CnCNet 5 suggestions

[Iran]

Here's a list of my CnCNet 5 suggestions, I'll be working on it later and I also intend to use color codes for what I feel is the priority that items need to be given. So it can also kinda function as road map.

 

Network services:

 

- Add spam detection (this needs to be done by bot or services, can't do it in the CnCNet 5 client)

- Add something like operserv for moderators:

-- PUBLIC command to list all moderators in the moderator DB

-- PUBLIC command to list all moderators currently online

-- Moderator commands:

--- (Temp) mute user in lobby channel

--- (Temp) mute user in PMs

--- (Temp) mute user globally or in game channels

--- (Temp) ban user

--- Kill user (to force CnCnet 5 client updates maybe?)

--- Drop name registration for user (for people hoarding/stealing names, not sure if this can be done via a web panel on ladder?)

 

- Add memoserv or a clone with at least support for 100 memos per player (the CnCNet client will add GUI support for it)

 

CnCNet client:

- Add GUI support for nick registration stuff.

- Show all games hosted by default, even if you don't have the game installed it. If the game isn't installed/configured and the player tries to join show an appropriate error message. Add option to the client to not show games in game list when you don't have that game installed BUT DISABLE IT BY DEFAULT.

- The stream button should have text on it to show who's streaming, if multiple people are streaming make the button show how many, clicking the button should then popup a window with a list.

- At start up show a screen with C&C games already installed/set up and C&C games which aren't. When clicked on one that isn't set up or configured start a wizard to help the player with setting up. AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS START UP SCREEN ADD A 'Don't show this window again' tick box. Tore on IRC suggested adding registry checks to check what games are already installed.

- Add a button for memos, if a new unread memo was received change the color of the button. When the button is clicked open a menu which allows you to send memos and read memos.

- Something graphical to show news, a 'news' button doesn't suffice as it doesn't show what the new news is. There needs to be something to show that there is new news and what it is.

- Add news for CnCnet client updates.

- Voice chat is hardly used, maybe change it up or remove it? Main issue is that the 'Voice chat' button takes space.

- The 'I'm Away' button is hardly used, maybe go away with it and automatically set status to away if idle (make this setting configurable in the options menu, with period and the away reason text?)

- Maybe change the 'About' button into 'Info' and add a button for the forums and another button for the CnCNet site in the window for it

- Add support for joining custom channels and game specific lobbies, the bottom right of the user list could be used to show the channel list. Add /join command too.

- Add support for /page <playername> <message> command.

- Try reducing start up time (using a profiler to check what causes the long start up time), and if startup time can't be reduced add some more feedback than just a sound at start so people know the client is starting up. I suggest adding a splash screen.

- Better scrolling support.

 

Quickmatch support:

- Add a new 'Enter QuickMatch' button, when pressed it joins the quickmatch IRC channel (does NOT leave lobby, just switch channel), quick match shows people in the QuickMatch channel and a list of QuickMatch games being played on the left.  When in the QuickMatch channel add a 'Exit QuickMatch' button.

- In the QuickMatch channel change the 'New Game' button to 'Start Quickmatch', when clicking this button a new window appears with feedback about the current status of matching/finding a player to play quickmatch with, when done the game is launched.

 

Ladder support:

- Add button to open the ladder page for the ladder account the user is logged into. If he isn't logged in open a page with info on registering on ladder.

- Show rankings of players somehow?

 

CnCnet Bot:

- Add !ladder/!rank <name> or #<number> command, to display ladder/rank info.

- Add random chat announcements to the bot with a 30-70 minute interval.

-- News announcement

-- Link related YouTube accounts

-- Other random stuff like help with things people commonly ask

- Add commands for guides to fixing common issues (like on CnCNet v4):

-- How to join a game (Maybe?)

-- How to change resolution/video settings

 

Ladder:

- Start with RA1

- Moderators should be able to ban account from ladder, deduct rank points and reset rank points

- Start out with a casual list of matches played for a ladder account, rankings page and match info page, over time add more competitive and complete stuff

- Add hall of fame for a list of monthly winners

- Add something for showing a list of ALL TIME (not monthly) rankings

- Add map info/statistics and/or listing games by map (might be hard with all the custom maps crap on ra1)

- Sponsored prizes

- Sub-forum to report abuse of ladder

- Moderation of ladder to punish abusers

- Add support for more than just 1vs1 support (the game EXE already dumps statistics with this support)

- Add support for clans

- Something to help with tourneys

- Needs to have a nice theme.

- Try recruiting additional webdev talent.

 

CnCNet 5 general:

- Add CnCnet 5 rules;

-- No harassment of users

-- No cheating

-- No spamming

- Add sub-forum for CnCnet v5 stuff like support, reporting of abusers etc

- List of moderators

- Add a guide or forum topic or something for people who want to have their streaming channel and/or YouTube channel to be supported by CnCnet v5.

 

CnCNet.org site:

- Change the frontpage or at least http://cncnet.org/download to not be so heavy on links and text, the info for manually installing CnCnet5 should be easier. Hifi suggested a big button. The chat links on the right of the page are redundant as the menu at the top already includes a chat link. The CnCNet v4/legacy text is kinda redundant too.

 

Community:

- Get people active on the forum (maybe adding a Forums button to the lobby or something?)

- Banners and link/images for forum signatures

 

TS Support:

- Anti-cheat (need CCHyper's help with this)

- Spectators/Observers

- Recruit people with TS modding experience (we have the DTA guys helping us, might be useful to have a few more)

- Recruit people with competitive TS online experience, needs to know about cheats and detecting cheats and using XCC GameSpy. Should probably be in charge of sub-forum for reporting TS abusers/glitchers/cheaters.

 

YR Support:

- Completely todo

- Need to use patcher for game EXE instead of shipping a modified EXE, for legal reasons

- For mods Ares needs to add support for spawner code (or can Ares work with our patched EXE?)

 

RA1 Support:

- Add option to prevent players from changing game speed ingame.

- Fix selectable spawn issue with mixed random and selected spawns (fix written, needs to be tested and shipped)

- In the host/join game window group the fixes together, remove unusued/disabled options and add an option to add new map categories. Maybe some small tweaks to the layout too, especially when scaling the window size.

 

C&C1 Support:

- Add selectable spawns

- Add pre-determined alliances

- Add spectator/observer

- Map thumbnail generator needs to generate higher quality thumbnails (currently it's treating a whole template as one terrain type, instead of the treating the individual tiles in the template)

- Fix 6 player

[Jacko]

That is a LOT of stuff

 

However I am confident that you guys can do a very good job of this! (I mean, look at cncnet5 already... its just awesome)

 

a suggestion for TS support to stop cheating is to do something similar to how westwood tried to stop cheating in RA by having some sort of [digest] section on maps

maybe have some of those on the .exe or something could work so that it checks everyone uses same .exe

 

Also I'm not sure who compiles these but a /p2p function in lobby to check for p2p mode would be appreciated by many players I'm sure.

[Iran]

Should be pretty do-able in 2-3 months, don't forget it's spread out over at least 3 people.

[Allen262]

I fully support a show all games option.

[riderr3]

I miss old "Screen shaking". Why its not available?

[Jacko]

because apparently it caused desyncs :/

although it was a bit weird when a super-powerful player resigns and all his stuff takes like 5 minutes to explode

[pichorra]

A small webclient that runs on browsers? that might avoid issues with operating systems

[Japie]

Guys,

 

Awesome work with the new lobby!

 

Just one suggestion from my part: is it possible to prevent people from abusing the game speed option?

We just had a game of 8 people (CnCNet 5 rocks ^^) where one frustrated noob kept setting game speed to the lowest level effectively ruining the game...

 

[Iran]

Hi Japie, I've added it to the suggestions list.

[AchromicWhite]

I know you guys have a lot on your plate, but adding support for ARDA would be great. Might be easier to do if you DON'T add it as part of RA, but instead have it as a different selection when you create a game, and then have a list appear off different directories for mods. So like, 10 or so slots where ARDA mods can be added.

 

So when selecting to play a mod that uses ARDA, you'd click on create game, select ARDA as the game platform and then click on a directory path from a list of pre selected (by the user) directory paths.

 

Doing this would allow way more mods to be used by cncnet, opening up huge opportunities for people that very seriously mod the most popular game on cncnet5

 

  -Liam

[FunkyFr3sh]

I thought arda is dead, no more updates since ages Can't really add support for it

[cn2mc]

A couple of suggestions for the client:

-Currently any action in a game room (change side, colour, etc.) by any player causes everybody in the game to revert to 'not ready' status. Make it so that only the host's actions unready everybody, while individual players that fiddle about only lose their 'ready' status.

-Often players (hosts) who are unfamiliar with the client or simply distracted will press 'leave game' instead of 'start game', thus kicking everybody out to the lobby and not even knowing what happened. There should be some sort of safeguard for this, like a popup asking for confirmation.

 

Both of these will significantly speed up the pre-game process.

[Matt]

Here's a list of my CnCNet 5 suggestions, I'll be working on it later and I also intend to use color codes for what I feel is the priority that items need to be given

 

Looks like you might want to have a bug tracker.

[riderr3]

because apparently it caused desyncs :/

although it was a bit weird when a super-powerful player resigns and all his stuff takes like 5 minutes to explode

 

Ok, may be enable this for skirmishes will be possible in new updates.

 

[Penguinman]

Hi,

 

I have three suggestions for making game setup quicker.

1)  when people choose teams and positions this is represented on the map preview- ie if three people from team a are on position 5 there are three A's displayed next to that position on the preview- maybe "stuck" to the number. I think this would be useful even if the numbers are really small.

2) have an option so that the host can disable team-position combinations that are wrong for that game- so if it is north versus south with two teams, a and b are limited to selecting only the appropriate positions to allow that.

3)have a host option to say that players can't share a position- so they only have what is left available to them.

 

I hope these are useful/ make sense!

 

 

[Jacko]

That certainly would clear up problems in 'team-vs' match lobbies where people are often a bit..... slow to work out what to do. :/

[Penguinman]

That should have read "even if the letters are really small"

[Retired]

I know ladder isn't working on this server but when you play multiplayer I'm assuming you can still have the game run in tournament mode? It's not a big deal but I'd rather people have to surrender rather than just abort the game so the computer is still there playing.

[Jacko]

why not have a setting in the lobby that allows player aborting the game or not?

for example 'player can abort in-game' yes/no

[Penguinman]

Make it an option to have helicarriers and phase tank, like the choice of aftermath or not!

[Allen262]

Make it an option to have helicarriers and phase tank, like the choice of aftermath or not!

 

Not a bad idea....

[Nyerguds]

That seems rather useless. They're completely not incorporated in the balance of the normal game. You might as well let players build ants... O_o

 

Heck, phase tanks are STEALTH APCs. Can you imagine the Tanya rushes with these things involved? And I'm not even sure if infantry and defense buildings have sensors by default in RA, since stealth is only used for the submarines.

[Jacko]

infantry and defenses do have auto-sensors IIRC

 

[Allen262]

That seems rather useless. They're completely not incorporated in the balance of the normal game. You might as well let players build ants... O_o

 

Heck, phase tanks are STEALTH APCs. Can you imagine the Tanya rushes with these things involved? And I'm not even sure if infantry and defense buildings have sensors by default in RA, since stealth is only used for the submarines.

 

Even if nothing but ships have sensors they can be added to any units/buildings in the same file that makes the helicarriers and phase tank buildable.

[Penguinman]

Ok, so according to http://cnc.wikia.com/wiki/Phase_transport sensors aren't a problem.

I don't agree that it would be like adding ants. Ants would be pretty useless anyway and what would build them? I think that as allies don't have the chinook and their aftermath units are not so great it is not so unfair that they get a better chance to sneak into the enemy base. I also think that helicarriers could improve the allies air power balance as they can take 5 helis each. (In the demo video i saw they were an allied unit- maybe they could be both factions...) But even then it would only be an option...

 

So I hope that this might be considered- I can't believe it would be so difficult to implement as the files to do it are already there- they would just have to be included in the client like aftermath was. Or perhaps that is something one does not simply do- I am not a programmer... (I just want to try out helicarriers!!)

 

So does hifi like any of my suggestions? I would be very happy if they got into the list!  :roll:

Thanks for all of the responses!