JJ2WC III: The Countdown has begun

[Nielsje]

Fellow Jazz players!

I have to admit it has taken a while (including all delays and such, mainly because me having heavy loads of homework and study at the university) but finally, JJ2WC 3, or the third edition of the Jazz Jackrabbit World Championships is about to start! 

A total of 9 teams has signed up for the competition, and all of them are listed at JJ2WC’s website (http://jj2wc.ncmv.net/) including the groups each team is placed in, as well as the weeks in which teams are facing eachother. About precise times of playing, the Group Officials have to be contacted (these are located above the groups, on the “Schedule”-page) Group Officials also have to be contacted for the map (this is picked randomly by the Supervisor – me – and announced about an hour before the actual match starts by the Official) Some parts of the website are already working fully, but we’re still working on some parts.
The rules and the mappool will probably be released tomorrow, after compiling. Friday is the deadline for finishing the website, and we’re ready to go after that.

Team leaders may contact their Official already to arrange matches, in fact, this is recommended for a smooth progress in the roster. Each team has a week to play it’s match, after that a new round starts. Some teams have to play two matches in a week (all the teams which are placed in CTF Group 2 do), and in this group the tournament lasts one week longer because of the extra team (other groups may use this time to prepare for semifinals – if they proceeded – or to play postponed matches).
From each group, the best two teams proceed to the semifinals, where they play mixed semifinals (#1 in group 1 faces #2 in group 2, #2 in group 1 faces #1 in group 2), which are followed by the finals. These matches will take about two weeks, but I’m not scheduling them yet because of possible postponed stuff, like happened during the Duellist Cup.

For now, I have assigned the following staff members of JJ2WC:

Supervisor:
- ChippieBW
Officials:
- Cooba
- Grytolle
- R3ptile
- Vegito
- Yasco

5 Officials might be enough for the tournament, but it’s better to have some more. Therefor, we are still looking for additional Officials! Interested in this challenging job which may give your JJ2-carreer a boost? Then sign up in this thread! We’re especially looking for people who can:
- Host matches (stable and fast connection required)
- Write match reports for played matches
- Monitoring channel #jj2wc
If you think you fit these criteria, you can sign up by giving your name, e-mail and motivations in a post in this thread.

That’s it for now, I might post the latest updates here as well. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask them here 

Regards,
~ ChippieBW, JJ2WC Supervisor

[DanYjel]

Wow. In week from 13th February I will have like one milion six hundreds twenty three thousands seven hundreds ninety five tests and exams, but if that was the most suxorious thing ever, it could rock. From 18th February, I am going to ski vacation with my class and it will last forever, till 25th Feb.

From November 2005 I've been scaried of that JJ2WC3 will be in same time as my ski vacation. So... It is :D :D :D

[Grytolle]

(this is picked randomly by the Supervisor – me – and announced about an hour before the actual match starts by the Official)AN HOUR??? THAT SUX A WEEK AHEAD PLZ:( :( :( :( :( :( :(

[Nielsje]

A good team is prepared to play on each map ;)

Ah well, I've heard more complaints about it, but I'm not likely to change it soon. Perhaps I'll make it a few hours more, but not a week. Also, it's not like last year when each round had 1 map. This time each match has a different map. More information on this will be added in the "Rules" section later.

[R3ptile]

A hour? What about 30 minutes?

[Grytolle]

Awesome, now we are expected to learn 30 levels to have a chance, and most of them aren't all that fun anyways. I am quite sure you said the map would be announced way ahead in time previously by the way.

[Vegito]

I agree a bit with Gry, this will surely be annoying -_-'
Anyways, I'll start arranging my poules matches tomorrow, when I have time ;P

[[GpW]Urbs]

No he didn't say so gry, in fact the whole point of 30 levels was that people couldn't learn them by heart. Or they could, but they'd have to pwn in all 30.
besides don't fret foo!! You guys at least played more than 50 percent of the levels i hardly saw half of em!! Don't be such a perfectionist unless u play for such amounts as Vo0 or fat:)

[[GpW]Urbs]

Ohh and chip, I hate you.
Why the hell did u put us against metamorphed legends for our first match, I don't want to be demoralised at the start of the tourney already:(

[$tilettø]

gg/gl boys

[Grytolle]

Whatever. I can learn a map in 30 min. I just felt sorry for everyone without that abiility.

[Vegito]

Im able to learn a map fast too, but I prefer having 1 day or so to just know every trick availible..

[Superjazz]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA :WOOT: HAHA *rolls*

15min plz thx }>

[Grytolle]

Let's have chip make a new lvl for each match!

[R3ptile]

Just reduce the amount of maps to 8 for each game mode? :p

[Grytolle]

Yeah, then that 1 hour policy would make sense for the CTF-tournament too.

[Superjazz]

Naw...

[Nielsje]

I just added rules to the site. This is for now a temporal version, so tell me if you have any suggestions.

Oh yes, about the mappool and map release times, I'm not even THINKING of changing that anymore. So you guys might as well stop suggesting things ;)

[Grytolle]

Yes, let's have a tournament that is fun for the arranger - not for the players^^

[Vegito]

What do you mean, gry?
"not fun for the players" - Actually, most of the players agree on not telling the level at all. Only a few dislike it.

[[GpW]Urbs]

Come on gry, favourites don't nag about stuff like that!!! Just play and (-):)

[Superjazz]

Besides Gry, weren't you just claiming to play for fun, not for win? ...and that you don't happen to care about the level too much? :confused:

[Enigma]

You knew this system was going to be used for the levels from the very beginning, so if it hurts you that much, why did you sign up at all? ;-/

[Jerrythabest]

hmm to erase this useless topic, clicking anything on the players/clans page gives an error (players), a 404 (teams) or does nothing (sort players by)

EDIT: oh yea, I wanna b an official, that sounds like a nice tilte for me XD I havent that much lag (since I dont get any lag complains if I close all internet-sucking things), I think I will like to write reports about the matches I have seen, but I didnt know about #JJ2wc and I dont have mIRC at this pc at the moment, but thats easily changed.

[Vegito]

hmm to erase this useless topic, clicking anything on the players/clans page gives an error (players), a 404 (teams) or does nothing (sort players by)

EDIT: oh yea, I wanna b an official, that sounds like a nice tilte for me XD I havent that much lag (since I dont get any lag complains if I close all internet-sucking things), I think I will like to write reports about the matches I have seen, but I didnt know about #JJ2wc and I dont have mIRC at this pc at the moment, but thats easily changed.


I havent seen you hosting any 2v2 or 3v3 before though.
Have you got programs like Respawn, Controller, Cataclysm, and do you know how to work with them? :P

[Jerrythabest]

yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes:P

I have PC4, Cataclysm, Gamma, JazzAdv.. never mind, respawn, Seeker hole fix, EvilE, JJ2sst and a server cheating thingy made by Jam...

I promise I wont use JA, EvilE, JJ2sst, and the Jam thingy, and I know gamma and seeker hole fix work only for yourself. Good eh? I have all and I know all:P now say.. where did I get that mIRC from?

[cooba]

where did I get that mIRC from?...www.mirc.com?

[Vegito]

then go to Quakenet xD.
I wont explain how mIRC works because its too <s>useless</s> easy ;P

[Grytolle]

I do care, SJ... Some levels in that map pool still do suck. I wouldn't care about those stupid levels if there was some time to train them though. And I am quite sure he stated that there would a much longer period of time before this, Enig. And SuperJazz, for fun doesn't mean I wanna play on boring levels or levels I don't know - that's not fun to me atleast. Why do we have such a big mappool for CTF but not for TB anyways?

[Yasco]

And SuperJazz, for fun doesn't mean I wanna play on boring levels or levels I don't know - that's not fun to me atleast.


Except you and the other CCers trained those levels 23/7 a time ago.

[Jerrythabest]

yea, that is a very good question. I think they were just lazy and stopped at 10 TB levels.

[Vegito]

Except you and the other CCers trained those levels 23/7 a time ago.

You are SOOO wrong there.
I only saw most of the levels 2 or 3 times.
I think I never even played ANY 3v3 in most of them.

[R3ptile]

Why do we have such a big mappool for CTF but not for TB anyways?
Because TB is a totally new game type, that was never played before in any major tournament? :confused:

[Grytolle]

Some of them where so bad we just skipped them... ;p

[Superjazz]

lol

[Vegito]

so you* skipped them :P I think we should train all levels, not only the levels we like and hope we play in those =\

[Jerrythabest]

when will I get contacted about the first CTF match of RRA? First week has begun! Oh, yea, I wonder if RRB has a match planned already.

[Superjazz]

I think you could've made all the levels except nro.1 hidden from homecooked. Steals just useful space from that list unless there will be a patch for unlimited homecooked-list. Maybe the recent one had that but for me it just kept crashing when loading it, so I had to stick to 1.23.

Anyway I like the mappool a lot, thanks. ;)

[Vegito]

oh yeah, we'll see what happens, SJ.

Anyways, I hosted the first JJ2WC match from this year, I think.
<s> I wish it was my last </s>
A lot of things went wrong, espescially in the first round.
I couldn't even write a real match report anymore :|

Anyways, just a small match report.. :|

Round 1:
NaO Vs. FC (Northern Alternative Onslaught vs. Gayest Team Ever a.k.a. Frozen Carrots)

Gah, you know, this match already started messed up from the first place.
In the first place, red couldn't score at all, I had to fix that in the pregame already.
Second thing, I already got crashed in the pregame (when I was eating! >|)
Well finally, 15 minutes over time, the match actually started.
Many kills were made in the first 10 minutes (and if I have to believe all, I guess there were more than 10 3hk's in this game ;P) oh well.
Everything went ok (except for no respawn and laggy. what do you expect with 7 players ;P) till the 12th minute.
My screen froze - I couldnt do anything but rebooting my computer. yay.
After 4 minutes, everyone was back in my server again, and after some discussing about the score (which was 43-33 to NaO there) we started again.
Im not entirely sure what went wrong here myself, but everyone was ready, I restarted the game and said "Go" - even more people said go, but Sucer didn't seem to get it and screemed stop when FC killed 2 people.
I was stupid enough to restart the server for him why it should have been his problem (that he cant listen). but crap, I made a mistake and so Nunez got mad.

Then, in the 17th minute of the match, I got crashed (AGAIN!)
I really was afraid that Nunez wouldn't return or what ;P
After (yet again) some discussions about the score - Which I dont know anymore at that point :X - we finally were able to finish this game.
Round score: 50-40 to NaO
Only the FIRST round took 45 minutes thanks to 2 crashes mid game, and a few people got mad.
Nobody really wanted to play the second round anymore, I think, but.. we started the second round.
Nobody had noticed that Nunez went BRB either. So, when it was like 1-0/2-0 to NaO, I had to restart (so Nunez couldnt be mad about the Sucer part anymore either.) - This game went a lot smoother.. ..except for that I had to fly through the level a lot to make sure ammo kept respawning ;P..
This game, for a change, still had a lot of 3hk's, but at least people weren't annoyed anymore, and, only 1 crash occured. ;P
when it was 11-8 to FC, I had my final crash. Anyways, after everyone rejoined again, we could finally start again. still 17 minutes to go.
I finally opened WPE here, since nobody rejoined anymore, nor anybody talked anymore. Well, FC were leading with a difference of 10 points quite fast, but NaO managed that FC didn't really get a lead of more than 13 points. With a bit of complaining about no respawn and some 3hk's, this game really went a lot better than the first round. 20 seconds before the end, it was 88-86 to FC.
(Round score was 48-36 at that moment.)
Then, both Sperry and Nunez got killed. that gave 88-88.
3 seconds before the end, when DanYjel said GG, he also got killed.
That made the score 88-89 to NaO.

That was totally unexpected (to me.) since FC kinda deserved to win this thanks to their great second round (in which everyone could play more concentrated.)
We (the officials + admin) even considered playing this entire match again, because it was unfair to everyone thanks to so many crashes.. But we never talked about it again :P

A tip to people who like to host: bluh, get WPE ready, or host unlisted. -_-
I know what to do in the next match. :| (To make it less laggy and make sure it wont crash again.. :-P - why is the first match always going wrong..?)

GG teams, you really played nice, I myself think that FC was better, because in the second round, you could really see who played the best when they were concentrated.. this time, FC was unlucky, next time maybe NaO. ;P

Next match report will be without crashes, and more with timings + scores and so on. heh ;P
I couldn't even handle the first round myself. G_G

[Grytolle]

First, good game, good job and congratulations to NaO for winning – I, for one, sure didn’t expect it.

In order for this tournament to go more smoothly from now on – there are a few measures you can take. Most of them concerns security, but the one I want to address first is just about simplicity for the host. PC4PB2 is a good tool, but it lacks a function we could really use – the ability for the host to edit scores. I am sure Overlord wouldn’t mind putting this function into a new version, but until he does, you can use this (http://www.freewebs.com/grytolle/jazz2stuff/ctfscorebeta.zip) (it works, but it’s ugly, atleast it works if your jazz2-executive is named “jazz2-exe”). It allows you to change CTF-scores as you please. Note that it might look weird for the clients, since their score won’t immediately be updated when you edit it, they will, however, see the correct score the next time a score is made, or if they rejoin. This could be useful if you for some reason crash, or need to rehost. I don’t really need to explain why it’s useful to have this ability, do I?

What you can do to prevent crashes.
Get an easy-to-remember IP-address and host unlisted. Sure, the players could remember a bunch of numbers, but it sure is easier to remember something like “grytolle.ath.cx”. The way to host unlisted is to host with the Local TCP/IP-alternative in jazz2 – this will not allow you to set a password though, and there isn’t much reason to, but if you for some reason do want to do that, any version of Project Controller 4 would do the trick. A good site do get an “easy IP” is DynDNS (http://www.dyndns.com/
). Recommended.
<br>
Use WPE to protect your server. If you do this, you can keep hosting listed, which as a matter of fact is easier for everyone. The old filter that Nimmy and Overlord has released does protect you from ASD-attacks, but it isn’t fool proof, due to certain lameness in its design. As there is “better” ways of crashing than with ASD, and I have been exposed to those numerous times, I made an, if not water-proof, atleast far more secure filter. What it does is blocking all packets that have anything to do with joining – obviously, this could be a problem since no one can join, but if you enable it once everyone are in server, it should be no problem. Make sure that you enable all three filters that have anything to do with joining (called 'no join', no 'join2' and 'no join3' or something like that). Before everyone have joined, you could still have use for the old filters that atleast protect you from ASD, so they are included in the filter-file too.

To get WPE, click here (http://www.nimmy-online.com/jj2networkfilter/WpePro.zip).
To get information on how to use WPE, click here (http://www.nimmy-online.com/jj2networkfilter/guide/index.htm).
To download the JJ2-filter I made, click here (http://www.freewebs.com/grytolle/jazz2stuff/Grys_JJ2_Filter.flt).
If you hate me, or for some other reason would prefer the old filter, get it here (http://www.nimmy-online.com/jj2networkfilter/JJ2%20Filter%20v0.2.flt). Recommended.
<br>
You can use the JJ2 Network Blocker. Information here ( http://www.nimmy-online.com/jj2networkfilter/). Download it here (http://www.nimmy-online.com/jj2networkfilter/peer.zip). Not that good since there is no up to date list that blocks all crashers’ IPs. Not really recommended.


It would also be good if fixes of Jj2 that has been made got released soon, so the jj2-games can be more fair. *cough red brackets* Sorry for keeping to go on about that.

In order to catch crashers in the act, it's a good idea to record the packets with WPE. Only record "Receive", else your log will be way too big, and I haven't seen any other way of crashing than via packets sent over TCP. Make sure to save your logs with IPs shown.

It would also be preferred if one official hosted the pregame, and another one hosted the actual game-server, since the hackers could easily get the IP during pregame otherwise. This won't be a concern if you both host unlisted and use WPE though.

[R3ptile]

Good effort, Gry.

[Vegito]

I knew most of it, but I did not have the time for it because I got crashed too soon + complain complain talk talk in the first round:P

[Sucer]

That was totally unexpected (to me.) since FC kinda deserved to win this thanks to their great second round (in which everyone could play more concentrated.)
We (the officials + admin) even considered playing this entire match again, because it was unfair to everyone thanks to so many crashes.. But we never talked about it again :P

I seriously, no offence, think that the match was unfair to us. The beginning of the second round went very badly for us, becouse non of the PU's were respawning, and happy and Emp played too risky. (sorry I don't blame myself, maybe I'm selfish or something)
Then after I whined a lot about the respawning of Seek PU to Vegito, he did something and all Pu's suddendly started to respawn to us. Also the airhit problem got fixed and the rest of the second round went smoothly. 20 seconds before the end Happy killed Nunez and 10 or 5 seconds before the end Happy shouted: e1, e1! and I went RF'ing and killed a few people. That settled a neat and VERY close victory 88-89 to us.

Sorry to whine about this, (I know we agreed it to be 33-43) but I think we were leading a bit more. Blaah anyway it was a lucky match for us. We beat a legendary team and I know you all think it must have been luck, but we really rule!

HAHA:P sorry. But had to post this.

[Vegito]

not very legendary, but you know..
I only shot the pu's once, and took some ammo midgame.
I wonder how that could solve all problems.. ;p

but indeed, since your team didnt capture the flag a lot (6 times in the whole game) it was obvious that you were lagging too.
And I really am sure about that 43-33 part, although I should have write it down, but you know, it was the first time EVER I hosted such a game. ;P
I know what to do next time -_-

[Sucer]

But the last score I saw was something about 31-46 to us +the +scores. (one for us and four for them)
Anyway we agreed it to be that way so no complaining about it anymore.
Is the crasher already hunted down and banned and executed?

[Grytolle]

It sux that my interent was messed up last night. Else I would have recorded the game and helped Veg keeping things smooth.

Content edit, please don't avoid the filter.
Bobby

[Jerrythabest]

pageclaim!

Veg, get your 1001 filters ready, host unlisted and have all possible tools running! Mayb ask jam for his tools, I dunno if I know all of them but he made quite some useful tools.

[Grytolle]

Not really, from what I have seen. His spectating tool we did a few nights ago together is quite nice, though. It seems that his knowledge of packets is a bit limited, however.

[Vegito]

I know how to protect my server, Jerry.
Now give me the time to actually protect it and everything should be fine ;Z

[Sucer]

Yeasterday we were already 30 mins late from the shcedule, so I fully understand...

[Jerrythabest]

I don twant my match to be messy:P Its postponed already

[Vegito]

Yeasterday we were already 30 mins late from the shcedule, so I fully understand...
Only round 1 took about 45 minutes because of crashes and people kept talking ;P

[Sucer]

And people kept going to toilet without a warning and the game was continued twice while a player was away.

[Jerrythabest]

mayb they should buy a laptop and play on the toilet, then they dont have to be away when they have to do stuff:)

[Rabbirrun!]

Next time im in..:D mede nederlander :P

[Jerrythabest]

poor you you just missed this great tournament!

hoi NLer:) welkom op J2O:P

[Jerrythabest]

Just to let everyone know:


Date..Mode..Opponent............................GM T Time
RRA
......CTF...Team Belgium........................Postponed
Sa18..CTF...Sayeret Kofim.......................11:00
......TB....Gorus with eight-dimensional Rings..Postponed

RRB
......CTF...Northern Alternative Onslaught......Unknown
......TB....Team ^^.............................Unknown
See the suckyness of WC3's time planning. Everyone wants all the matches on Sa18.

[Vegito]

That shouldn't be a problem though, Jerry. ;p

[Nielsje]

Instead of discussing stuff on the JJ2WC CuteNews comments, I'll recommend to use the NEW FORUMS instead:

http://jj2wc.ncmv.net/forum

Have fun :)

[Jerrythabest]

what is our level we play in in 50 minutes god(-)!! Wake up you foos!!!