Hey everyone. I think that the TF2 server browser is missing some massive features, and I think I want to take a stab at making my own through my website. The goal is to add servers to this list and add proper tags to everything, i.e. "Pure", "Trade", "No Crits", etc.
[t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/965202/ShareX/2015/07/2015-07-16_11-48-34.png[/t]
[b]Is it up?[/b]
[url]http://teamtrotter.net/[/url]
[b]What do you need, boss?[/b]
I need servers. Good servers specifically. What I need are IP's of good servers and why you feel they should be on the list.
[b]Are there banned servers?[/b]
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: Since this is user-submitted goodness, I use a little discretion when adding servers. If a server does not have the player's interests in mind and practices pay2win or ads every time you die, I'm not adding it to the site. There will be an accessible changelog and server-banlist on the website.
That seems like an awesome idea!
This sounds really good. The ingame server browser is slow and requires a load of tags to filter through and find the kinds of severs you actually like.
There should be tags for all the popular server networks, so you can easily filter out the networks you don't like, or find the networks you do. There should also be a ratings system. For servers that a lot of FPers like or go on, they can rate highly. Then you can, at a glance, know which servers people can go on to find the most FP users.
Real quick, what are some tags I should use?
Right now, the tag clouds I'm going to use are split into Gamemode, Region, Stock/Custom Maps, and Additional Tags.
At the moment I have "24/7", "Rotation", "Mod-Friendly", "No Crits", "No Damage Spread", "Low Gravity", "Faster Respawn Times", and "DM-Only". Trade/Achievement is considered it's own gamemode.
[QUOTE=wauterboi;48130708]Real quick, what are some tags I should use?
Right now, the tag clouds I'm going to use are split into Gamemode, Region, Stock/Custom Maps, and Additional Tags.
At the moment I have "24/7", "Rotation", "Mod-Friendly", "No Crits", "No Damage Spread", "Low Gravity", "Faster Respawn Times", and "DM-Only". Trade/Achievement is considered it's own gamemode.[/QUOTE]
Don't forget All Crits, [del]Vanilla Maps, and Custom Maps.[/del]
Messing around with a design (heavily based on ToonHUD atm)
[t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/965202/ShareX/2015/07/2015-07-05_22-18-18.png[/t]
I thought of adding hosts, because I sincerely dislike Skial and Lotusclan, but like servers like Firepowered.
[editline]5th July 2015[/editline]
And because it's so gosh darn cute and super 90's, here's a logo I made:
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/965202/websites/TF2/img/logo.gif[/img]
You should do what Anther's Ladder does, where depending on the location you pick as your current residence, different servers have different-coloured names depending on latency (green for low ping, yellow for playable, red for high). That's really the only big thing I can think of that's missing.
Oh, also, maybe a setting that allows users to disable 32 player servers from appearing?
[QUOTE=Rajikaru;48131761]You should do what Anther's Ladder does, where depending on the location you pick as your current residence, different servers have different-coloured names depending on latency (green for low ping, yellow for playable, red for high). That's really the only big thing I can think of that's missing.
Oh, also, maybe a setting that allows users to disable 32 player servers from appearing?[/QUOTE]
Latency is something I don't know how to account for, because it doesn't always boil down to how close you are to someone and I don't know how to determine your ping to someone else's server.
That last one is a good idea because I hate 32 player servers, but I definitely know people who love it. I'll put in player count as one of the options to choose from: 24 and 32.
As you may have guessed by looking at the thing it's simply design, so I've gotta hook it up with JSON and JQuery.
Something controversial I was thinking of when I first toyed around with this idea was purposely hiding/banning servers from appearing on the list. With how the page works, I have to add servers manually. As part of principle and part of the fact that it would be laborous to manage [I]all[/I] servers, I honestly don't want to add servers like Skial or LotusClan for having a bad history of faking player counts and going crazy with ad revenue (although I haven't cared to play since I found that out years ago), and really focusing on making a server list of servers worth playing. I don't really know where to draw the line for that. I do think I would come out and explain why a certain set of servers don't make it to the front page though on a "Banned Servers" page, though.
[QUOTE=wauterboi;48131798]Latency is something I don't know how to account for, because it doesn't always boil down to how close you are to someone and I don't know how to determine your ping to someone else's server.
That last one is a good idea because I hate 32 player servers, but I definitely know people who love it. I'll put in player count as one of the options to choose from: 24 and 32.
As you may have guessed by looking at the thing it's simply design, so I've gotta hook it up with JSON and JQuery.
Something controversial I was thinking of when I first toyed around with this idea was purposely hiding/banning servers from appearing on the list. With how the page works, I have to add servers manually. As part of principle and part of the fact that it would be laborous to manage [I]all[/I] servers, I honestly don't want to add servers like Skial or LotusClan for having a bad history of faking player counts and going crazy with ad revenue (although I haven't cared to play since I found that out years ago), and really focusing on making a server list of servers worth playing. I don't really know where to draw the line for that. I do think I would come out and explain why a certain set of servers don't make it to the front page though on a "Banned Servers" page, though.[/QUOTE]
Maybe just start out looking for servers or server hosts with good histories to put on the list, and if the list comes out small, add in the skial/lotusclan/etc as "last resort" options (like make them a separate list that shows up if the person is willing to risk it)?
[t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/965202/ShareX/2015/07/2015-07-06_12-02-20.png[/t]
I'm able to fetch a lot of dynamic stuff as well as information from my JSON file using PHP! I'm going to set my site to cache every ten minutes so it doesn't take so long to load and so I reduce traffic.
Any eta on when this will be done?
A day, week, month etc?
Nope!
[editline]6th July 2015[/editline]
If I put an ETA, I psyche myself out of doing work. I'm doing this for the fun of it and making leaps and bounds in learning programming as a result.
Cool, well I am looking forward to seeing it whenever it is done! :)
Maybe a manually kept list of good community servers to help provide activity? (not a community that has servers, like FirePowered, but a community based on a server, that would have regulars, etc.)
[t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/965202/ShareX/2015/07/2015-07-07_01-06-06.png[/t]
Searching works, and is done using the magic of JQuery! It's all client-side goodness.
I'm going to recode, look into caching (which is the most important!), and do a full redesign with all of the new stuff I've learned along the way.
Correct me if I'm wrong but your asking for servers to add to the list? If so I would recommend [URL="https://steamcommunity.com/groups/smurfy-tf2#"]Smurfy Fortress[/URL]. For tags, I'd suggest rotation, pure-enabled and no-ads.
Would there be a way to make it only search fr vanilla maps? Pretty much everympa I find when I search is some weird Minecraft server or full orange place.
[QUOTE=vladnag;48140440]Would there be a way to make it only search fr vanilla maps? Pretty much everympa I find when I search is some weird Minecraft server or full orange place.[/QUOTE]
If this is possible, a search for proper custom maps would be great. Only official gamemode prefixes and filter out words like minecraft and orange in the map name.
If finding ping is impossible, then displaying the location of the server somewhere would be nice.
Sounds really cool. Hope to hear more of this.
What do you guys think I should call this? I'm trying to think of something along the lines of <place><verb>, like FortFinder, or FortTransport or something like that without being so cheesy.
[QUOTE=wauterboi;48151684]What do you guys think I should call this? I'm trying to think of something along the lines of <place><verb>, like FortFinder, or FortTransport or something like that without being so cheesy.[/QUOTE]
Track Fortress
or
Team Trotter
GameFinder or MatchFinder sound good although they aren't places
[QUOTE=Nystical;48153414]GameFinder or MatchFinder sound good although they aren't places[/QUOTE]
Not MatchFinder, that sounds like a dating site. And apparently is a dating said according to google search.
[QUOTE=kariko;48153737]Not MatchFinder, that sounds like a dating site. And apparently is a dating said according to google search.[/QUOTE]
What about "Pubber Mingle"?
BlackBoxPeopleMeet.com
If you guys are wondering why I'm bothering recoding this thing, it's because my workflow is to draft and then rebuild as something cleaner and easier to maintain. I learn a lot of stuff a long the way, and in order to get that example to work, I had to tackle JSON, JavaScript/JQuery (clientside), and PHP (serverside). As I learn, I pick up new things that aren't fully utilized, write too much code (inefficient and prone to errors), and build a better picture of how things are specifically meant to work together.
I'm also going to use this for my personal portfolio since I'm aiming to build websites for local people as a self-employed web dev hobo, so don't fret if you don't see immediate progress.
Lastly, and what I think is most important for you guys to hear is that if I am somehow uninterested or unable to maintain this website (which is totally possible if it gets too popular), I'll hand off the files to whoever wants to take them off my hands. Handing shitty code off to someone else is not my intention.
[QUOTE=wauterboi;48154771] I learn a lot of stuff a long the way, and in order to get that example to work, I had to tackle JSON, JavaScript/JQuery (clientside), and PHP (serverside).[/QUOTE]
As a javascripter myself, let me just say this: [url]http://www.w3schools.com/jquery/jquery_chaining.asp[/url]
Read everything on that page, and promptly [I]never do it[/I]. Every time you have to go back and look at this bullshit 50 command pileup you wrote, you will hate yourself.
Just assign the element to a variable if you want to avoid having the user's browser dig it out of the DOM it for each modification.
I will chain if it's a small amount of steps that are basically the same thing or a very distinct inverse. For instance, removing and adding to a string, or removing a series of strings from a string would be fine in my book.
Layering shit on top of shit will always be shit though, so I'm totally on board with you on that.
So far, categories include gamemode, region, stock maps or not, tags, and host. Anything else that should be a dedicated category?
[b]EDIT:[/b] oh yeah, max player count!
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