spacius secondary rotation

[S3Savage]

Cheers mates,

Recently both "main" servers (unfreeze and freefun) have had a good amount of players.
While this is nice for the Q3 community in general, some of the regular players like to play on lower populated servers, me included.
Personally I try to avoid the main servers if there are more than 10-16 players on it (depends on map).

Meanwhile the spacius server is totally empty when the friday glacius rotation is *not* on.

Sometimes I hang around there and after quite some while a few familiar faces spawn and we can play a few rounds.
The culprit is that the (alternative, secondary) rotation is *really* awful (DM17, DM1, tourney3) and after a couple of rounds we part ways again due to the limited map choice.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could run the "freefun" map rotation on the spacius server instead of the rotation that is used now?
@adminless What do you think?

[adminless]

well when it comes to popularity I believe the main servers are to spacius as spacius is to glacius so if spacius is empty (actually is not) glacius is actually totally death instead. matter of fact, spacius only really spawned for that reason (because glacius was death for a fact) and it definitively proved to be the better option but anyways it's ok, I'm just saying. so when it comes to my thoughts about it, well basically as I just said I believe spacius actually has its own (small but respectful) population and it definitively serves a purpose. I know for a fact that despite what someone may claim none of the maps at spacius are "top" maps (if they would really be, the would run at the main servers, they don't for a reason as you can see) but that doesn't take away that they also have a (I repeat small but respectful) fanbase and that they are also fun to play casually from time to time. besides I believe it would be plain non sense to open up UnFreeZe just to find (pro-q3dm6/q3dm7)x3 24/7 basically so having those maps there, even if they aren't the "pinnacle" and they are just "ok" maps, at least adds some variety to the game and keep things a bit more entraining for everybody. bottom line as I see just after migrating the servers these days I believe that when it comes to the server setup itself for other the usual maintenance/revision/update here and there this should be pretty much finished. yes, some things could be different but honestly I don't really see any significant margin for improvement, I think this is probably about the best this game has to offer so this should be it.

[S3Savage]

[...] that they are also fun to play casually from time to time. besides I believe it would be plain non sense to open up UnFreeZe just to find (pro-q3dm6/q3dm7)x3 24/7 basically so having those maps there, even if they aren't the "pinnacle" and they are just "ok" maps, at least adds some variety to the game and keep things a bit more entraining for everybody.

I can see your point and as I think about it, this makes sense. Casually these maps are fun every few play sessions.

[...] when it comes to the server setup itself for other the usual maintenance/revision/update here and there this should be pretty much finished. yes, some things could be different but honestly I don't really see any significant margin for improvement [...]

Technically, for the client and server code itself, I totally agree with you. There may be some low hanging fruits, but they're not worth picking. Unfreeze is in a very good spot here and almost perfect.

Regarding logistics though, the server population grew quite a bit during last year (that's what I see as a regular player, numbers might prove me wrong here). The game experience shifted from medium populated to full servers.
I think this circumstance might justify improving on the situation.

In this regard, would it be possible to host another instance on the server? As a "beta" if you'd like.
There shouldn't be a large impact regarding cpu time and bandwidth, right?
Or is this out of scope? As a developer and sysop myself I'd totally understand that you have no time or tendency to change things hastily.
Howsoever, thanks for bringing us an awesome gaming experience and for the many hours of your free time you put into this project!

Do you think it is worth further contemplating the logistics aspects?

[adminless]

yes this keeps a growing trend and by now it has consolided as a relatively medium size community hosting consistently +300 different unique players a day. that fact alone should be proof more than enough that despite the (non sense) hate by some that there's always going to be the overal managament direction is indeed the appropriate one but anyways I see you don't disagree with me on that so I'm just saying. as for the rest, well there's more to the "resources" than just the "money" (i.e. cpu/ram/disk/bandwidth) which by the way as you mention it is also starting to run low after all this months, there's also time and effort as you're pointing out yourself and the reality and core issue here is that just as I said I don't really see the need to set up yet another pro-q3dm6/q3dm7 server (i.e. "UnFreeZe4" mini edition). I believe that is probably more productive and interesting for the community to put those other resources like time and effort to promote other stuff, like could be spacius/glacius itself or some of the other alternative servers (i.e the new reworked ffa for example or the ctf/masters ones) or even the competitions that are running now, that will probably bring a more complete and lasting impact than spawning yet another UnFreeZe copy.

so basically thanks for the feedback, make sure that it's been heard and that I'll take it in consideration for future revission of this but at the time of writting I don't see it being implemented. I mean, if on the future months that load is projected to spike (yes even more) the "main" servers (i.e. UnFreeZe1/2) get so full that is impossible to consistently get any slots then I may consider adding another "mainline" UnFreeZe3 server along those lines but at the time of writting is not the case.

as for a "beta"/spare/test server, I have baltic, so may be it interests you to check it and do something with it, I don't really care much about it and probably in some months (once the deal term for it finish) I'll close it if nothing intesrting happens with it.