Server information tracked on the forum

[tmm3k]

It would be nice to have something on the forum that shows the status of the official servers, and even the unofficial ones.

Something simple like

Official Altitude Server 1
Map Name: Lost City
Players: #/14

I think that it would help bring more people to play. I know I would be more likely to start up Altitude if I saw that even one other person was playing. But more often than not when I start it up, all the servers are always empty.

[Karl]

we plan on opening up the beta a little more in the near future so hopefully there will be people playing more often.

the thing about a web page is I don't know anyone that uses the Steam community feature... If i knew it was a success we would consider setting up something like that... so you just hit a web page and can see/chat w/ your Altitude friends...

[Blank]

we should have biplanes nights (or afternoons)... just like a scheduled time where as many of us can log on to play some. Good short term answer to the problem IMO :E

[King!]

Originally Posted by Blank

we should have biplanes nights (or afternoons)... just like a scheduled time where as many of us can log on to play some. Good short term answer to the problem IMO :E

Most of the big games seem to be around 8, so thats probably a good time; and I'm usually finished with Blank's mom by then.

[TiamatStudios]

Originally Posted by Karl

we plan on opening up the beta a little more in the near future so hopefully there will be people playing more often.

the thing about a web page is I don't know anyone that uses the Steam community feature... If i knew it was a success we would consider setting up something like that... so you just hit a web page and can see/chat w/ your Altitude friends...

that would be a nice feature, also to take it one step further let us put a iframe on our websites with it in it. Then visitors to our sites could see people are on and would have a link to download. Or a link to talk to those in game. It might be worth it but probably not during beta stages.

[Christian]

yeah

this would really be a nice idea, perhaps an simple cgi interface (with some statistiks) for every server or on the master server (just a brief review like the server window).

[DiogenesDog]

Although I don't think have a general version of this would be worthwhile (like Karl alludes to, unless the game is a HUGE flop then this won't be a problem once it's actually released), I do think a tool like this for just your friends list would be pretty badass. I'd be really nice to have some kind of tool to show when your buddies are online.

On a related but completely unhelpful note, there's this Chinese game/internet services company called Tencent that has the best version of this ever. In addition to their games division, they also run the most popular IM service over there. So there's a little thing that pops up next to all your buddies names in your AIM-equivalent list showing what game they're playing. And for new games they'll push it harder by having a little pop up window come on to be like, "Hey, Blank is playing our awesome new DELTA FORCE OMEGA game, click here to automatically download and join!" So slick and evil. :P

[Karl]

Originally Posted by DiogenesDog

Although I don't think have a general version of this would be worthwhile (like Karl alludes to, unless the game is a HUGE flop then this won't be a problem once it's actually released), I do think a tool like this for just your friends list would be pretty badass. I'd be really nice to have some kind of tool to show when your buddies are online.

On a related but completely unhelpful note, there's this Chinese game/internet services company called Tencent that has the best version of this ever. In addition to their games division, they also run the most popular IM service over there. So there's a little thing that pops up next to all your buddies names in your AIM-equivalent list showing what game they're playing. And for new games they'll push it harder by having a little pop up window come on to be like, "Hey, Blank is playing our awesome new DELTA FORCE OMEGA game, click here to automatically download and join!" So slick and evil. :P

Just use Steam or XFire... On steam when your friend joins altitude (as long as they launch the game from steam) you get a pop up saying your friend is playing Altitude...

I would no doubt like to reinvent the Steam proverbial wheel to be a competitor but it's just not going to happen unless Altitude is a huge success... and even then we have considered just integrating into Steam (via SteamWorks).

[DiogenesDog]

Oh nice, I didn't realize that. I've basically just used Steam to d/l and try games sold through there, haven't messed with any of those kinds of features.

[King!]

man since I had to login to view the picture I might as well post.......I chuckled, that's a really big monitor you have there!
Speaking of which, when are wide-screen resolutions coming?

I don't really have/play on other steam games so it's probably too excessive for me. Maybe something like an irc channel with a bot to tell you how many people are playing(if you asked "!playing" or "!friends") would be relatively simple to do.

[Karl]

Originally Posted by King!

man since I had to login to view the picture I might as well post.......I chuckled, that's a really big monitor you have there!
Speaking of which, when are wide-screen resolutions coming?

yea it's the old Dell 2405FPW (1920x1200 res). Lams is going to work on wide screen someday... no ETA yet.

Originally Posted by King!

I don't really have/play on other steam games so it's probably too excessive for me. Maybe something like an irc channel with a bot to tell you how many people are playing(if you asked "!playing" or "!friends") would be relatively simple to do.

Steam has gotten a lot better in terms of being light weight (takes 0 cpu usage and 42k memory for me). Also all you have to have is the icon in the notification tray just like any other IM. For comparison Trillian takes 11k and skype takes 50k. So Steam no doubt has bloat (it runs the Internet Explorer engine underneath) but it's not that bad.

[King!]

Originally Posted by Karl

Steam has gotten a lot better in terms of being light weight (takes 0 cpu usage and 42k memory for me). Also all you have to have is the icon in the notification tray just like any other IM. For comparison Trillian takes 11k and skype takes 50k. So Steam no doubt has bloat (it runs the Internet Explorer engine underneath) but it's not that bad.

Well i'm running vista(because they don't bundle xp anymore :[ ) with 1GB ram so memory is ever so precious.
I wouldn't call 42k "lightweight"(not something i would leave idling anyway). considering altitude in game itself is 104k for me.
Meanwhile, the fully featured irc client I use(xchat) is a mere 5k. Heck i'll even make a prototype of a server snooping irc bot if you tell me the relevant protocol