Topics

1

News / Server machine removal

« on: July 06, 2016, 07:19:49 pm »

Our "RAxxOR" server machine (hosting the "r" OpenTTD servers using the address r.openttd.n-ice.org) was kindly sponsored by Kwissy during the last 2 years. At this point many thanks for that!

Now that the 3rd year started we were discussing whether we actually needed this server for another year and came to the conclusion that we don't. The average player count simply doesn't justify to keep this magnitude of computing power around and use Kwissy's generousness for another year.

So I don't expect any negative impact and there is no reason to be sad when RAxxOR will have its last running day on 18th of July.

Many thanks again to Kwissy <3

2

Changelog / Added options to hide users from scores

« on: September 09, 2012, 12:18:57 pm »

i have just added 3 new internal flags that can be set on user accounts:

hidefromhighscores
when this flag is set the user won't appear on the highscore board anymore. however, he can still get points as usual and his games and scores can still be seen on his profile.
it can be reverted at any time, removing this flag will make his scores appear on the highscore boards immediately again.

hidefromachievements
when this flag is set the user won't appear on the achievements top 10 anymore. however, he can still get achievements as usual and his achievements can still be seen on his profile too.
this flag is currently set on the 4 people (which includes me) that know the internal list of achievements - the list shows what you need to do to get the achievements so it would be unfair if people who know the list could participate in the competition for them.
it can be reverted at any time, removing this flag will make his achievements appear on the highscore boards immediately again.

disablescoring
when this flag is set the player will see the scores he would get in-game as usual, however, on the website all his games will appear with 0 points and also not count for the highscores.
scores they have already made in the past won't be affected and will stay, although they will slowly disappear from highscores as they expire after 60 days. the flag can be removed again at any time and the player can get scores again - however, scores from games already recorded with 0 points cannot be restored later.

the idea was brought up by our admin alex879ro because he no longer wanted to get scores, he also got the "disablescoring" flag set now.

the flags can only be set by n-ice admins, if you as a player want it for some reason simply ask us about it (on the forum or on IRC).

3

Tech talk / What's this board for?

« on: September 07, 2012, 11:44:10 am »

players interested in technical details can ask questions here or discuss technical solutions for the n-ice servers.

i myself will also use this to show and explain how some things are working here, so using it a bit like a blog. by that i hope that maybe we can attract some more people with good technical skills (server administration, web coding, OpenTTD GameScripts, cross-platform software programming in general...) to help with n-ice, either by becoming a fixed member of the tech team or at least by bringing in new ideas or pointing out problems.

4

Suggestions / Change of rule 4 (partly "the 50% rule")

« on: September 05, 2012, 09:46:40 pm »

Occupy at maximum 50% of the space around an industry/town.

suggestions on how to change the rule

instead of working with percentages we could use hard values, as they can simply be counted within the game, so it's a lot more transparent to both players and admins and leaves less room for interpretation. we could say one of these things:

You must leave room around any industry/city for at least one other company to be able to build stations of...

#1	...at least the same size and shape as your own stations covering the same resource.
#2	...at least 5 tiles length with 5 tracks. (the real values have to be agreed on, 5x5 is just a random example)
#2b	...at least 5 tiles length with 5 tracks for loading and another 5 tiles length with 5 tracks for unloading (only if accepted by industry/city). (the real values have to be agreed on, 5x5 is just a random example)
#3	...the maximum station spread in length and width (type !limits to see it).
#4	...at least half of the maximum station spread in length and width (type !limits to see it).

another option would be:

#5

keep the 50% rule but make it get checked by software. admins and players can always type something like "!usage Mousewell Mines" and they get a list of all companies touching its coverage with the percentage from the coverage they use. We could even implement an automatic warning when someone exceeds 50%.

or we can simply leave everything as it is. 

what do you think? any other ideas?

5

Changelog / added "duty" system for admins

« on: September 02, 2012, 03:30:48 pm »

admin requests were broadcasted to all admins before, also including admins that might be online but don't want/can take admin requests at the moment.
to route the calls a bit better the "duty" system was now added. admins write !onduty on IRC to signalize that they are ready to take calls or !offduty when they don't want any more calls. admins on duty will get the requests first, as a private message directly to them. if admins are on duty but don't answer a request within 20 seconds it is broadcasted as it was before.

6

Changelog / All servers: terraforming burst doubled

« on: August 27, 2012, 07:02:00 pm »

The terraform burst (amount of tiles that can be terraforming within one command) was raised on the servers from 50 to 100 as requested here.

7

Changelog / Server 4: train limit raised from 120 to 200

« on: August 27, 2012, 07:00:45 pm »

as requested here the train limit was raised from 120 to 200.

8

General Chat / OpenTTD related quotes

« on: August 12, 2012, 01:31:06 am »

For quite some time we're already collecting funny quotes and conversations from OpenTTD servers (mostly our own, but also some others). But I think we haven't announced it anywhere yet, so let's provide a link to them here:
OpenTTD quotes

You also have quotes or funny OpenTTD related converstations that should be added? Post them here 

9

Clone permissions / badboy / cleanest

« on: August 09, 2012, 09:13:33 pm »

#114 'cleanest' (White) - Location: South Africa - Connection: dsl-242-157-93.telkomadsl.co.za [41.242.157.93]
#118 'badboy' (White) - Location: South Africa - Connection: dsl-242-157-93.telkomadsl.co.za [41.242.157.93]

these two players definitely are critical and if they don't change (especially badboy) they might run into a rule break sooner or later (see the player notes board about them). but apart from that they have asked for clone permission and were checked by both geo and Kadar, so at least on that part it's ok.

10

Clone permissions / About this board

« on: August 09, 2012, 09:07:48 pm »

This board is meant to keep track of which players got a clone permission.

From our rules:

11. Only one connection per player
Don't connect several times. Admins will have to assume you are cheating. Apart from that you are stealing a slot that another player could use. You can explicitly ask admins for a special permission, e.g. when you play together with other people on the same connection. Use the !admin trigger for that.

So players should ask for permission. An admin should verify that they really are two humans using the same connection by opening a watch window for both players and see whether they are building independently of each other at the same time. If that happened, please create a thread with the name of the players as title on this board, so other admins know they got a clone permission.

11

General / Achievements list

« on: August 08, 2012, 08:36:27 pm »

players often ask for a list of available achievements. what they usually mean is they also want a description for each of them. the problem is that with the current achievements we're only at the beginning - all of them are still very basic. we plan much more advanced achievements later but right now you often get an achievement for a specific single action - and in some cases if you do an action X times.

the good thing about that is that the number of achievements someone has shows how much diversity he has in his playing style. you never built an aqueduct? well, you're missing out 
so as a generic rule of thumb: achievements reward you if you vary your actions and the servers you play on (because some achievements you can only get on specific scenarios, specific playing times, specific map size and so on...).

the downside of basic achievements is that if i'd give you a list all players would get them very fast. that's why we keep them secret and rather let you try to find them yourselves. not even all admins know them, only the 3 of us that made them up. and we are excluded from the achievements highscores for this reason (would be unfair otherwise). so don't be surprised when admins are as clueless as you 

anyway, so many people keep asking for it so let me at least give you something: the list of all achievements that exist without description.

Code: [Select]

Alienated!
And Now For A Commercial Break
Babylon
Baddabang!
Baddaboom!
Bang!
Banked Up
Bankster
Bath In The Crowd
Big Shot
Blub Blub
Boom!
Bridged
Bumpki..Agricultural Economist
Bzzzzzzz! We're Online!
Captain To The Bridge Please
Cat Skills
Chairman
Chief Executive
Chief OpenTTD Officer
Colorful
Company Assassin
Contributor
Converter
Cramped
Crash Test Dummy
Cu At The Mine
Da Man
Dick, The Diggy Digger
Directional Change
Director
Dissociative Identity Disorder
Docktor
Donor
Double Power
Drag Queen
Drug Abuser
Engineer
Every Ma..yor Has His Price
Ex CEO
Fail Guy
FDIC Customer
Flight Fleet
Fluctuation
Foreign Spy
Gaudy
Generous
Gold Rush
Grateful
Greenpeace
Grouped
GTFO!
Hail Me
Hello, Mr. Mayor
Home Sweet Home
House In The Clouds
How's The Air Down There?
Hurr Durr
Identity Crisis
Ink Orporated
Jack Lumber
Keep The Oil Well
Lame Duck
Large Synergies
Like A Boss!
Manager Roulette
Master
MAYDAY! MAYDAY!
Me And My Shovel <3
Merger
Mine All Mine!
Monopolist
Moonlighting
Mr. Asphalt
Multicolored
n-ice!
Nasty
Nature Lover
Nimrod
Now I Am Become Death, The Destroyer Of Worlds
Only Passing Through...
OUCH!
Outside Law's Limit
Papyrus 2.0
Paraterraformer
Pathfinder
Perfectly Aligned
Plastic Surgery
Pointer
Polluter
President
Producer
Pump It
Pupil
Raaaaawwwwwrd!
Rainbow Star
Reformer
Religious
Relocated
Revolutionist
River Dance
Rolling Material
Rome WAS Created In One Day
Route Supervisor
Rubber Johnny
Runaway Runway
Selfless
Sheikh
Skilled
So Low, So Low, I'm Low
SPAM King
Spammer
Street Worker
Structural Engineer
Supporter
Teamwork
Terminator 2000
Terraformer
Traffic Manager
Transport Coordinator
Transubstantiation
Tree Hugger
Treeversity
Tunneled
Tutti Frutti
Tycoon
Undercover Agent
Underground Kid
Up There
Vertically Addicted
Vroom Vroom
Wait, So This Is Not Minecraft?
Wanted By Interpol
Wanted By Police
Water World
What's In A Name?
Who Am I?
Wind Of Change
Womanizer
Woodchuck Would Chuck Wood
Y U NO MAKE SENSE?

and here's a hint, too: this is a forum thread, so you can simply reply here with information you have found out. feel free to report here when you have found out how to get a specific achievement, we won't delete it. happy achievement hunting 

12

Changelog / Server 4: vehicle breakdowns turned off

« on: August 07, 2012, 07:53:33 pm »

On server 4 we have just turned vehicle breakdowns off, after a proposal on this thread.

To compensate for the fact that this also makes the server easier we have also made some other changes that were suggested there:
- "larger_towns" setting raised from 4 to 6 (so every 6th town is a big city)
- "initial_city_size" was decreased, so cities start a bit smaller
- "freight_trains" was changed to 3, so wagons weigh a bit more now and you need more engine power

13

Changelog / Admin request by placing a sign

« on: August 05, 2012, 01:11:25 am »

Today the server was updated with feature #000892.
It is now possible to call an admin by placing a sign where the sign text is starting with "admin". This is also the recommended way for admin requests, as it gives admins a location to look at immediately.

14

Suggestions / [Implemented] FIRS?

« on: July 29, 2012, 06:06:56 pm »

in the past we have tried to put some NewGRFs onto the servers but the effect always was that it stayed empty. reason is most probably that the servers with NewGRF mismatch are sorted down in the server list, so players don't see or don't care for them.
however, FIRS has become quite popular so chances are high that players already have that NewGRF and see a server running it, with a nice green dot 

so i think we should give it a try and run a FIRS server. now as you all know we can't just create a new server, resources are limited, we got to make one of the existing server a FIRS server.

questions:
1. should we try FIRS? pro? contra?
2. which of the servers should become a FIRS server.
3. what additional (setting) changes should be made to that server so it's running properly with FIRS?

input please 

15

Changelog / New !progress trigger

« on: July 29, 2012, 12:57:33 pm »

with a small plug-in update we have just added the new !progress trigger. It is meant to show the current goal progress on one single line, expressed as percent of goal achievement of the first company and additionally visualized with a bar drawn with characters.
While the command can be used from in-game and for a single server it is mostly meant to be used as master trigger on IRC to get a quick overview of the server status, see attached picture.