Server Suggestion

I think everyone defines beta differently, but I define it as a fully functional and playable map. Detailing is finished or near finished.

My rendition of Beta is:
-Layout is finished
-More than 70 to 100% of the map is textured with non-dev textures
-Fully functional entity wise
-Beginning or in the process of optimization
-Detailing
-Tweaked lighting and close to all displacements done
-When changing beta versions, minor changes are made. New posters, more details, etc.

yeah, beta and alpha can be hard to define, impossible to regulate.

I come from another mod community where all tested maps were beta. Never alpha, no dev tex existed.
So generally when I'm releasing a map it is textured (even if only sloppily) and should be working.

I did a little 'alpha' on hoover where I slapped general proportions of the map together, invited some friends over and had them run around to 'size it out' or give impressions. Probably easier on smaller maps.
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But I think for this community Icarus has a pretty good definition of what a beta should be.
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But if these are suggestions for the tf2maps.net nightly server I recommmended in the other thread to only have finished maps for playing.
I think that would help alot because people will know they have to DL the maps once, then they can play on that server alot and never have to DL those again.

Alot of the maps we are seeing go through 4+ beta stages. That's OK for us mappers, that's not OK for most players. We all get to playtest the alpha betas enough as is so I think putting them on a 'public playtime' is a waste of time for the mods and will scare alot of would be players off.

It's not like we are lacking for choice of finished maps (from this community or not) to have a decent rotation going and add maps later as they become finished.

Map rating is the dumbest shit ever.

Never count on individual players to have a whole conception of a map.

Using maprating as a measure of anything is fucking retarded.

MangyCarface said:

Map rating is the dumbest shit ever.

Never count on individual players to have a whole conception of a map.

Using maprating as a measure of anything is fucking retarded.

Click to expand...

you seem to be getting progressively more angry...
though ill agree map rating means little in my opinion

Don't get ad hominem. It's pretty easy to work out in chat someday what maps ought to be run or not. The whole point behind rating being worthless is selection bias: those who feel more strongly about the map are more likely to rate the map; as a result your votes become polarized to 1s and 5s; of course there are the odd level-headed votes that more closely follow a normal curve but in the end you're not going to get anything useful (without, as you mentioned, a limited system [authorized users have x rounds played on current map, have x posts on the forums etc but these are all damn hard])

We really don't need to peg new mappers' works with a quantified number representing how hard they suck. Tried and true feedback methods will continue to be better.

More on topic, it would be relevant to everyones' interests, and especially those mappers whose current projects are far into development, to have a basic psychostats module loaded in order to develop heatmaps, which are a useful form of feedback.

I'm always hoping for someone to psychostats my maps...

The Win:Loss:Stalemate numbers, the average time per round, and the heatmaps are all excellent sources of quantified data.

oddly enough...im working on psychostats for grims server...its a bitch to setup, especially when you don't have shell access <_<

EDIT: Success! now tomorrow ill get the heatmaps set up
if anyone is interested in having a map included in the testing stages for this get me the pic and the coordinates as listed here: http://www.psychostats.com/doc/Heatmap_Setup
ill probably get around to this eventually...but im damn lazy, so take matters into your own hands
pm me with the info so this thread doesn't get taken over