Flitterkill

Not yet - on my to do list ALong with putting reserves back in play. Perhaps this weekend... -Fk

Actually, Nepenthe is pretty full about 1/3 of the week - nights and weekends being the most consistent. Gotta be there at the right time though - Brillow is right that UT2K4 took a hit with WoW and CS:S - we will likely see nothing like the nearly full servers 24/7 our GC CS:S servers see - but considering our server troubles we've had in the past, Nepenthe is doing pretty good - and is trending higher as more people start to stick and stay - and UT2007 is around the corner too! New IP (this needs to change for this and the other UT forum) is: 69.90.114.55 *26* Players - 2 specs - Opteron 252 - No lag unless you bring your own! -Fk

Every now and then the Earth decides to step up and say "hello" and this is certainly one of those times. Only three Cat 5 hurricanes in US recorded history. Except none of them teed off on a major US city safely tucked in 6 feet below sea level, conveniently located next to major chemical processing plants. Nice. Never understood why people built houses in floodplains (farm all you want there, just don't *live* there) - but a major city under sea level? And draining and filling in surrounding wetlands that normally serve as a buffer/sponge? Yeah. Only real hope now is that once it makes landfall the winds drop like mad - if they sustain... Best ghoulish quote so far (from CNN): "So, imagine you're the poor person who decides not to evacuate: Your house will disintegrate around you. The best you'll be able to do is hang on to a light pole, and while you're hanging on, the fire ants from all the mounds -- of which there is two per yard on average -- will clamber up that same pole. And, eventually, the fire ants will win." Second best (Washington Post in ref. to Camille - and this hurricane is supposed to be worse): "Those of us who lived though Hurricane Camille will never forget it. Camille struck with the force of several hydrogen bombs, altering forever the topography of the Mississippi coast. Its nearly 200-mph winds and 25-foot storm surge exploded concrete buildings and erased entire communities -- then gouged open graveyards and hung corpses in the live oaks like so much Spanish moss. There was a problem for a time telling the storm victims from those already embalmed." Wish I had a storage tank - hard to believe but it would actually make sense to stock up on gas now - $70 a barrel as I write this - prob more sometime tomorrow. It's not so much that the output from the Gulf has been shutdown until this passes, but that New Orleans is a major port for the off-loading and processing of petroleum - and with that gone... I'd wish the Louisiana National Guard the best in dealing with this but seems that most of them are somewhere else right now... Sure the Governor is loving that. Regardless of where you stand on the war, the National Guard were never intended for the duties they have today - they were intended for stuff like this (among other state things) - too bad they aren't here. </soap box> Good luck folks, best to all GC and non-GC in the path, - pray for that miracle. -Fk EDIT: Some conflicting data on the intensity of the storm now but the sci's all say it will make landfall at no less than Cat 4, may still be Cat 5, and are actually concerned that its structure may be changing - as it may be weakening, another eye wall might be forming, meaning hurricane force winds over a broader area Not used to seeing the NWS use the word "catastrophic" in their forecasts: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATC...ml/290455.shtml NWS Technical Discussion: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATC...ml/290249.shtml

100 tick server = server is running the game at 100 frames per second. Which doesn't even remotely suck If we on the UT side were to run an ONS server at that tick rate, long dead gods would awaken from eons of slumber to ask us "Can we play?" Which is to say ain't no hardware around that can do 100 tick for ONS We're lucky to get 25 -Fk

Liltard? I seeeeee you....... -Fk

As for the UT side of things: 1) Nepenthe. Was utterly fantastic for the longest time - then, who knows if this has anything at all to do with it - once we had that Chciago fire a month or two back - since that point - packet loss has been getting worse and worse - the hardware itself is fine but with the network issues - yeah... 2) Griffen Run: Lots of UT folks swear by Griffen Run - and they pay for that pleasure - boy do they ever. 3) Should we give funservers a fly? Willing to see what they can swing though they really do not do UT at all (out of thier 250+ servers - roughly 98% are all CS-S - there is one UT (non-ONS) server. 4) ReconGamer: I knew they were up to something but didn't know it was that. It would be so nice if they swung Chicago... I'll take a look at Scathefire (UT DM serer we have running at Recon) and see if pings have improved at all 5) There is a Chicago joint that deals exclusively with UT - very familiar with - not the cheapest - but ain't no Griffin Run either - pings and hops are unbeleiveable - I *will* kick in some dime to get these folks locked up for us if it comes to that. So - summation: Nepenthe hardware is great, network seems a bit....hmmmm Willing to give funservers a fly though I doubt they are prepared for the brutality that is about to be inflicted upon them by the CPU beast known as UT2K4-ONS If funservers = teh suckage for ONS, I got us covered (and with that cover comes the peace of mind in knowing that thier will be no more problems from that point on) I'll fire up the AIM so as teh fatty can vocalize in my general direction. -Fk

Ok - last server update for at least a few days, will revist Tue/Wed/Thr next week at the earliest and then it won't be until after August 9th for another server update 1) New Maps in Air Mars Cold Steel (Give this a shake - think you will like - no complaining about the scarcity of mantas...) 2) Start thinking about alt.node setups. I will be switching some maps around in that regard as to what is played on Nepenthe. I suggest firing up an instant game on your desktop and taking a look at the alt link setups avail for Nevermore and Ascendency - those two maps *will* have different link setups - just a question of which - give a yell if you have pref. 3) Maps rotated: Frostbite in for Primeval We'll leave Chain up for now 4) If you experience a map DL that is taking forever, do not post up with a trouble ticket saying DL's are broken without first seeing whether or not our website is down as well. If gamerscoaltion.com is down, then its not our problem - our redirects are on the same hardware as our website - if website down, then redirects are down. -Fk

Yes - if you are getting a new map from Nepenthe or Demesne pushed to you we have redirects in place If we didn't you would DL the map directly from the server at the capped netspeed set by the game server - which is usually around 10000 - which is 10k (now compare to a 56k modem - as in telephony....yeah) With redirects, it switches to an HTTP download from another server, which is not speed capped, meaning it flies down as fast as your modem can take it Bit of a problem then when we have our redirect hosted on the same stuff our website is hosted on.... If website down, then redirect offline = forever and a day to get a new map. -Fk

Seems perfectly fine this morning. Remember that ReconGamer is tooling with thier network specifically on Friday - they may have done some backend tooling aorund earlier. ECE maps went up not yesterday but the day b4 so if it wasn't those. Random internet crap prob. -Fk

http://www.daktronics.com/ I expect you will provide the board members with the backdoor access codes to all the signs you produce - here's hoping you get a contract for new signage for the Chicago Bears so I can then use the soon-to-be-provided hack code to make the board say "teh bears are teh suckage" Just kidding sorta... -Fk

Note from the UT side - even though I won't have the time to contribute or help much over the next few weeks That so-2-1-0.bb1.Chicago.Level3 router? I get the same thing and have been for the last few weeks and it is likely responsible in no small part to my packet loss on Nepenthe I ping perfectly fine to it but it has packet loss at least once a minute minimum. I also have the same 4.68.127.165 jump into that level three router - perhaps our real culprit lies there - though that address is also a level 3 domain (no clue why it has no name though) I'll go back to sweating now... -Fk

Posted in the GC private forums on this in more detail. Look back a few posts in *this* thread and you'll see Fat asking if anyone was using this server - note the lack of replies - after keeping tabs on the server for a few days it was painfully obvious that no-one was even poking thier heads in - totally dead. Either Fat shut it down do to lack of use or it went down for some strange reason and no one bothered to give it a kick back up (if the latter, the fact that no one asked about it being down should tell you how much action it was seeing) -Fk

1) Primeval flipped in replacing Frostbite 2) ChainIslesFinal flipped in replacing Spiffengrad SE (for the time being - Spiffen will likley go back into rotation - not replacing another map or anything - in a week or so - we need a break) 3) Ahebban and Shyron are new adds 4) Slow week this past week. Hurricane? Vacation time of the year? 5) Lag? Again, *for the most part* it's all you - blithering about it will get you nothing from us - our server is operating fantastically! However... Atari forums chatter has it that the Atari/Epic Master Server (the thing you connect to when you hit the server tab in-game) is having some hiccups - what this means is that servers will be losing connections to the master server randomly - meaning that during a game, on top of everything else, many servers are also repeatedly trying to re-connect to the Master Server. All that back-end activity *may* be part of your lag problem (if you have it) Nothing to be done until Atari/Epic fixes it. -Fk

Thats just you sucking as usual... At first I thought it was perhaps that I was running an earlier version of OLStats - not the case though so hmmm... Will report this up and see what's what -Fk

Me (FYI Brillow, still waiting for some CS screen shots for me to use) Let me know if ya want one You know (re: blonde jokes) we *do* have a real, honest to betsy *girl* in GC on the UT side... -Fk

http://www.golem.de/0506/38885-2.html -> click the pic with the scorpion for video http://www.golem.de/0506/38885-3.html -> click the pic for rocks video Those rocks... -Fk

Server Update for Week of July 9th thru 15th 1) The fire that took out a number of Tier One DNS servers in Chicago has still left behind a few quirks even a couple of weeks later. New hardware is in place and many of you have probably noticed your pings are actually lower to Nepenthe than before - I know I am seeing some super low pings more often than before. However, I have also noticed that some regulars on Nepenthe have seen some strange ping action - as in a ping of 60 one day, and a ping of 120 the next day, etc. There might be some routing issues that are being addressed up in the hoary netherworld of Tier One providers - I'll keep an eye on it but overall there is little that can be done - for the most part though, the end result has been nothing but good (lower pings for most) 2) Two reminders about lag: a.) At the end of a super long map, that had seen many players come and go, right at the end don't be surprised if the game seems to "hang" for a second or two - thats the local stats proggie parsing out the text file - the game is already over with (even if your screen says there is two points left on the core or something) - no problems at all there (and you do know to check your stats HERE right?) b.) Please try to remember that the lag you are experiencing (if you are experiencing it) is more likely than not all on your end. Check your ping - if its over 130+, notice that most everyone else is between 40 and 80 - ya think that might have something to do with it? CPU choke (CPU melt, processor overload, etc.) has been more than dealt with on Nepenthe - it ain't there - and trust me - if it were there *EVERYONE* would notice it - if you are pinging way high to our server, sorry, we'd love to have you here, but you might have a more enjoyable playing experience playing closer to home - Nepenthe is hosted in Chicago, IL USA - keep that in mind. 3) Map changes: Aridoom out. Nevermore SE and Valarna back in Frostbite is in (and will rotate on a week to week basis with Primeval) Volcano High [beta 2] is a new add. A very new map - you can also play it on the Titan 32P server (if you want to play on a server located in the United Kingdom that is) -Fk

So you think you have lag... Wikipedia: LAG For UT2K4, and many online games, you can boil the lag types down to these three broad types: Server-side - CPU choke Server-side - Networking outbound Client-side - You! On Nepenthe you might experience something Flitterkill calls "Stat Lag" - you can read about that at the end along with what are referred to in the online world as "high ping bastards" 1) Server-side - CPU Choke: This is where the number of players overwhelms the boxen due to gametype, mods running, other servers on the same hardware, etc. Good server admins have already adjusted the settings and such where this should not be a problem. You will occasionally see this on servers where there are other servers on the physical hardware (which is not that uncommon). In those situations, some other guy's server could be performing so badly as to honk off everyone else on the box. How do you know whether or not you are experiencing CPU lag? Easy. Look at the pings. If you join an ONS server and there aren't too many people on there, note what your ping is. On Nepenthe when there are 10 or so folks, pings in the 40 to 60 range are very common for folks playing from the east coast or the midwest (Nepenthe is hosted in Chicago, IL). Now take a look when the server is full up. Did your ping go up? Probably. Thats the stress on the CPU as it is taking a bit longer to process all that information and get it out to you - the result is that pings go up. Good servers have some good iron behind them and server admins who have things set just right. On Nepenthe you should really see no more than a 20 to 30 (and 30 is pushing it) jump from when there are 14 or so peeps in the server to when we are at 26 and 2 specs full. When Nepenthe is full, most people who are playing from the east/midwest will still have pings well under 100 - which is fine and lag free. If you were in an ONS server and you joined with say 12 peeps in there and your ping was 60 but later when there were 18 players in the server your ping was around 160 - well guess what? Right. *Some* 32 player servers (and other large servers) have this - you can def. tell - just look at the pings and feel the chop. There is a reason there are not many ONS servers over 16 players in size - ONS is *brutal* on CPUs. On Nepenthe, you should never have CPU lag. Opteron 285 - nuff said. 2) Server-side - Networking Outbound: Good providers have good pipes (connections) out into the internet-type world. They, just like us, are often at the mercy of *thier* providers and so on. If someone further up the chain from our server provider is having routing problems or the like, well, there ya go. And there is nothing that *we* can do about it. That lag is something everyone who plays online games has to deal with. Eventually, it gets better. 3) Client-side - You! Yeah - you! While you are playing are you: Downloading pron? Torrenting anything? Folding proteins? Defragging your harddrive? You get the idea - stop that and you'll have a much better playing experience. Where are you playing from? Folks in Australia probably do not ping well to our server... How is *your* internet provider getting you to our server in Chicago? Do a tracert to Nepenthe's IP address (In Windows XP, open a console window and type in: tracert 72.51.60.245) How many hops does it take to get to us? 20 plus and maybe you might want to play on other servers... The bottom line is look at the pings - if most everyone else's ping is under 100 and yours is not - then look to your end for the problem - whether that is with stuff you are running in the background on your computer or how your IP gets you to our server. Of course, do not forget packet loss as well. If you start to bliter about lag on on server to no end and everyone else is fine - we might kick you to stop the broken record. Bring up the scoreboard and look at the p/l # - if everyone else is at 0 and you have 4/8/16/22/whatever - you have some serious connect problems - lag for you but just what ya brung with ya! 4)High ping bastards: High ping bastards are those folks who happily join servers clear around the world, or people on 56k modems playing on opposite sides of the the USA, or people who just plain ignore the fact that the UT server browser shows the ping to our server as 240 - you like us so much you are going to join anyways! HPB's are the folks who have pings of 180, 220, 300, etc. when they join a server where the majority of players have sub-100 pings. In these cases, one or two HPBs *can* cause problems (or rather, others will perceive the effects of these guys running around as lag) for the rest of us normal folks. One of the mods running on Nepenthe takes care of most of these players - the game will automatically kick folks out for *sustained* high pings. At the moment, that's an *average* ping (over the course of a few minutes) of 200 or over. The kick message you recieve if this happens to you will indicate you wre kicked for high ping. This will only go active once 12 real people are on the server. Anmd of course, it bears mentioning - this ain't personal - this is an auto boot with no admins involved at all. You get booted - check your connect! Have fun! -Fk

Pubbers only get booted if the server is full and a GC member wants to join but absolutely you get a reserve. I'll pull your GUID (unique game serial number thingy) from the logs and add you in later this morning. -Fk

My hometown boy is outta here - I'll eat some Belt's for ya -Fk

Great to see you - now flash the correct tag noob /-=GC=-/ Kinda chaotic when you don't have to worry about a silly thing like "friendly fire" ain't it? -Fk

GC Server Standards - UT2K4 1) Basics: 2) Cliffnotes version: 3) Language: 4) Screen Name: 5) Attitude: 6) Spawn Killing/Camping: 7) Haxors/Aimbots: 8) AFK/Team Killers/Poor Losers: 9) Have Fun! 1) Basics: Go here for the overall GC philosophy 2) Cliffnotes version: Screen names should not have swear words in them. Same thing for religious stuff (pro-God, anti-God, pro/anti-any religion) Same thing for sex stuff. Same goes for political stuff. For all the above, goes the same for voice and text chat in-game. Keep the smack talk and nonsensical blithering to minimum. Try to keep your attitude in check. Have fun first and foremost! And yes, we are aware of the urban dictionary, nice try. 3) Language: We are not prudes, but when you clear out the swearing, blithering, racist, homophobe, religious, and other nothing-to-do-with-the-game stuff, game play quality goes way up. Our standards are what make our servers fun to play on - you know when you come here its about the game, sportsmanship, comradiere and nothing else. Our standards are also not open for discussion - if a word is filtered you can bet there is a reason for it. Words that may seem not all that bad to you can often be the snowflake that starts the avalanche. If we just go ahead and nip it in the bud before it leads to stuff requiring admin attention, all the better - admins would much rather be playing than admining. Please do not attempt to debate why you think you should be allowed to use whatever word we have filtered out or asked you not to use - it will get you no where but kicked. Of course, open-mic music playing, singing songs because you like the sound of your voice, etc. - yeah, we'll kick for that too 4) Screen Name: Same stuff that applies for in-game chat and voice applies for screen names as well. Again, just because you think the name is fine that doesn't mean we won't ask you to change it. Even with creative spellings or clever euphamisms (as amusing and clever as they may be) admins will ask you to flip the name to something else. How does this usually play out on the server?: Admins will ask a player for a name change in chat a couple times. If you ignore us we will likely freeze you to give you a clue. After that, kicked Return and still don't have a clue? You figure it out... 5) Attitude: It can be frustrating, I know... The server is full and at start the manta left without giving anyone a ride. So did the hellbender. And that raptor you were just about to get into and by all rights was yours, well, someone "stole" it right out from under you. And that manta that left with no passengers? It didn't go to the first node. Here is where the choice is made. A little bit of griefing is understandable, but yelling, insulting, denigrating, etc. your teammates will get you what? Think about this now... Exactly. Try building some teamwork instead. It might not work. It happens. Some people don't listen. But some probably listened. And they are more likely to return to this server because of it. So when you next join our server, you will probably have smarter teammates as a result of your talking to your teammates as opposed to yelling at them. And soon enough, the server is more often than not full of smart players. And the matches are great. And n00bs who join the server learn by watching and example. And the community grows. Or you could just blither on and on about how your team is teh suckage and you are the only thing keeping them in the games, etc. I'm sure that will work real well to build teamwork and everyone will add your name to thier UT buddylists and will follow you to whatever server you end up on after we kick you from ours. Yeah. 6) Spawn Killing/Camping: What many folks new to this game do not realize is that there is really very little that can be counted as really "spawn killing" in ONS. ONS is all about nodes and team strategy. Part of that in some cases necessitates that the enemy might put the smack down on a location where you may or may not spawn at. The node might even be "locked" at the time. Part and parcel of ONS. If you spawn at a node and there is someone camping there with mines and such? Kill him or her, or, the next time you are killed, spawn at a different node. Simple. If someone is camping your base and you control no nodes - again, part and parcel of ONS. If you are having difficulty realizing this salient point, you do not need to tell the rest of the players on the server your beliefs. Get better or perhaps try another server. We are not trying to drive you away from here (the opposite really) but we will warn and/or kick if a player refuses to stop harping about "spawn killing". Campers? Let them. Camping more often than not means the other team has one less person actively attacking and destroying nodes. In some cases certain locations have a tactical advantage vehicle-wise. Again, you are playing ONS - you know this already. We strive to have a fun server environment, but a truly competitive one as well - if you think any of the above is not what ONS is all about and is patently unfair, you probably should stay far away from any formal ONS league or ladder such as the TWL 6v6 ONS. You won't last long... 7) Haxors/Aimbots: You will see this from time to time just below the chat line in-game while you are playing on our servers: "Just because they never seem to miss *you* doesn't mean they are botting or hacking..." Exactly. Please understand that folks have been playing UT since 1999. The weapons and skill set for UT deathmatch have not changed that much in 6 years. Which means: 1) That there are some scary good folks who know how to use a shockrifle. 2) They understand the concept of keybinds and can switch weapons insanely fast. 3) They can adjust thier aim based on how high or low thier ping is. 4) They can see where shots are coming from through the screen fog and make good guesses on where you might be... 5) If you stand still at anytime you have a good chance of being dead a moment later. Randomly spamming in text chat or over voice comms about botting or hacking after an admin has told you to give it up will get you kicked. Admins know what to look for. Leave it to them to deal with. 8) AFK/Team Killers/Poor Losers The server will kick folks who are idle for 2 minutes. Don't take it personally - others want to play and this is the easiest way to make room. On occasion, an admin may notice you aren't doing anything. If they notice that again, they may kick you before those 2 minutes elapse - again - nothing personal. Team killing is kinda hard on server where friendly fire is off; but it happens. Some folks like to get in vehicles, drive forward a ways, then get out, preventing thier team from using them until they eventually respawn (provided they don't get jacked) Sometimes they shoot newly spawned vehicles (which are of course locked) into thier teammates, thereby killing them. Lovely. Sometimes they just create havoc for the team they play on because they feel like it. Kicked and/or banned. Simple. And as for poor losers... If you cannot handle the losing, this may not be the server for you. Switching to the winning side just because you feel like it during a map is not cool - not cool at all. This doesn't help your teammates obviously and it also identifies you as a player most folks would probably not want to play with in general. Why not do something different? When one side starts to outnumber the other - join the losing side! That says volumes about your integrity as a team player more than anything else. 9) Have Fun! Thats why any of us are playing this game in the first place. That is also why we have all these standards in place - to keep it fun - it should not surprise you how much better it is to play on a server that lacks 12 year olds (13, 14, 15, 16, 17...) that learned new words at school today, idiot college dudes who think they know how the game is "supposed to be played", and the like. Enjoy, have fun and cya on the servers! -Fk

Here's the deal - with the fire that occurred in Chicago over the weekend that took down our xgaming GC servers, there have been some lingering after effects (note that the fire wasn't *at* xgaming, it was elsewhere that hit some big time IP providers). The big one has been pings for lots of folks connecting to Chcicago servers jumping upwards of 50. This is a result of some big iron core routers going down due to that fire. Short term: Next upwards to 48 hours expect sucky pings Long term: Bonus! They are replacing with bigger, better, faster. xgaming is of the opinion that pings may even be lower than pre-fire. It is, like much of this nonsense was, out of thier hands but they have been good at keeping folks in the mix. Hang tough and ride it out - all will be fine shortly. -Fk

http://media.pc.ign.com/media/746/746632/vids_1.html? Video released on the 22nd of June - the one on the left side of the page. And you are thinking to yourself - this looks like the stuff I saw before - wait for the last 1/3... New interview here: http://www.gamecloud.com/article.php?article_id=400 Choice bits: "An example of those types of tweaks is the booster we added to the Scorpion. Useful for feeding enemies into the front mounted anti-personnel blades, it can now be used to ram enemy vehicles. If you eject while the booster is engaged, you’ll eject into the air as the vehicle detonates on impact with the force of a redeemer." Ouch "One feature that I’m most excited about is idea of player triggered missions. The general idea is that players will be able to work together on a map specific objective, such as destroying a bridge or stealing the enemy’s war plans. Once a team begins to embark on this, a “mirror� mission becomes available for the enemy. In the examples I just mentioned, these would be defend that bridge or protect the war plans. We’re also very interested in really mixing up the actual mission types quite a bit, so they’re not always destroy/protect X. One idea being prototyped is the idea of a convoy mission where one team’s group of vehicles needs to get from point A to point B, while the enemy tries to shut them down. To mix it up even more, we may have ground as well as aerial versions of those missions." And lastly "We’re now able to apply ragdoll physics to vehicles which permits some pretty spectacular crashes." -Fk

Player 0 is also a bug that has not been tracked down by the developers. My guess is that it may be related to the fact that we auto kick people who try to join the server with the just the name "player" - I have no logical reason for thinking this - just my guess, which is about as good as what the developers have right now. As far as wild score changes - yeah, the specatating bit sounds as good as anything to me - but don't forget most of us have fewer than 20 matches recorded - this thing has been up less than a week - give it a few more for scores to settle a bit. Major fire at (near?) Chicago IP last night, Nepenthe up when it comes back up - out of our hands, out of xgamingserver hands as well. -Fk