[bf1942] Since we now have our new Andreas ;)

[Joe]

We've only been asking since '42 for that, but I guess the custom mappers
will find another game, again.

Not to shoot the messenger, but this is one of the most bass ackwards calls
I've seen made in relation to the series, three times now. The methods have
been around long before the bf series, and so has the usefullness of it.

To put a bit behind my statement, we run a very popular 40-slot BFV server.
We get a LOT of player traffic (More than 100,000 players/month per
Serverspy.net) and have a lot of regulars. We also compete at TWL so a lot
of the other clans come by to play as well. Long story short, we have tried
to run custom maps. Everyone wants to play them. The problem is getting
everyone to download something out of the game. I created a mappack with a
few maps as a test, and advertised it very heavily on our site and in-game
for over two weeks before we ran it. We had a few hundred downloads on it,
only. We were lucky to have 20 guys in game at once. The lack of support for
custom maps is such a horrible downfall of the bf* series, and I really had
hopes that with VOIP being added, something like this that would actually
prolong the life of the game would be included. IMHO, voip would be a lower
priority than custom content downloads. Wouldn't 64 player voip drag the
server down more than a url redirect? :/

Anywho, I hope EA/DICE reconsider this in the near future, as it would be a
huge bonus to the the game. I can't imagine coding that in would be all that
difficult, a http fetch and decompress....

Thanks for relaying the info, even if it's not what I hoped to hear, and we
all appreciate your work on the linux/bsd counterparts.

-----Original Message-----
From: Andreas Andersson [mailto:andreas.andersson at dice.se]
Sent: Friday, May 06, 2005 8:52 AM
To: bf1942 at icculus.org
Subject: RE: [bf1942] Since we now have our new Andreas ;)


I'm afraid BF2 does not support any of that. :/

Apperently, they thought about it, but felt that it would steal to much
bandwidth from the server and affect the game-experience for the others
on the server.

The redirect feature would have solved that I guess, but we do not have
time to implement that now. Sorry!

/Andreas

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe [mailto:sechon at blackmud.com]
Sent: den 4 maj 2005 04:52
To: bf1942 at icculus.org
Subject: RE: [bf1942] Since we now have our new Andreas ;)

Many engines offer a redirect feature, to redirect anyone without the
map to
an offsite location containing the requested resources, as to not strain
the
game server itself.

-----Original Message-----
From: Lance Woollett [mailto:baalzaman at gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2005 9:40 PM
To: bf1942 at icculus.org
Subject: Re: [bf1942] Since we now have our new Andreas ;)


agreed. While BF maps tend to be large and mass downloading of maps
could place a strain on resources, this would be a huge help to the
mapping/mod community.


On 5/4/05, Neal Clayton <xayd at vae-victus.org> wrote:
> Not that there's anything wrong with our old Andreas, <3 for looking
out
> for us FreeBSD people, but some questions...
>
> It would be nice for BF2 to allow the sending of custom maps within
the
> client and server, has this been implemented by any chance?  A big
> hindrance to custom maps and mods in BF'42 was the fact that they were
> not available for use on public servers, because people don't get them
> pushed from the game server when they connect like they do with UT and
> Quake engine games, for instance.
>
> This ability (coupled with the option to redirect the download to a
> webserver somewhere else) would be a big help, and would also prolong
> the game's longevity as well, since people would have alot more custom
> content out there to play when the stock maps and gametypes get stale.
>
>