My ASUS VG236HE (no longer available?) has been pretty much perfect for the last year. All I did was turn the brightness to 50% and the contrast to 75% and it got rid of the overly saturated colors. I use an AMD HD 7950 (previously an HD 6950 when I got the monitor) and AMD chipsets have been known for many years to have warmer image quality out of the box. NVIDIA chipsets tend to have less saturation out of the box and need a little saturation boost to be more comparable, so perhaps that is what causes people to say that ASUS monitors look disgusting.

All TN panels suck, but my VG236HE believe it or not is probably the best looking one I have owned color-wise. Can't wait until we are able to have 2560x1440 IPS monitors that can do at least 85-120Hz, but NVIDIA cards have a limitation for DL-DVI at least that limits you to 2560x1440 @ 82-84Hz.

MGE-only servers have the same spawn issue, unrelated to SOAP. You're right about SOAP disabling itself on non-SOAP maps, and that's because the SOAP plugin sets itself into a fail state when no spawns for the given map are available, which is then logged in the SM error logs every time an unsupported map is loaded.

Alright, I'll try turning HDR off when I have some time to play. I was under the impression that with all the particles, items and crap added to the game over the years, along with a DX9 game engine with sort of "hacked in" multithreading just added too much overhead and there is too much frame latency in heavy battles, but I guess I might be wrong. Funny how the original recommended CPU was a P4 3.0GHz, but I bet you can't even get 20 FPS with one of those even with just a few players on a server nowadays.

The bug always spawns the player at (0,0,0) and seems to affect once working MGE V7 servers as well (I don't know about RUGC or MGE IT though). I am the developer of the MGE V8 Betas and none of the original arenas were moved or deleted in order to retain compatibility with the original spawns (I want the map to replace V7 some day as I designed it to fix V7 bugs while adding more arenas for people to play on). :)

What dx9 configs are you using? My stock game goes down to 80-100 FPS with a 3770K @ 4.3GHz/1.175v w/ HT enabled, 16GB DDR3-2133 CL11 and an HD 7950 @ 1150/1500. I tried Chris' quality configs before and they seemed to make zero difference in my framerate. I play at 1080p/120Hz VSYNC with maximum video settings except for motion blur.

It appears that you are running SOAP on your server simultaneously, and it's just reporting an error because there aren't spawns for the SOAP plugin when you run MGE maps.

I managed to find this error today in my logs:
L 02/04/2013 - 16:52:54: [mgemod.smx] trace error. victim Valor(18)
L 02/04/2013 - 16:52:56: [mgemod.smx] trace error. victim Juanita Milllos Baby(5)
L 02/04/2013 - 16:52:57: [mgemod.smx] trace error. victim Valor(18)

Already talked with Lange this afternoon about it, and the error disappeared when I re-compiled the plugin against the latest SourceMod snapshot, but the bug is still present. No idea if it's something in SourceMod or the game itself as the "popular" MGE servers still run the original mandatory SM 1.5.0 hg3717/3718 snapshots while my servers run hg3761. Also, I noticed that people playing bball were seemingly unaffected (watched a pair of sollys for like 15 minutes and they were respawning normally from what I saw).

Hopefully we can resolve the problem soon, but until then, clueless people are probably going to blame my beta MGE V8 map or my servers, judging by the amount of "f!@k this broken server" BS I see in my HLStatsX chat logs. http://stats.trashedgamers.org/hlstats.php?mode=chat&game=tf2other&server_id=0&filter=fuck

Well guys, I might have found the MGEMod error that Lange was looking for. I never saw it in my logs until I upgraded my Beta MGE server from SM 1.5.0 hg3718 to the latest 3761 snapshot. My server is now logging "trace errors," which Lange told me could be behind the spawn problems. He said that the plugin runs a ray trace when players spawn, and that the spawn code will fail in some way when it errors out randomly. Hopefully the problem isn't too difficult to fix and I anticipate a new plugin version likely being released soon.

MGE Training V8 Beta4 Bugfix A has just been released in post #133 above. My beta server will switch from Beta4 to Beta4A whenever it empties out tonight or in the morning. Thank you for your patience. :)

MGE Training V8 Beta4 with spawns (MGEMod 1.0.5 included as it's needed for V8 Beta3 and above).
BETA4A will be out in a few minutes to resolve the Badlands Mid choke oversight.

Changes from Beta3:
-Removed Duel arena, seemed rather useless in hindsight.
-Added another Turris arena, and conjoined the two Turris arenas to get under the Hammer brush limit (but don't worry, they are completely sealed off from each other). One is set to default Ammomod settings and the other is set to default Endif settings.
-Tweaked player clip on the logs around the capture area on Granary Middle as a user reported getting stuck in some spots. You should be able to walk onto the point over the logs without jumping, just like the vanilla Granary.
-Added 4 more spawns on Trainyard on the "brick ring" area to hopefully improve it a bit.

I had to make this using my final Beta2 VMF and a decompiled Beta3 BSP, as I lost the Beta3 VMF in a storage drive incident. I just realized while writing this that it means I lost the changes I made to the Badlands Middle chokes, so they are solid again in Beta4. I apologize for the problem and will release a Beta4a bugfix release soon with non-solid Badlnds chokes and with other fixes if other map problems show up too.

Thank you for playing MGE and as usual, let me know what you think about the map!

V8 Beta4 bugfix release A (resolves Badlands choke issue I remembered): https://dl.dropbox.com/u/53256537/MGE_V8_BETA4A_%2B_MGEMod105_2_3_2013.zip

I run the TrashedGamers community servers and acknowledge the issues. A few other people earlier in the thread said they were encountering the same issues as well, and Lange doesn't know what could be causing it either. Haven't touched the V7 server since November before updating to MGEMod 1.0.5 this week, and even then I still haven't changed the spawns or anything. I'm wondering if the Christmas update did something as I believe that needed new SourceMod snapshots if I remember, and people started complaining around early January when I first joined the forums. That server is running a newer snapshot and the V8 server is still running an older snapshot, and both servers are having the same issue apparently. I'd like to hear from other server ops to see if they are frequently encountering the same issue.

I should have Beta4 ready by tonight, after I finish up a few things and perform basic testing of the spawns. Because I lost the original V8 Beta3 source file a month ago due to my SSD erasing itself (ironically, the SSD still works fine to this day), I had to take a final V8 Beta2 source file and patch in the decompiled Beta3's Gravelpit, Turris, Trainyard and credits room.

The major change with this version (which I hope a majority of MGE players agree with) is the removal of Duel (which to me seemed to be a somewhat pointless arena after the fact) and the addition of a second Turris arena. One arena has the default Ammomod settings and the other has default Endif settings, currently. In order to fit within the limits for brush sides, I worked some magic for a couple hours and fused the two Turris arenas together, sharing most of the assets between them like the ceiling, walls, etc. by stretching their lengths to cover both arenas. Both Turris arenas are in the same skybox, but a skybox brush runs through the middle where they are conjoined, so from the inside, it appears that they are completely separate arenas. Since they are properly aligned, all I had to do spawn wise was offset the Y value by ~1300 hammer units on each spawn point.

I'll put up a Dropbox link once I believe I am finished with this version.

I've owned an ASUS VG236HE for just over a year (purchased for $329 on Newegg), and it is by far the best non-IPS LCD monitor I have used. Mine appears to be discontinued since it's an older model with CCFL backlighting that consumes a ton of energy, but I'm pleased with the nice, smooth colors and response time. It's nice to see even better models being released and with new features like Lightboost that can reduce motion blur.

Coding support for 2v2 would be up to Lange to consider. I'm just the freelance mapper for MGE V8.

***

Anyway, here's a question I should ask for the continuation of map development, since nobody seems to have made me aware of any real problems besides spawns or arena settings and not physical map problems or exploits.

Should I:
a)Remove Duel, copy Turris and set one Turris arena to Endif and the other to Ammomod.
b)Keep Duel and the single Turris arena, but try to do something different with Duel like more spawns, gates or different settings, and change Turris to different settings.
c)Something else (please explain in detail). Do not ask me to remove any existing arenas (besides possibly changing the newest three) as I have already explained why in a previous post on this thread. :)

Keep in mind that my map cannot please everyone. Some players are bound to hate <insert arena name here> for whatever reason, and I doubt I can come up with a map where 100% of players like 100% of the arenas. Remember to provide detailed, constructive reasoning as to why something should be changed or done better so that I can make changes that a majority of players will agree with. Bear with me because admittedly, I don't really play MGE or competitively even (I'm literally out of my house from like 7:30 AM to 9-10PM during the week) and I am working on this on some weekends if I can, which is why I'm here on these forums for feedback from MGE/competitive players. My goal is to improve MGE for everyone, not just on my servers. I've enjoyed learning about mapping with the MGE V8 project. :)

I can probably take a look at the spawns sometime this weekend. I wonder if something such as the minimum distance is a problem which causes the function that respawns you to fail once and send you to the map's origin.

As for Turris, I could certainly scrap Duel and put another copy of Turris in there with different settings if enough free brushes are available. The viability of Duel seems questionable anyway so I might as well nuke it and copy Turris again.

For Trainyard, are you requesting the spawns to be closer to the center, or possibly more spawns that aren't in the corners of the map?

Currently, all new arenas are set to MGE mode. I will gladly change specific ones if the consensus is that they should have endif or ammomod settings.

Haven't had time to get my computer sorted out yet, maybe this weekend.