You will need to update to these if you have not already after last weeks updates.

I have been very busy today after the mamouth update lastnight, and is still some outstanding issues from this and these are as follows and most are mod issues.

HL2DM

• Please run fix me after updating to ensure your server starts with the oranage box engine.
• Mani Admin currently does not work and we are waiting for an update
• All other mods have been updated in mod central

TF2/CSS/Dod

• All these games have had Source Mod and MetaMod  updated to allow servers to run and is available in mod central
• Mani Admin needs its gametypes.txt updating, this has been done for mod central but you need to generate a new one for your servers if running it, this is available from the mani mod website
• zBlock currently does not work and need either deleting or removing to allow the servers to work we are waiting on an update

If you are having any other issues  it is either mod related (rename addons folder) and test, or is a bug introduced by Valve. As normal please raise a support ticket if you require further assistance. http://support.inx-network.com/

Garry’s Mod

• Added Toybox ingame map downloading
• Added button to toggle toolmenu visibility
• Clicking outside of the spawnmenu now closes it
• Tweaked spawnmenu sizing
• Fixed huge memory leaks under Linux
• Combined singleplayer and multiplayer new game dialog
• Added web controls to Toybox
• ‘Clean Up Everything’ now clears decals and ragdolls
• Fixed lights being visible through walls
• Dog now throws and catches
• r_hunkalloclightmaps is now 0 by default

As you have noticed this is not quite the same blog that you were looking at 24 hours ago and thats because we have done a total rebuild on it with a new theme, and some new features.

We will shortly be fully releasing the new Knowledge Base that will be incorporated into the blog. It is taking shape and is being populated as I speak and will continue to be added to as we get new tickets and we don’t have a nice answer for you. Thus meaning you get the help you want quicker!

Searching has been improved by searching everything, including the new Knowledge Base and will highlight your phrase so makes it easier to find what your looking for. Meaning no more trawling through pages of stuff and then finding its not there!

Team Speak 3, this is well and truly under development I handed over the newly built server for our developer to start using at the beginning of the week. So hopefully not too far away now (and no we are not talking Valve time!!) and so we are getting quite excited about this, as it won’t just be Team Speak 3!!

An email will be going out about this but the Ventrilo servers will be unavailable on Thursday the 30th of September 2010 between 0300 – 1200 local time UK.

For now peace out and keep fragging!!
Olly & Simon

Just about any gamer knows what Half Life and CS is both the original game and the “new” source engine version CSS servers. Its become almost a house hold name like Quake and Doom were in the 90’s.

CSS Servers in the beginning

Counter Strike rolled off the development line way back in June 1999 as a mod to half life. But was not until November 2000 that Valve retailed the game, the game had 19 beta releases until version 1 was made available and even then there were 7 major updates to the game, one of the biggest and most talked about with the update from 1.5 to 1.6 but the current CSS servers is still a little way off.

Introducing STEAM servers

Many people believed that this update ruined the game as 1.6 was only released on Steam, after the WON platform was shutdown in 2004, there is still a group of hard-core players still playing 1.5 but these mainly consist of people who are too cheap to buy a genuine copy of the game. Like all good games this carried the ability to add custom content like: new maps, mods, sounds and graphics to it to change the game play, there is still a large active community of developers supporting this game after 10 years! This proves just how big this game still is.

Valve also released Counter Strike Condition dubbed as CS:CZ in 2004 which was a slightly facelift version of the game but still ran on the now 6 year old Goldsource engine which is a modified version of the Quake II engine, this did not have the success that was expected with only 2.9 million retail sales of the game as of December 2008 compared to the 4.2 million by the end of the same period.

Source server engine is introduced with CSS servers

When Valve released Half Life 2 in November 2004, they also released a new up to date version of the game called Counter Strike Source, or CSS servers for short, this version now had the same level of graphics of other games for its age and so was making older PCs struggle to run the game, even in beta testing we saw an influx in CSS servers influx. When Half Life Episode One was released they also released an update to the Source engine in June 2006 which improved CSS servers. With the original engine needing a reasonable powerful pc for the time did mean that it took a while for people to start getting into CSS servers, and when they did many did not really look back, some people still prefer 1.6 to this day after playing CSS for many years. Like 1.6, CSS servers maintained the ability to change the game content with mods and maps etc.

CSS servers and cheaters

All three versions of the game have been plagued with issues of cheaters and hackers, the Valve anti cheat system (VAC) works well but is not the best thing and so there are groups like Steam Bans that work better as this is ban submissions by real people. But still there is no substitute to good old fashioned human admin but for many servers this is just unrealistic to haveadmins on their servers 24/7, and to help this many mod developers have coding kick and ban scripts in to allow people to start votes to get rid of people from CSS servers.

CSS Servers the Future

As of the time of writing there is still little word on the future of Half Life and CSS servers, and the market is becoming increasingly competitive with the likes of EA’s Battlefield seriers of Games and Activision with the Call of Duty games. We will have to wait and see what Valve do with new CSS servers.

- Fixed new weapon firing integration causing some guns to over-fire on single taps
- Fixed a couple of cases where machine guns could skip slightly with enough lag
- Fixed c4 explosion pre-caching
- Added precise audio timing fixes for client-side prediction
- Increased the tolerance for skip detection in client side audio to prevent sound dropping out due to client clock drift
- Completed work on clan tag strings validation

Jason

Want a CSS Server?

[gssimon@INX-236-135 srcds_l]$ ./start.alienswarm: ./srcds_run: /bin/sh^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

So had a Google around the error and found that it was todo with a Linux textfile being corrupted by being opened in notepad so used a Linux command to fix it and its still broken.

So I looked through the HLDS Linux mailing list and found this in it:

Upon further investigation, the Alien Swarm dedicated server has not been released for Linux. We shipped some of the Linux files by accident.

M.

Then:

That doesn’t sound good, “by accident”? Will we be getting Linux files tonight?

Jim

Just to confirm:

Sorry if I wasn’t clear. Alien Swarm is not currently supported on Linux.

M.

So we can chalk another mark on the wall for another botched Steam release!

Stay tuned when we hope to have good news soon….(well this is Valve time we are referring to)

A required update for Team Fortress 2, and an optional update for Day of Defeat: Source and the Counter-Strike: Source Beta is now available.  Please run hldsupdatetool to receive the update.  The specific changes include:

Linux Dedicated Server:

- Fixed srcds_run to work properly with the Counter-Strike: Source beta dedicated server when autoupdating.

Engine:

- Fixed the startmovie command not using the codec dialog.

Team Fortress 2:

- Fixed dropped weapons and ammo kits not being affected by explosions.

- Adding missing “+lookup” and “+lookdown” keybind options.

- Added SetCTFCaptureBonusTime tf_gamerules input to allow map authors to set the length of crit bonus time (in seconds) for CTF captures.

Jason

There are so many factors that make a great game server. If we look at the technical specifics- anything from the hardware, to the connection. The configs- rates, tweaks etc. To the aesthetics- if you are going to have a good game server, the better the tools, the easier the job.

With a struggle, here’s the top five factors (in no particular order) that make a good game server:

The tools

To configure a game server, you need the full access. And to do it properly, you don’t want to be faffing around. This is where a good control panel comes in. As well as the control panel, full FTP is a must. The control panel should do everything the FTP does, but my making 101 clicks, one click! The ability to save config, install mods, change the start line on the fly, are all a must

The hardware

Game servers will run on:

• Desktop PC’s
• Crappy specs

However, don’t expect performance. Desktop PC’s aren’t made for stress, and can overheat (I’m talking about those that host them in a datacentre for some weird reason- must be cost cutting). Quad Cores are a must these days- Dual Cpu’s will do for running a few servers. Anything less and you are going to see horrible performance degradation.

Hosts should skimp on their hardware.

The best connectivity

Connectivity is perhaps the most important part of a game server. One bad route, and your pings will sky rocket. An ip transit provider should be incredibly stable. If you are finding the network going offline every few days, that’s a sure way to scare off players. So look for a good network. Goscomb connectivity is highly rated in the UK for example.

The configs

A CS Source game server needs rates set correctly according to those using the server. If you don’t set your rates correctly, expect horrible packet loss, choke, and lots of ‘OMFG’.

The provider

Of course, it goes without saying. A good control panel, good connectivity and the rest. But you are stuck without a good provider. There are a number throughout the world. Things to check for

- Are they a real company, or after school operation?
- Does their pricing scream desperation?
- How long have they been around
- How quickly do they respond to sales emails?

For now, that is just about enough to get you started. Be careful….it’s a warzone out there

T**s

S**t

F***ers

Apparently Ubisoft’s Scrabble Game has been using offensive language to beat an 8-year old at scrabble.

How did no one on the Dev team think “Hey, we should pop a word filter on this beast, yo!”? Come to that, why wasn’t it sufficiently tested by Ubisoft and Nintendo?

If you don’t test your games, then mistakes will get made. Sometimes very embarrasing ones.

- John