Thread: SPECTATING INSTRUCTIONS

Alright, here's the deal. TPG L4D2 3 & 4 have been reserved for the tournament and setup with the necessary plugins to give players the ability to pause (already existent in the servers) and allow specs to join. With that being said, its a bit archaic in it's design and is meant to allow more people to play the game, not watch it. To prevent interruptions in the game, I urge you all to follow these instructions. Any problem players will be dealt with...

PLAYERS
1. Once a tournament game is ready to be played, the players can start up a lobby and connect to the server using Steam group server browser to connect to server 4.
2. A representative from each team will have to type !ready in order for the game to start. A player can also type !unready if they want to cancel their ready signal. (THIS FUNCTIONALITY HASNT BEEN TESTED YET SO IT MIGHT NOT BE READY)
3. If a game is to be paused, a player can type !pause (be warned that if the game is paused, nobody can fully connect to the server, so if theres a timeout, you will have to !unpause before the player can be let back in the server). Once you are ready to start again, the player who initially paused the game will have to type !unpause. If the game is paused for more than 90 seconds, any player can !unpause. Currently 3 pauses are allowed per map, but this can easily be changed if needed.

SPECTATORS
1. Specs will not be able to join until a game has started and all the players have loaded. You can confirm this by viewing the game info on a player in the game and making sure at least 8 people are in the server.
2. Once this has been confirmed you can connect to the game by joining on a player already in game using Steam or connecting through console -- connect 66.150.221.87:27018 -- joining using L4D2 will not work.
3. Once connected to the server, you will IMMEDIATELY need to type !spectate in chat to be forced to spectator. (people found griefing this feature will be dealt with...) YOU MUST TYPE THIS AT THE CHANGE OF EVERY ROUND, EVEN WHEN SIDES CHANGE ON THE SAME PART OF THE MAP!
4. Let it be known that players will be able to see regular chat, but will not be able to see team chat or hear you over the mic, so keep to those forms of communication between specs.
5. Enjoy the show!

So when a spectator joins a match and finishes loading what is the period of time we have to type !spectate. I mean wouldn't you have to fully load the map and be in-game to use the chat screen? Which would mean you would be thrown onto one of the teams while there are playing their match before you get the chance to type !spectate. Please explain a little more Enf. Thanks for making this available by the way. It's greatly appreciated.

I'm guessing you'll randomly be put on a team and appear... which could cause the other team some confusion. The BEST time to do it would be prior to either team readying up and if you aren't in spectate before then... you don't get in. Kinda like how they lock the doors at the symphony once it has begun. Don't know if we could enforce that though through the mod.

This is something that will have to be tested as Im not sure. My assumption would be if the teams are full in the game's eyes (4v4), any other connections would be prompted to choose a team upon entering the game. If it auto-chooses, then we will have to rewrite the rules to say specs need to be present at game time and put a pw on the server to be given out at the beginning to prevent others from joining mid-game.

Originally Posted by tr_enf

This is something that will have to be tested as Im not sure. My assumption would be if the teams are full in the game's eyes (4v4), any other connections would be prompted to choose a team upon entering the game. If it auto-chooses, then we will have to rewrite the rules to say specs need to be present at game time and put a pw on the server to be given out at the beginning to prevent others from joining mid-game.

If it's anything like the confogl spectate mod anyone who joins after the game is "full" (4v4) will end up in spectate mode automatically, but will still appear on the scoreboard as on a team until they type !spectate.

Also spectators will have to type !spectate at the start of every round again.

my advice to any ardent spectators will be to bind a key to say !specate. So you don't have to constantly type it.

Bind a key to !spectate, one to !ready, one to !unready, one to !pause, and one to !unpause. Helpful.

And I believe even spectators will have to type !ready, as well as !spectate, every round start (if it is the same thing as confogl).

Originally Posted by ¤[BlitzKrieg]¤

Bind a key to !spectate, one to !ready, one to !unready, one to !pause, and one to !unpause. Helpful.

And I believe even spectators will have to type !ready, as well as !spectate, every round start (if it is the same thing as confogl).

I am getting less and less interested about having spectators now if they're gonna mess up our game

Originally Posted by Scotzo

I am getting less and less interested about having spectators now if they're gonna mess up our game

I don't expect TPGers to be the type of people to mess up a game. If you're not smart enough to type two things every 20-30 minutes then you probably won't be able to launch the game anyway.

Well tonight is the first match of the tourney I believe. Having Enf on the Young Guns team will make this a great opportunity to see how this works...if both teams are OK with it. I know that I am fine with seeing how things work out.

Typing 2 things for a total of 2 seconds of typing or a few extra seconds of binding shouldn't mess things up. Might provide a bit of a delay if someone isn't paying attention, but an admin can always type !forcestart I believe... again, that was on confogl so it may be different on this.