IRJustman

I'm at a complete loss for words. I knew he was dealing with bad things in his life; I never realized they were THIS bad. I hope he had loving surroundings. I couldn't imagine (nor would I ever want to) what he had been going through. God speed, Hoopy, and may you always know where your towel is. --IJ.

As for me, I'm always around in the evening hours California time (usually up to about 0000 (0300 ET) and somewhat later). --IJ.

I guess I see what you mean, but I'm talking about those like the one spray that this guy put down and kept dicking around saying "It's not a porn spray." Another was tesing the limits of the "no racial epithets" rules. In the latter case, the admins "gave them enough rope to hang themselves". If they did it on my server, they'd both be gone, no questions asked. I won't tolerate that kind of BS. --IJ.

The modus operandi of giving these guys enough rope to hang themselves only serves to tip your hands to the trolls, I have observed. On my own server, I have a zero-tolerance policy for these idiots. I would kill them the very instant they start doing something stupid. I have found that it nips the problem right in the bud. Likewise, only for my own server and assisting GM whenever he needs it. And furthermore, I only work with Linux or other Unix-system boxen as servers. Amen, bruhthuh. On my own policy page at http://tf2.ian-justman.com: When last I checked, this isn't a preference. You cannot choose to be homosexual. You can, however, choose to be a homophobe, but I digress. Here is what I have on my own server's policy page: However, I also disclaim that, as server owner, it is entirely at my discretion what constitutes "xenophobic". At least, this covers the entire gamut for me. While on the subject of epithets, I also raise an issue that is very close to me. I include the word "retarded", used in terms of describing an intellectually-challenged person, used as a derisive term in my definition of "xenophobic". Calling someone "retarded" simply because they're different from you in any way simply is part-and-parcel "xenophobia". That said, there is no excuse to use it even on someone who is acting stupidly. If you have any questions about my position and how I arrived at it, please bring up the topic with me privately; I presently do not want to discuss my reasoning in public. Thank you for your attention. --IJ.

Agreed on both, though add Degroot Keep given the reasons I laid out in my posts, or at least, put a mercifully-short map time length on it. Eh, I'm meh about arena maps, but one of my least favorite game types is payload race. WHICH REMINDS ME... Another map that needs to have serious work done to it is Hightower. This map sucks so hard. This map's endgame takes entirely too long and I don't know how long it takes until the mechanism that ends the game by pushing the carts forward starts on this one. Seconded. Ties in with the "decorum" rules I always harp on. It's in my own server's config. He picked up revising MapChooser Extended, all the way to the point of hooking it into the game's own voting subsystem. Powerlord wrote one, the one GM was referring to. Thank you. That's definitely something I'm all in favor of. Plus I don't necessarily play to win; I love conversing with everyone there. In fact, most of the people here whom I play EllFourDeeTwo versus with, we always set alltalk to on. Crits... are a source of ambivalence. On one hand, it can seemingly punish good players for no reason at all, and instant death is very rarely what I would consider 'fun'. On the other, it can help even the battlefield on occasion, and gives newer players a bit more of a fighting chance. In theory, anyway. Personally, I'm in favor of no-crit with option to turn on. But then again, I primarily play Sniper, so take that as you will. It all comes down to the fact that at least one or two of the founders come from a company whose forte is just about everything but quality assurance. Three words: I. Hate. Stats. Really, just about the only thing the stats system was ever useful for was finding the idiots and their names who've infested the server so I could add them by Steam ID to my own instance of SourceBans. Otherwise, it's all about dickwaving. I have other things that came to mind a bit later afterward, so I'm going to relegate those to their own post. --IJ.

Maps: Stock for sure, but there are two which really chafe me. One is Hydro since it has enormous potential for stalemates which quite likely contributes to the known quality of driving users away per what Paranoid said. The other I take issue with is Degroot Keep, especially its atrocious "Shakespeare" filter (which is very broken RENAISSANCE-era--NOT Medieval--commoner speech, not "high-class" speech; "thee" and "thou" are NOT upper-class speech, just FYI). Broken speech filters aside, this map gets very old very quickly, especially considering the limited weapon selection of the game mode. Rounds go by very quickly so even the current twenty-minute length seems like an eternity. If you must include either one, put shorter time limits on them, e.g. twenty minutes for Hydro and fifteen for Degroot. On the subject of custom maps, please please PLEASE restrict them to good release-quality maps. Some of these alpha-quality maps tend to be problematic, considering some I've seen look very incomplete. Panic is one exception since it is very good quality and is one of the few payload race maps I actually enjoy (for reference, I tend to dislike payload race in general). I'm talking about maps which are missing textures. I'm on the server to play a game, not playtest someone's incomplete map (I'm not talking about yours, Paranoid; I know for a fact I'm playtesting a work-in-progress). Plugins: Definitely keep Mapchooser Extended which hooks into the internal voting system. Sometimes, using the number-based system makes me use voice commands, which annoys me because I never use them anyway. I think the pre-game mayhem's a great ice-breaker. What I would also like to see is something that works much like votemute, but gags ALL forms of communication, so we can completely squelch any problem user. That or have the votemute insert a gag as well. If we don't want to hear from the user, we should be able to silence him entirely, right down to his typed responses. Let him use voice commands for gameplay reasons. Settings: Allow custom sounds and player models. Also, the settings Powerlord had in place to discourage teamswitching and teamstacking were pretty effective at performing their assigned purpose. As for custom sounds (also includes models), you can whitelist as broadly or as narrowly as you desire so you can use custom sounds (I use the sound of a one-inch Type C Ampex VTR starting and TF2 music instead of the 16mm projector start plus music for replay's sound and Touhou-related sounds for other events as examples). Baha, if you get a tree listing of the appropriate directory, you can easily create the whitelist. Features: Not sure what to suggest here. Admins: Hard to comment on this one here, but we need people who will enforce both gameplay and decorum rules, with particular emphasis on decorum. The admins we had were overall pretty good. One of the reasons I stuck with OCRTF2 and Ichimonai and why I run my own was their strict decorum rules and enforcement of same. Reserve Slots: Paranoid said it well here. It's a tough call to do this one, but it all depends on the circumstances. --IJ

I guess that's true, though the key difference is you tend to deal with gameplay behavior and I tend to deal with social behavior/decorum. --IJ.

I'd love to play with you guys, but I prefer playing places where I know a large number of the people in the game, or, I know someone who has some hand in operations of the server. That's how I came to OCRTF2 to begin with (via Powerlord). Furthermore, I want to play on servers with clear, well-established and -enforced decorum rules. Valve servers do not fit any of the foregoing criteria. As such, I go there, check some of the gameplay out, then leave. The last time I was on a Valve server, I was bored to tears because there was none of the usual camaraderie or socializing that we see on OCRTF2. Though that was better in stark contrast to one time before that where there was rampant stupidity. Even the former was enough to drive me away. However, granted, I didn't know most of you at first, but I did get to know you. And overall, OCRTF2's decorum rules were very close to what I consider ideal. This alone kept a lot of the stupidity down to a tolerable minimum. Unless OCRTF2 comes back in some form, it was great while it lasted. I think he probably means the servers' wonkiness, but I'll let PL answer this one. I haven't exactly been doing so either, other than to watch the servers to see who's playing. As for the game itself, I do keep an eye on the SRCDS mailing list like PL does. I had recently offered my own server. However, any possible technical issues notwithstanding, I think the main thing that keeps me from doing so is the fact that given it is my box, I do have very strict rules of decorum that I want followed in addition to (although most of mine are mostly based on) rules OCRTF2 already has in place. According to a conversation I had with Bark and Paranoid last night, this seems to create a "single tyrant" scenario that these folks are trying to avoid. For what it's worth, I will continue to run my server if people would like somewhere to play, but I don't think it can be an OCRTF2 community server because of the rules I want in place. --IJ.

Easily enough done. Just need to find something in the TF2 assets or record something that has him speaking in that monotone. --IJ.

This is one reason I don't bother with hats. --IJ.

To give a quick synopsis of what was happening and while the flight data is still there, go to tick 95000, start playing, then go to the landing between pipes under BLU base. This is at about game-minus 06'38". Shortly before that, I was carrying the intel, but met an unfortunate demise. "Tetsumaru" picks up the intel at about game-minus 06'30", then proceeds to carry it throughout the map. At some point, I ask someone to kill him because of his antics. He makes it to BLU base at game-minus 20 seconds. He kills a RED soldier. Shortly thereafter, I arrive. Game-minus ten seconds is called. About a second or so later, I bark at him to "Cap the damned intel already and have it over with!" He complies, likely feigning meekness. It was during this time, I had popped Paranoid Drone the heads-up about this event. --Ian.

No, he spoke with me personally via Steam chat. While I personally hate forums, I'll tolerate them; unsure what Frogg's rationale is for not registering. --Ian.

What: Frogg wants to give the Heavy's retooled toolset a try as well as for those who missed the first time last night. When: This will be at about 1830 PST (2130 EST), which is about when Frogg wanted to do this thang, but I can certainly be coerced into starting it sooner. ;D Where: My server, tee-eff-two.ian-justman.com (173.12.223.108) Gameplay rules are much the same as OCR's TF2 servers. Decorum rules have been tuned to my own personal liking, and, at times, diverge greatly from OCR's own. Hope to see you there. --Ian.

To my knowledge, it isn't explicitly addressed, but falls under the general heading of "No hate speech" in the MOTD... it's probably something that needs to be expanded and clarified. For my part, the issue I have is not necessarily with the "f-word" (of course, I have issues when it is used along with other unsportsmanlike speech, but you can be a jackass equally well without ever using it). My real issue is the "r-word", i.e. "retarded", as a derogatory term toward anyone or anything. "Stupid" is okay. "Retarded" is not. I say this because people who really are retarded are not that way by choice and do not (necessarily) even know it. And they are fundamentally not bad people. Do with it as you deem fit, but that is what I have to say on that matter. --Ian.

While I was playing on BLU (both team and eponymous server), I clocked Bahamut with a rocket as I had a few times previous. He had been complaining throughout a round of CTF_Doublecross that people should leave him alone so he can get an achievement (he was on the RED team at the time, attempting to get some sort of stickybomb environment kill). This is at a time when the BLU server is at peak userload, so he should probably expect to (or at the very least, not be too surprised that he) get clocked. His reaction: he slayed me and several others on the BLU team in response. Needless to say, for my part, I immediately lost interest in the ongoing game, going into spectator mode. Basically, that game immediately ceased being fun. Out of respect for his authority, I do appreciate the work he does for the servers by making sure that teams do not do things they should not, such as sticky spawn-camping and team-stacking. Plus I think he is a pretty cool guy. That last point is probably the biggest reason why this bothers me as much as it does. That said, his job is to make sure others play fair; I believe he should do the same for his part. I hope I am not asking too much. Thank you. --Ian.

I am completely aware of this, so I jumped on the beta rather late into the testing phase. In fact, I was happy to hear that it would use Webkit (though I did not exactly put two and two together at the time that it would mean support for the Mac; once the announcement for Steam for the Mac came out, it became clear) since Trident is a massive security hole. Even happier still since Webkit is open source and already available for multiple platforms. Perhaps now, but this could start the ball rolling for those of us who like neither platform but prefer Linux or (if you use ABI emulation) other x86 variants of Unix, e.g. FreeBSD or OpenSolaris.--IJ.

Here is my take on that situation: Per a conversation I had in-game with a few of the guys on BLU last night, I'll say that if Valve truly WANTED to make a Linux client as well as any of its games available for those who prefer to use Linux (or, via emulation setups, FreeBSD), it can very easily do that. How? Most of the work to make that happen is already done with the recent port to the Mac. There are two key things Valve had to do to make this happen: Adapt Steam to use a different web rendering engine, notably Webkit. Not only is Webkit the core of Safari and of Google Chrome, the latter being available not just for Windows but for Mac and Linux as well, but of KDE's Konqueror. Valve had to adapt Source to OpenGL. Linux desktops, like Macs, support OpenGL for 3D acceleration. At this point in time, I see absolutely no reason why Valve could not port Steam and any Source game to Linux (and by extension, FreeBSD. About the only thing in the way right now is demand. People need to ask for it. People need to be aware of this. --IJ.

Not just the matter of being snookered into buying hardware, I am far more concerned about my privacy. I have heard at least one case where a customer put surveillance software on their computer when they sent it in for repairs--and was abjectly shocked to learn what the techs did with the computer. Needless to say, the customer sued. --Ian.

Paranoid: I have not had that problem happen to me, and I have about the same specs, only I'm running a C2D E8400 and I only use ATI hardware. --Ian.

I must call bull on your suggestion, Atmuh. I have seen at least one of these happen when we had a particularly foul-mouthed jackass on the server, yet we did not have enough votes (or in one case, voters) to get him out. Granted, all the other players did vote. With their feet. This is precisely the kind of scenario we are trying to avoid here. If that's the case, get rid of that silly piece of graphics below your text. I can read your username just fine.--Ian.

This is Atmuh we're talking about. Need we say more? --Ian.

IJ here (I have to use this name since most forums won't allow me to use my actual nickname; not to mention, I hate forums to begin with). I even asked if any of them were using exploits, BB.ClintBeastwood chimed in rather enthusiastically, "Hells yeah!" And I can definitely attest to the text flooding, the "gay" remarks, as well as the remarks against the music being played here, to which Chili responded by telling them that they need to remember where they were, a site entirely devoted to music, so it's fair game. And I'm with Chili. We really could do with some late-night admins to deal with crap like this. It's bloody annoying when you have dummies like this ruining everyone else's fun. I like getting home from work to play a game (well, unless I'm on call for after-hours tech support for work, which means I have to be ready to bail at a moment's notice). I do not like it when said game is being disrupted by idiot users. Thanks for your attention. --Ian "IJ" Justman.