Introducing the Tempus Jump Network

[Rob123]

Tempus Jump Network

I’m very excited to introduce the Tempus Jump Network, now entering a public beta. Our aim is to grow a group of tightly integrated servers based on the Tempus timer by Jayess. The last 2 months we have been working to modify his Surf timer, which he has been working on since late 2012. Once out of public beta, we aim to work with existing server owners to have servers available in each region.

Our focus when modifying the timer has been to create a clean, highly functional but strongly reliable system that can be accessed from multiple servers, as well as potentially in a browser. A very brief outline of the major Tempus features are:
- Player profiles with soldier and demo sections
- Player points and rankings
- Times and points for: Full map runs, course runs and bonus runs (completion and top 10 scaling)
- Tier (1-6) system for all courses and bonuses, for both soldier and demo
- Map information panel with creator, top times, and tier ratings
- Highly detailed HUD that is fully customisable and also can be turned off
- Cross server integration such as WR announcements or admin messages

This is only a brief run-down of the system we have in place, and are looking to grow. There are several key decisions we have had to make, which I will outline below, and am happy to take feedback about:

Timer supports Soldier and Demo only

All map times, points and rankings are for soldier and demo only. Of course players can still switch to other classes and use !s / !t and !regen functionality, however runs will not be recorded. We have done this to keep the timer as functional and clean for what is the clear majority of users. Reworking the timer to support additional classes would require an overhaul of the existing system and leave us with a much messier interface.

Timer does not support regen times

Following a similar approach as above, regen times would not only clutter the interface, but also leave us with a dilemma about points. Giving regen-on runs no points in our view made them obsolete, and would unnecessarily split up jumping efforts. Only runs with regen-off (unless Tempus detects regen is needed, which it will auto-switch on) will produce a run time and points

Timer will only be available in Tempus network

We will be contacting and working with server owners who we feel we can establish a trustworthy relationship to build this network. Having this timer open-source is not an option for us. The integrity of the database, functionality of each server and zones/tiers for maps all rely on a well controlled and managed network. We would much rather have a smaller list of servers that we can 100% rely on to be functional, than having the database and timer functionality under threat.

Public Beta

Now we need your help to test/break things! We currently have a small Australian server running this timer, and we will look into setting up a US test server. The database currently has about 165 maps all zoned up, majority with difficulty tiers assigned. I’ll be making threads of things that we are looking to get feedback about (Points system, syncs on run starts, etc).


For any questions or feedback, feel free to post here or:

Add myself: http://steamcommunity.com/id/Rob_busch/

or

Add Zato (Director of Memes): http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198045479800

Lastly I'd like to give a massive shoutout to Jayess for all the work he has put into this, and trusting us random TF2ers with this timer. This is by far the most advanced timer in TF2, so we are really fortunate that he has offered to modify it.

[Dr. Heinz]

Sounds AWESOME. What about a EU test server as well?
Gaugey would be a good guy for that.

[Rokio]

Good work guys! Hopefully we can get the database tied into the website eventually so we can display stats and stuff online again.

[.]

mad rep bruv

[Shunix]

Sounds AWESOME. What about a EU test server as well?
Gaugey would be a good guy for that.

Gaugey's steam profile http://steamcommunity.com/id/gaugetheory/

[Afterglow -tt | jump.tf]

Finally, jumping will be interesting again... Here we fuckin go boys. After trying it out, it looks really amazing. Miles ahead of skillsrank. Nonetheless, I have some stuff to say.

My most significant complaint/opinion is that there's an overwhelming number of commands/options. I think some of them should be trimmed out (e.g. remove all the aliases for commands, it's just adding clutter). Some of them do look pretty neat, and I reckon they will be used (like comparing times vs other people for each checkpoint). With more use, the numerous commands will become natural sure, but you have to understand as an initial user, it's extremely confusing. There's like 5 different versions of !top for instance. Might be worthwhile to make a video tutorial or something going over the commands once it comes out for real.

I think skillsrank kept its commands few and intuitive by having the majority of the user experience in the online database. For instance, there was no way to check the !top for a map other than the one you were on other than using the online database. To me, the database-hosted-online-approach seems a lot better than trying to do it all in-game. I do think tempus should provide more commands than skillsrank though. Just suggesting that some of the more in-depth commands could be removed if an online database was hosted on a website somewhere. Like the "player profile" thingies? That seems like it would be much more suitable for a website.

Also, do we really need timers for EACH individual bonus? That seems pretty ridiculous for maps like soar where it makes more sense to me to make it just a bonus course. Who would just speedrun a single jump (like the bounce jump, wtf?). I understand that that's how it is in surfing, but to me it just doesn't feel right for tf2 jumping.

I also think ALL the main course timers should NEVER include any bonus. That wasn't quite how it was for skillsrank, but I think that's already the case for tempus. If that's so, never mind.

I'm also curious, is there any thought process behind the placement of checkpoints? Or is it just scattered throughout a map at seemingly equidistant points. Is there a certain standard for how many checkpoints a map gets?

I also hope the point system makes sense. Couldn't really tell how it worked. You should make it transparent how the points work.

[VoiDeD]

Having this timer open-source is not an option for us.

Well hopefully you guys will realize that when distributing compiled plugins, you must make the source code available. Not doing so violates the SourceMod license.

[Rob123]

Well hopefully you guys will realize that when distributing compiled plugins, you must make the source code available. Not doing so violates the SourceMod license.

This plugin is not written in SourceMod, it is written in EventScripts. When we work with server owners to distribute the plugin they will have the full source. When I said it isn't open-source, I am implying that plugin will not be available for anyone to download. Hope this clears that up.

@Afterglow

Lots of good points.

- Commands and options. I agree the current system can be very overwhelming. However, in our experience most of these commands do get used, even though they may seem obscure. What we may look at is a super-simplification of the !help menu. Reducing it to maybe 10-15 of the core commands. Then making an alternate menu that gives the full list for more advanced users. We will look into this, and possibly a forum post / video that runs through each command.

- Website stuff. We do plan on working with Rokio (thanks for the subforum!) to get online player profiles, map data, and more going. Whether we will reduce the amount of in-game information when this happens, we will see. After using skillsrank and this timer, personally I prefer being able to access all information in-game very quickly. Would like to hear feedback from others about this as well.

- Bonus timers. This one was a tough choice and we went with individual per bonus (unless there are 5+). We did this because we wanted to bonuses to be different from map speedrunning. They reward very little points and were just meant to be fun, accessible, other jumps. Doing all bonuses as one course would also mean you could only teleport to the start of it. We wanted players to be able to teleport to every bonus individually. This one is up in the air though, so if everyone thinks bonuses should be grouped, we can have a look at re-doing it.

- Map times only include the courses. The only exception to this is speed/speed2? One of them had 10 bonuses in a row, so we turned it into a second course, which gets included in the map time.

- Checkpoint placement - We aimed to put checkpoints every 6-8 jumps, as well as after the harder jumps that 'stick out'. So a 10-15 jump map usually has 1 CP, 15-20 usually has 2 CPs, etc. I thought about doing a set criteria, but all jump maps are so different it seemed better to set them manually per map. We are very flexible on these, happy to move/add/remove these to what people want.

- I'll try do a forum post that outlines the point system. Doing this in-game would be too cluttered. The system itself we are looking to get feedback on.

As for EU/US test server, currently we've got plenty to work on with the feedback we've gotten. There is cross-server functionality that we will need to test and experiment with, so we will need one in due time.

Thanks for the feedback guys, I'll get some dedicated threads going for more specific stuff

[RNC1839]

So is this timer optimized for any specific jump plugin i.e. [JA]? or is it a stand alone plugin?

[Afterglow -tt | jump.tf]

Also I believe it was mentioned that there would be automatic STV recordings for WRs. Is that still a thing?

[Rob123]

Plugin is standalone. We should be able to get automatic STVs for records but that's not being worked on for a bit.

[VoiDeD]

This plugin is not written in SourceMod, it is written in EventScripts. When we work with server owners to distribute the plugin they will have the full source. When I said it isn't open-source, I am implying that plugin will not be available for anyone to download. Hope this clears that up.

Ah, I see. Fair enough then.

EventScripts though... Quite a shame.

[Dr. Heinz]

No timer for 1 seperate bonus, group them together please.

[Shunix]

No timer for 1 seperate bonus, group them together please.

this

[John]

What a revival to the jump timers! I was putting off working on skillsrank (lazy and school), but I definitely can work on a web front end for this, assuming you guys haven't found someone already (or are working on it anyways). Hope this does revive some parts of the jump community, as I know a lot of you just /love/ speedrunning.