As far as maps are concerned, I talked to many people (Shane, chupa, nukedude, nickname, personal friends, etc…) who play TF2 regularly as well as played on each map before deciding on those maps. It was a community effort.
I talked to Bitey about the maps on the server and how to make the server more appealing to outside players, this has been a work in semi-progress since I became TF2 CL. Can’t solve problems when you don’t get feedback or results from possible solution suggestions.
Mani is the only mod that I’ve read about where the menu’s disappear after 5 seconds. I have read the Source Mod and Beetle(shudder) both have menus that stay up. Obviously the forums I was frequenting could have been mistaken but I thought I’d just bring that up.
If it has to go to rotation then that is easy enough to setup.
The stability of our server is always our #1 concern. There have been many problems with HLstats beyond simply being broken after a patch. The main problem was not having a separate port to use HLstats for TF2, sharing a port with CSS causes problems. Speaking of which, I need to ask Liam whether or not that problem ever got solved.
During the last LAN event Liam and I discussed many things about the server. We talked about why it kept breaking and ways in which we could overcome this issue. Some of which were the read-only suggestions. I do not know the status of anything we discussed at the LAN event and am awaiting a response from someone with access to our server. Liam is busy and I realize this. However, I simply have no other options of accessing the TF2 server. At the very list no other options have been presented to me when I have inquired about such things.
The team behind TF2 is currently in the process of implementing a way to make it easier to change the respawn times. Hopefully this will make it easier to control that aspect. For many TF2 pub players respawn times are a huge deal.
Contrary to what some believe, I have tried to get our server configured properly and populated. I do not appreciate people making false accusations without actually sitting down and talking to me. 5 words exchanged in passing isn’t talking. The evidence is all over these forums, the fact that I have a server setup on one of my PCs at my house, and all the talks that I have had with many of our members and many people that I’ve met in other TF2 servers.
I don’t have the resources to directly make the changes because I am not an Admin of the server, which is understandable as long as someone with access is at least trying the suggestions that myself and others within the TF2 community have made. We all want the same thing — a stable, fun, and populated TF2 server.
Placing blame on someone who doesn’t even have access to make changes to the server seems pointless. It isn’t one person’s fault that the server isn’t configured. It is the fault of many. For one we haven’t properly trained people to actually access and change settings within the server. Hence why we have Liam taking the brunt of the work load, and the others that do know how to do things have more pressing real life matters to attend to.
I have read pages upon pages about server configurations and ripped my brain apart trying to configure HLstatsX on my own server. I have successfully implemented a ton of things to my TF2 server, but I have a lot more to learn.
Please don’t tell me that I have been wasting my time these past months when I have actually put a lot of time into my own self knowledge in order to better support our TF2 server.
I am trying to learn everything I can, on my own, as fast as possible so that I can earn the trust to have admin access or at the very least give better suggestions for TF2 server configuration. The simple fact is there isn’t anyone with the time to actually answer questions or help guide those of us who are trying to run servers to actually do so autonomously. Regardless, that isn’t an excuse, I need to know server configuration and I will continue to read up and stay informed.
To Be Continued…
