Curious as to why some of the old stock maps aren't played

Discuss all things related to our custom map 32 player ONS server
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H1gH T3cH
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Jan 23, 2013 11:32 am

I'm getting back into 2k4 and other than DM/TDM/TAM I used to enjoy ONS. In fact it was by far my favorite game type when the game came out. I miss playing ArticStronghold, Dawn, Crossfire, Dria, Severance, etc.

As the subject asks, how come hardly none of the stock maps get played? ArticStronghold I thought was awesome but I see in the map vote that custom maps by far get played the most.
DW_WailofSuicide
DW Clan Member
Posts: 1634
Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 12:00 am

Vote them up and others might. A lot of people consider the older maps to not be that great because they don't have enough tanks or spam on them though. The maps that get played the most are kind of the least common denominator maps.
H1gH T3cH
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Jan 23, 2013 11:32 am

Thanks for the quick response! I saw that Dawn was played last night and was pretty excited to see that. And it's only been played 300-something times.

I may be mistaken but I didn't notice some of the old stock maps even on the server. Like Severance or Frostbite?

I can see why Frostbite wouldn't be on the server though considering it's such a small map on a 32 slot server.
DW_WailofSuicide
DW Clan Member
Posts: 1634
Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 12:00 am

I wouldn't take the played counts as anything more than a list of relatively recent trends. Spam Vikings used to play all those old maps all the time, but I'm sure those vote counts have been reset more than once. As you say though, Frostbite is too small and Severance, IMO, needed some work. From what I remember it was always one of those maps where you'd get cut off and have no chance of a comeback.
H1gH T3cH
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Jan 23, 2013 11:32 am

Yeah, I think once the middle node was taken and you got teh Levi it was over lol

Hopefully I can learn to appreciate the custom maps that are mostly being played! Looking forward to playing ONS again once my settings are where I want them :shock:

I will definitely try my luck on voting for some of the classics, ArticStronghold being my favorite.
SomethingToSay
1337 Haxor
Posts: 159
Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2012 9:25 am

Yeah I remember playing Dria a few years ago a lot, was a good map, though I don't do ONS much anymore @_@ now i'm almost tempted to play just cuz I wanna play dria again lmao


I do wish there was like a way to get the map previews up though, on monster mash

There are all kinds of maps on monster mash that aren't played and have a sequence that ends up in the high hundreds or even over 1000 and I vote for them and play it and then I'm like "oh yeah this, no wonder..." :(

If people took a screenshot of some MM maps and sent it to the right person could/would it be put up in the preview screen? A lot of maps have really vague names and a picture to at least capture some of what the map is may help remember and possibly get those maps voted more
DW_Ant
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SomethingToSay wrote:I do wish there was like a way to get the map previews up though...
To get the map previews to work you must have the map's ucl file in your system folder. To generate a ucl file, have the map file in your UT2004/Maps folder, and run UT2k4. It should automatically create a ucl file in your system folder if it was able to load up all resources for the map.
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SomethingToSay
1337 Haxor
Posts: 159
Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2012 9:25 am

DW_Ant wrote:
SomethingToSay wrote:I do wish there was like a way to get the map previews up though...
To get the map previews to work you must have the map's ucl file in your system folder. To generate a ucl file, have the map file in your UT2004/Maps folder, and run UT2k4. It should automatically create a ucl file in your system folder if it was able to load up all resources for the map.

How would you get the map file into your maps folder? Does the server have all the maps for DL to put in there some where?

And if it's in there, does that mean you don't have to do the download screen for maps you haven't played on the server before?
Azmodan
1337 Haxor
Posts: 156
Joined: Sun Apr 04, 2010 3:46 pm

you get the map file into your maps folder with a cache-extractor. (http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/365 ... AL-UPDATED for example)

Those are simple programs that identify all files that you have downloaded from any servers that you've been on, since they actually are in your UT cache already.
Usually looks something like this:
Image

then you just mark anything you want, right click and "move" and it moves it to the right UT folder.
The advantage is that you don't have to download stuff from the server again and that you can use the files offline too.
The great disadvantage is the "version mismatch". If you play several servers which use the same basefiles, but different versions it will give you an error message. You then have to remove the file by hand from your folder and download the other one again. Same happens when files are updated. If Ant updates any files on the ME server for example you will have to remove all old versions by hand before you can download the new ones.
It's not as bad with maps from the DW servers, since the mappers usually include version numbers in the names (beta16, beta17...) so every new version is also a new map.
Other disadvantage is, your UT folder becomes enormous and you will never be able to get it small again since you can't identify what came from which server or is actually in use.

It works fine for the MM servers, since there aren't many updates and then usually only 1 or 2 files that you have to remove.
If you don't need the files themselves and you are just sick of downloading all the time, just increase the number of days that your cache saves files (30 is default)
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