TF2 Newbs (Team Fortress 2)

So its November 3rd now, and after a little bit of fumbling around, I managed to get all the pictures of the pumpkin contest (also known as Jibs Contest Of Noiice) sent over to TheJib so he could judge.  As some of you may know we were offering up a single prize of a Steam Gift of Left 4 Dead to be awarded by Jib.  In order to qualify you had to submit a pumpkin, the more badass the better.  The REAL prize though was the never ending fame and glory of knowing that you participated, and that the world looked on in awe at how cool your tf2 pumpkin turned out. 

 And… The winners are:

1st prize: Left 4 Dead, 1 year reserved slot, trophy honorz - Crab Spy (in cross hairs)
`– NFreak

2nd prize: 15 steam bucks, 1 year reserved slot, trophy honorz - Painted Engy/Sentry Gun
`– Dingo (And her canadian bf)

Runner up: Honorz Icon, 1 year reserved slot:
Spy silouette *Nice work, you pulled this off well
`– Doomheit

Sticky bomb *Very original. Although not ‘carved’ you had to carve out the spikes to put them on there.
`– Koans (you can no longer say you never win anything)

Pyro face etched *quality. Very clean
`– Octo (hah, I managed to place!)

TF2 graffiti carving. *graffiti for the win. badass
`– Zepith

All who participated:
3 month reserved slot / honorz icon.

All in all, we had 21 entries, 20 were TF2 related (1 was portal related).

 Check out all the entries here:

http://www.tf2newbs.com/contests/2008-Team-Fortress-2-Pumpkin-Carving/Pumpkin_Contest_Entries/

This is a short post, just reminding everyone to get your pumpkin carved and submitted for the contest for a chance to win Left4Dead! Woo!   So far there have been 4 submissions in the competition, but I’ve been assured that there are more coming.  Remember that the contests closes Nov 2nd, so you MUST have your pumpkins sent in by then.    This contest is open to everyone, even if you have never played on the newbs servers.   Good luck everyone.

For additional details see: http://www.tf2newbs.com/contests/2008-Team-Fortress-2-Pumpkin-Carving/

-octo

Today the newbs servers accomplished something that it has not accomplished ever before.  We had all 8 of our servers 100% full.  This is a total of 192 players on at the same time.  Sure some of the larger server groups are full all the time, but this is a pretty big deal to me, especially since we just got done migrating to new addresses across most of our servers (and one of the servers was JUST added this week).

A large part of this success can be attributed to the die hard newbs, who try each day to start up the servers.  Today after the server updates came out (which I happened to be pretty quick on upgrading our servers for) I saw regulars joining the servers when they came back up, some of these servers filled almost instantly, a couple others took the usual 10-20 minutes of 1v1 to get going ;)

As for the server updates, here is the list, and my take on it…

Added rate limit for several client commands to prevent server spamming

^– I hope this addresses the bugs when poeple change class a billion times in a minute (I’m getting sick of banning people for it)

Added consistency checking for particle systems

^– yay, hopefully this fixes some of the see stuff you shouldn’t be able to cheats

Updated r_particle_timescale ConVar so it can only be changed if the server has sv_cheats set to 1

^– I’m guessing this was being abused in the clients?  (See teleport/cloak forever?)

Updated loading/disconnect dialogs so they’re easier to read

^– New font it seems, is easier to read

Updated Dustbowl, Granary, and Badwater Basin with several exploit fixes

^– anyone have any ideas what these were?

Updated Granary to remove the setup time and gates

^– yay.

-octo

So yesterday there was quite a bit of lag on #4, after being alerted I hopped on and saw that indeed, lerp was going into the yellow or orange, the color is hard to tell on my screen. Anyways, I contacted the hosting provider and they offered me a solution, move to a newer better machine on a faster connection. YAY! But wait…. You have to change ips (again). :( Sad Cakes for all.

So, I could choose between keeping the ip:port we have, and get reports of lag that I can’t do much with (except open a ticket) and all they’ll tell me to do is move, OR get to start from scratch as far as favorites/history goes and try to advertise the new site.

I chose the new machine. But, I had a really GOOD idea. Rather then wait until some future date where it became a problem, I also asked that they also move #7 (since so far it hasn’t got a huge following). They graciously did, and even left the other ones up for the night so I can try to tell the users whats up. I thought this was very nice of them.

So what does this mean to you? It just means that we all need to add the two newer machines to your favorites, the previous #4 and #7 go byebye tonight/tomorrow so better to be prepared, then to be like ‘wtf - where everyone go?’.

The new addresses are:
69.12.37.3:27015 Newbs TF2 #4 (24/7 2Fort) [Octo-land]
69.12.37.14:27015 Newbs TF2 #7 (Rotation) _NOCRIT_ [Devil Link]

Hopefully they stay at these new addresses for a long time, because I for one am tired of having to beg people to change to a different server, or to ask them to favorite new servers. =)

Oh, in other news #1, #2, and #3 may or may not be going away, I thought they were dead dead, but then it got postponed, and now may have been completely taken off of the table. Be aware that those machines do sometimes get a little laggy, but they do have a solid following so they do fill up quickly.

Oh, also I’ve been keeping track of which people start up servers, so don’t think your efforts are going unnoticed, I’m just saving up kudos to unleash all at once.

-octo

WHOA. time for some updates. screenshots first of coourse

partY TiMES. gotta love the party hats..

The ‘find octo as a weird class hunt’. Noiice for finding him as pyro, NOIICE for doing it in style

Teh Hunt continues! I think i see some pyro parts in there… somewhere

KEEP THE SCREENSHOTS COMING. We all know you have them.. so share them already. :D
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JiBs Hope:
So.. a little update on me. a lot of people ask “Jib where have you gone? Our original stats leader? The crit rocket monger you are…” I’m a DJ and i have 3 real jobs. : / wtf right? Not quite sure how it happened but while i’m amassing a small fortune i’m looosinggg my mind :P so.. i said. F work. okay? I said, you schedules me less next month! I took 7 days off, which coinciding with the othe days I have off gives me 13 days off in a row next month.. I work 7 days TOTAL next month and only DJ 1 gig.. for comparison this month I work roughly 23 days and on my days off dj’d 3 major events.. OMGZ.. jib’s taking over.

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RPOTD.
although i already posted this in yellow frogs thread. it needs some attention because its cute. and its a fail.

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Tomorrow will be a special ‘what the Ef’s hot’ edition of bloggage. stay tuned..

J!b