The server is in Dallas, TX.
Stats show it still offline.
Has anyone been able to connect tonight? I can’t check it myself.
I see folks in-game via steamcommunity, so I’m guessing it is running despite it saying that it’s offline. So … I dunno … enjoy the game, I’m confused. :surprised
I was able to get a couple hours in last nite, played fine (minor hiccup on first attempt to load escherhouse), but was able to reconnect and play it fine…
Screenshots from last night and last week’s games:
Hope to see you online tonight, need to put escher through the wringer here and expose every flaw you can find. Next release is likely going to be the final release and I want it to be perfect! Thanks bunches to everybody who has contributed by playing so far.
Nice you got a shot of my 25 points with the sniper. On the loading screen that 25 points is twice as long as every other class. Loved that match, no one killed me and I just sat quietly in my corner picking everyone off.
good games!
i sent someone to the front page for the ip info… and it was wrong. might want to double check it
steven
Indeed, it looks like the IP is missing an octet in the middle.
Another great game and another full house… a full… ESCHER house! Ha ha! I crack myself up:shrug:.
The input you give me in game only helps me improve that map every week. Feedback has been positive since the first playtest. Either you’re all too kind or I’ve managed to craft something interesting here.
Akin and others (mostly Akin) repeatedly tell me to harass Valve over this map but I don’t even know how I’d go about that… so I had an idea. I dunno if it’d get a response but when ctf_escherHaus hits final release, the beta tag removed and I publically submit it to many map hosts I’ll send an email to somebody/everybody at Valve and invite/challenge them to a match in Escherhaus. Perhaps if we get a team of our regulars to commit we might get a game out of them and I might selfishly gain some recognition.
Either way, it’s always fun playing against/with the lot of you. See you all next week.
i think you got a good map kromano… but tonight it felt too small for the amount of people we had. i dont have a suggestion yet but like i said with a full house it just sent us to sudden death each time.
Yes there was a “246” missing from the IP in the SPOILER tag. But it’s correct on the banner. I’ve fixed it. Someone also told me the server downloaded some custom sound files before each map. Sorry, I didn’t know it was going to do that. You can turn that off client side (if you didn’t know) but I will remove it from the server as well.
Sorry, I was late getting online tonight. We rented the 3rd Pirates of the Carribean movie and I had to see it. I’ll preface this with a “good job on the FX” for those who worked on the film. However, I was dissappointed that the story sucked. Was it just me or was there an awful lot of talking in this movie? Blah blah blah blah blah (brief action sequence) blah blah blah blah blah. It reminded me of watching Anime. Notibly because when they were talking … nothing but the mouths moved. yawn
Oh well … that’s my thread derailment for the evening. Till next time 
Haha, it’s pretty true. A whole lotta nothing happened, but when I left the show I felt that it was more entertaining than the second (ending swordfight aside). But at least in Pirates they didn’t spend 20 minutes talking about what just happened 20 minutes ago… but I digress. TF2 is fun.
This is the part I was talking about with the stairs, just to the right of the tunnel entrance. The rest of the stairs hug the wall allowing to to strafe up them but because these aren’t against the wall you have to turn to face them to find them, which means turning your broadside to the oncoming enemy. Otherwise you get snagged in that corner and most mutliplayer maps navigate fairly well backwards.
I’d have taken a better screenshot but I kept dying 
I kinda dig that Happy Valley is so small. I prefer Counter Strike and TF2 to Halo mutliplayer but one of the cooler things they do is give suggested player counts for map sizes. I love maps like cp_well (the train one) with a full, 32 person server but when it’s sub 12 players or so it just feels really empty and you spend too much time walking and not enough time fighting.
Though last night’s match showed that that it might be too easy to fortify the single choke point of the map where all TF2 maps have multiple routes to prevent that. The different tiers help but you’re still subjecting yourself to the same field of fire any time you go for the flag. What do you guys think?
I see what you’re saying, I thought you meant the spiral staircase inside the houses themselves.
I know of a quick way to fix that up, shouldn’t be a problem.
EDIT
I’ve been considering what was said about a chokepoint in the center where all routes converge. You’re not the only one to bring this up but fixing it isn’t as simple as those stairs will be.
I’m trying to think of ways to provide a simple alternative but I don’t know that one exists. Underground sewers were suggested but I think that 1) That would enlarge a map that is already large enough, it’s just too many areas to keep track of in my opinion. Perhaps somebody will disagree, but my second point 2) a change like that is pretty substantial and would mean many more bouts of betas and balance testing, and optimizing. It just feels like it’s too late for that now. I don’t want to do another massive redesign unless the center is that much of a problem.
Suggestions on whether this is truly a problem and needs addressing would be helpful (especially in the actual escher thread instead of general chat ;).
/EDIT
i am sure valve was up against these decisions too… but they took the time to make it the best they could.
i have been playing with hammer and i think it is such a pain to work with. so i understand what you mean by a substantial change
Truth is, there probably isn’t a simply alternative. The map is still fun to play, which is a lot more then can be said about most custom maps. Maybe if it were easier to access the higher tiers from the spawn areas then it wouldn’t be so easy to fortify the center with sentry guns and it wouldn’t completely throw the map dynamic? But beyond that, I would take this as the kind of critique that you might apply to the next map you design.
For my next map I actually plan on doing concepts and an actual layout before I get started. I know some elements I want to include, but I haven’t established a working layout. The big problem with Escherhaus was I was winging it the entire way. I just started building (as I usually do) and put in elements when I felt like it. Generally those kinds of maps don’t turn out super well, yet I seem to keep pulling it off (at least in part).
I’ll start a new thread in game design when I have something on paper to get started from. Until I get fully underway on the next map I’ll continue to tweak and try to improve escher. Within the next couple weeks I will be closing down escher production and calling it finished, so it’s really now or never to suggest ways of improving. (I only put a deadline like that on it because I’m no longer learning anything new on this map and it’s designed about as much as it ever will be, so working on it is becoming stale and boring. It’s time to move on.)
Great rounds this weekend. Having the server full really proved Escher and HappyValley’s playability. We could never get a real feel for the maps before with so few people because you’d go to setup defense and someone would take the case then you would go to intercept, miss the person and they would score. Or we would just sit around and deathmatch and maybe someone would go for the intel. We just weren’t getting accurate matches. Well I think this weekend showed how well done these 2 maps really are.
Lemme 'splain more. I don’t know about you guys but I like to switch classes frequently sometimes because a specific need arises (spy to sap a sentry gun) and sometimes just because I enjoy a certain class. Without a full server this isn’t possible because while you’re playing around as a spy there is no defense and a scout can boogie on through and win the game. This time we had strong defense and power offense so it allowed for scenarios where someone needed to go spy to take out gear and they didn’t have to worry about not covering the base. We all know how the Valve maps should play because we’ve clocked so much time on them but these maps are virgin territory so who knows what strategies may develope. Ex. I forgot who did it but the engineer that decided to build a sentry gun in the middle of the canyon in happyvalley, brilliant move! That took a while for us to destroy effectively pressing us back into our base. (Sorry for the diatribe, I write freelance for a video game site and these new maps are really good material :D) Anyway, now we can really start to playtest the heck out of these maps.
So, my critiques so far:
This may sound weird but for the server I’d like to have all speak on by default. Since we are getting to know each other and its a private server I’d much rather be able to smacktalk and jeer the other team. Like after RockinAkin backstabbed me for the fifth time I would love to be able to congratulate him appropriatly. (“AKIN, you suck!” or “Freakin Spy!”) I don’t think our team dynamics would suffer too much from this as we were chatting both in voice and text while it was on anyway. But that may be just me, I enjoy it more when its like a LAN party.
Happyvalley, I don’t really have anything to critique on the design other than it doesn’t feel finished yet. I don’t know if you’ve got anything left planned Swizzle but at this point the flow is good, every class has an important roll and it takes some good teamwork and coordination to get that case out of a well fortified intel room. By unfinished I just mean the finishing touches and detail objects etc.
Escherhouse I found some things playing this weekend so I will post those in its forum. My opinion, its got to be around 90-95% complete now. Some minor tweaks and its go time.
Good job Swizzle and Kromano! And big thanks to Kirt for hosting the server!
One more suggestion for you guys to consider. How about turning on friendly fire? The spy class really is playing with a handicap. I know when I play as an engineer I shoot anything that comes towards my precious hardware. I would say if you do that then don’t activate the autoban for team killing options.
I’ll play either way, just something to consider, maybe for a round every now and then.
FF isn’t an option, by default that I’ve found, in TF2. That said, I noticed that FF is available in the admin mod so maybe we can try it out. I’ve thought about playing with FF enabled as well, it would COMPLETELY change the way the game is played. A pyro couldn’t rush into a crowd and open fire without scorching a number of teammates, likewise a heavily crowded cap point on something like grainary would see havok if the heavy opened fire to defend against a highly mobile scout.
I know some FPS have an option to turn friendly fire on as a percentage, so that FF still hurts, but it’s only, say, 60% as damaging as it would be against the enemy.
I can certainly turn alltalk back on if that’s the preference, but I’m totally opposed to friendly fire on. IMO it gives too much of an advantage to the Spy. A Spy with FF on would be able to stand next to the Engineer while sapping and create a situation where the Engie’s teammates would hesitate defending the buildings for fear of injuring their own teammates. Pyros or Heavies couldn’t shoot into the area (even with reduced damage) without taking out the Engineer or his buildings.
The Spy has it pretty good without this advantage. The dude can go completely invisible, disguise as another class, one hit backstab enemies and out sap an Engie repairing his buildings. Unless you have a very convincing argument for FF, I’m going to stubbornly say, “no!”
(and that has nothing to do with my hatred of playing the Spy class or playing against them) 