New year, new content!
And we starting this New Year with some new things!
But not before showing that the server just reached 100 days of uptime just at the start of this year!
Reopening Snow-War
I just recently reopened the Snow-War server after being closed for a few months when I reopened the SC 3.0 server. For now everything is still the same as it was before in Igloo Arena. Unfortunately it's not possible to add a RTV plugin here because this mod doesn't have "slot commands" (I mean, those keys to change weapons in-game with the keyboard numbers), so as a solution of this was decreasing the timeleft to 15 minutes per game.
The IP and port is 172.81.132.160:27019 (just the same thing as the SC 3.0 server).
And that's everything. Have fun.
GoldSrc/Source server updates
Unfortunately I have decided to finally close the Sven Co-op 3.0 server (yes, for the fourth time this year). The reason for this is because it has become a mess to maintain, as well as it generates a lot of stability problems as it's running under Wine (and on a very old version). Sorry to those who liked this version and to the very few who enjoyed the server...
Maybe in a very distant future something similar will come back, but for now this will have to stay like this.
- Extended maximum of rounds restarts to 5 on the Codename CURE server
Some other games I would like to host
For a long time I have been wanting to expand the servers to some other games. In my mind I have been planning to host these:
- Portal Co-operative
- Synergy
- Headcrab Frenzy
- Base Defense
- Left 4 Dead (probably the second one)
- Team Fortress 2 (only MvM)
- Sonic Robo Blast 2
But for now I have these drawbacks:
- Portal Co-operative only has Windows binaries and Wine for some weird reason refuses to load SRCDS even with the latest version from Debian and from the WineHQ repositories. What a shame, I really liked this mod so much and I ever wanted to make a server for this.
- Synergy has had too many problems when I wanted to create a server on Linux (such as entities not appearing, sounds not loading correctly, weird crashes, and so more). Now that it has been updated after the HL2 20th Anniversary my plans to create a server there have resurfaced but for now I'm not sure if I'll take it up again.
- IIRC when running a Headcrab Frenzy server it crashes, but I don't remember exactly if this happened when trying to use Metamod. I don't remember how I managed to fix this but there was a solution to this problem on the Steam forums.
- I'm not sure whether to leave a server on Base Defense but seeing that there are literally no servers left in the US on that game (although there's actually one and it's from GoldSrc Saturdays) I was deciding on whether to leave one there. What I will do is setting the Softcore difficulty for personal reasons and for the sake of some other new players.
- I would like to but I'm not sure either. Probably it will run with the default campaign maps but there are a huge lot of servers running with vanilla stuff that it would not be worth it.
- I haven't played TF2 since 2020 and I don't quite remember how to play MvM anymore. I was thinking of dropping one with this mode and probably custom maps since this was one of my favorite TF2 game modes (I suck a lot in normal modes) but seeing how much TF2 assets end up weighing after downloading them on my VPS I ended up backing out of this.
- Just like TF2, I haven't played that again for years now and never got used to its gameplay. Still doesn't take away from the fact that it's an awesome game. For now I'm not interested in opening a server of that, although I would also like to add custom maps (if possible) and new characters to it. And in case you're wondering, it will be co-op only too.
BTW, I was also considering hosting Xash3D FWGS gameservers of the current GoldSrc mods I'm running. I'm not sure about doing this considering Xash3D FWGS now allows playing on GoldSrc servers which has Reunion/Dproto on it but for now I don't think about doing that.
Codename CURE server updates
- Added new saysounds to command messages
- Updated MOTD
- Added new maps (csv_highrise, csv_canyon_town, csv_corridorhell_v1)
- Removed ccs_pvkII_cathedral_v5 from map rotation (too long, no waves and no possibility of spawning)
Codename CURE server updates
- Added some graph files to the FastDL (so that people no longer have to download them directly from the server even if they weigh a few kilobytes)
- Updated SourceMod to 1.12
- Disabled tv_enable 6-slot hack (I guess that's was causing the server to crash)
- Added a new chat annoucements plugin (actually to display some useful tips for newbies)
- Added new maps (csv_highrise, csv_sewers)
- Disabled zombie kill messages on chat
- Modified player info hint message (actually I just removed those "emojies" and replaced to text abbreviations)
- Removed csv_villa from server (that map was causing crashes after spawning)
I'm also working on a tiny color chat SourceMod plugin to everyone to use and not only for admins (I mean just me). The only problem I have had with this is that those CURE chat messages (e.g. "Affirmative", "HELP!") are not converted on the plugin and it returns its original code messages like "#CC_CO_GREN", so I had to add the ones that come in English instead. This could generate some confusion for those players who are playing the game in other languages as those message are not translated to the client's language.
More info about this soon.
Welcome, once again
Well...
As you may have noticed, I have decided to finally close the forums, mostly because I'm no longer interested in moderating one.
Instead, I decided to reconvert it into a small blog that I'm thinking of using it to create quick news about updates (mostly about gameservers) and some other things I do in this space.
For hours I have been looking for a simple blog system with a "retro/classic style" design that is not so complicated to customize. I thought about using sphpblog but unfortunately it's been abandoned for years now, it has some weird exploits and no longer works in PHP 8. I tried FlatPress but I don't like its design. And so it was until I decided to look in Debian packages and I found this nice and light blog engine similar to bashblog called BlazeBlogger, written in Perl and that comes with a theme that I like a lot.
By the way, most probably I will make an archive of the forums or leave them read-only but for now I don't know.
Anyways, that's all.
Thanks. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and enjoy playing on the gameservers.
