Well what can I say? Week two of the Hardfought CS Invitational Tournament was exciting to say the least. I got to watch some very intense matches. S-audiks, 3dL and FDA advanced this week to the Winner’s Bracket Semi-Finals, while TsK, VV and RA received their first losses, dropping them down to the Loser’s Bracket. Nexus, LCD and WTF? advance up to the Loser’s Bracket Quarter-Finals, staying alive for one more week, while ExE, db and KD were eliminated. Some of the match outcomes were somewhat unexpected… had some surprises here and there :-) We did have a problem with two players during the WTF/db match but I’m pretty sure that’s all been resolved and we shouldn’t run into anymore issues like that for the rest of the tourney. If you want more details on that, visit the msgboard forums. For the teams that are playing for week three, please send me your match schedules no later than Wednesday night. Good game’s to everyone from week two!
OK… I’ve had a lot of requests for this, so I finally broke down and did it. Look over to the left there… yeah, that lil white button that says ‘PayPal’ on it :-P Due to the increasing amount of inquiries about where to send monetary donations to help maintain/improve the Hardfought gaming server and everything associated with it, I’ve created a premier account with PayPal. Anyone can send donations via the web to me to help with server maintenance and upgrade costs… acceptable forms of payment include Visa/Mastercard and eCheck. You need a PayPal account to use this feature, but creating one is easy and it’s free. I’ve already received a donation in the amount of 25 dollars… thank you! As any funds arrive I’ll let everyone know what the current status is as well as where the money is being spent. Right now, there are three things that donations will be used for… helping to cover my monthly server co-location fee, hardware upgrades for the current gaming server, and to help pay for the remaining parts I need for a Neverwinter Nights server. People who have contributed in the past are GoatX12 and Ronin (hardware) and Eat More Lead (cash)… thank you again! :-) No one is required to donate anything of course, but any and all help is welcome, even if it’s just one dollar… every lil bit helps, and it’s greatly appreciated.
A new voting poll has been created… take a look down at the bottom right-hand side of the webpage to see it. There’s a new map pack from the Countermaps gang that some of you have asked me to include… so of course I’ll put it to a vote first, give everyone a chance to get them downloaded. I’ll have the new map pack available in our ‘Files’ section after this post (it’s in two parts). I’ll also have cs_arabstreets available there as well. I know, finally! :-P Also, I just wanna see what you all think of a Neverwinter Nights box being hosted by myself and becoming part of the Hardfought network. I’m gonna start one regardless of the vote – I just wanna get your opinion :-) The results for the last voting poll showed that the majority of you are in favor of both PunkBuster bring run in required mode on the public server as well as CSCop handling some of the intentional team wounding that occurs during the first few seconds of each round. I wont run PunkBuster on the public port until it’s out of beta… it still has some bugs, which I’ve witnessed first-hand during the tournament. A team-wounding script may or may not be possible with CSCop, but I think it’s about time we found out. More on that later.
There was a new point release beta made available to the masses last night for Quake3… includes some new DM maps as well as improved network code, and supposedly new code that will prevent all current cheats for the game as well as make it much harder to create new cheats… we’ll see. I’ll update the Hardfought CTF/DM/TDM Match port as soon as a version of OSP is released to take advantage of the new code. The Classic CTF port… well, I’m not sure about it anymore. I’ve brought that port up and down so many times… :-/ Recent developments on the CCTF msgboard have indicated that yes, a new version is still being worked on, but no, some of us (the new CCTF team) are not willing to keep the CCTF communities’ interest alive by giving everyone updated progress reports on a regular basis. The CCTF community has pretty much fizzled out… the Nexus CCTF team hasn’t played a match or scrim in months. Even the one popular CCTF server hasn’t seen much traffic lately. In light of that, plus HaDeS hooking up with some old time friends to play some RA3, I’m thinking seriously about dropping CCTF once and for all and reviving the Hardfought Rocket Arena 3 port. I’ll probably do that once the RA3 mod authors have had a chance to update their mod to the newest point release. Well hold the phone – I just looked on the Classic CTF website, and it looks like they’re actually taking some action on our suggestions… there’s an update! :-) Also says they will try to release new info about the progress of the mod every week. I’m still skeptical… I sure hope they do what they say they’re gonna do.
Well that’s all I have for ya today, gang. I’m leaving in a few hours on a business trip, so I wont be around for the next few days. I should still be able to check email and the msgboard and stuff at night when I finish up work. Have a good week everyone, see ya online.
K2