Custom Maps Events

[Drecks]

Originally Posted by gyps

Has anybody had a difinative answer from TWI on what the chances are of getting these maps made stock ?

If not Yosh any chance we can some input from You on this please

They will end up as an "official" for the game

[danh]

Originally Posted by Drecks

Danh, dont come and tell us we didn't try to tell and "educate" people where to store custom maps and what to do when they caused problems. The forum is filled with these kind of posts and its kind of odd you missed that.
The "Clear cache message is well known" and the Cache extractor comes form this community. Even you asked and got served so I'm kind of amazed by your post.

And the part of "We can blame TWI all day and say its their responsibility" feels kind of odd to. Who are the "We" ? And point me to the daily blames ?

The players most of the time even didn't need any knowledge as all they needed to do was joining a server running custom maps and wait. Unfortunatly to often there wasn't any indication you where donwloading something so that might be part of the problem. Cause as you don't get any message people might think something is wrong and simply would restart the game and pick another server.

We back then and now probably you underestimate the number of people visiting this forum. We had testsession filling up fast in the passt. As soon the announcement was out it would fill. And TWI did help to with these announcements, but the real deal started after the release. We might have to push out an announcement every time a custom map is on.

Sorry Drecks. I did mean to sound rude and inconsiderate. I am just enthusiastic about this. I do read the forums and I have seen the issues. I am just saying I want to do some more.

I say we as a general statement.

I just want to come up with a solution besides waiting for official maps.

[Mike_Nomad]

Originally Posted by danh

Sorry Drecks. I did mean to sound rude and inconsiderate. I am just enthusiastic about this. I do read the forums and I have seen the issues. I am just saying I want to do some more.

I say we as a general statement.

I just want to come up with a solution besides waiting for official maps.

Its still TWI's show no matter what.

[TrOOper]

TWI still thinks that the steam workshop works...........it doesnt for many , many, many people......

They are living in a fantasy land to believe everything is working right...

[Drecks]

Danh, I recognize and at the same time envy your enthousiasm. But don't let the fog
of enthousiasm blind you from all what have been done already.

Custom maps could have been really great on this game. In my believe its the most
important to a game like this. Even more important then extra vehicles. As they won't
drive anywhere without a map. TWI deserves kudos for being one of the few developers
to bring an SDK for a shooter like this.

But its been proven by now that the way the game treats custom map could have been
better. As an example I can name , an idicator which tells players he downloads a map
from the redirect. Some did see it others not. A less fancy loadingscreen so players see
which map loads.

For them (TWI) it probably also lesson learned. Recently, better said the last few days,
we see more movement on some of the custom maps servers.
This will only get better when these maps are brought in a steam update.

And in my believe that "offical map pack" isn't that far away.

[danh]

Thanks Drecks. I understand your point. I will try to get some answers from the dev about the map pack and I will still try to organize events on different servers.

[=GG= Mr Moe]

As everyone can guess, custom maps keep the game fresh. It keeps veteran players around playing. This keeps the player numbers up. More people playing is attractive to new prospective players/customers. More players keeps the veteran players around. All of this adds up to a more attractive franchise and positive word of mouth.

Support of the mapping and modding community (not speaking of the official mod RS) is also attractive to potential players and new talent that may be interested in contributing their efforts to maps and content. New talent brings fresh ideas which keeps the game interesting.

There is no downside to supporting those wonderful mappers and modders. Its a win-win for us all. TWI has been great in the past at doing this. Currently their efforts in this are not so visable to us all. I know they are busy with RS and judging the mapping contest but...

Perhaps a little more Dev feedback here on the forums is in order (and I don't mean our wonderful and lovable Yoshiro ). For whatever reason (I don't pretend to know) John and Alan and the rest of the gang don't add their two cents into our conversations like they used to. Maybe they have forgotten how important/uplifting/inspiring etc etc it is for the rest of us to hear their thoughts and ideas on what is going on, not to mention how it looks to have their personal involvement in the everyday activities of the game, be it official or unofficial.

The absence of input from those in charge is a little odd considering the roots the devs have come from. We certainly don't need to hear day to day updates of what is going on, or have the devs drawn into time consuming (and sometimes pointless) forum conversations of what is going on, but their occasional thoughts and inputs are greatly appreciated even if they don't agree with most of us may be thinking. I think if someone gave them the impression that it would be best for them to avoid this, then they have probably been mislead.

On the other topic of trying to get players more interested in custom mods and maps, I think that has been tried numerous ways and discussed to death in both the last few years of ROOST and currently in ROHOS. That doesn't mean stop coming up with ideas and letting people know of them etc, it just means the rest of us have done just about all we can and the rest is up to those players to explore the great new things the mapping and modding community is coming out with.

That said, everyone, please continue to support and post all the feedback you can to those unsung heroes that we have come to know and love, those that spend hours to bring us the content and fun that we continue to enjoy!

[gyps]

Originally Posted by Drecks

They will end up as an "official" for the game

So I understood my mean was more on when, if we are waiting for the end of mapping contest then tidying up etc we could be looking at months and months away

Yosh cant some of the ones be added now and updated later much as you've done with the stock maps ?

[danh]

Yes. There are still some fundamental differences between the custom maps and the official maps. I am not sure how they will handle it but official maps have around five packages. Sound, Effects, Art, and the Game types. This allows for new game types because you only have to change or add another game type package. This also allows for 4 guys to work on the map at the same time. Custom maps include all the packages in one map file. TWI might go in and try to split the custom maps up and then try to optimize them. This would take some time.

But it is possible for TWI to support the custom maps right now as they are and do this stuff later.

[gyps]

Then thats what we need to try and get TWI to do

Can we have some dev input on whats possible / likley to be abale to be done please

[Yoshiro]

Winners from the mapping contest will be offered a chance to make their content official. How we have handled this in the past is we provide the mappers with a list of issues we expect to see fixed, wait for a "final" submission, have QA test the map, have our LD's fix anything that shows up, then prepare it for a patch.

[BlackLabel]

The brilliant custom maps ( namly Druzina, Gumrakstation and Univermag ) brought me back to a rather stable shedule of playing ro2 at all.

It reminds me a bit of RO1 when berezina got big and leningrad blew the other CA maps out the water ( oh and ofc my beloved BDJ ) and THAN where made "official". Albeit with some changes such as now unlimited tankspawns on Leningrad. ( the limit made it even better, forcing more tankprotection from infantry )

The maps afromentioned are really good in size and offer a varity in gameplay that most stock maps are missing.

[gyps]

Yosh whats the likley time scale from end of mapping contest to when we are likely to see patch ?

not a signed in blood date but an educated guess please Yosh i know devs hate doing this because it taken to be carved in stone once said (so all who read remember the first part i'm asking for a guess not a fixed date before you start quoting any dates we get back )

[Yoshiro]

After contest there would probably be a month or two (don't hold me to that) of fixing/work done to the maps before a patch would be rolled out. But things such as the mappers time/our time play huge factors into this.

[Kowalczyk]

This thread hasnt changed the world (yet!) but it has changed one person. I have gotten incredibly bored with the game recently, but seeing this thread has made me make a resolution to find and only play new custom maps.

[Drecks]

Originally Posted by Kowalczyk

This thread hasnt changed the world (yet!) but it has changed one person. I have gotten incredibly bored with the game recently, but seeing this thread has made me make a resolution to find and only play new custom maps.

To get a more insight view on how players think I wonder.
Why you needed this thread to start to play custom maps ?

Why you did not join servers running them while they where there in the serverbrowser ?

[Kowalczyk]

Because I am a Taurus and I hate change I also kind of forgot there may be other servers out there that do things differently.

[Drecks]

Originally Posted by Kowalczyk

Because I am a Taurus and I hate change I also kind of forgot there may be other servers out there that do things differently.

Apparently this game has a lot of people who don't like changes or 200 MB downloads.