[Need cross enviroment servers] for tm2

[Danger_Mouse]

Hi guys,

Sorry if this has been mentioned before but when Valley & Stadium arrive to join Canyon, will we be able to have servers running tracks from all 3 environments, eg. Track 1 - Valley, next track track 2 - Canyon, track 3 - Stadium etc etc...
Or is each game totally separate from the others?

Thanks all

[TMarc]

At the moment this is not revealed yet (not planned, or in work, we don't know exactly).
It would be great to have multi-title servers.

[weerwolf]

omg why you wanna do that XD
But, technically the server is capable of doing that. Since it is one server.
However if it is made possible by nadeo i dont know. Secondly, your guests must have
all 3 titles bought to play that set up.

[Danger_Mouse]

Thanks chaps,

I do hope it's possible otherwise I can see some titles having a lot less players than others, not good if you like that title

I loved multi title TM in TMUF, great fun, so please Nadeo, please, at least make it an option

[Demented]

I would think It shouldn't be too hard to set up filters that only show challenges that support the titles you have installed.

[Mandark]

Or maybe another solution:
Let's say that you have Canyon but not Valley.
You can still join that server which has both environments. The current map is Canyon, but the next one is Valley, and you don't have Valley. For Canyon-only owners, there could be the following possibilites:

1) You are temporally disconnected from the server until another Canyon map follows
2) You are sent to a some kind of sub-server, where you can play, along other non-Valley owners, a Canyon map. When the valley map is finished and the next one is Canyon again, all the users are in one track again.
When in the sub-server you could choose to see the chats from the Valley track, and even talk to them if a friend of yours owns Valley.

The filter is also a good idea.

[Cerovan]

Unfortunately there is several flaws with your suggestion

1) You are temporally disconnected from the server until another Canyon map follows

It's quite frustrating for the player to be kicked because he doesn't have the title (and will more ragequit the game than be encouraged to buy it)

2) You are sent to a some kind of sub-server, where you can play, along other non-Valley owners, a Canyon map. When the valley map is finished and the next one is Canyon again, all the users are in one track again.
When in the sub-server you could choose to see the chats from the Valley track, and even talk to them if a friend of yours owns Valley.

This means that admins "must" have a backup server if they have a multi-environments server. Moreover the problem will be more complex with the 3rd environment (use 2 backup servers for each multi-environments server). And if the admins didn't set up this kind of servers, the player will be simply kicked.
If we do that, i think it'll not good either on a long-term.

It's a very difficult thing to have a good system about it which will work with everyone.

[Mandark]

Yeah, you are right, sorry for my stupidity

I was also thinking, that when a map of a title you don't have comes, the game automatically searches a suitable server for you. When another map of your title comes to that server, you are asked if you want to come back to that one or not.

[TMarc]

Yeah, you are right, sorry for my stupidity

Never mind, you are not stupid, as already discussed, it isn't at all a simple thing to think of.

I was also thinking, that when a map of a title you don't have comes, the game automatically searches a suitable server for you.

This is a nice idea.

When another map of your title comes to that server, you are asked if you want to come back to that one or not.

I would not want switch around all the time for different maps, also I would not like to be interrupted in the current game even if the other server is my favorite.

Then it would be more convenient to look for servers that have only the titles you own.
At the moment it would be rather simple, later it will get impossible if there is plenty of titles or even title packs on servers.
Then players might have to agree on a minimum common amount of titles, and set setup a server for their needs.
Rent-a-Server for one evening... how about this?

A really crazy idea (sorry if someone else already had it before) would be the following: if the next title is not there for some players, they should be able to spectate the game. But this would require that the server is streaming the game instead of just hosting it.

[eyebo]

In United you can restrict a server to a specific environment by using the <packmask></packmask> tags in the cfg file for the server.

For instance, <packmask>Coast</packmask> would limit the server to only playing Coast tracks. The icon for the server in-game would change to indicate it was a Coast only server. This is also what you have to use to make Stadium server so Nations Forever players can play on it.

Leaving the packmask tags empty meant that the server was open to all environments.

Using tags like this made it easy to see what environment the server was hosting. And if the game had implemented it, you could have also had a filter that showed only the servers with the environments you wanted to play.

I don't see why it would be such a hard thing to implement something similar in TM2, automatically filtering out the servers from the titles that you don't own.

United Forever/Nations Forever is an example of how this has already been done.

Nations Forever players can not see United Forever servers because they do now own the other environments.
United Forever players can see all servers because they own all the environments.

And yet all these players exist within the same system.

This makes me confident that Nadeo can easily pull off what is needed in the future with multi-environment and single-environment servers co-existing in the same system.