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cr!zis in the spotlight
on Tuesday, April 21, 2009 :: by soh-lokirulez @ 9:10 PM
1251 Views ::
13 Comments
::  :: Interviews
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We haven't covered much Instagib projects and players so far on. I think it's time because someone coded a very neat statistics site for the instagib community and is active in mapping and helping out in the dev team. The person I talk about is called Tarmo "cr!zis" Hyvärinen and he gave me an interview.
Instagib
Hi cr!zis, you are the founder of www.warsow-insta.net and are hosting a lot of servers for the instagib lovers of the Warsow community. Why do you prefer instagib over normal weapons?
First when I found Warsow (summer of 2008) I wasn't really aware of the different gametypes and just joined a random server which happened to be an instagib server. That's how I found insta and Warsow. I thought it was easy and fun fragging, and was hooked immediatly :-) When I first tried playing with normal weapons, I was a bit disappointed as an old QuakeWorld player I expected QuakeWorld-alike experience with cartoonish graphics. But instead weapons felt slow, hard to hit with and not really fun to play with. So I stuck with insta.
Your warsow-insta.net site is mostly a statistics site parsing frags collected on your instagib servers. Why do you think there is a need for a frag parser and how does it work technically?
I think statistics add a bit more competitive feeling for public games. It's also fun to follow how your own frag ratio improves. Is it really needed? I don't know. A lot of players find it fun to try to get into weekly top list with good frag ratio, others think statistics are useless and mostly point out that stats don't really tell how good or bad player is.
From technical point when I started doing the frag parser, I wanted it to work without any modifications to Warsow server code so it could be used easily on all existing servers. I found out it is possible to log kills to a logfile, so I decided to go for the log parsing route.
The parser itself is written in Ruby and works on a two parts. First task is to parse player frag lines out of server log (wswconsole.log), splits them up as time the frag happened, player who did the frag and who was the target, and saves this data to the SQLite database. Second part is to select top players from the database, generate XML file of top players and finally generate HTML output using XSL template.
The second part was a technical choice mostly done due resource limits on my server - making stats as static HTML output instead of dynamic web site, I can run very light webserver (webfs) which takes only couple megabytes of RAM. If I get more server resources some time to run full Apache/PHP/MySQL stack, it opens a door to completely new dynamic feature possibilities for the stats. Perhaps even parsing much more stuff from the log data, like time spent in game, your personal top kills, and stuff like that.
How many frags have been collected on your servers at all?
At this writing, there's total of 1 414 180 frags recorded (that's over one million and four hundred thousand frags!). The SQLite database size is 186 MB.
Although I'm not much of an instagib guy myself in Warsow, I find it interesting to see how active the instagibbers are compared to the normal weapon guys. The ESL has some instagib ladders (iDuel and iCA) and matches are played daily. Are you playing in leagues yourself?
Especially iDuel seems to be quite popular in ESL. I don't play any leagues as I like more playing just for fun rather than for competition. But maybe I will give a shot for duel cups in the future.
It occurs to me that instagib players are not really liked in the normal weapon scene which is a bit more organized on the official warsow.net forums. People call instagib "boring point & click", "campers" and even pubbers as "Counter-Strike players". Have you noticed any offenses yourself or in general? How do you see the normal weapon players on the one side and the instagibbers on the other?
For new players I think the key success is that insta feels more fun, since you can get at least accidental frags and get a feeling of succession. It's quite hard to get any frag against even mediocre players with normal weps if you're a new player with little first-person shooter experience. For old pro Warsowians it might feel boring if you've played long and handle the game really well.
When it comes to attitudes of (unfortunately too many) normal wep old-timers, attitude sometimes is quite hostile. Warsow is supposed to be about respect and sportmanship - not about flaming about other people's favourite game mode.
I wish there weren't any "sides" on game modes and everyone would just get a long and have fun playing. Warsow community can be only as nice as we ourselves make it to be, so I hope people will drop the flaming about which mode is "better" and let each play whatever suits them.
You released the source code of the WICN-Client (the log parser). Will you continue the project and even implement the normal weapons?
Definitely - support for normal weps and other game modes like CTF is been long on my to-do list.
If I had an instagib server and wanted its logs to be parsed and show the statistics on my website. What should I do?
You should head on to http://www.warsow-insta.net/software.html and follow the installation instructions. Currently the parser supports only Linux servers and the installation procedure is not really as easy as it could be. One important thing (aside support for normal weapons) I'm working on for the new release is to make installation easier and more automated.
Mapping
You have released two maps so far: SMOOTH FUN CA and COMPLEX DM (soon to be reviewed by hwan). What can someone expect from your maps?
Hopefully good playing experiences :-) Smooth Fun is a CA/iCA map made in legacy of wca1/wca2 styles and Complex is an experimental DM map with many floor levels. Of these two, Smooth Fun turned out better and is pretty fun (in my own opinion) to play in CA mode.
What brought you to mapping and why do you think there is need for more "maps that suit different gametypes"?
I was browsing around Warsow Wiki for fun and decided to give a shot for mapping. For CA mode, there isn't many good maps in basewsw. Wca1 is of course the most popular (i)CA map ever and from unofficial maps, bip is the most played. Wca2 is too large for most of the situations, DM maps don't fit CA very well either, so I would say there is need for good new maps at least for CA players.
Will you continue mapping for Warsow and for which gametype? I heard CTF could need some new maps!
Definitely I will. Neither of my two first maps is anything spectacular but I learned a lot in the process. Hopefully I can do better in the future! Perhaps a smaller duel map, focusing on gameplay is the next attempt.
FFmod and 0.5
With the latest release of FFmod for Warsow 0.5t3 you host a FFmod server on your machine. What do you like about FFmod and do you prefer it over vanilla Warsow 0.5t3?
I love FFmod! Although I'm still very much newbie with regular weps, FFmod fixes most of the things that annoy me in vanilla Warsow (too much armor, too little damage, too slow weapons). Since the gameplay/movement in Warsow is generally very fast, slow Weapons don't really fit into the game well in my opinion. FFmod makes it all feel a bit more balanced, games get much more frags and speed, it simply makes the game more fun to play. For me, FFmod is probably my new favourite game mode.
You joined the web department of the dev team lately. What is your job?
My job is to help finishing the new official Warsow site. Hopefully this gives the devs more time to concentrate on the actual game and takes a little burden off their shoulders. Web stuff is what I do for living and love to do, so I'm really excited about this responsibility :-)
Do you plan to contribute to Warsow as a coder as well? Maybe easier statistics output for Warsow?
Implementing frag recording system directly into Warsow server code would indeed give a lot more possibilities for stats and perhaps for some community features, so that's something I plan to do on the long term.
With 0.5t3 hopefully released soon Warsow will ship with the gametype plugins feature. Do you want to code a gametype plugin and what would be the best gametype for Warsow in your opinion?
I will most likely give a shot for making gametype of some kind, but I don't know yet what. Some possible ideas what I would do could be insta speed mod where you could shoot only with over 1k speed, or Worms mode where pickup items would appear around the map in a surprise boxes and randomly turn out to be mines which explode :) Probably most of the gametype mods will be short-living fun mods, but it will be interesting to see what people come up with.
Quickies
Short questions, short answers.
Future of Warsow: Instagib or normal weapons?
Hopefully balanced living side-by-side.
0.5: will it make Warsow a mature game or a technical playground?
Mature game.
Do you play for fun or for competiton?
For fun.
Marriage or living as a single?
Marriage. I am happily married, actually ;-)
Caffeine or teein?
Caffeine!
More computer hours or off-computer hours a day?
Off-computer? Computer off? The thing that happens when electricity goes out? Eww..
Thanks for the interview. Any last words to your fans?
Respect and sportsmanship!
Links
cr!zis on warsow.ning.com
]m0d[
www.warsow-insta.net
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| Comments |
By
parry
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Tuesday, April 21, 2009 9:35 PM
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nice crizis (:
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By
shanni
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Tuesday, April 21, 2009 10:07 PM
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Very nice! cr!zis for president ;ı
ha ha
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By
Cat.named.Dog
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Tuesday, April 21, 2009 10:14 PM 
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GG Kiki ;]
You always have the right opinion !
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By
Gokkel
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Tuesday, April 21, 2009 10:24 PM
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Kiki! :)
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By
komodochas
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Tuesday, April 21, 2009 11:30 PM
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Great interview with interesting answers :)
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By
Sady
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Wednesday, April 22, 2009 1:21 PM
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K!k! \o/
<3
And awesome clan with really cool guys :)
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By
eX
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Wednesday, April 22, 2009 2:08 PM
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nice :D
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By
player
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Wednesday, April 22, 2009 8:25 PM
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^^
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By
FZW|BBQ
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Friday, April 24, 2009 8:35 PM
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ALL HAIL TO INSTAGIB
And thx for interview, servers and warsow-insta. All that is really nice :)
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By
BooX!
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Sunday, April 26, 2009 1:43 PM
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As always nice interview.
Crizis seems to be a nice guy, keep on rockin dude ;)
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By
ASD
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Sunday, April 26, 2009 5:20 PM 
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DIE DIE DIE
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By
Target1
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Tuesday, May 05, 2009 9:39 AM
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I'm very interested in your fun gametypes, I'd probably like them both... I already do the 1k speed thing with friends so they train their aim at high speed.
Nice interview, will look for your maps :)
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By
PeachFX
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Saturday, May 09, 2009 12:39 PM
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I believe that such principles are just what is needed 4 proper development of wsw. Nice work kiki!
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