Integrate EGBDL (5v5 EG baseduel) and eliteduel (5v5 EG warbird duel) into TWD

[Pressure]

Agreed. Would love to see EG baseduel become a thing. It'll be sad when it kills ?go twbd.

They would both thrive

[qan]

qan Could you rename twsd and twfd to egbdl and egete and put the setting in there?

That's probably what would be done, roughly, to make it work, though there are some complications.

Having a baseduel arena with the EG bot settings and old EG bot, but in TW instead, would be great. Still think we should have baseduel (and eliteduel) as a TWD league though. At some point, squads should at least have the option to play EG baseduel games against each other, even if the stats aren't recorded on the TWD site.

Also, in EG the teams would form by players randomly organizing on freqs with eachother/friends. I think implementing captains and a having a mini draft similar to TW's practice arenas (base, wbduel, javduel) would be best and would make for the best games. How long would it take to set something like this up?

Running it on a bot such as the BWJS bots currently used in wbduel/javduel/base would be the easiest way to just get it up and running. From there we could gauge interest. If games run frequently enough, it could be adapted to TWD. Unfortunately, running EG bots is not really feasible unless someone is able to get the code, and even then it would be a challenge to run on our servers.

The steps for getting the minimum viable product up and going would be:

• Get settings (Anyone make any headway on this? Talk to old devs, RaeRae, etc., and explain the project ... OR -- and this is not nearly as good a solution, and requires some skill -- duplicate the settings in a reasonable and acceptable way. Anyone is welcome to use TW's dev server for this purpose. DM/?message for details)
• Get maps and any LVZs (extra graphics files) associated (Easy, but still needs to be done. Who's on it? Are there multiple maps needed or just one? These maps are in your Continuum/zones/ZoneName folder)
• Compile coords, if needed (Are there multiple starting locations? If so, who is willing to open the map and compile a list of starting coordinates for teams? This is also a simple task, but it takes time. Go to https://trenchwars.org/index.php?v=downloads and download Drake's Continuum Map Editor. Unzip and double-click dcme_install.bat to install dependencies.Then open any LVL file from your Continuum/zones/ZoneName directory. Save in a different directory if you make changes or the files will be overwritten by the server when you go to that arena again.)

Keep in mind we're a volunteer-run game so if you want to increase the chance of success of such a project, you need to personally step up. I'm maxed out in terms of time investment to TW, and that might be the case for BIET, too. In other words, nobody else will do it for you; do it for yourself. If you're willing to do one of these things, post in the thread that you're on it. If nobody agrees to do these things, the project dies at this stage.

From there, we'd just need to adapt bots. I don't think that would be a huge undertaking for a first version. Like any project in TW, it gets more dev attention if there is more interest/activity, so we could go from there.

[Voth]

I'd love to see this happen. For years upon years, I almost completely abandoned TW because I found EG to be much more fun gameplay than your standard TW options. Really sad that FC throttled that zone.

I know things like EG baseduel, eliteduel, elitete are the most obvious to integrate right away, but nothing, and I mean nothing, beats out legitimate EG flagging. Maybe if the few easier plug and play options take off, we can consider a sub-arena/league dedicated to EG style flagging, if there is enough interest....as it is a much more complex league both intellectually and in actual gameplay than your standard TW fare. In the past, TW players have adapted well to it, though. Just a matter of having enough able-bodied players to sort of guide the rest.

[MHz]

EG is too laggy to play now- the last baseduel league hosted there was dire. It was completely mismanaged for decades - help calls going unanswered, players having to self-organise tournaments with zero staff powers, much needed dev work going undone, and zero talent or energy in the top tiers of staff. For example, in EG baseduel, a single player lagging out caused the whole game to forfeit. Imagine that in TW, one player lags out in a TWBD and the game just ends. It was shambolic.

And this was one of subspace's great zones, with a population around 300 when I started playing it properly around 2005... 50+ players in baseduel at a time... 24hr games with 30 player rosters in EGFL. Running EG's arenas in TW - with this zone's superior staff and resources - could be a real opportunity to increase our population, maybe by 50-100 experienced players. No mind should be paid to the feelings or interests of EG's current staff.

Re: the task of importing EG, Sprackle has done a great job in bringing through elitete - I think he has a bot that can copy settings and maybe maps? Since elitete is just a deathmatch to 10, it can be very easily hosted using existing bot infrastructure in TW. The same could be done for EGL (5v5 EG dueling.)

EG Baseduel is a very different proposition. Mapping this to TWD would be tricky since it isn't a deathmatch, and it isn't CTF, but is a completely unique format (players have to reach the opponents safe/kill the entire enemy team at the same time.) For this reason, it's probably more realistic to simply make EG Baseduel a permanent sub-arena such as ?go javduel, with elim-style-bot stats. Sprackle I believe was already looking into doing something like this.

[Voth]

That's probably what would be done, roughly, to make it work, though there are some complications.



Running it on a bot such as the BWJS bots currently used in wbduel/javduel/base would be the easiest way to just get it up and running. From there we could gauge interest. If games run frequently enough, it could be adapted to TWD. Unfortunately, running EG bots is not really feasible unless someone is able to get the code, and even then it would be a challenge to run on our servers.

The steps for getting the minimum viable product up and going would be:

• Get settings (Anyone make any headway on this? Talk to old devs, RaeRae, etc., and explain the project ... OR -- and this is not nearly as good a solution, and requires some skill -- duplicate the settings in a reasonable and acceptable way. Anyone is welcome to use TW's dev server for this purpose. DM/?message for details)
• Get maps and any LVZs (extra graphics files) associated (Easy, but still needs to be done. Who's on it? Are there multiple maps needed or just one? These maps are in your Continuum/zones/ZoneName folder)
• Compile coords, if needed (Are there multiple starting locations? If so, who is willing to open the map and compile a list of starting coordinates for teams? This is also a simple task, but it takes time. Go to https://trenchwars.org/index.php?v=downloads and download Drake's Continuum Map Editor. Unzip and double-click dcme_install.bat to install dependencies.Then open any LVL file from your Continuum/zones/ZoneName directory. Save in a different directory if you make changes or the files will be overwritten by the server when you go to that arena again.)

Keep in mind we're a volunteer-run game so if you want to increase the chance of success of such a project, you need to personally step up. I'm maxed out in terms of time investment to TW, and that might be the case for BIET, too. In other words, nobody else will do it for you; do it for yourself. If you're willing to do one of these things, post in the thread that you're on it. If nobody agrees to do these things, the project dies at this stage.

From there, we'd just need to adapt bots. I don't think that would be a huge undertaking for a first version. Like any project in TW, it gets more dev attention if there is more interest/activity, so we could go from there.

Historically, Baseduel settings in EG were slightly different than their pub settings, but I don't think anyone would complain if we just copied EG pub settings and made minor adjustments as needed.

Forgive my ignorance, but we can ?go eg from TW -- does that not give us any access to general EG pub settings?

[Voth]

EG is too laggy to play now- the last baseduel league hosted there was dire. It was completely mismanaged for decades - help calls going unanswered, players having to self-organise tournaments with zero staff powers, much needed dev work going undone, and zero talent or energy in the top tiers of staff. For example, in EG baseduel, a single player lagging out caused the whole game to forfeit. Imagine that in TW, one player lags out in a TWBD and the game just ends. It was shambolic.

And this was one of subspace's great zones, with a population around 300 when I started playing it properly around 2005... 50+ players in baseduel at a time... 24hr games with 30 player rosters in EGFL. Running EG's arenas in TW - with this zone's superior staff and resources - could be a real opportunity to increase our population, maybe by 50-100 experienced players. No mind should be paid to the feelings or interests of EG's current staff.

Re: the task of importing EG, Sprackle has done a great job in bringing through elitete - I think he has a bot that can copy settings and maybe maps? Since elitete is just a deathmatch to 10, it can be very easily hosted using existing bot infrastructure in TW. The same could be done for EGL (5v5 EG dueling.)

EG Baseduel is a very different proposition. Mapping this to TWD would be tricky since it isn't a deathmatch, and it isn't CTF, but is a completely unique format (players have to reach the opponents safe/kill the entire enemy team at the same time.) For this reason, it's probably more realistic to simply make EG Baseduel a permanent sub-arena such as ?go javduel, with elim-style-bot stats. Sprackle I believe was already looking into doing something like this.

Yes -- EG baseduel integrated into TWD is a headache. Just make it a sub-arena and if enough interest is gathered, can make a mini-league out of it, sort of like TWEL.

[Sprackle]

We've now added a few arenas from EG into TW with their original settings (currently as an event):

?go baseduel (eg basing)
?go egbdl (eg basing)
?go egl (eg twdd)

?go elitete (eg elim)

?go cagematch (2 team deathmatch)
?go gladiator (ffa deathmatch)

?go riot (eg zombies)
?go monster (eg zombies)


We don't have a dedicated bot yet (specifically for eg's basing arenas) but we're working towards it. Those arenas can currently be hosted with the existing RoboBot together with the host's commands and calls.

We'll add more as arenas soon. When someone's in game, can they show me how/where eliteduel is played in the map as 5v5? I have the original settings for it. Just not sure how it can be played out using the existing RoboBot.

[LeeRomeno]

We've now added a few arenas from EG into TW with their original settings (currently as an event):

?go baseduel (eg basing)
?go egbdl (eg basing)
?go egl (eg twdd)

?go elitete (eg elim)

?go cagematch (2 team deathmatch)
?go gladiator (ffa deathmatch)

?go riot (eg zombies)
?go monster (eg zombies)


We don't have a dedicated bot yet (specifically for eg's basing arenas) but we're working towards it. Those arenas can currently be hosted with the existing RoboBot together with the host's commands and calls.

We'll add more as arenas soon. When someone's in game, can they show me how/where eliteduel is played in the map as 5v5? I have the original settings for it. Just not sure how it can be played out using the existing RoboBot.

I am online pretty much every euro evening, so find me and we can go through, but in essence elitete was an event in EG, using egl settings (EG flagging had a bit different settings compared to EGL, for players, in a nutshell, 1 bomb did not kill, unlike in flagging/baseduel). As far as I recall, it was mainly hosted as solo-event (similar to elim in TW), so 10 deaths, last one alive to win (random spawns over the map). Only ship playable was warbird. I honestly do not remember it being hosted as 5v5 event, but if it was, most probably people just invited others to priv freqs and bot resetted at the beginning of game and in that case it was definitely not 2 teams fighting it out, but rather as many teams as arena could gather, so 4v4v4v4 etc.

PS! Thanx for this, those are all great events