Garian

it's great to see that some folks are interested! We should do some planning though, i'd hate to just say 'tournament on X-X-XX signups by Y-Y-YY' and have it go at that. Is there anyone around who has had experience setting up tourneys in the past? Which do you guys think would be better, round-robin or single/double elimination? I was figuring the former might be a bit more fair because we don't really know anyone's skill levels, but the latter would be more efficient. Also what are people's thoughts on a prize? I'm just about to start up tf2 for the night... I won't probably respond until tomorrow. So if you guys could just toss up some ideas and try to bash them out, that'd be great.

Ok guys! I was saying the other day on IRC that we should have a small-potatoes SC tournament, and even offered to donate 20 dollars for a prize (either cash or whatever you guys would deem appropriate)! I was hearing that there is already some interest (most notably Nekofrog, Tensei-san, and Battousai) and wanted to see if there were other folks who'd want to get in on something like this. I was figuring that we could even record the replays with commentary if people were comfortable having other folks watch their games... even though I doubt many of us here are really "good enough" to warrant actually having a VOD, it'd be nice to see our own flaws and compare strats. What do you guys think? You can message me on IRC or Steam (add me: https://steamcommunity.com/id/garianse) but please not here because I hardly ever check my messages or email. Update May 22: It seems most people want to have two tourneys, a 1v1 series and a 2v2 series pairing people by their skill. Each round of the tournament will be decided by a best of 3 matches. I'm thinking that we should maybe aim for a mid-to-late June date to begin playing, but I don't want that to be set in stone until we've got some more of the details hammered out. If you're wanting to "sign up," go ahead and make a post with the race you play and the name you'll be playing under. Check this post for future updates! Update May 25: For clarity's sake, there will be no prizes. Most folks had no opinion and didn't post about them, and the few who reply about prizes were generally against having them. Signups have been opened up as per the last update and I'll probably close that off some time in the next week at the latest. Update May 30: Signups will close sunday night at 12AM Eastern (that means MONDAY MORNING at 0000), and I'll get a randomly generated tournament bracket and map order on Wednesday. After that, you'll have one week to submit your replays (PLEASE Date and timestamp them). Since it will be a best-of-3, I expect 4 or 6 replays for each match-up, more if there are observers. The reason I want replays from both players is simply just to ensure there is no goofiness going on... I trust you guys are all mature enough to not game the system. Try not to have any hurt feelings if you're paired up with one of our better players and get stomped, it's just for fun and there's a lot that can be learned! Update May 31st: SIGNUPS ARE CLOSED! No more participants for the first tournament! Format is Single Elimination, Best of 3. Preferred multiplayer option is Battle.net, but VPN (like Hamachi) and PVPGN is allowed if BNet is not an option-- PROVIDED that both parties agree. As stated yesterday in of my posts, BNet users will be given preference if they are unable to accommodate playing on an alternative connection. The 3 maps for round 1 will be decided by coin toss, one each of a 2 player, 3 player, and 4 player map with the unused maps being used in round 2. If things kinda seem like they're kinda weird, keep in mind that this is my first time organizing any form of competitive play so I'm just trying to see what works and what doesn't, given our skill level. IMPORTANT: If you signed up but didn't specify your race (or random), you still have time to declare. I'll have a complete list of participants tomorrow and if there is an odd number, will join in myself. There's still plenty of time to practice so don't worry about being rusty! ALSO! OCRSC2 will be Team Melee, partnering up experienced and inexperienced players... We can work out the partnering details and more as we go through OCRSC1. Thanks guys! It's definitely a blast getting the ball rolling Update June 1: For the replay naming format, you should use an abbreviated form of your name (I would use Gar for myself), the level of the tournament (use some convention like "Ro 1" or "Set1"), and finally "Game" and the game number. When you send me your replays to me, they should appear similar to "Gar Ro1 Game1.rep" "Gar Ro1 Game2.rep" and "Gar Ro1 Game3.rep." Update June 3: The match-ups and groupings are in my last post, on page 10! Update June 4: I should probably give you guys my email, in case you need to email me your replays. garian[at]thasauce[dot]net. Update June 15: Nekofrog and Eddie have gotten their first VOD up on youtube, Game 1 between Nekofrog and SynthesizedStampede! ... Also, Eddie drew up a nice bracket for us which is also on page 16. If someone is capable of drawing up a banner for the first OCR SC Tourney, that'd be tops too! Even though we're all amateurs, it's really exciting to play such a fantastic game, and we should strive to be as professional as possible so that maybe it helps shape the opinion about playing sc competetively in a more positive fashion.

I don't really think so, Dhsu, the "Meet the..." videos seem to be much more like entertainment before gameplay (like the scout's insane speed), but it might be so. On another note, I don't know how other people feel but I think that goldrush and dustbowl are played far too often, it seems today that every other map has been one or the other and it drives some fairly regular players to spec the entire map or leave until the map changes entirely. On top of that, the server fills up with some of the either newest players or most retarded, pyros that walk around shooting flares or shotgun instead of checking for spies, entire teams of spies and engineers, and a general lack of coordination for the team that doesn't have either A) the most regulars, or the best of the regulars. Granted, we get those kinds of people on every map, but I think it'd be nice if we could remove Dustbowl and Goldrush from the rotation for a while. There are a LOT of maps on the server that we never get to play because every map vote seems to go straight back to either of those two.

Steam should only be eating about 30 megabytes of memory, give or take... so you might try optimizing other things first, buying some more memory second. To be honest though I really can't say much more without actually knowing your system specs... although there really isn't much more to say Hope you can get it working soon, Steam is a wonderful distribution platform.

Hey guys, the L4D SDK has finally been released... in beta form. In your tools section, look for Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools Beta. I personally don't have any use for it since I'm not a mapmaker, BUT hopefullly we'll get some fresh maps with proper nav meshes for some exciting games in the future.

Crab-walking kit. It will change your skeleton! Excruciatingly painful but worth it. Two items for Spy, two items for Sniper... and there's still two days to go :S

So the lions got rocked again last night... I think mostly because we picked our class lineup like right at the beginning while bonzai! was downloading the map and had no sense of coordination, and none of us really knew the map so we couldn't just run to the health kits when we needed to. The other team wasn't really amazing though, they were just really coordinated and didn't single file straight into fire like a couple of us tried to :S Looking forward to scrimming against them... saturday night i think rambo said?

lyrai excellent, i'll add their server to my favourites list and maybe hop on there once in a while! I'm not certain of all of the plugins, that'd be a question for Bahamut or Powerlord, though. The day 3 of the sniper update is out. The Razorback. Protection from a single backstab? Well at least now I have a reason to be on the enemy battlements of 2fort backsniping...

lyrai where are the nova people lately? i haven't seen too many on ocrtf2 and they were fun to have around because they didn't roll us over like other clans tend to. outmatched occasionally, sure, but it wasn't a slaughter fest :S

let's have a bow at it! edit: D'OH, BEATEN AGAIN

both the server and some individual copies of the game crashed, the map must be hella buggy for that to happen. Usually when a map is bad only the server crashes, but at least 5 other guys had to restart the game to get back in. I'm not really sure what happened, but somehow the nextmap vote got bugged so we couldn't avoid it. Also yeah, two push to talk buttons would be quite nice :S

The server just took a shit on a custom map called "River's Edge," a 5 point CP map. As soon as I got a backstab my game crashed, Rawk Hawk and !! both said when they got a kill they crashed too. We would've avoided it but the votenextmap function wasn't working.

A "vanilla" day is another one i was thinking would be a fun change of pace. Most players have an issue with at least one unlockable, but this isn't really about any personal feelings towards them at all... more like how the custom maps are for changing things up and getting some fresh experiences in the game. Although some of the long time players from before unlocks and newbies who don't have them probably won't see much of a change, those of us who've grown accustomed and take for granted the unlockable weapons might find a challenge in not having them available for a while. And now for something completely different: Apparently I lost my hat on Gravel Pit. Hish noticed it and decided to get a snapshot for me http://i41.tinypic.com/ruxnwm.jpg. I'm not really certain what exactly happened, but it will be neat if "bare head" will be an option for the head/hat slot. I'd like to see the soldier's eyes once in a while!

Team talk night has been something bahamut was saying we should try, I wanted to show my support here and see what other people thought about the idea :S also, apparently votenextmap relies on the rotation, and when you a vote passes it basically just resets the place in the rotation that we're at. maybe we should observe which maps tend to be voted using RTV to build up a decent map cycle that doesn't have to get vote changed so often? Aside from customs, that is, I enjoy having those on because they're generally a change of pace from the maps that most people know pretty much by heart. also: i really really really hate when a team of a bunch of our best players gets hindered by 3 or 4 slackers that refuse to cooperate, while the other team seems to have a flawless coordination effort. i don't really have any suggestions or anything, just venting a little :\

Seems to me that the SDK would at least be announced as released, so maybe some circumstances are pushing it a bit further back. I know for a while people were saying to use the CS:S setup for the source SDK to create nav maps, and there's a way of hacking around with the Ep. 2 setup to create a sort of fake L4D environment, but there are still plenty of flaws in that method too. It's really a shame that it's not out, too... for me, the most fun part of the game was exploring new areas and having a new experience. After a while, the maps get really boring, and survival mode is like a kick in the teeth to those of us who really want new maps. I've been pretty bored with the game for the past few months, and I haven't really been too interested in trying the other two maps in VS yet. I guess I just really haven't been feeling the game, though I'd like to get in on some games in the future. Also, to my knowledge the server SHOULD be listing as a steam group server, and everything on it should be vanilla settings. I removed a few of the nonsense plugins that people had been complaining about, and removed a bunch of people from the admin list because there was really no need for a whole bunch of people with admin in the game. If you have any problems/complaints/whatev, talk with scytheful first because I've been pretty hands off lately. He's got FTP, config, anc RCon access so he should be able to help you out.

I REALLY didn't like generator. The spawns were wayy too accessible to the enemy and extremely far from the final cap. I do like the majority of the map layout, I just think that the spawn should be directly beside the final cap like in Well/Fastlane, or near enough to it that it's possible to stop MOST caps, as in Badlands and Granary. I did like Woodland, it was pretty solid although I had some issue on the second map where blue had a route to flank red that red basically had very little to counter with short of stacking a pyro AND sentry underneath that window, firing at all times-- which takes away from the number of players able to stop the cart as well as being monumentally boring for the guy who's on window duty. I didn't really get to see any other maps, except for the quake map which was kinda silly, and spawning inside an enemy to get backstabbed SUCKS.

well that explains why i wasn't getting some of my headshots last night! but it doesn't account for my poor aim after the first half hour... i think that was being up since 9:30 am.

Gario: I'm really not sure, like I said this was a good while back now. He's probably still working on music, you might want to email him if you're really curious. AFAIK Ramaniscence got in touch with him for permission to put one of his songs on R:TS, so his contact info is probably still accurate.

He popped into the IRC channel for the modarchive a year or two back for a few hours. My memory is pretty bad but I think he said he was pretty much just too busy with real life to be wasting time on the internet. I asked him about a track he was working on a long time ago called "The Epic," and he said he never completed it... but he did say he finished the song he was supposed to have ready for AntonioPizza's wedding, so i guess it's all good?

a 20th anniversary edition rockman keychain? :> thanks for the energy drinks dave, i'll drink 'em sunday for my birthday!

i don't really see the need for any dedicated mic spam nights, usually if the server manages to survive the goodnight dropoff, brushfire will start playing stuff, and other people get in a chance to as well... provided there's no complaints (i don't think anyone is ever going to take spectreshot seriously so his complaints don't count). so basically i'm just agreeing with ducky on this, just visit atma's server for the mic spam :V

excellent! we can always use more ocr guys! also i forgot to chip in my support for PW night and Customs night, i was thinking that probably monday or tuesday should be customs because those are pretty slow nights except for the extra-regulars (usually me, ellipse, joseki, and brushfire) and any pubs who happen to be playing through the night. Seems we've been attracting some new regular players, too, which is good! I remember for a while we were still getting full 24 player games with password back in the autumn when it was by word of mouth... people inviting their friends seemed to work out better because the games were a lot more intense, and a higher ratio would have mic, and those who didn't would still communicate via chat or voice commands! finally: previews of the DKC2 project is going to be AWESOME.

rambo: rofl spellchecking! windstrike: that was brushfire having fun with the sm_rename admin command, he was garchomp. i'm not really certain WHO everyone was at this point because the sm_rename changes only last until the person leaves the server or map changes. also i'm sticking with electabuzz right now because of my spray

i thought "ocr night" was on hold until we were able to have a large enough population of regulars to warrant a weekly password night again, but i'd really like it to make a return. I REALLY like cashworks, bahamut said it's in the rotation after dustbowl and goldrush, so hopefully when enough regulars have the map we won't see the massive drop off in users when it switches. A number of guys always says 'customs kill servers,' but that really isn't true from my observation... it tends to be downloading and the resulting player drops from the server that does it. Dr.Tiddlywink's "Downtown_b31" seems to be pretty popular these days, whenever we switch to it if we're in a slump, we end up filling right back up (i guess the fact that it's tiny in comparison to others helps). Speaking of Downtown, Tiddly has been working on a new version, with larger buildings and less outside area to run around in. I'm not too sure of what to think about it right now, but to me it's not nearly as fun as the old version b31, although it does show a lot better work in details and other things... I may have to give it a bit more time, and try to give him some better feedback than 'tiddly, you're dumb!' Tonight while Brushfire and I were playing (just after bahamut and most of the rest of the OCR crew left... around 12 am central) we ended up downloading the quake sounds, and when we got in game they were functioning, which is really cool (and if they bug you, you can use !quake or /quake to bring up the menu for changing your settings), but the "humiliation" thing for backstabs is REALLY annoying, especially when there's a good spy on a payload map where the other team fails at spell checking. Is there any way that that event could be ignored?