Build and Shoot

When I look at the serverlist, it seems like sham and stormwind is the only servers who can manage to fill up a full map on CTF, which is a shame IMO. AoS is turning into a run n' gun game. And I think I may know the reason why.

Let's say someone hosts a server, if they manage to get 4 players into the server, and the map is small. They can still have some decent gameplay and the players won't quit immediatly. However, if the map was full-sized, everyone would just run to get the intel and run back, and maybe once in a few minutes see an actual enemy.

The solution I have come up with is a script that changes the map based on how many players who are online. Since I don't have any coding skills at all, I will just elaborate on my idea, and hope that someone will pick it up.

Let's say you decide on these maps to be included.


Pinpoint 0-8
Isle of war 9-15
Normandie 16-25
ClassicGen 26-32

You choose the amount of players per map, and it should be possible to to have several maps per step. So for example, when the map hits 9 players, you could have several maps from 9-15, and the server will randomly choose one. I'm not including that in this rundown for simplicity reasons.

You start out hosting the server with this script, and it starts with pinpoint. You get a few players on it, and because of the narrow path in the middle, you will be able to have some decent battles with only a handful of players. This will hopefully make the players stay for a while, and you might eventually gain more players. Once the server gets over 9 players, a timer will start. If the server manages to keep the amount of players over 9 for X amount of minutes, it'll change to isle of war.

Now that you have a slightly bigger map, it'll give the players more room to walk around, and this will encourage tactic play more than the previous map. To prevent that the amount of players online drops down for a few minutes, and changes the map back in just like 10 minutes. You will be able to make a limit on how fast the map can change. Let's say you put it to 30 minutes. Meaning that when the isle of war map is up, it'll stay there for 30 minutes no matter if the player amount exceeds or drops under 9-15. Also, after those 30 minutes, if it somehow manages to get over 25 players, it'll skip Normandie altogether and go straight for classicgen.


But let's pretend that's not the case. After 30 minutes, the map has accumulated even more people, and now has a total of 18 players online. This is inside the Normandie parameters, which is the map it'll change to. You now have a popular server on a good big map. People looking at the serverlist will now see a server with Normandie on, and a decent amount of players online. Because everyone loves Normandie, it'll hopefully quickly fill up with even more players. After a good 30 minutes on Normandie, it will be time to move onto the greatest map of them all...


... Classicgen! Congratulation, you've reached the final level. Please tell me what you think of this, I'd love some feedback. :)

I setup something like this for my CS:S server a few years ago. The map time was only 30 minutes anyway, but there were several map rotations, depending on player count. It could be pretty useful, although I personally prefer to play on servers where the map rarely changes.

rakiru wrote:

I setup something like this for my CS:S server a few years ago. The map time was only 30 minutes anyway, but there were several map rotations, depending on player count. It could be pretty useful, although I personally prefer to play on servers where the map rarely changes.

I see, in that case. The server owner could extend the 30 minutes even further, and maybe have only two different "steps".
Say, isle of war 0-14, and normandie 15-32.

I have been playing with the idea to dynamically change the boundary damage locations, paint the periphery temporarily red, and lock the outer area from building, depending on players on-line. It would be a complicated script. The ideal solution would take into account existing boundary damage, among other things.
... >_>; I don't have the skill to make that.
I think it's a good idea. I also have been playing with the idea to make a very small 2 vs. 2 map. That might fit into such a dynamic rotation.