Where is Cube going?

by isophage on 09/15/2002 22:33, 44 messages, last message: 11/24/2002 23:14, 13988 views, last view: 05/18/2024 21:43

Hello,
I've been watching this engine for a while, and just found someone online to play with. The game plays beautifully, but there seems to be noone playing!!!
The last update was a couple months ago, the last post, about a month ago, and there is no central place for servers to identify themselves (ie: a master server), and the community is so scattered, its almost impossible to get any kind of message out to anyone.
Is this project dead, or is it secretly being worked on by Aardappel, who is sitting on it like a pile of gold?
Has anyone tried to make some kind of server browser (other than the one at CubeWorld, which sucks IMO), master server, or some kind of query system that stores active servers in a list?

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#1: Servers

by Piglet on 09/16/2002 20:21

finding servers isnt the problem, its finding players, see my post called 'playing online' for my so far unsuccsesful attempt at organising some games.

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#2: Serving browsing....

by eihrul on 09/17/2002 04:08

..

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#3: Server browsing...

by eihrul on 09/17/2002 04:09

We really are planning to add a server browser, but we just couldn't get it in the prior release. Unfortunately, me and hard have copious spare time, so releases come when they can. However, I definitely think we will have a server browser in by the next release, whenever that will be. Just hang in there until then. :)

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#4: Re: Server browsing...

by eihrul on 09/17/2002 04:10, refers to #3

Ugh, meant to say "me and Aard." :)

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#5: I have been working...

by Aardappel on 09/17/2002 11:04

...mainly on making an open source release possible. It will happen very soon.

I am not sure if the cube community is big enough to be self sustaining. There always seems to be a large influx of people after each post on a major site (there will be one soon again, on one of the oreilly.com sites), but then it dies out quickly too.

Not many of the promises of people to make stuff ever seem to come true, its been ages since I have seen a good new map, let alone a SP map which I hoped there would be many now.

As far is players in concerned, yes a server browser would help getting more casual players on board but I am not sure that is the core problem either. The hardcore players could simply say here "we play at this and this time GMT/CET/EST.." but I haven't seen that happen either.

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#6: Re: I have been working...

by pushplay on 09/18/2002 01:04, refers to #5

Speaking of getting the word out... (and if you don't read slashdot) there's a cool live linux cd which does all of the usual cool stuff, and also has the UT2003 demo on it.

http://www.gentoo.org/news/20020916-ut2k3.html

This may be a good sort of project to have Cube on.

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#7: Re: I have been working...

by spentron@home on 09/20/2002 04:21, refers to #5

Took me a while to figure out what you meant by self-sustaining. Enough people to keep the new stuff coming to maintain the interest and match those going elsewhere, without reliance on pimping/advertising and it being "new" I presume.

Speaking of UT2003, seems like the game world is rather saturated. But people do play all these games. As I said before, people ought to like Cube, because so many say Doom is the best game ever. But maybe that's because it's Doom. I watch various forums enough to notice that Quake is more likely to show up on worst/most overated/worst graphics lists, despite being 10 times better IMO. But the net is rather misleading about a lot of things, for example one would think everyone plays online games... Must add, I think there's a throwaway aspect to games for most people -- relatively few stick with one game for long, play add-ons, etc.

I'm happy when mapping, then I go online and get depressed.

The Net is a tough place, in a sense. From my experience, real-world advertising gets more results, or at least relatively more activity. Breaks out of what might be called the incestuous nature of the net, anyway. I did at one point consider taking out some advertising for my site, although this had nothing to do with Cube at that time. One complication of that is unpredictability -- you could get nothing, or you could be swamped.

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#8: ..

by Aardappel on 09/20/2002 11:16

I generally don't "advertise" my project, I always reckon if something is good enough it will spread automatically. I guess cube is good, just not good enough :)

btw me & eihrul are working on server browsing/pinging functionality, see if that keeps the newbies on servers for longer :)

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#9: Re: ..

by eihrul on 09/21/2002 03:17, refers to #8

Correction, we've FINISHED implementing the server browser and thus it will definitely be in the next release. :)

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#10: Re: ..

by isophage on 09/22/2002 06:52, refers to #9

Lemme guess... Itll be out `when its done' right? Could you give us a smidgen of a hint about when the next release will be happening?

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#11: Advertising

by pushplay on 09/22/2002 11:23

Some games catch on by word of mouth, but they never really hit the big time without some sort of media support. Like Goldeneye 64. It was released quietly, started getting popular by word of mouth, but didn't really explode into popularity until the magazines started raving about it.

Having Slashdot take a look at Cube is all well and good, but I think having Cube reviewed on Gamespot would put it in the big time. Who would you talk to about something like that?

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#12: Server browser

by Shockie on 09/23/2002 07:27

that server browser on cubeworld took one night, i know it suxed, i waited for about 1 week for a replay from aard on how to grab info on players, but to no avail, the new cubeworld will hopefully have a central server DB which programs will be able to get lists from, and players too. all i need is to have eihrul or aard implement the code to add and remove servers as they go online

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#13: Re: Server browser

by Aardappel on 09/24/2002 11:45, refers to #12

back then there was no code in the servers to give serverinfo replies, now there is. The only functionality that remains is that of a masterserver, so that people can have new servers added automatically to their servers.cfg. I think we'll run such a thing on fov120.com.

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#14: Re: Server browser

by SleepwalkR on 09/24/2002 14:19, refers to #13

Yes, there will be a master server here at fov120.com as soon as I get the time to code one (next week).

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#15: Re: Server browser

by pushplay on 09/25/2002 06:49, refers to #14

It would be nice if there was a web interface to the master server so that we could see on the front page of Cube if there's a game going on any of the servers.

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#16: Re: Server browser

by SleepwalkR on 09/25/2002 09:29, refers to #15

That is part of the plan, of course =).

Hail to JavaServerPages!

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#17: Re: Server browser

by Shockie on 09/25/2002 15:18, refers to #16

i could have a mirror of it in php or asp if you want, even perl

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#18: Re: Server browser

by Aardappel on 09/25/2002 17:12, refers to #17

I don't think that is practical... we'd have to replicate the database, or have servers send updates to multiple masterservers. I think one place is best for now.

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#19: Re: Server browser

by SleepwalkR on 09/25/2002 19:35, refers to #17

Yup, it's not practical. The master server will be a Java servlet, and there's no need to mirror it anyway - it's not like there'll be hundreds of thousands of servers =)

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#20: ..

by isophage on 09/26/2002 04:09

When you guys actually get the master server up and going, you should seriously think about letting these guys (http://www.udpsoft.com/eye) plug into the list, so it would be easier to find servers (instead of having to go in-game), and make it so you can add players (clan members, friends, etc) to a buddy list, so you will know what server they are joining. Its really cool, I use it for like every game I have

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