9balls Virtual Pool 3DL and Round Robin Site ©

Thats the name of the newly formed Tiger Woods Online Virtual Poolers Group.

My online golfers name is WanLangPutt and anyone who has the Beta TigerWoods online golf game can search for  that group and join it.

Gimme a shout if you want a game.

Chocky has set  the highest VP3 tournament break and did it in magnificent style with a maximum 147 break in his second round  match of this years Virtual World Snooker Championships 2009  against srwest.

It now ties the record as the hignest break in online Snooker for Vp3  (Glen made a 147 in a friendly match against B11TME which is verified)and also for this tournament.

Congratulations to Chocky on a fantastic acheivement and   a terrific standard of play.

Here is a screenshot  of the moment and it sets Chocky into the record books...  

Now sitting on the sidelines and trying to be objective on this  is quite difficult but ill say it as I see it

To run one event in the virtual pool 3 lobby it has taken 4 people.

Its  run using a system that might be good for other games on gamespy but is not very usueful and player friendly in the vp3 lobby.at times in the lobby there is some confusion to say the least as to what is actually going on.

Now the one guy thats present in the lobby is the Admin who his job at the end of the day is to award the VIP status to whoever won the tourney. Thats mainly what hes there for as the Wizzes cant do that,they dont have access to the gamepy software that the Admin has.

Perhaps you guys in the lobby could be asking yourselves this.Why cant a more experienced TD for vp3 actually run an event using our own tourney system which is much more in line with what the players are familiar with?

The Admin guy can still make himself available to deal with the prize and VIP staus  can be administered when required and to whoever wins the event.Doesnt that seem a whole lot better organised and smoother?

The Wizzes in the mean time avail  their sevices to games that are more suitable for their way of running things and leave events to the proper people in the vp3 lobby that can run it easier

Celeris wont be drawn on what the charges for VP4 will be,although it may well be along the lines of what Id thought myself.

Steve Chaplins comment on the matter

" I do not want to discuss this right now as is has not been decided. All I know is there will be a minimal charge, probably yearly, and then there will be charges for other premium services."

Now your guess is as good as mine as to what the Pemium services will be and what your likely to gain from paying for them

Pricing structure and what that will be for VP4 has not been set out yet and thats probobly some ways away yet.

As this is quite a bold move on Celeris part in going it alone without Gamespy a lot more user input will be requested and that will be done through the Celeris forum,so expect further updates soon and perhaps more frequent.

Further info on the server and manangement of the lobby and Tournaments and who will run them will become clearer, nearer the time again along way away yet.

For those of you who are not in the habit of using the forum,any updates from Steve Chaplin I will post on my site and post them in the lobby to give you the opportunity to see them for yourselves.

Sources in contact with Steve Chaplin(ie Ladyhwk) will keep me up to  date with any info she can get as soon as Steve makes it available

Thats whats been confirmed from Steve Chaplin that you ll have to pay to play VP4.

What information as to how much and how often has not been made clear,although it would be safe to assume some sort of membership system will be in place.

Will it be online only? or will you be able to buy the game and simply play your mates online through LAN...we dont know

This could prolong the life of vp3 simply by keeping those that never bought the game and wont pay for games all in the one placein the gamespy arcade lobby.

Whether the game download will be free we havent heard yet,but the facility to play on the VP4 server will be at a  price.

So you may well be looking at a yearly fee subject to inflation it will increase,you may also look at it dropping as maybe people will not take up the offer and leave it alone and Celeris struggle to get customers.

What Celeris have now is a positive way of prolonging the life of the viritual pool series and charging to play on their server is not a bad thing as I would gladly pay,but its fine line between success and failure and so it has to be monitored very carefully how theyre going to sell this to you the public.Afterall they simply cant rely on people telling people about the new game in the gamespy lobby,the slow demise of virtual pool 3 and the DL version is proof of that....we simply dont get the numbers in gamespy as we ahould and although thats partly due to the router set up issues its also been poor marketing stategy by Celeris if they admit that.

Virtual Pool 4 will live or die in a very crowded market by making itself known to people,by competing with all these other free billiard games online that have cash prizes....how is Celeris going to combat this?

We as players already know its the best game,but its never been the best managed and promoted and its been like flogging a dead horse for the last few years as people have gone away and moved onto better places.

So the coming months are going to be very interesting let alone very important and for our own interest one of the most imnportant changes to how we play online.

This is now the most recent version of the programme with a few additional tweaks

Polo has made a handy little programme which as long as you play vp3 in desktop window mode you can watch a streaming game of football like im doing and you can also see when its your turn to play  cos vp3 doesnt freeze up.The programme will overlap your game till its your turn to play then you can shrink it to your desktop.

If you would like to try the programme   you can download it from here  PoloMaxWeb.rar

This is from his updated version 2,as you can see you can now watch up to 4 different streams and also make the streams transparent so you can see the topcorner pocket behind it

Just a reminder to start getting your practice in for the Virtual World Snooker Championship of 2010.

2009  was a record breaking year on two accounts,firstly we had the record amount of centuries for the tournament of 26,which broke the previous record of 2008 of 19.

The second and outstanding record,we had our first 147 of the Championships by Chocky,

All info is on my site just click the link above

Remember sign ups will open 31st Januaury and close April 17th or sooner if the total sign up limit is reached which is 64

"Santa is a slave driver has me working 60 hours a week on VP4, unfortunately won't be in your stocking this Xmas."

Thats inside info from Steve Chaplin.....says hes very busy on VP4 and all so far thats been said from him in an email to Debs...not much to go on.but hopefully if hes working the hours he says he is.then we cant complain that not much is being done or we arent hearing much.

I have added a new links page to have some useful links,but to have them all on the one page instead of running around looking foe them elsewhere.

If you have any suggestions for handy links please let me know

NEW LINKS PAGE HERE

Tournament Director Application

In order to complete this application, please copy and paste it into an email and complete the questions in the email. Once complete, please forward to: Ladyhwk@kc.rr.com

The information that you give here is considered to be "STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL" and therefore it will NOT be given to anyone outside of VPHQ staff  for any reason.

1. Your full name:
2. Your primary email address: (No yahoo or hotmail please)
3. Age:
4. Country and time zone:
5. Do you have a messenger you use such as MSN, AIM or Yahoo?  If so, what is your name/number for this?
6.How long have you played in Gamespy? And please list ALL the screen names you have played under.
7. Have you ever hosted Pool tournaments before? If so… when and where? (please give details)
8.What are the 3 main reasons you would like to be an VPHQ Tournament Director?
9. Why do you feel that you would be a good tournament host?
10. What do you think you will get in return from hosting tournaments?
11.How would your closest friends describe your personality?
12.What do YOU feel is your strongest personality trait?
13.Name 3 persons in Gamespy Virtual Pool that would recommend you for this position.
14. What days and times will you be available to host tournaments?
15. What suggestions can you offer right now that would make tournament play more fun for the players?
16. As a "VIP", we are required to conduct ourselves in an fair, honest and impartial manner towards all players, do you feel that you can achieve this?
17.As we also represent Gamespy as VIPs, do you have a problem helping anyone who has a problem with the game?
18. What is "common sense"?
19. If you are hosting and two players come out of a match each claiming the win, how would you handle this? (please explain in detail)
20. If you are in the middle of a tournament and players start telling you that VPHQ sucks, your tournaments suck and you suck, how would you handle this?
21. What time zone would you primarily host tournaments for?
22. Do you have any comments or suggestions that you would like to make at this time?

All new Tournament Directors will be expected to prove themselves as fair, dependable hosts for several weeks before VIP status will be requested. 

Thank you for applying for a position as Tournament Director with VPHQ.

VPHQ Admin.

Polomint who is one of VPHQ Tournament Directors has developed a small programme in his efforts to get those of us who have Routers and cannot get Virtual Pool 3DL to run on Gamespy.

The major problem for a lot of people who no doubt have purchased Vp3 in the past and come to the Gamespy Lobby,is that they cannot get Virtual Pool 3 to run due to the fact that they have to manually open ports in their router in order to let the game run.

This has to be the most annoying thing about making a purchase of the VP3DL version....you buy it,you install it...you play offline no problem at all and then when you try to join the online community you find your stumped by the fact that you need a degree in routers in order to try and get the game working.

Now I can speak personally of the problems with routers as I have a BT Hub which only through help from the lobby I got the game working through my router.

Many people like myself who are total Router novices need a way of sorting this out.

Virtual Pool 3DL needs specific ports opened in your router in order to work through Gamespy and  unless you understand the terminology involved and even though you can look at instructions online about your router,it is for most people a total confusing thing to try and mess with a router for fear of not being able to get online or causing major problems when your messing with something you know very little about.

I would not be suggesting this programme without having done a full test on it myself.

However.....there are some things you should be aware of prior or downloading this programme.

If like my router,you can create a backup of the configuration of your router....YOU SHOULD DO SO PRIOR TO TRYING THIS PROGRAMME.By doing so you will have saved the initial settings of your router as it was set when you first installed it...IE   YOU WILL BE ABLE TO USE YOUR BACKUP TO RESET YOUR ROUTER. 

So first thing I did was to reset my router to factory settings in order to try Polomints programme,so this I did but only after having already downloaded his programme to my desktop.

Then I followed the instructions on Polomints webpage and the programme opened up and did what it said it would do....it confirmed "PORTS OPENED"

So then after that,there was only one thing to try.....try and create a VP3DL game room......I did and it worked and you can see your room listed in the lobby.

So the last thing to do after that is......to try and join a room.....this I did and YES    it worked also.

In conclusion,If this programme can do what it says it does for many more people for Virtual Pool 3DL players,then I can only recommend it to as a major source of help to many potential players online. 

At the moment this remains a BETA version please use it at your own risk and neither Polomint,Celeris nor me are liable or responsible.....if it totally fecks your router up. 

It didnt do it to me.....so what do you think?

yOU CAN FIND THE LINK BELOW TO POLOMINTS ROUTER PROGRAMME.PLEASE READ DISCLAIMER, AND AGREE TO STATEMENT PRIOR TO USING PROGRAMME. 

POLOMINTS ROUTER PORTS PROGRAMME PAGE

             OUR OWN VP3 ROOM ON TEAMSPEAK 

RunoutRob has mangeed to fix it so that when you now join Teamspeak he can get you registered and then allow you to register to our own VP3 room rather than sitting in the main lobby on the server.

You will need to join teampeak whenever Rob is in the VP3 lobby and ask him to allow you to register to the VP3 server.

Once you have done that then you are free to meet up with your fellow VP3 players in our own room.

If you are still having difficulty then if you download TEAMVIEWER for this link TEAMVIEWER then you can allow someone to help you with your registration if your having difficulty.It allows someone to access your desktop and  guide you through the correct process.(Choose customer module to download teamviewer)

*****There are now 5 individual VP3 rooms on Teamspeak so that you and your opponents can join and play VP3 whilst you chat******

Hopefully this is one way of enhancing online play and making gameplay more enjoyable.

If your not sure just ask those who are using teamspeak at he moment and get their opinions.

Have you ever thought of what its like to actually talk to some of the crazy people you meet in the Virtual Pool3DL  lobby?

Well now you can and all you need is a Mic(preferably a headset)and then you need the teamspeak Client software so you can communicate.TEAMSPEAK GET IT HERE

Then once you got that installed you need to start teamspeak and  go to quick connect and put in this IP address

There is now a section on the VPHQ forum dedicated to Polomints Router fix programme,you can find it here Polomint's Router Programme

If you are experiencing problems with your router and getting your version of VP3DL working,then it might be worth trying it out.If you have anything you wish to commernt on or suggestions please feel free to post them here.

Heres what Steve Chaplin had to say about Polomints handywork

Steve Chaplin

"polomint,
Thanks for putting this together.

I'm not a big fan of uPnP, it has security issues and I doubt it will be as well supported in the future. But for how with XP, you have a solution that should get more people running.

I'm also not a big fan of using Windows Firewall unless your on a lan and need protection from users on the lan. A properly setup router/firewall should be sufficient.

polomint,
I would change the wording on your site for "firewall" to "windows firewall" as that was initially confusing to me as I think of most home routers as firewalls too. When you think the port opening software is sufficiently tested please send me a link and I will incorporate into the VP3 install."

I sent an email to Steve Chaplin to ask him a couple of things about somehow amalgamating a VPHQ Tourney system along with Celeris at some point in the future.I also explained the problem we have each year in actually gathering funds for the system and if he had any news or Info on VP GOLD.

Here is Steves response.

Its often been thought that only VIP'D VPHQ Tournament Directors have the sole rights to run  tournaments for Virtual Pool 3.

This in actual fact couldnt be further from the truth.Gamespy actively encourages you to get involved and organise your own thing,should you want to do an event or tournament or run your own ladder,you most certainly dont need to be a tournament director to do so.

All you have to make sure is that your event etc is run within the gamespy rules and guidleines that have been set out for you.

So there is no excuse,if you want to do something go ahead and do it, 

Heres Gamespy's guide to running your own tourneys,ladders or events Guidelines for Tournaments / Ladders / Leagues in GameSpy Arcade