Hey, it's a wishlist, so I figure, why not? Even if I know that my desire's pretty outlandish. ;-)
My basic wish is this :
I wish that there were more maps in the Mains, with much more varied terrain and objects. In other words, I would love a way to be able to have some things like custom objects, as well as custom sunrises and sunsets (we already know, no night, so that's out of the conversation here). We know folks like Greebo and Ranger can make some very good looking and entertaining maps.
However, I know that there are a few problems with this wish, including but not limited to :
A) Strain on HTC's servers for each map download
B) Length of waiting on downloads from the client side
C) Deisre to consistantly only have "quality" maps
D) Need to have maps completely and fully tested
E) Need for maps to NOT impact framerates beyond the current MA standard
I've thought of some possibilities for these problems that may help.
#1. To assist in parts C, D, and E, create a new LW MA arena ONLY FOR NEW MAPS and label it Main Arena BETA. This arena could be used to test new maps as well as any new ideas that HTC may wish to try but does not fit for WWI. Set a HARD CAP on this arena to something fairly low like 150, make a MOTD poll allowing users to vote on whether or not the map is enjoyed, and if they've found any problems, and also include in the MOTD a string of reminders that anything found in the arena is BETA. This arena would be unscored and there would be no squadron creation. Maps would rotate at 1x per week.
#2. Create a new e-mail address specifically for the new maps for all input on the new map. This unfortunately will include Skuzzy's workload. Sorry =(
#3. Here's probably the biggest difficulty code wise that would help A and B... Currently it appears all terrain downloads are done directly from Hitech's servers, and download over my 10Mb connection at a paltry 33kb! That's pathetic modem speeds in the age of broadband! I should be able to download a 10MB terrain file in less than 10 seconds, yet, it's taking me over 4 minutes to download current 3-4MB terrain files because of the poor download speeds. By integrating/implementing a bittorrent style system for all skin and terrain downloads, not only would download speeds be drastically increased, but MANY of us on high speed connections have bandwidth to spare and that extra bandwidth would help take a little pressure off of HTC's servers themselves.
As I said, I know this is kind of "pipe dream" type stuff, but I would love to see maps like Ranger's cove and Greebo's new MA map so bad that I am just adding my "wish".
