One thing Murnatan lacks are players. The biggest game I've played so far was 7v7 and the server crashed. We really need to somehow lure more players in. Could steam perhaps help somehow? I think if the game was on the front page for at least an hour it would drastically help. That would probably be impossible though.

There is possibility to get to some better page on Steam for while with bigger update, but don't know how big succes it will have.

We need admin system and no server crashs. But one crash is inside of engine from unknown reasons. Cannot be reproduced. Probably something with networking and memory. That is hard to solve. Would be good to update Unreal Engine to recent version but I think that is too big task for now and many things would broke. But that can solve that crash or atleast we could report it to UE bugtracker.

So we need to move forward with smaller tasks. First one update with few fixes, next probably admin system and then we will see if we should try to update UE or try to do support for mod maps or ambush mod (can be played like single player too).

The game needs to be fun on a competitive level before it will stand any chance of attracting regular players. 

Smoother alien controls, better prediction between server and client, complex keybinds, password protected/whitelisted scrim servers, etc.

It needs to *feel* like a proper twitch shooter.  Otherwise skilled players will have no reason to stick around.  Make the game run as smooth and tight as quake and people will start to hang out.

Also, most people nowdays don't go searching for servers, since most modern games have a matchmaking system. They just wanna click "Play" and have a game to play. Murnatan kinda needs one if it ever hopes to reach a larger audience, but all the other stuff already mentioned should take a much higher priority.

BFG: Personally I don't like matchmaking and I think that is not suitable for Murnatan.
First - when there are not official servers, then there can happen anything.
Second - you want to have few favorited servers with favorited players with favorite ping, not to be randomly connected to somewhere.
Third - I think that best fun is when good players playing together with bad players (not griefers). If matchmaking will connect you only to players with skill similar to you, then it will lose this feeling.

Anyway, when we will have some ranking system then it will be possible to do similar things like matchmaking for server owners (can connect only when have level X etc.) or we can add "Quick play" button for randomly choose some crowded server. But there will be always also server browser.

Quake Champions is being criticised for not having dedicated servers and a serverlist because that's what formed Quake - communities, servers you'd join and see the people you met before, get to know them, have fun, etc. a "Play" button was never a good idea and isn't going to be.

^ this

Quake Champions is being criticised for not having dedicated servers and a serverlist because that's what formed Quake - communities, servers you'd join and see the people you met before, get to know them, have fun, etc. a "Play" button was never a good idea and isn't going to be.

While I do agree with the community aspect of having a server list.  Lets be frank, the community is toxic.  This goes for pretty much any competitive online game.  The reason people play games is to challenge themselves; making friends is optional.  Every single competitive game out there has a matchmaking such as League of Legends, Overwatch, CS GO, etc.  It's pretty much required to have a real competitive community.  Even Tremulous with the success it had never really got to the point of tournaments with cash prizes.

The game is what it is, and I do enjoy having private servers to get to know people.  But do not dismiss the idea of ranked matchmaking so easily.  I'm not a top tier player nor do I think I ever could be, but seeing major names battle it out in any sort of tremulousque game would be the dream for me.  With a game like Tremulous where base building, strategy, and twitch gameplay all come together I can only imagine what kind of matches big name teams like c9, faze clan or optic gaming could put together.  With big plays of base moves, pushes, forward bases, end game scenarios, competitive murnitan/tremulous could be even more entertaining to watch than cs:go or lol.  As unlikely as it could be, I think this game has the potential to go so far beyond just a serverlist with ample players in it.

Tbh, my hope is rotacak and co. get bought out by a big name publisher.  They get rich and we get a polished tremulous style game with actual venture level funding.

EDIT:  To address the reason we are struggling right now is that lack of player population is a cascading self perpetuating effect.  No players in the game results in people downloading and joining a game only to realize that there a no players to play with and quitting the game, when they might have enjoyed the game if there were people to play with, causing there to be even less players and so on.  Personally I've tried to get on multiple times the past few days and there was literally no one to play with.  I don't know how this could be addressed other than bots.

I guess I have to disagree.  The reason I hardly play the game right now is because it needs a lot of work. 

Playable?  Yes.  Sort of.  But by no means is it up to spec.  The netcode teleports me across half the map when I play as grabit, movement physics are so-so at best, and automatic weapons like the rifle and chaingun glitch out frequently while firing.  If it was smoothed out to the point where it *felt* like genuine 1.1, I would probably play it much more. 

That's why I play 1.1 when I want to be competitive.  Not because Murnatan is missing a dumb Quake Champions style 'play' button.  Rather, because it is hard to take it seriously when you are playing to win but the game itself just can't keep up.

I think the population issues are caused by people making these same conclusions on their own.  "Eh, this is dumb.  I'm gonna go play something else."

A ranked matchmaking system would be perfectly fine... as long as it does not replace the traditional server browser.  Take TF2 or Quake Live for instance;  Both have regular server browsers as well as automatic matchmaking.  *That* is the way to do it.


Sidenote:  While there are a lot of poopy people in the Tremulous servers, I think a lot of the true hostility stems from a lack of cohesive leadership in the communities themselves.  The good people get mixed in with the bad as server admins, or the rules prohibit action that would get rid of them - or even something simpler like a lack of clear structure or procedures - and the hatred just goes round and round.

Doesn't help that it's hard to make bans stick.

To be honest I have got some of my friends to play Murnatan and also some people I played Tremulous with in 2009 but the crashing was such a problem, I haven't played in a couple weeks so maybe its fixed by now but it's definitely something that must be prioritised. The crashing kind of drew them away from playing the game because it annoyed them.

i think a discord would help ive set one up KPSYD3f  cant really get new players on it or to communicate tho

Making it easier for someone to set up their own server may help. I look and find 2 available and 160 is the lowest ping I've gotten

I have a game server machine and started looking at firing up a murnatan server. It requires a valid logon to get the game files via steamcmd (vs anonymous logon) which I'm very hesitant to do, who wants their steam credentials on a machine exposed to the internet? I could transfer steam installs and hope it works but perhaps I need only the murnatan game directory?

Getting the server to work with steamcmd would help entice game server providers to offer it as an option (if user counts increase) since they could then just modify their existing scripts.

Default connection entry is to localhost but there's no option to start a local server. I'll bet that I can start one underneath it

In any event, I'll get it working but making it easier to fire up an instance may help increase the number of available servers which may attract more players.

I miss the madness of 30 vs 30 trem games :p

tuple: server does not need you credentials from Steam at all. That password in config is only for you (can be anything what you will remember) to allow you to identify server.

Starting server from Steam: I have no experience with that but it should be doable later when I have time.

Starting server from server browser: Should be possible to add but managing that is little complicated. I will look at that later too.

But look at thread here on forum about server, it is easy to run it.

Yea, 30 vs 30 was epic. When Murnatan was released then we got about 20 vs 20 and it was amazing, funny, crazy, cool.

What I'm thinking of (with anonymous logon in steamcmd) is something like you'll find here https://ark.gamepedia.com/Dedicated_Server_Setup#SteamCMD . Steamcmd is just a tool to download necessary files for running a server and keeping them updated without storing a logon on an internet connected server. I suspect that it is more complicated than I think on the steam backend so don't take my suggestion to mean that it should be any sort of a priority. I just thought along the lines of easier to run/manage servers could mean more people becoming involved running their own servers.

Something that occurred to me though, perhaps scheduled meet up times for matches? Or, like in the early days of trem, an irc/chat channel to rustle up teams for a game? And no, Rotacak, I'm not saying *you* should do this, you've already done tons.

Basically, I'm spitballing ideas

edit: ok, I'm a disaster with this syntax :p