Oh man have I been a slacker! Well, not really, except maybe on news posting :-P I got a few interesting tidbits for ya gang so sit back, relax and enjoy…

The Hardfought CS Invitational Tourney is starting to wind down. Last night Texas State Killers defeated Royal Assassins 15-11 to advance to the finals in the Loser’s Bracket (bye round). Semiaudiks and WTF? were supposed to play this weekend, but WTF? never returned any correspondence concerning their scheduled match so S-audiks were awarded a forfeit win to advance to the semi-finals in the Loser’s Bracket. It’s looking like Nexus will play S-audiks this coming Sunday to see who makes it to the finals to plat TsK. Dammit I wish CS 1.3 was out already! If we’re lucky, it along with it’s built-in voice program and multicasting spectator software will be released in time for the Loser’s Bracket championship and the tournament overall championship. I sure hope so… I’d love to be able to broadcast both those matches to the public so they can watch in real time. We’ll see… good luck to those remaining in the tournament!

While on the road on business I decided to make a list of things that I thought people who frequent this site would like to see and use, as well as things I would like to see and provide. After thinking about it and getting a few suggestions from people on the #hardfought IRC channel I came up with three things – a web-based Java IRC applet, a traceroute utility and (my favorite) MRTG scripts that show game and web server performance graphs. While I may have been putting off this news post for longer than usual, I have been very busy writing these new applets and scripts for the website and polishing up code so it looks and functions the way I like and to be user friendly to you. So, how do I use these things ya might ask? How ’bout a brief description of each…

Traceroute Utility – this can be found via the ‘Server Status’ link on the left. What this utility does is simply run a reverse trace route, *from* the game server *to* whatever computer you happen to initiate the script from. You’ll get a hop count, host name and IP address of each router along the transmission path, and ping times to each. I know everyone from time to time experiences lag and it can be a pain in the ass having to fire up a DOS prompt and type out everything… hell, you may not even know how to check or what to look for. Now it’s just one mouse click and you’re done :-) By learning what the data means can help you determine where your high ping/lag is originating from.

Java IRC applet – ‘What do ya mean, go to IRC??’ Heheh… this one is for the IRC-virgins out there who have never used IRC nor installed any of the multitude of IRC chat programs out there to choose from. It’s also for those who may be on another system that for whatever reason does not/cannot have an IRC program installed. Now through the website here you can access channel #hardfought on either the EnterTheGame.com or GamesNet.net IRC network. All of the necessary fields are filled out, just click on the ‘connect’ button and you’re good to go. This isn’t as fully-functional as a true IRC client program of course, but it’ll get the job done and then some. Link to this is on the left.

MRTG – stands for ‘Multi Router Traffic Grapher’… I tried to incorporate this lil jewel of a Perl script back last year when Hardfought was still in it’s infancy, couldn’t seem to get it to work right. Last week I re-visited MRTG and discovered what I had been doing wrong with it in the past. So now, I’m running scripts for CPU utilization, memory use and network load (input/output) on both the game server and web server. By going to the ‘Server Status’ link to the left you can see graphs of all of these, updated every five minutes. Clicking on each graph takes you to another page with much more detailed information about each specific graph. There are *many* more scripts and graphs I can generate to monitor many more things… I just need to spend the time to learn how. Hard drive performance sounds like I nice one to tackle next :-) This is mainly for my benefit to track performance of each server and catch any issues that may arise based on the data (already found one on the web server when halfStats runs… look at the committed vs. available memory graph) but I figured you guys and gals should get to see it as well. I think that info is pretty damn interesting, and you should have a right to know how your favorite gaming server is performing.

While writing this I see that both HF 1 and HF 2 are full… good :-P HF 2 seems to only get use during the evenings though… maybe it’s the current map rotation? One thing I am gonna do is remove de_bahrain and de_rise from rotation from there… seems those two clear out the port kinda quickly :-/ If any of ya can think of any other good custom maps that should take it’s place, lemme know. I think someone mentioned some dock maps on the msgboard… someone refresh my memory, please :-P

Oh hey gang… even tho I don’t reply to every single piece of email I receive from you, I *do* read ’em all, down to the last letter. Between work and here I sometimes get massive amounts of mail, and I’m not a fast typist :-) Right now this paragraph is aimed to those who have sent me admin applications. I’ve read ’em all folks… we’ll start looking at the list of applicants the first of August and go from there. If you can admin during the early morning hours/daytime, that’s a plus just so you know.

Things that happen in K2’s world – I’m not traveling on the road anymore, at least for the next few months… yay! I kinda got a promotion at work, and this week I start work on a high profile account between IBM and another company. This also means that I have to *move* over to the far northwest side of Dallas, almost in northeast Forth Worth so I can be close to the project site. Where I live now is just way too far way to commute. I finally got approval on my rental application today, and I move in on August 18th (I didn’t even go to the apartment building, I just saw a picture of it online and saw it was five minutes away from work, so I took it… rofl). How does this affect you? In a couple ways… website along with email and CSCop may be down for a day or two while I get moved in to the new place. I’m calling tomorrow to start the DSL setup process but you know how that goes… bleh. I have a plan B if things don’t go smoothly on the DSL hookup. Also, the location I had planned for the Hardfought LAN party may change now… dunno yet. If I can find a good place to have it out by the new apartment then I’ll have it in that area… if not, Mesquite will still be the place. Date hasn’t changed, just so you know (October 12th – 14th for those not in the know).

My dog Scout is getting *huge*… just over 13 weeks old and he’s already doubled (at least) in size since I got ’em at 6 weeks old. Weighs in at just over sixteen pounds… heh. This boy is gonna be a bruiser, lemme tell ya :-P G’nite folks, see ya soon.

K2