Flitterkill February 12 Share Flitterkill GC Board Member February 12 Open thread for those wanting to put various hats (theirs, others) into the ring for Board Membership (or sole dictatorial) control of GC. No private comms unless you are looking for details of something not covered elsewhere. Do not come to me for blessings, anointments, coronations, ascensions, or any other form of elevation, praise, encouragement you may seek. You want in, speak up, here! You think someone should be in? Throw the name in and state a case. This thread runs concurrently to the open poll. If y'all decide to just slide on out to the Land of Discord and Donations nothing in this thread will mean anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soda February 13 Share Soda GC Board Member February 13 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MPG1770 February 15 Share MPG1770 GC Server Admin February 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cici February 16 Share cici GC Board Member February 16 Soda I'm curious if you're planning on implementing changes to the gameplay? I get the impression you want to make the game more challenging based on our discussions. However, I may be wrong. Can you elaborate on if you're planning on making changes and what those changes are? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soda February 17 Share Soda GC Board Member February 17 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
looneypumpkin February 17 Share looneypumpkin GC Board Member February 17 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cici February 25 Share cici GC Board Member February 25 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MPG1770 February 26 Share MPG1770 GC Server Admin February 26 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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