What are we paying for?

Middenrat · Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 7:47 pm Post subject: What are we paying for?

I mean, what was the point of commissioning a new server? It gets no attention from the Admins unless they want to use it for a Comp, then it's put back in the cupboard with all the other old toys. The tracks are an insult to all the hard work being put in by the trackbuilding community, with any old tat deemed good enough and barely sufficient to keep a three hour rotation going.

Fresh new Admin needed here methinks, the current crop don't want to do the graft Laughing

Anyone else feeling short-changed?
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DanTheMan · Joined: 17 Mar 2008 Posts: 1668

Anyone feel short changed by an admin up and leaving with no word of saying so, probably over a silly joke, then changing servers around as "they" feel fit and complaining at any moment, making snide remarks about the running of GP`s, then complaining about things.

YOU STILL HAVE ADMIN, YOU DO IT!!!
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mad · Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 9:18 pm Post subject:

ooooo ooooo boys boys...

yes, we are short of some admins at the moment and I'm way too short of time to get on top of the crisis. Mid, I still respect your judgement and hard graft in the past. If you want to get folk involved or help organise the admin then great, I'm open to suggestions. Be positive and we can get it sorted. It's not from lack of interest or commitment, it's simply that *#*#* happens and sometime soon I'll maybe have time to explain my absence.

On the point of using it for comps.. it's the only server capable of holding all the troops at once as forever sucks bandwidth way more than old nations used to.. this is the main reason we need a fully paid up pro hosted server.

Spanky_McCoy · Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 10:09 pm Post subject:

I'm in two minds here, on one hand the track rotations aren't what they once were but that's partly my fault as I occasionally change them after moans and groans that they need changing funnily enough from people who are quite capable of changing them. While I accept my selections of tracks are limited to the tracks I know of and not some of the newer ones the track list is getting changed. Now if egos and griping get out of the road hows about being a big boy, picking up your dummy and helping out instead of moaning or of course you could give up the admin powers and moan purely from the punters perspective then I might have a tad more respect for the complaint.
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evil_homer · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 12:03 am Post subject:

i think now we've got the new server we should drop the challenge server, if your planning on running the gp's and solo cup on GBR anyway. even the adventure chat and stick to the two main servers.

Dan and Spanky (as well as others) have been working hard on the servers, the first few solos there was a few problems setting it all up but they persevered and its been fun and they've kept the forum alive.
Mid has put a lot of time and effort in in the past so i value his opinion, he's also earned the right imo to be an admin forever

if the rotation is not going to be changed so often stick to the great tracks we have, Flinger, House Dash, A Racing Line, Death Proof etc etc etc and just add a few of the better newer ones.
my 2p

also could we put something ingame that lets people know about the forum, i know theres an address in the top corner but something on the chat bar perhaps Question

DaCheese · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:01 am Post subject:

Some shoreforums Madverts perhaps? Here's a plan of action for speeding up playlist changes. Not much of it is feasible probably but it's nearly 2 o'clock at night and some ideas wouldn't go amiss here.

Putting together a track playlist takes a long time before you factor in not being able to remember a track what a track's like from its name. Step one of speeding things up is to clean up the track folders because nobody knows what's any good or whether a track's in the right place and there's still plenty of non-Stadium tracks in the list. Seeing as I'm not really doing much at the moment, send me a zip file of the whole damn lot. Got some painting to do this week I think and my life isn't completely free of any other responsibility but I'll get through them all soon enough, faster if I work with Baino who'd already started work on this kind of thing.

Step 2: Organise the good stuff properly, catalogue it so playlists can be made in a several week rotation like Mid had going and chuck the rest. The idea would be to try and get a fairly even spread of each builder's tracks in each playlist so if a builder has 13 tracks and we have 6 lists, they always have two tracks up. If they made a new track, it'd go into the list after the one with 3 up. Adding new tracks would get pretty complicated as a record of which playlist authors last had a track of theirs put in would be needed.

Instead of an author getting one folder, each list gets a folder. All tracks in a playlist are in alphabetical order on the controller and can be selected, added and randomised far more quickly than the average playlist change now. Eventually the playlists will get a bit long and some messing about would be needed to add another playlist, but that how long it'd take to reach that stage depends on what you guys think is a reasonable number of tracks to have in rotation at once.

An even faster way to change playlists would be to have a feature of the controller that could read in text files containing track filenames or file references, but saying that's easier said than done would be a reasonable bet for a win in the understatement of the year competition. I've never used Java and couldn't program my way out of a paper bag with VB6; other than that, I'd have a go! Considering you already have a lot on your plate though Mad (surefire competition win) asking you to code something along these lines would be massively unfair.

There we have it. A long post full of daft ideas hastily typed late at night. Let the picking at holes in my plan commence!
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Middenrat · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 3:32 am Post subject:

Mad, Evil, thanks for the acknowledgements Smile

Spanky and Dan - and Steve and the other backroom boys - really have kept the show on the road and the Forum functioning. I hope they understand now what it feels like to be at the coalface and if there is some criticism, at least they haven't been ridiculed on the side, which is more than I was going to put up with for trying to share my interests away from computer gaming i.e. railway modelling. A case of selective amnesia presents in their posts above so let me remind and inform: I had to delete two threads in the Other Interests section after they were swamped by mockery, even after hints that I was quite prepared to 'spit my dummy out'. I pulled my head in after that, aye, and gave up farming the Forum if it's that narrow in scope.
All of which had me backed into a corner, but I've kicked this discussion off to try and get the server back to its once-dominant position in UK laps, not work over the past.
Evil has started with a sensible suggestion in proposing to spread ourselves less thinly (and confusingly to new visitors) by shutting down the rarely-used Challenge, I agree. The whole kaboodle won't be so daunting then.
DC has hit a row of nails on the head and I hope he will forge a taskbusting team with Baino, I love it when a plan comes through.
A couple of hours ago I was wondering what the hell to do, DC's post makes things plainer for me, cheers skipper

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DanTheMan · Joined: 17 Mar 2008 Posts: 1668

DaCheese · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 11:49 am Post subject:

That'll do, let's improve the server instead of arguing.
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StevieM · Joined: 14 Jul 2009 Posts: 92 Location: Garforth, UK

Dump the challenge server and bring back Madlaps Mini server!!

wooo

[sorry Very Happy

]

DaCheese · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:07 pm Post subject:

In order to have a mini server, you need mini tracks, and I think we discussed that elsewhere Wink

.
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evil_homer · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:25 pm Post subject:

i'd also remove the box for mad laps pro from the home page now its gone

mark-s · PRO Admin Joined: 25 Nov 2007 Posts: 527 Location: nice

sorry all be back soon, still waiting for internet to be installed. Crying or Very sad

Middenrat · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 11:50 pm Post subject:

Spanky_McCoy · Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2009 6:54 pm Post subject:

Baino · Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2009 8:46 pm Post subject:

[quote="Spanky_McCoy"]

DaCheese · Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 1:19 am Post subject:

If we can get a zip of the tracks sorted, how should the sortout work? Go through them all, list the ones you reckon are worth keeping by author and the ones that need to go perhaps, then compare thoughts and stick the resulting list of tracks that are "at risk" up so people can pick through and present a case for keeping something in the track pool? A lot of what we'll dig out for removal will be rubbish but our verdict won't cover everone's opinions so something like that might be an idea.

Going back to the recording which playlist a builder's most recent track was added to, perhaps a stickied post in the tracks forum could be produced with the names of all builders in it. Anybody who adds tracks would need to be a mod in that forum section so they could update it after adding tracks. Tight testing on new tracks might be an idea to avoid multiple versions of the same track as I know this is a big problem at the moment. I know it's hard to test thoroughly enough to iron out every last problem and I'm as guilty of having to update as anyone. Fortunately I think there's not really much that needs to be changed with testing as Matt has being doing excellent work on testing recently (thanks Matt, and sorry I've not been trying more of the recent efforts).
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Baino · Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 10:47 am Post subject:

Well at the moment I was just going through the tracks sorting out the ones that had obvious problems like a Christmas theme, badly placed or missing cp's, missing custom graphics or if there's a newer version available. I've also been trying to sort them into fatlap and minilaps for the most part i've been trying to avoid deciding on the actual quality of the track as this should really be decided by a wider range of people than just one or two so there's something for everybody when they go on a madlaps server
Once the chaff has been weeded out. we can upload the rest to the servers for people to go through perhaps useing the servers voting system to get feedback. I know that currently only a few people vote on the tracks and according to Mad you wouldn't want a server made up of what's got good karma at the moment but if everyone was to make sure they voted on every track they raced then it would surely work a lot better.
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DaCheese · Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:29 am Post subject:

That does sound like a better way of doing it, good idea Baino.
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Middenrat · Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 2:31 pm Post subject: