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  1. I would like to throw my hat into the ring. Today, I think we're in a better position versus where we were before. We have complete control over our server versus having NFO managing our server which I volunteered to do to lessen the server's cost. Subsequently, managing the server allows us to get a real-time perspective on resource utilization we didn't have before when NFO managed the server. Consequently, the consistent lag/pauses we were experiencing have disappeared. Additionally, I volunteered to work on the points plugin which I believe is in a good state today. I believe the points plugin functionally works the same prior to the lag issue with some new features added to it. This work included recreating the missing sections of the source code we were running for the points plugin which I did when I started looking at the points plugin source code. I was able to recreate a complete version of the points plugin source code utilizing the running plugin we had and now there is a workable plugin we are able to modify and improve upon. Subsequently, new functionality and fixes were implemented in the points plugin and new plugins have been added to the server to complement game play. The effort to work on the points plugin we are using today is not just from the work I did but with assistance from Archer and Soda. Also, I worked on upgrading the server to the latest stable branch of SourceMod version 1.11. This effort included transitioning the points plugin source code to the SourceMod’s new syntax utilized in version 1.11. Subsequently, transitioning to version 1.11 of SourceMod revealed issues with other third-party plugins we are utilizing, hence I worked on addressing those issues as the arose and converting those third-party plugins to SourceMod 1.11. This was a necessary step for our server because development of SourceMod plugins are being developed for version 1.11 versus older versions of SourceMod. Therefore, I felt it was worth the effort to transition to SourceMod 1.11 thereby ensuring we are compatible with current and future plugins we may want to utilize. This process was enjoyable to work on and I want to continue being involved with that work. As it pertains to funding the servers, I can provide funds to supplement a shortage if necessary but I’m hoping there is an increase in membership to cover the cost. Also, Soda I did add the 'world model turn rate fix’ plugin you recommended to the server. I'm not sure if the plugin really addressed the issue Mercman mentioned but we are running it today.
    3 points
  2. My main focus isn't so much on balance changes, more so performance and stability improvements first. That said, assuming the server performance is in a good and stable state, I'd probably look at adding quality of life to either the points plugin (like allowing a buyable ammo refill for the whole team, or a set of boomer goggles for the whole team), or other aspects of the game, like the 'worldmodel turn rate fix' plugin I posted about in the L4D2 section. If those two areas of focus are in a good state, then I'd look at balance and actual gameplay changes. Of course, I'd want to hear community opinions regarding balance changes - so I'd probably propose my ideas and gather feedback prior to changing things. My general philosophy for L4D2 versus is that the game should be fun from all perspectives, regardless of winning, losing, survivor, or infected. There's a couple tweaks I made to infected messing with my local server, such as making smokers more of a threat by increasing their survivor pull speed and reducing the latency of the tongue, or increasing the damage a boomer does when it scratches a survivor (they should be kept at distance 🤓). Stuff like that is what I'd be looking for community opinions on. Another thing that I think would be interesting would be setting up a fast download file server and have it linked to the game server, which essentially enables custom content to be used on the server and all players would automatically download it when joining (FYI - I have proven it works as a concept already). E.g. custom sounds (like a radio playing to all players), weapons, maps, etc. - lots of possibilities there, but more of a back-pocket idea for now. One more I almost forgot about - stats and stat tracking. I know source stats was used previously for GC, and I've experimented with reading and writing stats to a database in my local server. I did actually get it working, and I could track as many stats as I wanted, enabling things such as 'personal bests' for round performance, or time to earn a certain achievement, for example, and could even track stats by map, if desired. Players would be able to check their stats in game in real time, and track their development over time. That's all I can think of right now. Let me know anything else you may be wondering, or what your thoughts are!
    3 points
  3. Since the Last Stand update broke so many things, I never attempted to try to fix anything because, from what I experienced, the Sourcemod community never really fixed any of the dependents. That probably changed since I had given up looking. I never publicly released my plugin because of a few reasons: 1. I'm not a programmer. Even though I wrote v2.0 from scratch, it was still a giant mess. I only learned Sourcepawn from reading other people's work on plugins I was interested in, which led me to altering an already existing Points System and making countless bug fixes (pre v2.0). For those who remember the invincible Tank dying animation will know what I mean (which was... man, 11 years ago?). Things that would take someone like 30 minutes to code or fix would take me hours and I had no one I could use for resources. A few people helped me test, but that's literally it. 2. The code is a giant ducking mess. Under someone much more competent than I am, I bet the entire plugin size could be halved. Including whitespace, comments and such, it weighs in at a hefty 12,337 lines. I'd be embarrassed to have someone look at what I made, let alone constantly criticize it. I want to have some kind of dignity left... I'm surprised that the majority of the things actually... kinda worked. 3. I didn't want people to change what I had created. Call it pride or something, but if you let someone tinker around with something you made... is it really yours anymore? I didn't want it to not be mine anymore. There should be no shame in asking for help, but at the time, I had no one I could ask for help from. The constant nagging people did when something didn't work and expected the "genius at work" to fix it when they didn't know how to is kinda awkward. Probably is my fault anyway. I wanted recognition on something I made and I was kind of proud of myself that I made something work from nothing without knowing how to do it... which led me to not wanting to lose it, so I never released it. 4. I didn't want it to be used anywhere else but GC. I made it for GC, I felt it should be exclusive to GC... plus reason 3. I also wanted to keep things as vanilla as possible because every other 10v10 server was going further and further away from vanilla. Even slight changes (apart from very slightly buffing damage values by like 1 or 2, I'm looking at you Jockey and Smoker) would depart from vanilla in my eyes. The biggest change was Tanks didn't get slowed by gunfire anymore. In my eyes, those other servers kinda ruined the feel of the original game and if you didn't want to play somewhere where you could have like 50 abilities to choose from or have 1000 Survivor HP, GC's server was people's home. Also... it sucked when you were trying to enjoy yourself playing in the server, seeing something not work right or break, then leaving the server to fix it right away so the other 19 people could continue to have fun... wish I could have had fun every now and then... sadge.
    3 points
  4. Kill me 3 times in one game and you win membership: Prize is for GC members only, sry but Admins are not allowed. RULES: KILLING BY TANK/WITCH DOES NOT COUNT. NO KILL STEALING or you will be disqualified. If you are an already paying member and you win, remind me before your membership expires; that's if GC is still here? To give everyone a fair shot at winning, I will play survivor only.
    2 points
  5. Throwing my hat in the ring, as I'd be happy to maintain the web and/or game server(s) into the future. I'll list a few things about me that I believe would be relevant for people to gauge whether I am suitable. For the forums and web server, I have experience building and maintaining websites either from scratch in with HTML/CSS/JS, from templates like Bootstrap, or on Wordpress or similar web-building services. When I graduated from college, I made my personal and portfolio website that I still maintain to this day, and it is built on a Bootstrap template. For game server(s), I have experience working on Source servers (L4D2 mostly) and developing plugins of my own, or working on other people's plugins built in SourcePawn. For accountability and leadership, I have a full time job working as a software analyst specifically working in corporate compensation systems. I also am the Chairman and leader of a professional growth network for the IT sector of my company, through which I've initiated and hosted virtual events to over 900 people at its peak, and many smaller events with around 40-120 attendees. I also am a co-leader of a Manhua Scans (Chinese comics translated to English) group for over two years, which has around 30-50 volunteer staff at a given time. In that group I have been responsible for assigning work, delegating tasks, maintaining our website and discord server (~4k members), all of which I enjoy very much. For finances, I don't mind having to provide funds when required and reasonable for site and server upkeep. That said, it would be my preference to have the community fund itself through valuable products or services, similar to the membership system. I like engaging with individuals or communities and working on cool and interesting projects, and creating spaces that I can enjoy with others. I've been in and around GC for many years, playing on the L4D2 servers for the first time back around 2014. I was quite a moody teenager for a while, going through some bans and fights, all while playing games a bit too much back then. My personal philosophies and priorities have evolved quite a lot since then, and since returning to the community in the last few years, I've been supporting cici and Archer where possible in maintaining the L4D2 server and its plugins, and I'm happy to help foster a good community here in GC. I'm happy to chat when time allows, and I am quite fast in responding most of the time, so please feel free to reach out! Discord (best way to reach me): xxnoobslayer Steam: Link
    2 points
  6. AlliedModders Link - WorldModel_Turnrate Basically this just makes it so players models face the direction they are actually looking. The vanilla L4D2 turn rate is super slow and makes players seem less responsive than they really are. I think it would be good to add as a simple quality of life addition to the servers.
    2 points
  7. Latest Update: Update @ 3:40am CST on 1/16: The facility reports that five out of six chillers are operational, and the datacenter is within a normal temperature range again. They manually rebooted our primary router, and it came back online; we've now shifted loads back onto it. Our audits have not identified any equipment that is not functioning properly, so everything appears to be back to normal now at this facility. We will continue to monitor, however, and follow up with the facility as they work to repair the sixth chiller and improve their overall cooling systems.
    2 points
  8. JC - if it wasn't for you and your perseverance in GC's early days, IMHO GC and L4D2 would not exist without you.
    2 points
  9. Jackie, hope all is well. Miss having you around
    2 points
  10. It's Great to hear from you again Jackie, hope all is well.
    2 points
  11. Been a long time since I've been on here. Lots of life changes going on, and I'm sure for everyone. 11 years ago I found this server and I have some of the best gaming memories here. Plus some good times on the minecraft server. Damn, time flies.
    2 points
  12. 1) Server Reserves has been completely updated. That means some of you might be caught out, either not paid, or a gifted membership I spaced and removed. The former you can deal with yourself. For the latter, if you were GIFTED a membership sometime in the last year, hit up the gifter or someone and we can sort that out. 2) Subscriptions to get GC membership and the server reserve. It seems Stripe is spacing on this for some reason and transactions are choking. It could be a bunch of fraud stuff going down or whatever but it feels more like a bug. So for the time being only PayPal for subscriptions. It'll get sorted eventually. 3) When you do get a subscription, be sure to PM Flitterkill (that's me!) your Steam ID so we can set your reserve.
    1 point
  13. I know we're still at early stages 'revamping' the server so to speak, but one thing that would be useful to have back in the short-term for admins is to 'speak' to server via chat when we can't be in game and deal with naughty people without having to be there, if that's possible? Cheers and thanks for your help keeping GC alive, much appreciated.
    1 point
  14. I know I have not been active in game due to personal life, but I hope to stick around and help as needed either with some funds and occassional admining. Honestly for my mental health I probably need to get back into it. Soda has done some great things on his server and knows a good deal about the mods by now and would be a valid choice so long as we don't turn into a dictatorship (thinking old sky servers in particular) and continue to have a board of members who can help make decisions best for the community. I feel like that happens to a lot of communities and is why GC has lasted so long, we had a team of admins and people who genuinly care instead of leaving it up to one person. So yeah honestly I'd love to get more active in things again. As summer approaches I'll have more people working at my business and can take more time away for sure.
    1 point
  15. Thank you Soda for stepping up to help. If there are no objections to handing the reigns over to you, then it is up to FlitterKill and other BMs to discuss the next stages.
    1 point
  16. Update Reinstalled Win 10 and it works now
    1 point
  17. From what I've seen over the years, the AWM has been rarely used by anyone outside of an elite few who were outstanding shots anyway. Virtually everyone uses the AK if given a choice. Those who like it will probably continue to use it, while everyone else will continue to do what they're already doing. If anything, buying laser sights is what really throws the weapon tier list into chaos. That's when the M16's accuracy advantage fades and the AK truly supplants sharpshooter weapons meant for long range shots, especially against airborne targets. Luckily for me, the SPAS12 remains the most effective weapon in spite of alcohol intake.
    1 point
  18. I've often thought about what the L4D2 !buy 10v10 experience could be, given a bit of tweaking and active development influenced by community feedback. I know that GC used to operate like this, though things changed over time, as life happens - understandably. That said, I've taken it upon myself as a personal project to reinvent the experience for the community. I took the time to learn Sourcemod code (SourcePawn) and build an !buy plugin almost from scratch, heavily influenced by the version used in GC. Since Jackie's version is not public and other points plugins are not quite the same, almost all the functionality for the points system was made by me. I include things like boomer goggles, SI fire extinguish, placeable witches, and more. I've also included things like the ready up system, a database for long term stats, and achievements, all custom built. Also included rocket spawning, infected class chooser, and some other plugins that make GC as fun as it is. I have also made a 10v10 server, which runs on 66 tick rate, opposed to the 30 tick rate of most L4D2 servers, GC included. This makes the game feel much, much better. You can even play on zero lerp without experiencing any common infected jitter. Additionally, I have tweaked the behavior and statistics of the special infected and reduced the presence of tanks. My philosophy for 10v10 is that you shouldn't need to buy many tanks at once to wipe a survivor team, but rather the specials should be strong enough to be able to do so. Almost all specials received buffs to their damage, some received additional buffs, like smokers tongue range being increased, or boomers being able to move slowly while puking. Health values of specials are kept at vanilla with the exception of the tank, who has traded some max hp for increased move speed and lost the ability to heal. I am very open to feedback and suggestions, as I am actively developing new features and am very active on discord. I have created a new discord server, specifically designed for this new server, and all GC members are welcome to join, chat, connect, and provide feedback or suggestions. I do not run the server 24/7 right now, however I am open to it in the future. If you are interested in learning more or trying it out, join the discord, where I'm actively tracking my development: https://discord.gg/zwbGzFmwM8
    1 point
  19. JC - come in one day and get beat up as usual - great to see you're back.
    1 point
  20. Lengthy gimmick rounds can be quite fun when they aren't cut short. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1922606187 For the record, that wasn't the stream being laggy. The server was REALLY laggy, and it legitimately came close to crashing a few times xd
    1 point
  21. As a follow-on to Flitterkill's previous post 'GC Status and pseudo-wind-down' on the status of our virtual dedicated server (VDS), we have transitioned to a new VDS. Overall, the new VDS lessens the annual cost of hosting GC's L4D2 dedicated servers per Flitterkill's previous post 'GC Status and pseudo-wind-down'. Although, to minimize the cost requires us to maintain and manage our VDS versus using an NFO hosted L4D2 instance, which I volunteered to do. The new VDS's IP address is '74.91.115.164' (with a DNS entry of l4d2.gcftw.com). Once the new VDS was online, I started the process of transitioning over server two ('gamrs.co | !buy 10v10 #2') and server three (gamrs.co | !buy 10v10 #3 dev) to the new VDS. I was able to complete the transition fairly quickly and started testing the new VDS that same day. Minimal testing convinced me the transition went well and the server is capable of hosting our L4D2 dedicated servers. Additionally, I was able to continue testing with some members/regulars to see if there were any issues but did not notice an issue myself. However, testing with a full server will be the real test and should clearly indicate if there is an issue using the new VDS. Now that the new VDS is online and working, our current VDS will be shut down on July 27th, 2023. Therefore, you will need to adjust your connection to the new VDS if you want to continue playing on GC's L4D2 servers. To facilitate hosting more than one L4D2 dedicated server on the new VDS, I'm taking advantage of using different ports to connect to different L4D2 dedicated servers, which luckily Valves' server browser is capable of today. To point to the L4D2 dedicated servers hosted on the new VDS you will need to connect to the following: 1) 'Server #1' is hosted at 'l4d2.gcftw.com:27015' (without the single quotes). 2) 'Server #2' is hosted at 'l4d2.gcftw.com:27016' (without the single quotes). 3) 'Dev Server #3' is hosted at 'l4d2.gcftw.com:27020' (without the single quotes). Although there are three L4D2 dedicated servers configured on the new VDS, the new VDS can only comfortably host two servers concurrently based on my testing. Therefore, I'll leave the development server off and only enable it when needed for testing purposes. Also, if hosting two L4D2 dedicated servers concurrently is an issue we can disable one of the L4D2 dedicated servers if needed. In conclusion, there is a new VDS online with IP address '74.91.115.164' hosting GC's L4D2 dedicated servers. Additionally, the current VDS will be shut-off on July 27th, 2023.
    1 point
  22. SI Fire Extinguish Showcase:
    1 point
  23. My latest creation, took me a whole 10 mins to write the code thanks to an SDKTools function and a L4DStocks function lol.
    1 point
  24. 1 point
  25. Thanks for your continued work on the server FK, Maestro and archer. I'm glad to see it isn't going away. I think one server is better than none especially at that much savings. If there's dedicated "test time" when it's dead it'll be just fine. I'd just say no weekends during prime time obviously. I hope to get back into action sometime. I'm still technically an admin but haven't done much of anything in server since I had my 2nd child. I have done a few resets, bans, grabbed commands for others via PM. I think for my mental health I need to get back into it but need to find the time. When is the server most busy lately? My thing is it is hard to play anything multiplayer with my house being a madhouse, children getting into things and all the rest. Oh well.
    1 point
  26. https://www.gametracker.com/server_info/216.52.148.77:27015/
    1 point
  27. lets hope so I could only find #2 https://www.gametracker.com/server_info/74.91.113.10:27015/
    1 point
  28. 10th October - 2nd ear operation - and hopefully the final one. The pain and noise is unbearable, told that would last for about 3weeks. That's why I ain't been around for a week, noises are seriously amplified, especially electrical equipment around G# - thus wearing headphones is out of the question - wish I could record the sound, but suffice it to say, put your head inside a washing machine on a full load at fast spin, now you hear that; it's constant unmitigated torture - I haven't got the courage to cut my ear off, unlike van Gogh. Had about 10seconds of wonderful peace in my head yesterday, and no, I don't hear scary voices.
    0 points
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