The "How To popular MTA Server"

[Zango]

Examples of bad server names:

Instead of labeling your server in a 'foreign' language, you should include a tag eg. [ Arabic only / كون ارابيسك ]

While the MTA browser would benefit from a "server language" tag for filtering these out, MTA is used widely by Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, German and English people.

Until L10n is implemented, English is the only language for the interface and ties the community together. Consider the majority of the players don't even understand the alphabet used.

The servers list is incredibly crammed as it is.

Comprehensibility and message

What do you want to tell the world about your server on one line?

The people who frequented your server before it went offline can most likely deduce that "it's back", if it's online.

Extensive use of symbols is not good practice neither.

There is very little margin between server listings in the browser. Symbols and other FX only reduces the readability.

A better way to display above server

SMT #2 DD Only  |  www.mtasa.cz  |  [EN CZ SK PL] 

Unlike other multiplayer games it's pretty much only the "Name", "Players" and "Ping" columns which are effectively used.

The "Gamemode" column would correspond to something like the "Map" column in Counter Strike. However there is no useful information to draw from this tag.

Examples are "MTA:SA" "play" "GangsWar v3.7" "RPG v1.2 Beta" "Roleplay" "DayZ" "Everything" "DD" "U.S Car Mods" "GTA4"

It's not used consistently and is as such useless. "Race" "Roleplay" "Freeroam" "Deathmatch" would be good tags for this, but majority of servers employ a kind of fused gameplay with elements from all traditional gamemodes. MTA is incredibly versatile and many servers float together. Perhaps a "theme" would be better for the job. "Realism", "Vehicles", "Zombies", etc.

The search feature of the browser only searches in the "Name" rows as well.

With all this great knowledge we just gained, we know a good server name contains

What (short) theme, gamemode or style describes your server

Unique name and/or domain

Air

Similarly a server name should not contain

"24/7"

Version of MTA

Any characters outside below characterset ABSOLUTELY PROHIBITED

THE characterset for MTA server names

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 
1234567890 
. , ' `´ * ^ ~ / [ ] \ ( ) # | - _ % & { } : ; 

Examples of good server names that meet the above requirements

tl;dr

Concise, no unnecessary symbols, "Gamemode" tag is useless.

Your interface is very important. Please consider the following.

Only you understand how your server works

A new player on your server is only barely accustomed to basic server binds F9 (help menu) F11 (map) and commands like /login and /register

If you don't introduce people to your server, they will most likely leave.

This spawn screen on "FFS Gaming" is self-explanatory

Intuitive, clean and easy.

If you don't use a similar solution, you must instruct the user by screen dialogues or a help page.

An example of a bad "help" page:

Crammed and annoying.

Revolutionary design techniques for a good interface

• Sorting data for display (eg. alphabetically)
  
• Color combinations
  
• Air between text and border

The following are examples of good GUI

"FFS gaming" help window and bottom HUD

Consistent use of colors

SAUR

GTO (Grand Theft Online) HUD

[Woovie said it sucked]

A rule of thumb is to keep your server's total necessary download below 15MB.

With this size and the "world average" Internet speed it will take, averagely, just under a minute.

Additional data you can transfer to the client using fetchRemote, triggerServerEvent and the future downloadFile.

Long downloads will keep impatient players away.

Showcase:

MTA is open source

A considerable amount of the players cannot understand English

Copying the entire concept and gameplay off another server won't work

Please reply if you have any suggestions for the recipe.

Edited October 20, 2013 by Guest

[Kenix]

You're right in everything. Very useful for almost server developers/owners.

[Cheetah]

You hit the nail on its head right there!!

Nice "tutorial" if you can say that

[qaisjp]

nice one zango

[xTravax]

Wtf did you post this first picture?

Vry script much player

[HunT]

Well

Sure the server need a . . . good and new scripts - free lag - and organization.

Organization example : Scripters - PhotoShopers - Mappers - Web Master - Youtubers

Anyway i remember my server race in the 2009 with pathetic scripts and more shitt.

The first two months max 5/32 player online,but after 6/7 months the server everytime full 32/32.

Position 18

[qaisjp]

the fact it still has dkr means its living from an old age. show it from the server browser.

[Infinate]

Anyway i remember my server race in the 2009 with pathetic scripts and more :~.

The first two months max 5/32 player online,but after 6/7 months the server everytime full 32/32.

my server race in the 2009

the fact it still has dkr means its living from an old age. show it from the server browser.

Yeah.... You might want to read before you actually post.

[asd123]

Looks interesting. This will help me for sure

[qaisjp]

Yeah.... You might want to read before you actually post.

Calm down... no need to get angry for something so trivial.

[Woovie]

You state that this is a good design

The icons being on the left 'and' right of the bar give the impression of either they both relate, or you can't immediately sell which relates. That's a bit of a bugger.

[qaisjp]

You state that this is a good design

The icons being on the left 'and' right of the bar give the impression of either they both relate, or you can't immediately sell which relates. That's a bit of a bugger.

also bad aligning of location

[Zango]

About the best I could find haha

It makes no sense, you're right, but at first glance it looked good. It was mostly to emphasize on the stuff with design coherency (colors).

Removed it, please edit the post with a better example or reply. Added an example of a fabulous 820MB of download as well.

[Woovie]

Removed it, please edit the post with a better example or reply. Added an example of a fabulous 820MB of download as well.

Let me guess, KSA drift with 100 car models, half of which overlap each other on load?

[Zango]

I usually don't enter the hardcore tokyo drift servers in fear that my PC collapses...

Specific picture is from a roleplaying server I think.

It's something to reflect on as a community though. If you go in the shoes of a new player you end up downloading 2GB of shit from the first 20 servers.

[qaisjp]

im not downloading 1gb.

especially through the current downloading methods

[Zango]

Joining the twenty most popular servers (sorted by playercount) I had to download 3,400MB

One of the servers, not surprisingly Russian, had an astonishing 1.2GB of download on it's own.

Not everyone is running on fiber yet and there's still a lot of people who are restricted by a monthly quote.

I understand the importance of transferring models for your map, but complete visual modifications can be transferred optionally in-game.

Functionality has been implemented to assist this issue, as you can prioritise the bandwidth spend transferring data in events (triggerLatentServerEvent)

[qaisjp]

dont silently download models too. people will hate you.

[Spajk]

dont silently download models too. people will hate you.

They wont know it, models magicly appeared >