Hello everyone,
The last two weeks of June has been pretty crappy for me so the contest gamedays slowed down if not froze entirely (the morning shift died down because lack of activity; the night shift did continue albeit rather slowly). I should have mentioned something about it but I didn't (sorry about not communicating that, that was really rude and unprofessional of me). During that downtime however we were able to fix up a lot of things server-side so that it now no longer needs to be put up online before a game or taken offline post game, and other silly nuances like that. All and all, we're back and are running gamedays once again! (Actually we were back since July 1.)
Thanks to
@Drixevel I figured out how to build a table on the steam discussions board, so I was able to publicly post the map testing queue
in here on the server steam group instead of keeping it hidden in an excel spreadsheet file (which wasn't polite, but I couldn't think of any good way to make that info public, until now). Here you can see how large the testing queue is, which maps/missions have been recently tested (and when), and some loose idea on when some maps will be tested. (E.g. certain maps only run in morning or in night because of mapper availability.)
As mentioned many times earlier (and also mentioned in
the queue thread), the order the maps are listed on the queue is irrelevant - maps and waves can be picked off and played at any order, but priority will be given to certain maps based on certain circumstances (the highest of which being the mapper is present in the gameday, then there's posting in this thread, how skilled the players in the server are, etc). I do my best to automatically update the testing queue from the downloads page, but sometimes I miss out so if your map is missing feel free to politely nag us in our group chat.
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Speaking of group chat, we're down to the last month before the deadline. I imagine most people working on their contest entry are either detailing or drafting their pop files. If you have any issues with your map, nav, or pop files and need help, or you have specific questions about the contest, I'm always sitting in the server group chat (there are other mappers in there too). It has been rather quiet, so feel free to bring your map to ask or talk about it to our steam group chat.
The shortcut link is
steam://friends/joinchat/103582791457822588 (or visit
the group page and click on the big blue "Enter chat room" button). Some people even had their map tested on the spot once they joined and asked us in the group chat. Of course, if you have mapping questions, then obviously the TF2Maps group chat (steam://friends/joinchat/103582791429594873) is the better one to go to. Don't feel that you're trapped with MvM specific nuance problems - stop by and ask us your questions and we'll see what we can do to help you! (We fixed many nav and pop file problems of people who took the initiative to ask us in our group chat.)
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The morning gamedays have had rather shoddy attendance lately; it has been difficult to get a full team in the server. If the slump activity of the morning shift continues like this, we might not run the morning gamedays anymore. In turn, contest testing will proceed a lot more slowly since the night crew will have to carry the entire contest testing burden (at a rate of 1 to 2 tests per day). This
is not a good thing, especially since I'm expecting a huge surge of testing requests as we get closer to the deadline.
As it currently stands, if the night shift has to carry all the testing demands, it will take us up to July 15th (2 weeks before the deadline) to clear the queue. This assumes that nobody updates their submissions between now and then AND the night shift consistently plays 2 maps a day every day up to the 15th (all very poor assumptions). If we have the morning shift helping out with the testing, then that clearing date becomes more like July 8th (3 weeks before the deadline).
Therefore, if you have some time to spare, please make an effort to try to participate in the morning MvM gamedays! Everyone wins if everyone pitches in to help get these maps and waves tested (conversely, everyone loses if nobody helps with the testing). We're trying our best to have these maps tested so people can continue working on them, but we can always use extra hands! Ideally, as long as the queue has maps pending to be tested, we want to keep the morning and night shifts running
every day up until the deadline.
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Lastly, a PSA: A lot of people have been complaining about extracting zip files from the demo website. You have to use a modern utility such as
7-Zip to decompress them. The zip files use LZMA compression (the same one that map repacking uses) which gives the best compression for demo files and helps keeps the server space usage down. The default zip utilities in Windows or in other programs may not support the LZMA codec. If that's the case, use 7zip or something similar; the zip files are not "broken".
Please check the
demo website every now and then (at least once a week) and see if your map has been tested. We automatically remove maps from the queue as we test them, but we leave it as your responsibility to check if your map was tested recently and download the appropriate files. You can also check the queue thread
here for a list of all the recently tested maps and waves.
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I think that's all I want to say about the contest. The final contest submission thread will go up on July 15th, two weeks from the deadline (and 1.5 weeks from right now).
Thanks for reading and I hope to see more people in the gamedays!
