Hello,
I would like to present you a tool to find people to play with very easily and efficiently. Only EU servers are supported at the moment.
Here is a video, 4 minutes long, showing what the tool is about and how to use it. It answers a few questions from Q&A below but you still should read answers to questions #5-11.
Q&A:
1. What is this?
It's a desktop application to find people to play with very easily and efficiently in condition of overall low playerbase.
2. Who can be interested in using it?
People who often find themselves wanting to play certain modes but not enough players to play with.
3. How does it help?
It searches for you people to play with among actual players at servers combined with users of the application itself while completely freeing you up from any effort. When it finds a match, it will notify you via blinking tray icon and a popup and you will be able to join the match, or it will launch ManiaPlanet and open the corresponding server automatically if you choose so. As long as your desktop is at your vision you will notice the notification, this allows you to order a match and do whatever you want at your PC while waiting for a match (except playing other modes in MP games unfortunately, see why later in the post).
Suppose you want to play either Joust or Duel or Combo. Which mode do you choose to join the server with? Let's, suppose it's Combo. You run around alone or with one-two people but it is not enough. Meanwhile someone has appeared in a Joust server and you would gladly play with him/her but you don't know about them because you are in a Combo server. So you wasted lots of time and you didn't get to play while there was potential to play Joust.
Another approach is to check server lists for several modes either in game or at websites with fresh data but that quickly becomes tiresome, does it?
Now all these problems can be solved with the tool because it does this automatically all the time. But what else is really important is that it arranges matches inluding its users which greatly increases chances for a match! For example, supposedly you want to play InstaDM but it becomes really fun for you only if there are at least five players overall. You open MP and see an InstaDM server with one player, you are not in the mood to join and wait for more, so you leave. Couple minutes later there is another person with the same idea, sees not enough players, leaves, soon two more potential players do the same. Imagine you and these other there people where using the tool instead. You launch the tool, ask it for InstaDM with at least five players, collapse the tool in the tray, meanwhile enjoy browsing internets or whatever, soon three other people open the tool and say they want InstaDM with at least five players, so the tool sees four of you and one player at the InstaDM server, so it notifies all of you to join that InstaDM server - there becomes five players overall at the server and you have fun instead of leaving or playing less enjoyable modes.
This means using the tool not only frees you from any effort while looking for a match but also it greatly increases chances of finding people to play with.
4. How to use it?
Specify script names and minimum preferred players count for each script, submit. Collapse the window into tray, have the desktop in your vision and you can forget about it. Once the match is found, the tray icon will blink and popup window will appear and you will be able to join the server in two clicks or the ManiaPlanet will open the server automatically if you choose so. Very simple.
5. How does it work with the ingame matchmaking?
It doesn't. It works only with servers which are not lobbies.
6. How long the application is expected to work?
I don't know really. First it depends on my motivation. I am a lone developer of this tool, I am very lazy, I can loose motivation and shutdown the project any time but I've been working on it for over two months in my spare time (entire day and half of the night today btw) which is very uncharacteristic of me so there is that. Second this is alpha, anything can go wrong, so I might have to close it temporarily to fix. Also, the tool becomes ineffecitve if people don't follow two simple rules which I will discuss in the next answer (I hope you will ask the right question
). There is no complete solution done yet to prevent this so if I notice the abuse breaking the workflow strongly enough then I will have to shut down the tool and explore ideas to prevent this.7. So what are the rules?
Thanks for the right question
.The rules are obvious and all just common sense.
1. If you recieve a match suggestion and you see one or more other users are matched with you, then don't abandon the suggestion but join the match as soon as possible. Reason: the tool arranges matches for you not only considering actual players but also other users, so if you abandon the match, then the other users might have less players in the match than they have asked the tool for.
2. Don't have an active match order in the tool and playing a ManiaPlanet game at the same time.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this and I wish I could find a good solution. Reason: consider an example. A person, lets name them A, asks the tool to find a match of Royal with at least five people in total. But only one Royal server has two players, rest is empty. Two other people, lets call them group B, ask the tool for InstaDM and decide to play some Royal meanwhile at that server where there were two players. Now there is a server with a four players, the tools suggest the user A to join that server so overall there are five players as he/she asked for. At the same time there is InstaDM match appears for group B, so the tool notifies them and they leave the Royal server for the InstaDM match, leaving user A with not enough players.
8. What is the registration process?
Open the tool first time, see suggestion to visit a web site and recieve the key there. The web site will ask you to authenticate with ManiaPlanet account, then you will get the key. Insert it in the tool, validate and you good to go.
9. Why do you need to authenticate with ManiaPlanet account?
This is necessary to identify people who break the aforementioned rules. The solution to detect them is not yet refined. But when it is, then they will be suspended for a certain time if caught so they will get motivation to follow the rules or leave using the application at all. Having ManiaPlanet logins is absolutely necessary for this to be possible.
10. Is there anything else to know?
Yes. The tool can refresh servers once in about 100 seconds because of limitations of MP web service. So after you have made a match order and there is actual potential for a match, you might receive results any time between instanly and 100 seconds.
11. How do I know an executable from you doesn't contain harmful code?
You can do one of the following:
1. Check it in antivirus.
2. If you don't have one, upload binaries to virustotal.com - it checks for viruses in many anti-viruses.
3. Inspect the source code, compile it yourself. The source code is available at github open to everyone.
12. Do you have some screenshots?
Here
13. Does this tool have a name?
Sure, it's "Join to Play"
.Sounds amazing? Then Join to Play now!
P. S. Big thanks to w1lla, BusardCendre, Guerro323, ManiaDesign and oliverde8 for the support when I presented the early version!
)
