2.5 Test #5 - PLAYTEST - Sunday 23rd March - 19:00 GMT, 15:00 EDT, 12:00 pm PDT

I believe they are yes, candles said something about it last night.

Has the beta branch been pushed to official then or does that still need to be done?

 

I would imagine candles would like to try and fix the last few major bugs, then roll it out.

 

Candles removed the unnecessary scripts, fixed some map cubemaps and then shipped it last night.

 

If thats the case then everyone currently using the beta branch should revert to the normal branch to prevent conflicts in future

 

I think this playtest was just using Source 2013 SDK exe + some command line options to run it, perhaps that's the reason. We have a proper public beta branch now (Valve changed the way how betas worked), so now we can have players use that again

 

It's good to hear that the beta branch is more convenient now.

Is it possible to remove the password on it?

I got more than one person complain that entering the password was difficult/buggy. Removing it may help their issues, it may not.

 

More feedback on Epic 2.6 CrashTest from last night

If you don't want to read the dissertation of last nights matches - drop down to Game Issues.

I was happily surprised to find 20 ppl playing last night. I joined and about half were nubs. Great to see Heisen back - who has not lost any skill. Some other vets back as well, which I haven't seen for years.

During streetsoffire after we took 90% of the map so we pulled all the vets back and told the nubs to take down their base while we chatted and chased rabbits. It was quite fun. The nubs of course couldn't figure out how to push tanks, or get into the base so the game drew out, even after I stacked a few tanks in the VF. We even got some nubs into the command seat and did remote commanding. Everything was slow played then rapid death at will when a vet decided to take control or got bored.

Cyclopean was great fun since Toxin decided to only research Plasma, and Spike and I chased the com around the map overheating him, who I think was LazyBum (Sorry dude). I was dropping ammo and a nub on the other team ran down the hill and past me with his calculator out. I watched him, nodded and ignored him while laughing with Spike. Then someone killed him, Poor nub.

Coast was fun and hopefully the nubs learned a few things. Lots of guys first night playing, some of which would listen. It was not at all like a normal game. We took north, then my team all left north since middle sounded more interesting. They would actually run the whole distance from north down through base and into middle to die and mistakenly spawn north again to run all the way AGAIN. Until BE took out north and I could get a few nubs into an APC to combat the nubs coming through north. The BE com was doing a good job of keeping center and building north and south bases. He had 3/4 of the resource points. I had Spike and ScRaT plus about eight nubs. Spike left early since he though we were STACKED - haha. Well he came back later in the game since they must have given him a rougher time on BE. Anway - we lost everything a few times, and the nubs wouldn't leave main. So while the other team was pushing three heavies in from north and three from south I drove the com vehicle to south of their main, Built a rax, had my team spawn as gren and we killed their com from behind walls on top of their base. Too funny.

Flag maps were rapidly won since the nubs didn't know what to do and we would tell our nubs what to do and what was important.

On DustStorm I started on BE with ScRaT and had a nub take com. I walked him through research. Built tanks for nubs to get in and remembered the long slope of learning the nubs need in this game. Most progressed and did as told, but also I could not get anyone to spawn a tank. We need a video tutorial on making videos. I will get to that if someone else doesn't first. I got kicked from the game and when I rejoined I couldn't get on BE. But BE was dominating so I joined NF. We fought hard, most nubs remained engie no matter how many times I asked for grens. They would not get refs so we starved while BE picked us off over a very long period. They obviously don't understand that killing the commander wins the game. I tried a few times to kill their com, got him down to yellow oh - I love the new colors as a vehicle changes health status. But we couldn't seal the deal and eventually a veton the other team ended it. Heavies on the other team died easily, I had about a five to 1 kill ratio but they had all the resources, so that had little impact.

Game Issues:
I got dumped from the game at least six times. About once every 30 minutes. I would normally race a jeep to the location of my vehicle. ScRaT and I were in pretty close synchronization of getting dumped but I did notice when it happened we did not all get dumped at the same time and some people were not effected. I think some of the nubs may think they were kicked and that would not be good. I could rejoin within 30 seconds but I noticed it seemed to happen only when I was in a vehicle. There was one time when I was on foot and telling the com on DustStorm what to research that he was obviously gone. Shortly after I got in a vehicle I crashed. But others had gone already while I was still in the game. That could be why some nubs were not impacted since some did not ever get in a vehicle. I do not recall if I ever crashed while in the com vehicle. Normally it was while in a heavy. But also it was at a seemingly regular interval, like every 30 minutes. It didn't seem to matter if we had 10 or 30 ppl playing.

I'm really happy to see Empires back, I'll do my part to help train the nubs.

 

Been messing around on 3 different PC's and still no crashes. Didn't install 2013 sdk . Only beta + 2007 sdk. Fresh steam install. Could the crash be related to leftover svn files or old steam installs.

Only issue I have is a slight freeze when changing maps. Always had that issue and seems better then 2007 where it would freeze for a lot longer.

 

Speaking of loading... did anyone else loose the load windows with hints and log excerpts?

 

We had 29 players on tonight. Crashes occurred frequently, once two minutes apart, then Candles gave Vicki some new DLL's. I crashed once more, but when I restarted it asked me to update. He told everyone to restart Steam. I did not have the drop to windows crash, but I did have one screen freeze. It looked like something very different. I killed HL2.exe and restarted and did not crash again. I played for another couple hours and a few maps. It might just be fixed.

Games got fun after the stacking was reduced. Still the same handful of guys demanded to stack teams. So Fucking Empires is back. Shit - someone shoot me. I counted 9 vets vs 9 nubs one game, it was pitiful. This is not going to get new people to remain in the game long enough to compete.

 

classic pire

 

It's getting replaced with a HTML version that allows us to make a lot more interesting stuff

 

Perma Gag needs to be implemented. Let them play but STFU. I can think of only two players who deserve this. I think for it to be fair at least three admins have to initiate perma-gag. First and second admin gage is temporary as a normal gag would be, third gag is STFU gag to make it permanent and upto the owner of the server to remove.

Better start buying flowers and candy Freak and Paradox - or maybe Vicki would prefer a foot massage.