Introduction
Hey folks, it's that time of year again! Today, Xonotic celebrates its 4th birthday. Along with the celebration, I'd like to let you guys know about a few things we have been up to, and officially announce the new servers for the game. I'm going to try to keep this short and sweet, so without any further ado: Lets get on with the announcement!
Hub Servers
![[Image: ZIHF3nrl.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/ZIHF3nrl.jpg)
Hub is defined as "the effective center of an activity, region, or network." What we're trying to do is provide a consistently available and inviting environment for community building. One of the main existing problems with the game is a lack of good core servers which are maintained well and easily find-able to people at all times, this leads to people merely wandering around and unable to find a match the majority of the time. I proposed that we create recommended and officially hosted servers which attempt to mitigate this issue by providing people with consistent options. We want to direct new players to these servers, and present people with fun events or promotions that keep them entertained and able to find a match at all times.
Another key exciting factor with the hub servers is our plan to integrate with subcommunities and groups to provide public hosting for tournaments, quick cups, and other events so that everyone can easily get a piece of the action. An example would be mapping contests-- we can easily create a server which hosts all the maps from a contest, and leave it promoted in the serverlist for all people to see. Furthermore we could possibly integrate voting for the maps right into the server, so it would be a one-stop-shop for anyone playing the game to contribute to the contest result selection.
Like I have mentioned previously, these servers are about community building... One of the most important things that needs to be done for this is ease of access and communication, so I have set up an IRC channel dedicated to the servers which allow easy chat between players and IRC users. Join us on irc.quakenet.org : #xonotic.hub!
Displayed above in the screenshot is a demonstration of the new default serverlist functionality which will be present in the upcoming 0.8 release, along with other various updates to the menu which I have described further in the development progress section of this announcement. For more information about the serverlist category updates, visit this thread here: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=4535
Although I handled the organization and setup for the servers, a great deal of thanks is due for the sponsors of these servers that provide the hosting and support to the game. Xonotic is built upon subcommunities and people who put their hand out to help strengthen the project. I extend a great deal of thanks to wtwrp.de, bitmissile.com, and smbclan.net for the hosting of the Hub servers. Additionally, I'd like to thank a few other people who helped me finish the scripting and infrastructure for the servers, specifically like Cobra_Fast, Mario, [-z-], and Mirio. (Apologies if i'm forgetting anyone, let me know and i'll edit it
)
Tournament
As part of the launch event for the hub servers, I am pleased to announce that we will also be hosting a European All-Weapons Deathmatch Tournament. The rules are simple, get as many frags as you can on the tournament server during the time of the contest. The contest will run on a server supporting 48 player slots which will be open to all competitors for 4 hours, starting at 5:00pm (CET, GMT+1) on Sunday, the 16th of March 2014. Anyone can join the server and play, and there is no need to sign in or do any other work-- just hop in and frag as many people as you can! However it is recommended that you pop into the IRC channel so you can easily see what is going on and follow through the fun. We do not have any prizes for the winners of this contest, it is merely to test the servers and have some fun, although we will be announcing the champion and the rankings of the participants shortly after the event is completed.
Trustworthy admins are desired for moderation of the event, and note that we will ban all users who disturb the game or otherwise play unfairly. Feel free to message me on IRC if you're interested in helping us out.
Development Progress
I don't have time to go into much detail here, so I'll just do a brief summary of the various things we have been working on. Look out for a more detailed progress announcement soon, we plan to do another development blog post in the near future!
If I have forgotten a feature, let me know and I'll likely add it to the list if it's appropriate.
Closing
That's all i've got for now, I'd like to say that I'm rather proud of the direction the project is taking now and I'm looking forward to how the game turns out.
Happy fragging
Hey folks, it's that time of year again! Today, Xonotic celebrates its 4th birthday. Along with the celebration, I'd like to let you guys know about a few things we have been up to, and officially announce the new servers for the game. I'm going to try to keep this short and sweet, so without any further ado: Lets get on with the announcement!
Hub Servers
Hub is defined as "the effective center of an activity, region, or network." What we're trying to do is provide a consistently available and inviting environment for community building. One of the main existing problems with the game is a lack of good core servers which are maintained well and easily find-able to people at all times, this leads to people merely wandering around and unable to find a match the majority of the time. I proposed that we create recommended and officially hosted servers which attempt to mitigate this issue by providing people with consistent options. We want to direct new players to these servers, and present people with fun events or promotions that keep them entertained and able to find a match at all times.
Another key exciting factor with the hub servers is our plan to integrate with subcommunities and groups to provide public hosting for tournaments, quick cups, and other events so that everyone can easily get a piece of the action. An example would be mapping contests-- we can easily create a server which hosts all the maps from a contest, and leave it promoted in the serverlist for all people to see. Furthermore we could possibly integrate voting for the maps right into the server, so it would be a one-stop-shop for anyone playing the game to contribute to the contest result selection.
Like I have mentioned previously, these servers are about community building... One of the most important things that needs to be done for this is ease of access and communication, so I have set up an IRC channel dedicated to the servers which allow easy chat between players and IRC users. Join us on irc.quakenet.org : #xonotic.hub!
Displayed above in the screenshot is a demonstration of the new default serverlist functionality which will be present in the upcoming 0.8 release, along with other various updates to the menu which I have described further in the development progress section of this announcement. For more information about the serverlist category updates, visit this thread here: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=4535
Although I handled the organization and setup for the servers, a great deal of thanks is due for the sponsors of these servers that provide the hosting and support to the game. Xonotic is built upon subcommunities and people who put their hand out to help strengthen the project. I extend a great deal of thanks to wtwrp.de, bitmissile.com, and smbclan.net for the hosting of the Hub servers. Additionally, I'd like to thank a few other people who helped me finish the scripting and infrastructure for the servers, specifically like Cobra_Fast, Mario, [-z-], and Mirio. (Apologies if i'm forgetting anyone, let me know and i'll edit it
)Tournament
As part of the launch event for the hub servers, I am pleased to announce that we will also be hosting a European All-Weapons Deathmatch Tournament. The rules are simple, get as many frags as you can on the tournament server during the time of the contest. The contest will run on a server supporting 48 player slots which will be open to all competitors for 4 hours, starting at 5:00pm (CET, GMT+1) on Sunday, the 16th of March 2014. Anyone can join the server and play, and there is no need to sign in or do any other work-- just hop in and frag as many people as you can! However it is recommended that you pop into the IRC channel so you can easily see what is going on and follow through the fun. We do not have any prizes for the winners of this contest, it is merely to test the servers and have some fun, although we will be announcing the champion and the rankings of the participants shortly after the event is completed.
Trustworthy admins are desired for moderation of the event, and note that we will ban all users who disturb the game or otherwise play unfairly. Feel free to message me on IRC if you're interested in helping us out.
Development Progress
I don't have time to go into much detail here, so I'll just do a brief summary of the various things we have been working on. Look out for a more detailed progress announcement soon, we plan to do another development blog post in the near future!
- Functioning prototype of the new weapon changes is under way-- specifically including the Arc (Lightning Gun), the Shockwave (replacement for Shotgun), and various other improvements to the weapon system.
- New ammo system and compatibility/support system for map item balancing.
- Large updates to the menu programming and layout, especially including XonStat integration built into the Multiplayer window. Screenshots coming soon.
- New visual theme by Sev called "Luma" which replaces the old Luminos HUD and menu design. Screenshots coming soon.
- New item and general 2D icon design by Sev as part of the Luma theme roll out, this will include all new models and simpleitems images for the pickups in game. http://i.imgur.com/hNy6QQO.png (note that the image is preliminary and many things about it are subject to change)
- New method of saving radar maps, this will allow us to do top-down radar images of the maps for use in the minimap. http://i.imgur.com/tEujGu6.jpg (prototype/proof of concept demonstration)
- Vignette visual effect built into the GLSL shader.
- IRC support built into DarkPlaces, this way we can do both an IRC client built into the menu and a server-code powered IRC bot for communication between game servers and chatrooms.
- Large improvements to the monsters included in the game, allowing mappers to have more dynamic and challenging scripted events built into their designs. This also includes the addition of a new game mode called Invasion, which has players fight off increasingly difficult waves of monsters.
- Improvements to bot handling, especially allowing bots to learn how to play on maps more efficiently and easily by using player movement data.
- Various other polishing of the game, ranging from tweaks of default settings to large bugfixes.
If I have forgotten a feature, let me know and I'll likely add it to the list if it's appropriate.
Closing
That's all i've got for now, I'd like to say that I'm rather proud of the direction the project is taking now and I'm looking forward to how the game turns out.
Happy fragging
Do it yourself, or stop complaining.
![[Image: 38443.png]](http://stats.xonotic.org/static/badges/38443.png)
![[Image: 0_e8735_c58a251e_orig]](https://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/60015/73987442.5/0_e8735_c58a251e_orig)
Server is up now and you're all still welcome to play, additionally i'll likely leave it up for several more hours than previously thought. 
![[Image: 2170.png]](http://stats.xonotic.org/static/badges/2170.png)
![[Image: optsig.png]](http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/6726/optsig.png)
![[Image: 41457.png]](http://stats.xonotic.org/static/badges/41457.png)
![[Image: 788.png]](http://stats.xonotic.org/static/badges/minimal/788.png)
