Powerlord

Sorry, OCR decided it wasn't going to give me new message notifications. Only 3 hours played on the server? Clearly, you'll need to use this slot to play more. Added. I need you to tell me who you are on Steam first. I use our server's stats page to look up peoples' Steam IDs. It's now droppable and craftable as of a few hours ago. You do. I carried all the reserved slots over from the old server, including yours. AND NOW, for something that Valve announced moments ago: Valve just introduced out-of-game item trading, now in Beta. Oh, and it sounds like you can now trade items for games directly in Steam. Also: I'm restarted the servers, although I don't think it was strictly necessary, as there were no major server-side changes... I just wanted to make sure the haptics update didn't require updated server-side support.

The server's suffering packet loss inside the provider's network. I'm trying to get in touch with tech support. Edit: I filed a ticket with the provider. I also narrowed it down to the connection between these two nodes: xe1-04.gwy03.sctn01.hostnoc.net and ec0-64.bi3901.sctn01.hostnoc.net, as packets start dropping as soon as it passes from one to the other, and it's happening in both directions. Not that we can do anything about it. BLU is currently not even showing in the server list, and I wouldn't rely on RED working right now either. I'll check on the servers one more time at about midnight EST, before I go to bed. If the lag is gone, I'll restart BLU. Otherwise, I'll restart it in the morning. Edit 2: Server's still getting packet loss. I'll check again in the morning.

Ok, I added you.

Added I see two Spike Spiegal's in the Steam stats. Spike Spiegal {SHB} Spike Spiegal Which one is you? I'm assuming the {SHB} one, but the profile is private so I can't verify that. The last donation address gave money to FireSlash. If you really want to donate to the guy that hosts the current servers, it's possible via Pledgie/Paypal (Pledgie is just a tracking service that uses Paypal for its actual donations):

I considered that, but it's also not the only way to get a reserved slot.. it's more of a convenience to me to just add our most active players, since it's easier to add people in bulk than one at a time. They are also people who invite other people to the server. People can also request one directly from me... assuming they know me. P.S. I'm also interpreting this post as a request for a reserved slot. P.P.S. Which I've now added.

I've added a number of new reserved slots to the people who play on our servers the most. Specifically, those in the top 50 by connection time who didn't already have one, except phill. The 28 new reserved slot holders are (in alphabetical order): !! Aeronaut AfroNick Arrowshot Biohazard Bizbiz Cinderwild Dr. Jones Frosty Bites Gamemaster Gary Coleman's Ghost Hazardous Sentient Ice Being HoopyFrood ivelchild JGshogun (although this one almost wasn't added because he hasn't been on in a few weeks) Kenogu Labz NDUDE Obstacle phill (I lied earlier) presh RocketSniper Shrub Sir Prize Spider Top Gun Wertilq Yosimite Zilac To use a reserved slot, when the server is full, pull up the developer console (bound to ` next to 1 in the upper-left corner on US keyboards) and type connect blu.ocrtf2.com or connect red.ocrtf2.com depending on which server you're connecting to. If your reserved slot isn't working, let me know. I did a bunch of reorganization of reserved slots so I can locate people easier. I don't *think* I removed any, but I can't tell just by looking. I also could have made typos when entering new data. I already found a mistake with presh's and corrected it.

Replays have been reenabled. Let me know if you see any server crashes. A lot of people want to know what's going to happen with reserve slots. I was thinking of opening them up to our regular players. In fact, I may just go in and add people I know that play a lot on our server (but my memory isn't perfect, so...). Other than that, people will need to request reserve slots from me rather than FireSlash.

Between my roommate and FedEx, my new computer didn't get delivered today as planned. My roommate because he said he'd be here until noon, yet had left for the weekend already when FedEx stopped by to drop off my computer at 11:15am, and FedEx for not being like UPS and saying "you can pick up the package at Blah after X o'clock." (I arrived home at just past noon). So, despite asking FedEx to keep the package at their local depot and I'd pick it up, it never got transferred there today. And knowing FedEx, it won't be now until Monday.

Steam is acting up tonight. I'm not sure how this will affect TF2 servers. The last time Steam acted up, it randomly kicked 1/2 the people on our server with "No Steam Connection" or some other ridiculous excuse and wouldn't let people rejoin our server until the server changed levels.

The new items are: A new Rocket Launcher named "The Original." Likely a reskin of the regular rocket launcher, as it has no description. A new Sniper hat named "The Anger" that looks a lot like the Conjurer's Cowl. Brink-related. A new Heavy hat named "The Tamrailic Relic" which looks a lot like the Spine-Chilling Skull. Skyrim-related. An new Engineer Misc named "The Pip-Boy", which replaces the Engineer PDAs (not buildings, whoops) An new Engineer Misc named "Wingstick".

Our servers aren't coming back up post update. I need to see what's going on in more depth. It appears that the server binary is gone or moved. I'm looking into it now. Edit: Servers are now back up. Thanks Valve for the update missing half the files and forcing me to do a file verification on the server.

It should be applied to our servers shortly. Edit: It looks like there are alternative version of Engineer buildings in this update, with the name Pipboy. Pipboy being the name of the mascot for the Fallout series. Edit 2: The items in question are for Skyrim. Edit 3: There may be a Brink item as well, I can't tell.

Circa 3 hours ago: Servers auto-updated and restarted around the same time (this auto-update then restart is really neat).

I thought he was a time traveling horse doctor. In other news, my new desktop shipped today. Hopefully it'll be here by Friday, if not, it'll be until Monday. Sadly, if it arrives on Friday, I won't be able to play Friday night due to installing software.

Valve already said no to replacing either dispenser or teleporter.

There was some talk about exactly that happening around a year ago. I thought someone said some of the files in the game pointed to it as an upcoming mutation. Of course, it never happened.

I should mention that I'm still upset with Valve over their lack of release of the rumored Infected mode... where you play as Infected (like Versus) versus a team of all bots. Seriously, playing as infected was my favorite part of L4D/L4D2. I just hated having to switch back to playing Survivors every other round.

I'll be honest, I got tired of L4D2 quite quickly after it came out. The only reason I had it installed on my (RIP 2011/07/29) desktop recently was 1. For the Summer Camp achievement. 2. To do some testing on a server mod I'm writing for TF2, L4D, and L4D2. It likely doesn't help that Killing Floor goes on sale all the time, and I consider it a better game than L4D2. Oh, and speaking of TF2 earlier... it's free now. Feel free to join us on the OCR TF2 servers.

So yeah, my desktop decided that it was going to start BSODing yesterday. I may try to play TF2, but my laptop really, REALLY sucks at it. I'm making arrangements for a new computer this weekend. But hey, at least it happened on a weekend, where I actually have time to deal with it.

This update was auto-applied to NEW BLU and NEW RED roughly two hours ago. OLD BLU and OLD RED were just updated and restarted.

Valve released an optional (read: required for Linux servers) TF2 update earlier today. It fixes problems with the Mantreads crashing the server. It may also fix some related crashes dealing with the Cow Manger 5000 and Righteous Bison. I installed this on all servers approximately 2 hours ago.

I've updated a few maps on the servers. cp_launchpad updated to version 2b. cp_gullywash updated to pro (no, don't ask me why the version jumped from imp3 to pro). This is mainly balance changes, including the elimination of the water under points 1 and 5. tc_meridian updated to rc3. ctf_haarp has an update, but the download for it is broken.

I forgot to mention that I discovered a bug in our new TF2 setups during today's update. I wondered what was going on when TF2 NEW RED auto-restarted and TF2 NEW BLU didn't. Turned out there was a hidden crashed copy of the server still running from back before I disabled replays. The auto-updater was sending the server restart message to this crashed copy. I couldn't see it because when I asked the server for BLU's console, I got the non-crashed version instead. Here's hoping that me killing that process fixes the weird ping times... they seemed more normal for me this evening, even if they were higher than I liked. Still, I'd rather have 90ms ping times than 180ms ping time I was getting over the past two days. I also added a switch to the NEW TF2 servers to make the server immediately exit if another process is listening on that port when it starts. Simple version: It prevents me from starting BLU twice or RED twice, but doesn't fix the crashed server issue experienced earlier. Incidentally, Valve said earlier today that they still haven't tracked down all the Linux server crash causes, so replays are still off.

Additionally, the Highlander medals were added to the game. Starting the server updater on the OLD servers shortly. The NEW server has already launched the auto-updater, although I'm monitoring it to make sure it works correctly.

Actually, he's lying. It's randomlyKickPhill.smx (because that's the SourceMod plugin file extension). In other news, I got some more gruntwork done on the Builtin Votes extension this afternoon. Hopefully I'll finish a new version for testing later this week.