TF2 Server Update Released 03/09/10

A required update to TF2 Servers is now available. Please run hldsupdatetool to receive the update. The specific changes include:

Engine (CS:S, DoD:S, TF2):
- Fixed a server crash caused by spamming the server with invalid rcon passwords.

Team Fortress 2:
- Fixed a bug in the Steamworks internal stats reporting.

Jason

Posted in Team Fortess 2 News, Updates | Leave a comment

TF2 Servers and CSS Servers Updates Available 01/09/2010

A required update for TF2 servers is now available. This is also an optional update for CSS servers. The specific changes include:

Dedicated Servers (CS:S, DoD:S, TF2)
- Fixed a case where servers would lock-up while writing .dmp files.

Counter-Strike: Source
- Fixed some minor smoke grenade bugs.

Team Fortress 2
- Fixed a bug in the Steamworks internal stats reporting.

Jason

Posted in Counterstrike news, Team Fortess 2 News, Updates | Leave a comment

CSSource Server Update Available 31/08/10

A required update to CSS  Server is now available. Please run hldsupdatetool to receive the update. The specific changes include:

Source Engine ( TF2, DoD:S, CS:S )
- Fixed hang when typing “map” twice in the console.

Counter-Strike: Source
- Smoke Grenades:
- Made them bloom faster.
- Made them more opaque.
- Fixed “one way” smoke.
- Changed walk speed to be 0.52x of run speed ( Counter-Strike 1.6 )

Jason

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INX Gaming Tutorial: Add admin with Sourcemod (Detailed Method)

In this tutorial we are going to go through adding admins to your server with Sourcemod. There are two different ways of adding admins to your server. There is the ‘Simple’ method which is… well, what can i say? Simple. There is another method called detailed which is what we are going to go through in this tutorial.

The files that you are going to need to look at and/or edit are not available via the INX file editor as this method is for the more advanced user. However, you will still need to use the control panel for a server restart later on.

It may be easier for you to locate the files that you need and download them before we start to add information. You can download each file as and when you need them, but we like to make life easy here at INX and I find downloading them all first is much easier than the later. Please locate and download the following files via FTP to somewhere easy to find and access on your computer.

Navigate to the following location using your FTP client. srcds_l/cstrike/addons/sourcemod/configs/. Once you have navigated to the above location, there are three files you will need to download to get the ball rolling.

admins.cfg
admin_groups.cfg
admin_levels.cfg

Now lets have a brief overview on what each of these files contain. The admins.cfg file contains a list of all people who you have granted admin rights to on your server. This is where you will do the final task of adding their details to enable their access. Admin_levels.cfg holds the information which controls what features your admins can or can’t access. These are also known as admin flags which are denoted by a letter (e.g. abcdefg). Finally, the admin_groups.cfg is where you can create pre-set groups for admin rights. For example, you can create a group called ‘Full Admin’ and assign all admin permissions to that group. You can then create another group called ‘Basic Admin’ and only assign specific items like kick and change map. Another group could be called ‘Basic Admin with Ban’ which can hold all of the features of the basic admin group with the addition of the ban permission. You get the drift :)

Right, lets start with creating a group. To do this we will need to use the admin_levels.cfg and admin_groups.cfg files. There will be some default text within the admin_groups.cfg file, but i am going to trim down some of the nicey nicey stuff in the file and show you here just what is needed to avoid confusion.

Groups
{
“Full Admins”
{
Overrides
{
“sm_map”    ”allow”
“:CSDM”        ”deny”

}
“flags”            “abcdefhiz”
“immunity”        “99″
}
}

The short and sweet of the text (or mumbo jumbo) that is above is actually fairly simple. The part highlighted in red is the name of the group. The section highlighted in green is where you can specify which admin flags you want this group to be able to access. These flags can be seen in the admin_levels.cfg file which you downloaded earlier. You simply add a letter for each of the flags you wish this group to have access to. The final section which is highlighted in blue is the immunity level for the group. This is numerical and can be adjusted accordingly for the group as you wish.

The final section of the admin_groups.cfg file which we are going to cover is the overrides section which is highlighted in pink (yes… don’t ask!). Here you can specify specific commands that you wish the group to have access to even if you have not specified the flag in the flags section (highlighted green). In the example above there is no ‘change map’ flag specified which would be denoted by the letter ‘g‘. However, as i have specified that this group can have access to the sm_map command, this function can still be carried out. On the other side of the table, i have specified that this group is to be denied all access to any command from the CSDM (Counter Strike Death Match) menu. Simply add the command and allow or deny respectively.

So, lets create groups for ‘Full Admin’, ‘Basic Admin’ and ‘Basic Admin with Ban’ which should get you started and well on your way!

Groups
{
“Full Admin”
{
Overrides
{
}
“flags”        ”z”
“immunity”    ”99″
}
}

{
“Basic Admin”
{
Overrides
{
}
“flags”        ”bfgjk”
“immunity”    ”0″
}
}

{
“Basic Admin with Ban”
{
Overrides
{
}
“flags”        ”bdefgjk”
“immunity”    ”0″
}
}

If you place that into your admin_groups.cfg file, this should give you a good starting point to start giving out admin permissions to people of your choice.

Now we have specified the groups and what permissions that each group has, we not have to assign those groups to users. For this we are going to now look at the admins.cfg file. Again, there is some default text in the file, but i am only going to show in this tutorial what is actually used.

Admins
{
“Bashful”
{
“auth”            ”steam”
“identity”        ”STEAM_0:1:123456″
“flags”            ”"
“group”            ”Full Admin”
}
}
{
“Doc”
{
“auth”            ”steam”
“identity”        ”STEAM_0:1:123456″
“flags”            ”"
“group”            ”Full Admin”
}
}
{
“Dopey”
{
“auth”            ”steam”
“identity”        ”STEAM_0:1:123456″
“flags”            ”"
“group”            ”Basic Admin with Ban”
}
}
{
“Grumpy”
{
“auth”            ”steam”
“identity”        ”STEAM_0:1:123456″
“flags”            ”"
“group”            ”Basic Admin with Ban”
}
}
{
“Happy”
{
“auth”            ”steam”
“identity”        ”STEAM_0:1:123456″
“flags”            ”"
“group”            ”Basic Admin”
}
}
{
“Sleepy”
{
“auth”            ”steam”
“identity”        ”STEAM_0:1:123456″
“flags”            ”"
“group”            ”Basic Admin”
}
}
{
“Sneezy”
{
“auth”            ”steam”
“identity”        ”STEAM_0:1:123456″
“flags”            ”"
“group”            ”Basic Admin”
}
}

Excuse the names used in here again :) You will notice that there are no flags set against the users in this file. This is because all of the permissions are assigned from the groups which we setup earlier on. All that there is left to do now is to upload the files back to the server and hit the restart button.

Your admins (in this case the seven dwarfs) should have admin permissions according to the group they are set against.

Posted in Tutorials | 1 Comment

Update for TF2 & CSS servers

An update has been released for TF2 & CSS servers

Last night, an update for TF2 hosting & CSS servers was released. This follows a large amount of CSS servers updates in recent weeks.

TF2 & CSS servers update information

Required update for Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Source are now available. The specific changes include:

Source Engine ( TF2, DoD:S, CS:S )
- Fixed a crash on startup with some video drivers.
- Fixed a bug where the speaker config would be lost on Windows Vista / 7
- Fixed a case where alt-tab would stop rendering models.
- Made the ‘X’ that closes the achievements screen visible by default in 1280×720 resolution.
- Made disconnect messages wrap so they don’t get truncated.
- Made kick / disconnect messages more legible.

Counter-Strike: Source
- Fixed a memory leak in the dedicated server.
- Fixed a problem that could cause the crosshair to expand briefly after the trigger is released.
- Made crosshair scale independently of framerate, matching the old behavior at 100 fps. This does not affect actual recoil, fire rate, or spread – only the expansion of the crosshair. Added cl_legacy_crosshair, which defaults to the new behavior.
- Made the crosshair for the Glock and Famas scale correctly upon firing in burst mode.
- Removed ability to jump to inaccessible locations using grenades (flashboosting). Added sv_enableboost (defaulted to 0) for those who prefer to allow this behavior.
- Fixed an issue with involving incorrect armor protection vs. grenade damage. Added sv_legacy_grenade_damage (defaulted to 0) to allow servers to revert to the original behavior.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes caused the freezecam sound to be heard when spectating a player who dies.
- Fixed an issue that could cause KeyHintText to generate junk characters.
- Prevented ragdoll spasm that could occur when using the jointeam command.
- Addressed a problem with the sniper rifles that prevented unzooming during auto-reload after shooting all the bullets in a clip.
- Fixed an issue with the AWP and Scout that could cause their zooms to vibrate briefly after a reload.
- Fixed map cycling so that the cycle now starts from the map selected by the user instead of going back to the first map.
- Fixed mp_restartgame so that it resets MVPs as well as score and deaths.
- Removed fun fact from achievements summary screen and associated playerblotter functionality.
- Throttled warning messages for disabled achievements to no more than once every 60 seconds.
- Made the silhouette that appears when you hit AUTO-SELECT on the Terrorist choose a class screen fit within its borders.
- Fixed lock radar rotation option in the GUI. Setting this option now works.
- Fixed a potential crash with custom huds.
- Fixed a bug in walk prediction.

Team Fortress 2
- Fixed a bug in the Steamworks stats reporting.
- Fixed the new Worms gear not playing the correct sound during the Equalizer taunt.
- Fixed map cycling so that the cycle now starts from the map selected by the user instead of going back to the first map.
- Fixed a memory leak in the dedicated server.

Jason

How to run the update on your TF2 & CSS servers

To run the update on INX TF2 & CSS servers, please run the update button on our game server control panel.

Posted in Counterstrike news, Team Fortess 2 News | Leave a comment

Teamspeak 3 servers – coming soon

Teamspeak 3 servers are coming to INX-Gaming

That is right Teamspeak 3 servers are coming

Ok I think you have the message that Teamspeak 3 servers are coming to INX. As such we are getting quite excited about that. We know that you have been wanting this for ages and have been unable to offer it but development for our new Teamspeak 3 servers platform will be going into development in the next week or two.

About Teamspeak 3 servers

Our next generation Teamspeak 3 servers software has been highly improved compared to its predecessors. For starters, both the Client and Server are now available as a flexible cross-platform solution for Windows (32bit and 64bit), Mac OS X (Intel and PPC) and Linux (32bit and 64bit). All platforms are 100% feature compatible and feature rich so regardless of which platform you use, all new features will be available across all platforms upon TeamSpeak 3 servers launch date.

Information from Teamspeak 3 website

Keep checking back here for more information on Teamspeak 3 servers from INX-Gaming.

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Garrys Mod servers Update Released 26/08/2010

Updates to Garrys Mod servers have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Garry’s Mod

Fixed Linux server

Posted in Garrys Mod | Leave a comment

TF2 Servers Update Released 26/08/2010

A required update to TF2 servers is now live. Please run hldsupdatetool to receive the update. The specific changes include:

Added Hungarian localization file.
Updated Steamworks stats gathering.
Updated localization strings based on community feedback.
Updated Cp_Yukon
- Fixed an exploit where players could get outside of the gameplay space.
Updated Koth_Viaduct
- Reduced the capture time for the control point from 6 seconds to 3 seconds.

Jason

Posted in Team Fortess 2 News, Updates | Leave a comment

CSS servers the history of

The History of CSS Servers

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.

Posted in Random thoughts | 3 Comments

CSS Servers Update Released 25/08/2010

Required updates to CSS Servers are now available. The specific changes include:

- Added a new server ConVar “sv_competitive_minspec” that enforces the following restrictions on clients when set to 1:
- r_drawdetailprops     1
- r_staticprop_lod      (-1 to 3)
- fps_max               minimum 60 (or 0)
- cl_detailfade         minimum 400
- cl_detaildist         minimum 1200
- cl_interp             (0 to 0.031)
- cl_interp_ratio       (1 to 2)
- Fixed ragdolls popping when using mp_fadetoblack 1
- Fixed a buffer overrun exploit that could be used to attack/crash servers.
- Fixed a crash at startup when no sound emitter scripts were loaded.
- Fixed a crash that could happen if a custom model was loaded with missing materials.
- Fixed a crashed related to alt-tab.
- Fixed a potential crash in the shaders.
- Fixed a crash when running custom maps with missing model files
- Removed the client console commands “mat_supress” and “mat_debug”

Jason

Want to have your own CSS Server?

Posted in Counterstrike news, Updates | Leave a comment