Map Feedback

[Geit]

http://tf2maps.net/feedback/

Over the last few months I've been trying to think of ways to use training annotations in a way that is suitable to their current implementation (They only work in single player) and then it hit me on Saturday - They could be used for easy, clear and accurate feedback on maps in development, a few days later and we have this:

Comments were made on a live prophunt server by myself and are being viewed on a local listen server

So, What do we have? - We have:

• The ability for players to target any location that they wish in the map and give a piece of feedback through !feedback - If an annotation already exists at the location, they cannot place another.
• The abilty for people interested in the feedback to load up the map in single player and view it.
• The ability for the map author to delete annotations once he has seen them via !deleteannotation
• A web panel where annotations are listed and authors can login via Steam (http://steamcommunity.com/dev) to claim their map and be able to moderate the annotations and change map information, and upload map screenshots. http://tf2maps.net/feedback/

Why is this better than just posting feedback on a forum?

• Posting feedback can be a hassle, you have to take a screenshot of the issue and post up reproduction steps. With this, you take a quick break from the game to type something and the map author can come back and see exactly what you wrote and where at a later date, without the need of location descriptions or screenshots.

***
Commands are: !feedback <message> (minus the <>) which provides targeted (location reference) feedback which can be seen on the server by people who would like to look at them (see below) and through the web panel.

People can view the annotations in game by joining a server with this plugin running and typing !toggleannotations on the map they want to view them on.

Map authors can delete annotations from within the game with !deleteannotation, please note that the map must be claimed as yours for this to work.

Let me know what you think - This is now running on all GamingMasters servers and I'm currently in the process of attempting to get other servers to run it. If you are interested in the source, it can be found here: http://gamingmasters.co.uk/feedback/feedback.sp

 

[Micnax]

Genius!

 

[Cerious]

Very, very nice work.

 

[Ravidge]

This looks pretty cool, but I'm not sure I understand how it's used..

Here's how I interpreted it, please correct me if I got it wrong somewhere:
A player can play the map online and make feedback/annotation blurbs where ever he desires.
The map author installs SM on their own machine and launches tf2 with -insecure cmd line, loads up a local game of the map and sees all the notes.


Is that right?

 

[Geit]

This looks pretty cool, but I'm not sure I understand how it's used..

Here's how I interpreted it, please correct me if I got it wrong somewhere:
A player can play the map online and make feedback/annotation blurbs where ever he desires.
The map author installs SM on their own machine and launches tf2 with -insecure cmd line, loads up a local game of the map and sees all the notes.


Is that right?

Yes, or they could use the webpanel to obtain the coordinate reference/message (i.e. [GM] Señor ThatCactoosIsASpy made an annotation at 1367, 996, -193) which could then be used in hammer with View -> Go to Coords

 

[grazr]

Do you reckon this is more or less tedious than screenshot paint overs? Plus, sometimes it's hard to explain your thoughts in a single sentence.

 

[Bermuda Cake]

Do you reckon this is more or less tedious than screenshot paint overs? Plus, sometimes it's hard to explain your thoughts in a single sentence.

much, much less.
Take the picture, open it in paint or something, save it again.

Unless it only works in singleplayer? Can other people see it in multiplayer?

 

[Geit]

much, much less.
Take the picture, open it in paint or something, save it again.

Unless it only works in singleplayer? Can other people see it in multiplayer?

At the moment the training_annotation entities are made on the server (This makes doing location checks far easier) and on the client, but due to limitations with the entity you can only see them on the client, should Valve improve the entity, then you'd see it on both and I could add a series of commands to control it's visibility.

At the moment you can use the location reference from the webpanel or load the plugin on your client to view the annotations. - Theoretically I could make a daemon to take screenshots of the annotations in their position, but it would likely be a waste.

 

[Ravidge]

To be able to leave 1-line feedback ingame would be great. Longer posts should be made in the forum thread anyway.

Viewing the annotations ingame seems like a bit of a hassle, but a webpanel that displays all the annotations + coords sounds very useful.

 

[Codename22]

This looks really interesting, I would like to see this in action myself and try it out.

 

[Geit]

Overhauled based on recent developments in the annotation system, It now uses a non-entity based approach to making the annotations while maintaining the (largely) same feature set.

Full changelog:

• !annotate has become !feedback
• the original !feedback has been removed
• It now uses an non-entity based approach, resulting in speed boosts at the cost of some extra memory usage
• Annotations can now be viewed on multiplayer servers
• Annotations will not be rendered if the client has not run !toggleannotations
• Annotations will not be rendered if they are not in the User's LOS
• Annotations no longer render when they are more than 1024 units away

 

[grazr]

That 1024 cut off distance seems a little unnecessery... some map areas can be between that and 3000+ units. It'd be nice to know where annotations were if they are in LOS, so that you can walk over and read them.

 

[Geit]

That 1024 cut off distance seems a little unnecessery... some map areas can be between that and 3000+ units. It'd be nice to know where annotations were if they are in LOS, so that you can walk over and read them.

It's not hard to adjust, but there are two reasons I made it 1024: Everytime annotations are refreshed it has to run a distance check inbetween every client and every annotation, and if the distance check fails it won't bother with the LOS check, so simple optimization is one reason. The other is that if there are alot of annotations in a large open area, If they are not distance limited, it fills up the screenspace pretty fast. Anyway, like I said, it's not hard to change and it's even possible to make it based on per-user preference.

 

[Geit]

We tested this on TF2M EU earlier, worked fairly well apart from the eventual lag caused by having too many annotations sent to everyone. Until I come up with something more refined I've limited it to sending out only 5 annotations a second, which has fixed the lag. (Here is the compiled copy: http://gamingmasters.co.uk/feedback/feedback.smx and the source: http://gamingmasters.co.uk/feedback/feedback.sp )

***
Someone said on group chat earlier that they didn't understand exactly how it worked, so I've put together this slightly more detailed overview

1. The map is added to our database at GamingMasters upon being loaded
2. From the moment it is added, players can start adding feedback to it with !feedback
3. When an annotation is made, it is added to the database and shown on the web page for that map. Example: Linky
4. Annotations can be viewed from the moment they are added in-game also by typing !toggleannotations . Example:
   
   
5. A map author can claim a map on the web panel, allowing them to edit map information, upload a map image and delete feedbacks on the webpanel
6. When the map is claimed, the author can go in-game and type !deleteannotation to remove spam or dealt with feedbacks

Anyone still confused? Post and ask. :3

 

[Geit]

This is now loaded up onto the TF2M US server, but not yet the EU sevrer (I think) - The url has changed to: http://tf2maps.net/feedback/

Enjoy. :3

 

[lana]

Fantastic news. Should make playtests all the more productive.

 

[J4CK8]

Fantastic news. Should make playtests all the more productive.

Somehow, I don't think so... I tend to die A LOT when I'm not moving, typing feedback in chat. Hopefully it will work well and map feedback will be a lot better in quality and quantity, and maybe reduce the need for the demos.

 

[lana]

Just from a formatting standpoint, please reduce the font size for the username and coordinates of the annotation. The line will sometimes wrap, which seriously increases the size of some of the comments.

 

[Geit]

Quick weekend changelog:

• Added administrator group to webpanel (Ask Dr. Pepper to add you to it, if you're an admin)
• Administrators can now delete feedbacks on all maps
• Adminstrators can now upload map images for all maps
• Administrators can now edit map information
• Changed the feedbacks to a tabular design
• Fixed a formatting issue with titles (see above post)
• Fixed avatar images not being rendered
• Fixed page load times taking a long time
• Removed some excess code related to removed features
• Removed hideous fonts from inappropriate places

Anyone got any other stuff for me to do? Please? D:

 

[Ida]

This thing is amazing, I really low how well it works! I'll definitely make us of it as much as I can.

Have you thought about a system to control the amount of feedback nodes yet, or at least to prevent some troll from flooding the server with feedback?