Unveiling The Official Soldat Web Gather

[Michal Marcinkowski]

We have something really awesome and new here, what does it matter what part I took in it? jrgp is the main man here and all applause goes to him.

Such thing should be implented in soldat and not some browser...

No, because nobody has time to sit with the game turned on. Everybody uses browsers and it is easiest and most convenient to wait for others while you're browsing your daily porn or whatever you do on the internet.

I bet 90% of the gather players use IRC

No problem, let them use IRC. This is a Gather for 90% of the population that doesn't even know what IRC is and doesn't intend on using it.

Good luck playing the gathers!

[jrgp]

There should be some notice that you can use your SF account. I wouldn't know if it wasn't for this thread. And the error messages shouldn't be written in red text on brown background.

Yeah I'll get to that too.

Done.

And email addresses on profile pages aren't shown at all now. I'm going to hold off until I get that setting in SMF sync'd with LDAP so the unified site can see it.

[Veritas]

Having no way to sub or perm/temp ban players significantly hampers the quality of the gather. Even on regular gathers there are issues with excessive pausing/leaving without getting a sub/hacking, and that carries actual penalties.

IRC can be accessed in a web browser as well, so the only conclusion I can make is you're planning to get this integrated into Soldat. Hooray I guess, but you're reinventing the wheel when there's an established community that could be accessed instead.

Also, don't assign the teams on hitting join, it allows for team stacking. Also also, put MSAC on there.

[L[0ne]R]

Well, nobody's forcing players to stop using IRC if they like it better. Right now to me this gather seems like something in-between a pub and an IRC gather. It works like a gather, but is more user-friendly than IRC.

Plus, with time it might have all the features it's missing right now and will become a full-fledged gather system.

[biohazard]

Gratz.
U guys should try to implement the interface on the client, next release. As like the failed IRC client, which would winz if eC had allow to connect on Qnet.

[Veritas]

Well, nobody's forcing players to stop using IRC if they like it better. Right now to me this gather seems like something in-between a pub and an IRC gather. It works like a gather, but is more user-friendly than IRC.

Plus, with time it might have all the features it's missing right now and will become a full-fledged gather system.

But IRC is really, really simple. If you have the ability to type in your nickname and the names of channels (which are all over the place) into http://webchat.quakenet.org/, congrats, you can use IRC.

The learning curve isn't so much a curve as a mole hill that people like make mountains out of.

[L[0ne]R]

Well, nobody's forcing players to stop using IRC if they like it better. Right now to me this gather seems like something in-between a pub and an IRC gather. It works like a gather, but is more user-friendly than IRC.

Plus, with time it might have all the features it's missing right now and will become a full-fledged gather system.

But IRC is really, really simple. If you have the ability to type in your nickname and the names of channels (which are all over the place) into http://webchat.quakenet.org/, congrats, you can use IRC.

The learning curve isn't so much a curve as a mole hill that people like make mountains out of.

Setting up IRC wasn't as easy for me. I have a plenty of experience with computers, but even I had trouble figuring out how IRC works when I tried it the first time. I remember seeing other people complain about that too.

http://webchat.quakenet.org/ <-- this is nice and simple. But up until now I didn't know it existed.

[Illuminatus]

Lol, guys you're really funny. jrgp makes some great announcement and you start b***hing right from the beginning. Give it a chance and if you don't like it post your criticism, wait for the suggested improvements or just gtfo to your lovely IRC.

First of all: Good job, jrgp! And gratz for being in the "official" dev-team now.

Didn't try a gather on it yet but still some comments:

• Good take to finally make more use of Soldat's website. We definitely could use some more visitors there - at the moment it's most used feature is only the download-area and maybe the online-serverlist. So putting a gather-app on it (and maybe also using the news-area as a dev-log like I suggested here) is a good idea.
  And MM is absolutely right with his comment on the suggestion to implement this in the client: Noone will wait till the gather starts with Soldat open in the background. I want to press "join" and surf the web till I get the notice that the gather starts. And since we have no Portal in Soldat yet it also would be impossible to perm-ban some hackers.
• We'll need more promotion for it (of course only after you made some more improvements to it). Is there any newsletter currently? Maybe send the news per mail to any registered user on Soldatforums. Or you could at least use the ad which which shows up before you start an unregistered copy of Soldat (I don't know - is it still there?). The best would be an ingame-news system of course. That's how we could get in touch with all the players who never ever surfed any forum, used IRC or registered the game, who just downloaded the game and plays it since then. Something like the one MM already implemented in Link-Dead. So we would notice a new announcement which would point us to soldat.pl. We would then surf there, read the news on it and start the gathering.
• Where are the gameservers located? And who hosts them? How many are there at the moment? 4? It would be nice to add some more information to the servers, like if it has MSAC on it, where it is located, etc.
  Ways to handle the location-problem:
  - Add the location of the gather-servers to the website (gather = server, right? Or is the server chosen afterwards when enough players joined the gather-match on the website?) so you know the location beforehand and have no right to whine afterwards when you have high ping.
  - Let the players add some location-info ("Europe", "North-America", "South-America", "Australia" and "Asia" would be enough) to their "User Info"-page (because it's hard to find out the right location of all the users who joined some gather-match if some of them use proxies while surfing or only surf with vpn-enabled). Right before the gather starts it will decide which server to choose depending on the locations of the players.
• There is some old information on my user-info page which I want to delete. But I can't since I already deleted the information here on the forums months ago and there is no page on soldat.pl to change it directly.

Once again I say: Good job.
We have new developers for Soldat who hopefully will post some "welcome!-here-we-are-and-this-is-what-we-are-planning-to-do"-message soon. Leads to less bugs.
We have a new anti-cheat module which hopefully will be robust and lightweight enough to add it to the Soldat-installer. Leads to less hackers.
We have an online-gather system now which somehow connects the IRC-boys with the public-players. If you add the addresses to the common IRC gathers on the online-gather website you'll will have more and more active players because that's how after some time they find out about the big Soldat-world on the IRC. They will be surprised, stay active a bit longer and maybe even join a clan. Leads to more activity / a more wider Soldat-experience.
Together with the Portal-thingy which gives us not only a friend-system but also the "perm"-ban possiblity on the public-world I see a bright future for Soldat. You "just" need to bring all the things together, use the Soldat-website and make more promotion.

@Veritas: Maybe it's simple for you. But you aren't the majority. The majority is the dude who's called noob. He wants to play with his friends (he made on the several forums or some public-servers) and other guys but has no server, no idea how to host one and doesn't want to register to Quakenet or other stuff. He never ever heard of IRC. He just wants to try the new "gathering". Which system will he choose?
The one where he needs to download and configure some client-software (yes, he could also use the online-version, but how to configure a bouncer there?), then needs to register with quakenet, then needs to join a specific channel, then needs to understand all the strange commands (!overkill??) to finally join a gather and have some fun? Then afterwards he has to struggle with the fact that his IRC-name is not fixed, so he needs to look for some bouncer if he really wants it.
Or the other solution where he just logins on the official soldat-website with his forum-nick and passwort and has a nice flashy-gui to directly have the fun he seeks for?
Think about it a moment. And use the perspective of those people who never ever tried IRC. With all the suggestions we already posted (and which will come) and the roadmap jrgp has posted there won't be much differences in the future between IRC-gather and online-gather.

[Monsteri]

Who the **** is going to read that whole thing!?!

[Blue-ninja]

Who the **** is going to read that whole thing!?!

People who want to be convinced of the usefulness of a browser program?

[jrgp]

Who the **** is going to read that whole thing!?!

Consider this your first warning for spamming.

[CheeSeMan.]

where are the servers located? And wouldn't a larger DM be funner? This is one of the gamemodes that is lacking in gathers ?

Its a great idea in a sense, yet I feel that if you want to play gathers and become a better player: then IRC is the place to be. Anyhows, until some form of admining can be put in place... a penalty reporting system? think ill stay clear of this gather! Needs MASC for one and i can see it becoming a retard/hack fest!

But as has been mentioned... IRC community is really a fun place to be i'd suggest it too anyone! Really it isn't difficult to get on...

[Furai]

Servers are located in Chicago, USA. They are hosted by FLAB as it is mentioned in the first post.

[CheeSeMan.]

Servers are located in Chicago, USA. They are hosted by FLAB as it is mentioned in the first post.

I would suggest writing this in the actual gather. eg CTF #1 NA

A vast majority of EU soldat players are extreme haters of lag and I think you will find numerous players will just leave once they see their ping.

[demoniac93]

This will definitely come in handy when we start reviving Soldat on the community level, well done.

[Veritas]

@Veritas: Maybe it's simple for you. But you aren't the majority. The majority is the dude who's called noob. He wants to play with his friends (he made on the several forums or some public-servers) and other guys but has no server, no idea how to host one and doesn't want to register to Quakenet or other stuff. He never ever heard of IRC. He just wants to try the new "gathering". Which system will he choose?
The one where he needs to download and configure some client-software (yes, he could also use the online-version, but how to configure a bouncer there?), then needs to register with quakenet, then needs to join a specific channel, then needs to understand all the strange commands (!overkill??) to finally join a gather and have some fun? Then afterwards he has to struggle with the fact that his IRC-name is not fixed, so he needs to look for some bouncer if he really wants it.
Or the other solution where he just logins on the official soldat-website with his forum-nick and passwort and has a nice flashy-gui to directly have the fun he seeks for?

You don't need a bouncer, so I don't know why that matters. The rest, again, isn't actually difficult. IRC looks (and is) archaic, but there are a number of tutorials showing how, in pants-on-head-retard terms, to connect to IRC, register your nick, as well as people willing to help you out on the forums and in the gathers themselves. Yes, people may have to read some words + pictures and then comprehend them, but I feel like we can make that work.

People like to complain for the sake of complaining, and that's the only real reason that people whine about getting started with IRC.

there won't be much differences in the future between IRC-gather and online-gather.

Then why bother? Why not put up a nice looking GUI on top of IRC?

[DorkeyDear]

I am glad to finally see this. Hopefully this will increase popularity in the future, and have support for irc players to play along-side with those who use the website gather. Maybe a possibility for them to even chat together, having a little lobby (seemless irc client). I do hope to see, though, a possibility to play realistic, or realistic/survival, do encourage people to try other things.. maybe have a "unique fridays" where special / non-standard or non-common modes are played ^_^ just some thoughts

[Illuminatus]

there won't be much differences in the future between IRC-gather and online-gather.

Then why bother? Why not put up a nice looking GUI on top of IRC?

Because the online-gather is already done, simple as that. Do you really want jrgp to throw all the code away? Why not giving it a try first? Let's see how it evolves.
You still have time to rant about it if it won't become popular or won't been used after some while.

[filip2322]

Ok...since i cant join the gather could someone explain me where to put what,ip,port,pass.
I got this:    soldat://outcry.u13 - five numbers - four numbers-
I entered it this way:   /\ip              /\port            /\pass

And i get:Could not download files

Please help

[Veritas]

there won't be much differences in the future between IRC-gather and online-gather.

Then why bother? Why not put up a nice looking GUI on top of IRC?

Because the online-gather is already done, simple as that. Do you really want jrgp to throw all the code away? Why not giving it a try first? Let's see how it evolves.
You still have time to rant about it if it won't become popular or won't been used after some while.

You should be pretty used to throwing code away as a programmer.

My beef with it isn't in what it does (gathers are awesome and should be encouraged) but that we currently have an active gather community that desperately needs new blood, and this seems to only serve to splinter groups more.