Yeah it’s November – and I got a nasty head-cold :-( My noggin feels like 50 pounds of jello… my boss made me stay home today to rest but I can’t. So I figured I’d do a news post and dabble a lil in Perl and .php instead :-P
Oh let’s start with some CounterStrike stuff… how ’bout stats? :-) Yes stats are now up again, and this time I’m using PsychoStats as the log parser. Just follow the ‘Game Statistics’ link to the left and select HF1 stats. I think you’ll enjoy the new layout and the wealth of information it provides. Most of the columns are sortable and you can click on each player’s name for more detailed information. Stats are processed twice a day – once at noon and again at midnight. You gotta play for a minimum of five hours, rack up 50 kills and have a minimum rank of 900 to show on the rankings list… so get busy :-)
I took PunkBuster off of the public port. It’s still dropping legitimate players who are running PB even in manual override mode. It’s virtually useless anyways except for it’s screenshot feature, and you have to have an admin around for that. But if they’re around, I’m betting they could spot most of the cheaters out there… hell I caught one last night, blatant use of a wall hack and auto-aim script, he didn’t last two minutes ;-) Anyways… there’s another alternative to PunkBuster that’s actively being developed, with a beta release coming out soon. As soon as it’s released, I’ll letcha all know about it, and we’ll see about trying it out on the pub port.
CSCop – most of you seem to enjoy the new script I modified… good! There’s been some discussion about it on the msgboard here and also in IRC. One day this week I am going to sit down and re-think a few things about it, try and make it even better. No promises tho… I’m by no means a coder, but I’ll hack it out as best as I can. If anyone has any *useful* ideas to share (e.g. other than ‘this sucks, change it’) please throw ’em my way.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein – the second version of the multiplayer test was released yesterday, which fixes a few bugs and adds some functionality. The netcode still need a lot of work tho :-/ The port I started has stayed full almost constantly since I brought it up a week ago. To keep in the realism tradition, friendly fire has been turned ON. Now… since RtCW is new, there’s virtually nil TK support for this game right now. The second release tracks TK’s and lets the person TK’ed file a complaint, and if the TK’er receives enough complaints (set by the server admin) they get booted. Of course there’s nothing to stop them from coming back. So… I came across this lil program called WAB… it’s a perl script that monitors player kills and takes appropriate action should someone start TK’ing. It also has an unacceptable name filter and IP ban feature. The catch was, it was developed for Linux, not windows platforms. But since it’s Perl, you should be able to make a few modifications here and there to get it to work on a win32 system. So that’s what I did today :-P The latest version of WAB is running on the Hardfought RtCW port and is fully functional… it has an AdminMod feel to it, except that it’s ALL automated via script editing. It’s taken care of a few TK’ers already and has forced quite a bit of people to change their name instead of using the default ‘WolfPlayer’ :-) If you haven’t tried this game out yet, you need to, it’s pretty sweet… you better have a fast CPU and video card though.
Lag – yeah yeah I know :-/ Here’s the deal. The Hardfought server is on a 6Mbit segment of an OC-48 that’s being used by a large company here in the DFW area. I’m not the only one using that segment during normal working hours. Anywhere between 7am and 5pm CST, don’t be surprised if ping times climb kinda high, because during those times is when this particular company uses that segment – sometimes they use a lot of it. After 5pm til the next morning and on weekends it’s pretty much un-used except for me, which is when most of ya play anyways, so pings are generally nice and low for everybody – if your ping is still high during the evenings and weekends, it’s your problem from that point on :-) I’d still like to find another place where pings are low ALL the time like they were at the beginning, but this current deal is *free* so I definitely can’t complain. You shouldn’t either :-P
Hardfought banner/button contest – yeah baby! I need a banner and a link button in a bad way. Been up a full year and nada. Nothing. Zip. If I were a graphic artist I’d f00kin’ make one myself but I can’t draw to save my life. Sooo… I figured I’d have a contest. Remember that video card and NIC I was gonna give away at the last Fragwire LAN, but didn’t because no one could beat me at chess? ;-) Whoever can make Hardfought the best looking and totally kick-ass banner and link button, I’ll give them those cards. Banner size doesn’t matter so much, just so long as it looks good. The link button needs to be 88 pixels wide by 31 pixels high (standard format) – if it’s animated, even better. Deadline will be December 31st of this year – submit all entries to me at contest@hardfought.org – serious submittals only please. I’ll post the top ten entries here on the site after the contest, we can all vote on which you feel is the best. If you wanna show off some of that artistic talent, here’s your chance. I’m also a very picky bastard, so do your best.
To wrap up – I started Scout on some obedience training yesterday. After one day he’s already coming along nicely – he’s a smart friggin’ dog. Too smart actually :-) The pinnacle of his training will be to ‘sick balls’ at anyone I point to. Now I just need Glimmerman’s home address… :-P Oh yeah, I’m also a new CAL league admin for the Quake3 Threewave Classic CTF division, so if you happen to see someone by the name ‘CAL|Keith’ – that’s me ;-) G’nite folks, see you online…
K2