilltop. It will probably get a fortification similar to the G2 pak40. Artillery or snipers can easily wipe out this defensive position. Tough to flank, but I plan on allowing infantry to sneak the S wall from the river to the pak position. I'm still evaluating what all is going to happen around G1.

G2 pak40 - This is a tougher one to silence, but there are quite a few spots where Russians can snipe the gunner. G2 has a wide front to cover, so a simultanous attack from both flanks would allow one team or the other to get a side shot on the gunner. I may add one or two trees to obscure it's coverage area, but that also works against attackers (as the pak40 gunner can fire blindly).

G3 pak40 - Probably the toughest of all. Attacking this pak position head on is suicidal. It should either be softened up with arty, or use snipers to take care of the gunner. I may lower the wall in front of the pak40 slightly to make the pak easier to hit. Infantry scouts can also sneak up the north wall, through the V2 launch area without being seen. This gets you behind the pak position where you can kill the gunner (or a tank in the tank scrape on top of the hill).

The power of G3's pak is balanced by the issue that Germans have a tough time re-taking this hill. Once you drive the Germans off of this hill, you should be able to hold it against German reinforcements. We'll see how it plays out over the next week.

R1 pak45 - A bit naked on the hill above R1. Vulnerable to snipers on Hill 13 or at the radio shack in the Hill 17 area. The Hill 13 mortar position can also be used to drop rounds onto the gunner's head.

R2 pak45 - This gun used to sit on the bunker roof where the mortar now is (it was way overpowered there). Shouldn't be too many complaints about this pak other then it's tough to stay alive while using it. (I may put a wall next to it.) So far, the R2 pak dosn't get a lot of use and may need some assistance.

R3 pak45 - Sniper bait. Also mortar bait if you use the Glacier Trail mortar position (which is specifically designed to hit that pak45 position!).

SE Bridge pak45 - Helps the russian's hold the Southeast Bridge (a worthwhile cause for the Russians). More of a nasty surprise then a defendable position.

...

Of the seven paks, the G3 is probably the worst. The G1 pak will become less effective over time as I detail the area around G1. G3 is pretty much set, other then possibly lowering the hill in front of the pak40.

Found an issue with the stock T34. We will be changing the stock T34 into a T34_76 in the next beta (beta2). It can be abused (the issue), but I won't issue a server patch unless folks really start to abuse it badly.

Admins may want to turn off the stock T34 in the meantime.

Other notes from observing gameplay today:

- I'm wondering if the rain effect is broken. When it's raining (you hear the rain sound in the background) there should be raindrops dropping from the skybox onto the player's head. I'm not sure that is working properly.

- I'll probably concentrate on fixing up the farm area for beta #2.


I also plan on opening up the area around the North bridge in Beta2. There's a treeline on the west side of the road, that separates the N Road from the fields that I'm going to remove. I also plan on opening up another section of treeline behind the camo-net tank scrape area to allow easier access to the N Road that leads towards G3.

Just to make sure folks know where to get a copy of the in-game map. Here's one that links to a 1600x1200 version.



Base Assault map

thread still goin over there and goin strong...

just thought you'd like to see this



http://halo.anarchic-x.net/images/screens/shot0075.jpg

##admin edit##
Changed screenshot to url link
In the future please resize or use a URL link

20v22? That must've been a madhouse. I'm glad to see that you didn't run into any gamestate issues or other crashes with that many players. How was server performance under that heavy of a load?

MOB's server has been rocking all day, noon until almost 3am. It got quiet around 1am (10 players), then rebounded for an hour or two (15-20 players). I think our peak players was around 25-27, which isn't bad for a first day.

Matches seem even, the new stats package might even give exact win/loss for Tuchola on .76. Saw a bunch of matches today that were over in 8 minutes because one side or the other did a blitz and the other team didn't defend.

...

Not entirely sure what to do about vehicles stuck in terrain. Getting stuck in rocks, I probably won't fix, unless it's a rock in the middle of a bottleneck (such as the rocks in the river on the SE corner of the farm area). Getting stuck in normal looking terrain, I will take a shot at fixing.

The jeep shot where you stuck inbetween the two bits of stone fence, I'll simply extend the vehicle clip on the stone walls to eliminate getting a jeep in there. (The downside is that it makes it harder to kill infantry at that spot by running them over.) I saw someone get stuck there on the MOB server as well.

Still working on map edges. Probably not a priority in beta #2 for next week.

That patch of road near the Hill 17 Radio Shack is a thorn in my side. It's one of the alpha blend patches that doesn't like to blend properly (there are a few spots in the HIll 17 trail network too). So I ripped out the blend that wasn't working and will hopefully remember to replace it sometime.

I'm pretty sure that Sigma (posted at 12:18am) ran into the invisible wall that is the fix for the map exploit. (If ya'll have that installed.) That invis wall was added just southwest of the German spawn, along the road that exits the spawn on the South side. The exploit fixer only lets me do rectangular regions, but the broken bit of treeline was odd-shaped. So I added a bit of a buffer to make sure you can't get inside that wall at all.

The barb-wire in the middle of the road is interesting. It likes to stick to players like burrs on a dog's fur. I'll simply move it a bit farther west so that you can't touch it without setting off the minefield.

...

I am hoping to hit that balance between infantry and tanks. Where tanks have a chance of getting across a map, but they'll do it faster and safer if infantry clear the way. I also want infantry to have about 50-50 odds of evading if they meet a tank.

Sgt Thomas and I created a lot of havoc tonight, on foot, in the South Forest. We would setup in cross-fire positions with our anti-tank ammo and wait for Russian tanks to come rolling across the Southeast Bridge into the South Forest. As soon as they got into the killzone, one or both of us would fire at their rear panel and take them out.

Infantry can do a lot of damage if they play smart and know where the hiding spots are. A lot of times, tank drivers won't be able to identify which direction the shot came from. Especially if you use weapons like the mortar.

Did I mention how much fun I had today, watching everyone explore the map and commit mayhem upon each other? ('twas pure chaos at times)

Biggest complaints were the usual... map size (it's only 10% larger then Barbarossa, but feels larger due to unfamilarity) and the 35 minute time limit on rounds.

There was some good commentary about the width of some of the passes (some vehicle passages are too narrow / constricted). I'll be addressing that in beta2 (found a few more spots that I hadn't mentioned before).

i think as i get to know the map alot better, i wont care as much about the map size but it is pretty big.

i found this SICK secret passway to the russian base 3 and im not sure if its a glitch, it sure didnt look like one but i just want to say that it was amazing

We'll I've learned most of the map, and it feels smaller than Barbarossa (even though it's bigger).

Well, anyway, I had a blast playing on it last night. I may not play Barb ever again

If you look closely at the map, you will see that there are 2 paths marked in the treeline between R2 and R3. The one is a 4-way path in the very middle of the treeline, but there is also a Y-shaped path in the eastern section of treeline.

That Y-shaped path was added specifically to give Russians an alternate route to reinforce R3.

...

When reinforcing R3, Russians have (3) paths...

1) Vehicles can run the road or they can swing a bit farther east and run up through that small depression east of the road. It's not an ideal situation, but not hopeless either.

2) Infantry can cut through the east section of that treeline. There's one entrance on the south side, but two exits on the north side. Plus a bit of foliage on the north side to keep defenders guessing which exit was used. I may need to add a rock / stone wall along there.

3) Infantry can also cut farther west through the path in the very center of the treeline. That often brings them out behind any Germans who are at R3. If they really want to get behind the germans, you could even go farther west and sneak up the Lazy-S shaped dirt road.

there didn't seem to be any gamestate issues.

there were 1 or 2 people complaining about massive lag but in all honesty i am POSITIVE it was a problem on their end. we have an active teamspeak server and i asked about 15 people on my team if they were experiencing any lag and didn't hear anything from anyone.

as far as the tanks, well i can't help you there. we run anarchicmod so our tank settings are different (ie. T34 is scaled up to the actual speed at which they drove making them MUCH faster than stock, etc.)

i did upload the patch fix for the exploit so it is possible that is what sigma ran into...

btw, sorry about the huge image. i usually resize them but just forgot out of excitement.

I watched some folks run around last night... what I suspect they're seeing as lag is lighting lag due to my not having a final VCLOG file for the map yet. We used to see those lag hitches when you entered the middle farm area for the first time. Without the VCLOG coverage, the client has to calculate lighting for all of the new models that suddenly came into view.

I'll try to get more VCLOG data built-in to the map for beta2. I only VCLOG'd about 10% of the map and that's from a few weeks ago (so the area around G3 isn't VCLOG'd at all). It's a pain to do, but it gives me an excuse to walk the map and look for problem spots.

While auditing my GSC files, I think I found out why the stock T34 is buggy. Looks like I have 2 threads doing the same thing running at the same time. Essentially resulting in double-stock tanks and double-jeeps.

So the stock T34 may get a reprieve...

Now that I've explored the issue a bit more, here's what was happning.

1. Destroy the first stock T34 that spawns
2. Move the newly spawned T34 and you'll see that a 2nd one shows up immediately
3. Move the 2nd copy of the T34 and no more will appear until the existing pair are destroyed.

So the Russians are getting an additional T34. The bug also affects the stock vehicles such as the Russian jeep, but did not affect the After-Hourz vehicles. This also explains the bug where I was seeing multiple Russian SUs during HQ gameplay (not a bug with HQ, but a bug in the map).

Note for the .76 players: I disabled the stock-T34 this morning because I was afraid that it was resulting in infinite spawning of tanks.

This bug will be fixed in beta2 (removal of the extra tankdrive and jeepdrive lines in the main() function).

could it have to do with portalling as well?

also, i get no rain effect, but in my experience with big maps like this it's a detriment to gameplay as it causes more problems (gamestate, etc.) than the good you get from it, and the map is fantastic even without it... but that's just my opinion

ditto

And I couldn't resist hopping in last night onto the map.... much fun by all and many new faces. Good job Bob. cod gods pooped on my fun and I was disconnected in match 2.

Interesting that the rain effect is not working on the .76 server. There must be a conflict of some type with the mods installed on that server. Could even be the server-side fix PK3 that I created for Beta1, although the rain wasn't working last night even before we put the server-side fix up.

Adding 2 more satchel spawns and a few more smoke grenade spawns. The smoke grenades in the german ammo shelters are mostly to help the germans escape out of a spawn rape situation.

one thing about paks... i don't know if it was intended or not, but some of them can hit the very base they were defending... might want to restrict range of motion

sorry about the double post...

one more thing about vehicles... PLEASE keep the stock T34's in... they're the fastest thing WE have.
and i would STRONGLY suggest doing away with all but maybe 1 milk truck. i've played this about 12 times now with HEAVILY populated servers and they sit unused because IMO (and most others) they are slow, useless, gunless deathtraps...

I'm not terribly worried about paks that hit the bases they are defending... it fits the theme of "defend your territory and weapons or have them used against you". I think each team has one pak that can hit their own bases.

We've seen the milk trucks used a few times. Might swap one of them for a jeep.

The stock T34s are staying in, I fixed the double spawn issue. I may even swap one of the KV1s for another, or give the Russians a 2nd stock T34 in exchange for a milk truck.

i'd love to see both of these happen

I'm a little concerned that the Russians are having trouble on the map, defense-wise. The Germans seemed to win a lot of rounds tonight. Not sure if that means the map is unbalanced, or if the Russians simply haven't learned their side of the map yet.

Some of that may be the missing stock T34.

Found why the rain effect is not working in Beta1. It's designed to taper off as you get more players and simply stops working with more then 15 players. I've changed the code around a bit and we'll see if it works better in beta2.

I may restart the .76 server on Thursday morning to apply the fix (and to turn the T34 back on).


I'm also considering adding a pair of FG42 spawns to the map. Probably at the SW bridge and the N bridge.

Paging Radiation and Jack! Paging Radiation and Jack! Please report to the SW and North bridge as soon as possible to pick up your FG42s! And please, don't swagger when you are carrying your saws!

FG42s .....mmmmmmm.. NICE

I was wondering the same thing, the few games I played as Russian we got creamed pretty good. Although from the games I played I think most of the German wins were due to the strength/vets on the German side vs. a larger number of inexperienced players on Russian (I hope).

Bounced the server this morning, turned on the stock T34 again. The double-T34 bug is still in effect as I'm still testing the fix to the rain effect.

Currently sitting in spectate mode on the server to seed it.

Sweeeeeeeeettttt!!!!!!!!!!1 Finally I get to play with FG's boooiiinnnngg

Gonna change the round settings slightly for Friday. Currently, it's 35 minute rounds with the option of a 3rd round if the first two rounds are less then 60 minutes and neither team won both rounds.

What I'll do is shorten the battle limit to 45 minutes, which will lessen the chance of a 3rd round. That will even out multi-round battle times at 46-99 minutes (70 minutes if both of the first two rounds stalemate).

- Moved the G1 pak40 gun. It no longer has as commanding a view of the SW Bridge as it did before. Also added a lot more rocks and foliage to the south side of G1. Russians should be able to take and hold the SW Bridge now. But this will make defense of G1 harder.

Scrap, the R2 Pak doesn't reach the opening by the radio shack. A tank can sit there and pound the R2 without fear of Pak fire. Was this planned, and is the Pak's altitude restricted?

Click to view attachment

G3 Pakgun Spawnrapper, this gun actualy hit the R2 Pakgun and the whole farm area around, maybe even R1

Click to view attachment

got stuck in the road.

Gawd. Take that screeny down, before everyone and their dog starts lobbin shells across the map...

Just giving a note that it should be removed... because its overpowered! Add a invisible anti shell wall or somethin

Heh, I figured the G3 pak might be problematic.

Both the R3 and R2 pak45s did not have enough vertical elevation. I've added about another 2-3 degrees to both of them.

Did some testing on the paks, there are a few that had a few extra degrees of elevation added or removed for beta2.

I'm 90% sure it's possible to shell long-range across the map using tanks. So long as you have to move the tank out of its starting position, I'm not going to interfere with those firing solutions. Naturally, the G3 tank scrape will probably figure prominently in the german firing solutions.

Watched a few more spawn rape situations tonight. I have some ideas as to what the Russians need to get out from under that sort of situation. I study spawn rape situations very closely when they occur to see what the defenders try to do to escape.

I think the Germans are covered. They have 5 spawn buildings, arranged in a circular fashion. Each building has anti-tank rounds and it's not immediately obvious that you've spawned in those locations. Two or more Russian tanks can hold down the German spawn for about 2-3 minutes before they'll get pushed out. That's about right in my book and the Germans aren't dying as soon as they spawn. Challenging, but not frustrating.

Russians need a few more trenches, plus I need to finish the two bunkers. Maybe a few more bushes at the corners of buildings / rocks / walls. Even with an unfinished spawn area, the Russians manage to push Germans out in a few minutes. Russian spawn rape is a bit more frustrating then challenging at the moment so I need to tilt it slightly to be more favorable to Russians.

...

I'll probably move the R2 pak gun about 10 meters to the south (other side of the road). That will let me put foliage at the current position, letting Russian infantry slip the corner easier without being seen while going for a defuse. The current R2 pak45 is also too vulnerable (gunner is too easily killed).

I think I fixed all of the angles on the other pak guns.

...


v092 might go up on the test server on Friday/Saturday. This will be an incomplete preview version of beta2 changes just to make sure everything is working properly while I finish the other things that need to be fixed for beta2 release. (Beta2 will probably release on Mon/Tue. Things are balanced enough that I don't feel the need to rush the release.) I'll be putting v092 up so that I can get some feedback on the G1 changes (moved things around in the G1 area).

...

I'll probably swap one of the KV1s for a stock T34. Russians need one more fast-moving tank for offense. I'm unsure whether to give the Russians an additional T34 in exchange for one of the milk trucks, but I'm probably going to go ahead and do it for beta2 and see what happens. That will give a vehicle balance during BAS of:

German
(2) Jagd
(1) StugIII
(3) Panzer IV
(3) Panzer III
(3) Halftracks

Russian
(2) KV1
(3) T34 stock
(2) T34_76
(3) BT7
(2) milk trucks

And 12 jeeps / horches spread across the map.

We might even want to take away one tank per side and put 2 more jeeps/horches in. The initial tank rush on a full server is a sight to behold, 4-7 tanks all moving forward in a pack.

just to let you know, the AWE 2.12 mod i have on my game works fine.. No issues.. nice to see trip wires in the trails being used & parachuting in game is different just like searching dead bodies for weapons. Great map you have BOB. The guys i brought in from the [DoW] clan love the map & game play..
Talk to u later

Grego

Scrapyard, the only problem I seem to have with the map ,is that when I take a SS I get kicked from the server(ours) .The message that comes up is " Hunk missing or something to that effect" I have turned my setting up to 100 as you suggested last time you were on the server ,but it still happens.This is the only time i`m being kicked.

It can be a problem when policing the server,as I can`t take a SS shot of a culprit before I kick them ,to backup my reason for kicking them in the first place.

Any ideas????????

You mean the following hunkmegs fix? (My one system is set at "128", the other is set at 256.)

http://www.mobclan.com/forums/upload/index...?showtopic=7047

seta com_hunkmegs "???" (256 or 512)

Do you remember what the exact error message was?

Adding (2) FG42s to the map. Server admins will need to disable this weapon if they don't want it available to players. Both FG42s are in non-obvious locations away from the main spawn areas and are on thirty second respawn timers. I was tempted to make them on 60 or 120 second respawn timers, but leaning them up against a tree works just as well.

Added two more flame throwers to the map. That brings the total count to (4). All are on 30-sec respawn timers. They should be fairly evenly spread across the middle of the map.

Pretty sure I've fixed the pak40s / pak45s.

Widened a few of the new semi-covered fox-holes.

I did add 2 or 3 more satchel spawns, but I don't remember where.

Moved some more rocks and trees around in the G1 area. Russians can now assault the SW bridge easier, but Germans can still defend it. If the Russians take the SW Bridge, they should now be able to hold it.

Thanks Bob, I have done what you suggested,but am going out soon ,so i`ll give it ago later.

Other, future changes (probably in beta2)

- Going to rework the terrain around the bases to make it slightly easier to jump through the window openings of a breached base.

- As Hammatime pointed out in the strategy thread, G3 is probably the strongest German base. (G2 runs a close second due to spawn proximity.) Fairly easy to defend (but it's beatable). I do have some tricks up my sleeve that make make life more difficult for the Germans on that side. I plan on adding treeline paths through the two treelines ESE of G3 (Hill 83 area). That will allow Russian infantry yet another route to infiltrate and harrass the defenders at G3.

- For right now, I'm only going to give the Russians one extra T34 (exchange for a KV1). I think I'm making enough other balance changes to the map and I want to see how it shakes out in Beta2.

- Fixed a few more sections of road that exhibited the "pothole" effect. (Players falling through the roadway and dying.)

- Fixed a bit of the Farm area fencing.

(Trying to remember what else I fixed this week...)

Don't know if you've had a chance to address the issue north of G2, between the trench and the treeline. Driving a tank close to the trees causes it to get stuck and explode. No obstacle, just a "snowdrift" there. That trench eats up a lot of tanks and jeeps as well. Is it possible to smooth that out so vehicles can drive over it without getting stuck?

v092 will be going up on the test server (70.42.41.170) in a few minutes. This is a preview release for beta2 but is not-quite-ready-for-primetime. I'll be doing at least 2 more internal revisions this weekend before I begin prepping a beta2 release.

...

I'll try to make sure and look at that snowdrift. The old-style trench there also causes issues and needs to be replaced with the style near G3.

it's possible that the russian bases are a little harder to defend because they are more out in open areas than the krauts bases....

maybe move one them back against the back wall nearer to the spawn? or closer to the trees? or reposition R2 pak to cover the base more (on that note you could move it away from the path where the Germs can sneak up to it easy too)

if you didn't want to do that maybe you could pull german 1 closer to the middle of the map or german 3 out of the corner a bit or german 2 a bit closer to the edge of that area to make it easier for russians to sneak in...

hope i'm not sounding critical 'cause i don't want it to come across that way at all... this map is definitely in my top 3 now and i'll be damned if i don't do everything in my power to help you with ideas to make it the best map it can possibly be :salute:

on another note, here's a screen of where one of our guys fell through the map after getting out of a jeep today:
http://halo.anarchic-x.net/images/screens/shot0091.jpg

*edit*
just scrolled back and saw that you were addressing the bases already... great work man! on an unrelated note we run with no time limit and thought i'd just let you know that longest round i have seen so far was 72 minutes

The .76 server crashed today, but there's no error messages in the log. I need any of the following MOB members to tell me what the specific error message was:

Sgt.Thomas
GOOSEDOWN
Shadow
Dienamic
440Cudakid
Silver
Old Man Mike
... or anyone else who knows what the error was (a screenshot would have been great)

...

Still addressing the game balance. Russian spawn ended up a bit farther east then I thought it would. I may add / move 2 russian spawns into the ammo shelter close to R1 and allow 1 russian to spawn in the small shack nearest to R2.


That screenshot shows that you were near a section of road. Possibly one that I've already replaced for beta2. I can't quite figure out where it is but I think it's right by the russian spawn house and I did replace that road section.

v92 is awesome!