TF2 Newbs (Team Fortress 2) Blog

Today there was a new TF2 Server update released -

All of these things are great, and I’m glad that Valve also fixed some other bugs/exploits (‘Protected several more commands from client exploitation’).  Unfortunately they also changed one other item which has a much broader impact than any of these other fixes.  The decided to update players STEAM_ID’s to be like the L4D Steam IDs.  I’m sure theres a great reason for this update (maybe its required for use with the new steam cloud stuff) but unfortunately they didn’t give any sort of warning that they were going to make this change.  On the surface it seems like a pretty innocent / simple change but the impact is far reaching.

Lets use my steam_id as an example:

Until today it was STEAM_0:1:5809658 after this update it was changed to STEAM_1:1:5809658 (notice the 0 changing to a 1).  This seems pretty insignificant until you realize that a lot of things that happen on a server are tied to this identifier, and until recently a lot of these were hardcoded for the STEAM_0:x:XXXXXXX format.   One of the major things that this disrupted were bans.  The ban list is just a text file with a list of steamid’s in it.  Now that the ids have changed (even a little) makes the old bans not match any longer – effectively unbanning everyone.  The solution to this of course is to update the list so it uses the newer notation, and to update other software like HLstatsX CE, Sourcebans, sourcemod (used for admins, reserve slots, etc) to newer versions which matches people based only on the x:XXXXXXX portion of their steamid. 

So if you noticed the stats down for a little while earlier, or that there were some banned players on, or that your reserve slot not working, or your admin abilities suddenly disappeared this is why.  I have upgraded most everything, so heading forward there shouldn’t be any more problems.   =)

. Octo

The title says it all.  Due to the postive response received from the recent submission by everyones favorite fatty Scott Eats Bullets I’ve decided to try something new(ish).  I’d like to expand the number of authors on the blog.  The rules/restrictions/wants are pretty simple:

• Subject matter needs to be TF2 related, I would like it to have a TF2 Newbs tie-in most of the time, but its not required in every post.
• Must be readable
• Must be fun or informative
• Must be (mostly) original (compilations are ok – but sources must be sited)

If you think you have what it takes, or have some ideas for topics for someone else to write about, leave a comment, post about it on the forums http://www.tf2newbs.com/forum/index.php/topic,1896.0.html, or talk to me (Add Octo On Steam) directly. 

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