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Rather than starting a separate thread in each of the 4 sections for game servers, I thought It would be better to have a general thread.
And so, to start off let’s discuss the amount of L4D servers up.
Looking at the servers I see alot, and I mean ALOT, of L4D servers up as you can see on the “WCU Gaming (WCU)” Steam page. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/wcugaming
L4D and L4D2 are great, but having only 1 TF2 server up, and an IDLE SERVER at that is just embarrassing.
As of a few minutes ago I re-enabled the other TF2 server, which I believe is still set to Orange…
I would love to have an Official Maps Rotation, a Customs Rotation (which can be added to by asking me to try out a map), and a CP, PL, or CTF Rotation, or a mix.
The L4D servers would have to be reduced in number, but that seems like an acceptable loss.
Also, there seem to be alot of CS 1.6 redirects, what exactly does that mean even?
Any chance of holding a minecraft server?
Can you go *edited* at IT about the filter that’s making SC2 nearly unplayable at times?
More TF2 servers would be awesome, I play on FFN/FuG/etc all the time and wish that the WCU servers could become something like this, maybe even a donator perk thing as well. Would be absolutely amaaaazing for us to have, sounds great!
The L4D/L4D2 servers would have to be reduced? Isn’t the new box under essentially no load right now and could easily accommodate more servers?
The redirects are basically it showing the CS1.6 server as full or almost full to get more people to come in, as they see it as almost full when it isn’t.
Facinating, so its number fudging.
Ehh, whatever, if that’s what you want to do with the 1.6 then go ahead, but I do not support such tactics.
I suppose we can add the TF2 servers I wanted to and see how the server handles them, and I would really love to add the Minecraft server, to it.
Whenever its updated, all you need to do is copypasta the new .exe in when there’s and update.
As for SC2 I will go over at some time and ask about that if someone who is in IT and reading this doesn’t give us an answer themselves.
Minecraft is huge. I know of 12-14 guys who play a good 4-8 hours a day. I can see if I can redirect them here if you guys set one up.
Doesn’t Minecraft take up a *edited*ton of resources and would end up crashing the box if we left it running 24/7?
Also, the “tactics” may not be “worthy” or whatever to get people to come into a server but if you saw a full server vs. an empty one, which would you want to try to play on? FFN and FuG do it too, they show servers as full 24/7 but they aren’t.
Mitch and Tallgeese are already in contact with ITS about SC2, I believe Stephen has told Tallgeese that nothing on the campus has blocked the ports for SC2 and the new filtering software shouldn’t be doing it, but would like someone to play with him sitting hearby and running a packet sniffer or something on it to try and figure out what is happening, perhaps packets being dumped into the trash folder on accident and causing the frustrating lag.
Hmm… Minecraft servers actualy only handle updates to individual blocks and if sections of the map are coming into view, and only a few blocks are changing at any given time, and sections are sent all at once, so after that it only needs to know they are there.
The actual data for the server (this is the world and what’s in it) are are a fair size, but not unreasonable for a map data file.
The clients do most of the processing, so unless your computer has problems with minecraft then it will be fine, and you wouldn’t be playing anyways if you did.
The server is also easy to maintain and back up if need be (just a single data file).
I say anyone who has a problem with it should download the server and try it out themselves first and have people willing to help test it by connecting to it.
To bring everyone up to speed I’ll address each issue:
Felix Nova said:
And so, to start off let’s discuss the amount of L4D servers up.
Looking at the servers I see alot, and I mean ALOT, of L4D servers up as you can see on the “WCU Gaming (WCU)” Steam page. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/wcugaming
L4D and L4D2 are great, but having only 1 TF2 server up, and an IDLE SERVER at that is just embarrassing.
As of a few minutes ago I re-enabled the other TF2 server, which I believe is still set to Orange…
I would love to have an Official Maps Rotation, a Customs Rotation (which can be added to by asking me to try out a map), and a CP, PL, or CTF Rotation, or a mix.
The L4D servers would have to be reduced in number, but that seems like an acceptable loss.
Also, there seem to be alot of CS 1.6 redirects, what exactly does that mean even?
The L4D/L4D2 servers generally run and populate themselves with minimal oversight and use virtually no system resources. The new 6core opterons run the code so efficiently that even when all 19 servers were populated we didn’t get above 20% CPU load. We can reduce the number if you want but IMO it’s not necessary.
The number of TF2 servers is lower because we could never keep them populated. Feel free to play with Server 1 and 3. If we need a 4th either install it or let me know and I can for you. Adding more TF2 servers does NOT require us to reduce the number of other servers.
CS16 redirects are lame but they work and we’ve yet to receive a complaint about being redirected. It’s fairly common practice and the playerbase has just gotten used to it.
PROlapse said:
Any chance of holding a minecraft server?
Can you go *edited* at IT about the filter that’s making SC2 nearly unplayable at times?
Yes we can host a minecraft.
I contacted ITS Friday and got the ball rolling on getting it fixed. We should have answers within the next few days.
Fascist Flakes (Jagr) said:
Doesn’t Minecraft take up a *edited*ton of resources and would end up crashing the box if we left it running 24/7?
Virtualization can fix that easy.
The minecraft client actually does most of the processing, the server just keeps track of what is where and the 10-20 block changes/player movements each second, its not that hard to run at all.
I ran a server on my craptop WHILE it was folding, and it ran just fine, no problems at all.
And the points per day didn’t change at all if the server was running or not.
As such, a long as we have the space for the map, which is a few megs (1-10) then it should be fine.
Yeah but it’s java. And java’s.. well.. it’s java.
Java is about the only program capable of maxing out a server farm when it crashes. <_>
Java can burn in hell.
Minecraft will need to be run under a virtual environment as it is very alpha and very unstable. This will keep it from affecting the rest of the servers.
Sounds good to me, I like the way things are goin so lets get the ball rollin on all the new stuff! Felix if you start populating the TF2 servers a ton like FFN and such do then maybe we can get donators and such? Hats, perks, etc. Lets get some research in on this stuff ^^
Phonetically Phamous (dice said:
How are we going to bring and keep people on the TF2 server/s?
this is a good question.
You keep people on the server by giving them what they want. The FFN community is huge and gives donators, etc all kinds of perks/etc. I know they have some sort of redirects up as well that ALWAYS show their servers at like, 35/36 full 24/7 so people will continue to join. Their rotations are 9/10 PL maps, CP maps just arent as fun for the mass community. Their ranking system is pretty awesome, and relatively simple, but the auto-balance of teams plus auto-assign, donator hat perks, etc are all things that keep people coming back, along with stable servers and a low ping. They have a gigantic forum for people to post on, etc.. would be awesome to get some of that here.
I suggest we change the rotations immediately, and I’ll get my old clan on and see how they like it.
I’ve already voiced my opinions on what they should be, but what do you guys want to see exactly?
And yes, Java can burn in hell, C or C++ would be so much better, even C#.
What is your opinion of CS:S? I’m really about out of ideas and it would be good to get a fresh opinion. I’ve noticed how it’s not even mentioned.
Fascist Flakes (Jagr) said:
You keep people on the server by giving them what they want. The FFN community is huge and gives donators, etc all kinds of perks/etc. I know they have some sort of redirects up as well that ALWAYS show their servers at like, 35/36 full 24/7 so people will continue to join. Their rotations are 9/10 PL maps, CP maps just arent as fun for the mass community. Their ranking system is pretty awesome, and relatively simple, but the auto-balance of teams plus auto-assign, donator hat perks, etc are all things that keep people coming back, along with stable servers and a low ping. They have a gigantic forum for people to post on, etc.. would be awesome to get some of that here.
That’s all well and good so let’s break it down.
Redirects? Don’t exist for Source-engine.
PL rotation? Tried it.
CP maps? Tried them.
Good ranking system? Still have one.
Autobalance? Still have it.
Autoassign? Got complaints.
Donations? Not going to happen with this crowd.
Stable server? Yep.
Low ping? You betcha.
The reason we don’t have populated TF2 servers is because they aren’t already populated, redundant reason is redundant but that’s just how servers work now. People aren’t going to join an empty server. You can have the best server on the planet but if it’s empty no one’s going to care. What we need is for people to quit *edited*ing around and making excuses and actually bring people into the server and get it populated again.
If you care about getting TF2 populated, stop playing SC2, WoW, and MW2 and make it happen, otherwise it’s just a rehash of everything we’ve heard before.
Felix Nova said:
I’ve already voiced my opinions on what they should be, but what do you guys want to see exactly?
A CP, PL, classic, and 2-3 idles would be a good setup IMO. Remember, the more ambitious you start this the more daunting the task of populating them becomes.
I would contact Shingi and see what advice he can give. He had the TF2 server populated for a while but he had alot of personal stuff hit the fan and the constant updates without a CL to babysit and update it killed the repeat customers.
Hmm… Well, we can leave up the idle server i guess, and ill look into good custom maps for a custom rotation, get the best of the official, and a single-kind rotation, perhaps some prophunt as well as a casual all-talk server
L4D and 2 can stay how they are, but I was playing on the earlier and the info that is usually displayed when you join a source server is 404’d.
CSS is Mitch’s call, and whoever he sees fit to run it, and 1.6.
I’ll do a little more digging on what is exactly needed for a good Minecraft server and it’s resource needs.
Finally, I saw we have a KF server, I need to start playing that again, munnay.
The L4D/L4D2 motd and clan advert started 404’ing a couple weeks ago. We’re still looking into it.
Idk if the KF server even works. The guy I tapped to set it up and run it knows what he’s doing (generally) but he’s got internet ADD. I’ve been meaning to check on it but the config file is like 400 lines long and to diagnose a problem you have to go through it line by line
As for CS/CSS, I’ll get with the current head admins and see what they think. I’m not sure if either of them are even interested in doing it again. I saw there was a good deal of interest in them from students at the last meeting, maybe we can tap some of them for this. I’m going to dig around.
I have a solution for populating our servers without the use of fudge, and we can use a function already built into the game: bots.
Using tf_bot_quota and tf_bot_quota_type we can have a few bots running around and they will leave as people come in, thus giving peple reason to play on our servers even if there are no other human players.
Also, when there are no human players, the bots become inactive and leave thus stopping unneeded server activity.
having the quota be 12, 6 on each team, seems like a good idea since that is the usual minimum for a good game anyways.
Edit:
Forgot, nav files need to be generated for each map, which doesn’t take long, and only needs to be done once.
sv_cheats 1, nav_generate, and wait.
The server restarts and bots can be added and they will function normally, almost player-like at times.
sv_cheats can be reset to 0 once the nav file is generated and does not need to be 1 for bots to be active.
Another Edit:
Wasn’t there something similar for CS?
MasterP said:
Fascist Flakes (Jagr) said:
You keep people on the server by giving them what they want. The FFN community is huge and gives donators, etc all kinds of perks/etc. I know they have some sort of redirects up as well that ALWAYS show their servers at like, 35/36 full 24/7 so people will continue to join. Their rotations are 9/10 PL maps, CP maps just arent as fun for the mass community. Their ranking system is pretty awesome, and relatively simple, but the auto-balance of teams plus auto-assign, donator hat perks, etc are all things that keep people coming back, along with stable servers and a low ping. They have a gigantic forum for people to post on, etc.. would be awesome to get some of that here.
That’s all well and good so let’s break it down.
Redirects? Don’t exist for Source-engine.
PL rotation? Tried it.
CP maps? Tried them.
Good ranking system? Still have one.
Autobalance? Still have it.
Autoassign? Got complaints.
Donations? Not going to happen with this crowd.
Stable server? Yep.
Low ping? You betcha.
The reason we don’t have populated TF2 servers is because they aren’t already populated, redundant reason is redundant but that’s just how servers work now. People aren’t going to join an empty server. You can have the best server on the planet but if it’s empty no one’s going to care. What we need is for people to quit *edited*ing around and making excuses and actually bring people into the server and get it populated again.
If you care about getting TF2 populated, stop playing SC2, WoW, and MW2 and make it happen, otherwise it’s just a rehash of everything we’ve heard before.
I don’t know how the redirects work then, because I see the servers as 31/32 and then try to join and it will be 0/32, with only myself in it.
CP maps don’t work, only a few such as MAYBE dustbowl and some others, a “Back to Basics” server would be fantastic. 24/7 PL servers also work decently well.
The ranking system/points system was HLStatsX, do we still use it?
Autobalance I know is on, just noting things they have.
Autoassign people will QQ about but as a “donator perk” they won’t ever get balanced and they can like “prefer” which team they want to be on, so that autoassign puts them on that team.
Donations would work, maybe not with “this crowd” but with TF2 people they donate all the freaking time. They want the hats, they want the invincibility at the end of a round, they want no auto-balance, etc. etc. etc. http://www.freefrag.com/index.php?pageid=perkben
I know our servers are stable and have a low ping, hence why I think we could get it to work.
Yeah, once things get populated it would help, but also putting out consistent announcements over Steam to populate the B2B server, etc would be good as well as just continuing to play in it. The problem is just randomly sitting in it blows
. FFN also advertises their other servers in the other servers, including the amount of people in them, join now, etc. Radio is also available, etc etc etc…Unless Valve changed it you used to get a warning when being redirected. Maybe they changed it, idk, but regardless when you join that full server and instead get dumped into an empty server does that *edited* you off?
The HLstatsX CE system is still up and running and it’s autobalance is surprisingly effective.
My point isn’t that the community in general doesn’t donate. My first-hand experience demonstrates the opposite, TAG used to get hundreds a month in donations for admin powers and other perks. My point is that WCUG has always run free and open servers where admin and perks are earned rather than paid for. If we start demanding money for things that used to be free, not only will the people we have leave but we’ll have lost a piece of ourselves as well.
If you want to go that route, my recommendation is that you first start with with a basic set of features and idle the server to build a playerbase. Once you get some regulars, recruit a handful of admins. Keep idling and building it up until you get a crowd of 10-15 per night then invite a few more to be admins. Once you start getting 15-20+ on at least a semi-regular basis, start adding perks for small donations. IE $5/month gets you end of round godmode, custom-color chat, and teambalance immunity, etc. Make it worth the money but don’t think you can charge more because others do. We aren’t in this for the money, it helps, but we’re in this to make things exciting and populate the server. Unlike everyone else, every aspect of our server is free so profits shouldn’t be an issue. Also, offer admin for donations, this is ALWAYS a big money-earner on populated servers. Say, $10/month gets you admin to all TF2 servers, reserved slot on the idle servers, and the $5 donation perks. Incentivise it, say if someone’s donated to get admin and after 6 months they’re in good standing let them remain an admin for free. They still pay for the perks but you’ve given them a feeling of accomplishment with their activity and they’ll reward you for that with their continued loyalty.
When going that route, everyone who already has admin should keep it. Students, as always, get everything for free.
If we did this on all our servers the club could make an enormous amount of money. While I’d love to be an *edited* about it and say that the earnings need to go to the PC side only, I know that’s not going to happen <_>
MasterP said:
The L4D/L4D2 motd and clan advert started 404’ing a couple weeks ago. We’re still looking into it.
This is easy to fix, just stick those jpgs on the webserver and have the motd and banner files direct to it.
Nickname said:
MasterP said:
The L4D/L4D2 motd and clan advert started 404’ing a couple weeks ago. We’re still looking into it.
This is easy to fix, just stick those jpgs on the webserver and have the motd and banner files direct to it.
This isn’t my first time rodeo, you know <_>
MasterP said:
Nickname said:
MasterP said:
The L4D/L4D2 motd and clan advert started 404’ing a couple weeks ago. We’re still looking into it.
This is easy to fix, just stick those jpgs on the webserver and have the motd and banner files direct to it.
This isn’t my first time rodeo, you know <_>
then why has it been down for a couple weeks? It’s a 5 min fix at most.
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