TF2 Newbs (Team Fortress 2) Blog

Since the inception of the TF2 Newbs server (a stock rotation server) on the first day of beta one of the challenges has been to keep the server full, or at least populated enough where I don’t have to sit there for 6 hours by myself.   Unfortunately due to things outside of my control we’ve had to change the IP addresses of our servers a couple of times, combined with our rapid expansion in total servers (currently we have 8 maintained by me + 2 donated to the community by others) early in the day its common to find the servers empty, requiring people interested in playing to sit on an empty server waiting for those first few people to join.   When I have time, this would be me. Oh how I yearned for a way to easily invite my friends who were around to come play too. Once in a blue moon I could hit shift-tab, bring up the overlay pick a friend, and invite them to the game I’m in.  But most of the time the option just wasn’t there.  I then learned from someone very very smart, that all you need to do in order to get the invite option to come back is to change your ‘status’ on steam, and it’ll magically reappear.

Here are some non-resized pictures to help.

Oh look no invite

Lets go change our status

Oh yay! I can invite now

For information on the current contest see: http://www.tf2newbs.com/forum/index.php/topic,1915.0.html

Server #8 is 69.12.108.39:27015

Here are the current standings:

1. .S9 eekozoid {N}               
2. nø-pulse` Ggglygy [N]     
3. {N}{OSS} Alex Chilton (JF)     
4. yaaawn {OSS}                   
5. [N]{OSS} Andy <3 Ali | »AIDS«
6. [N] NFreak »AIDS«            
7. {N){OSS} Steven | »AIDS«       
8. [N] .S9 StrongBad36x           
9. [BnH] LeeTagger                
10. [N]Koben{OSS}                  
11. mikeyr22                   
12. {N} Scott Eats Bullets       
13. deprecated                   
14. i?» .S9|Amadeus {N}         
15. Marco                          
16. (JF)Verrah                     
17. [LPF] The Big Boss             
18. [N]{OSS}SniperDrew [SP] 
19. Riot ¤ Happy.Smiles
20. ejc

There is plenty of time left to win a prize.   Remember that points are awarded for different things!  Although the totals in HLstatsX are being used in the point totals, your actual ‘skill’ points are not significant so dying does _NOT_ hurt your points.  It is entirely possible to win this contest with a <1000 skill point total.  The majority of the points are awarded for events that signify  team work, map goals, and time spent on the server.  So get in there, get dirty, die a few hundred times grabbing that intel, or capping that point and make us proud.

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

On Monday morning the Newbs community suffered a great loss.  Servers that were important to the community were removed (they were originally scheduled for removal in late September 2008).  These servers were:

• #1 (24/7 Dustbowl)
• #2 (Jump Maps)
• #2.5 (Jump Maps)
• #3 (24/7 Badwater)

The other thing that went away was our old hosting for the website/database :(  It was a very sad day in Octoland…

The website and the forums were down for a day or two, but they were the easiest things to move since I had prepared for this day (poorly, but thats besides the point).  We only ended up losing about 1.5 days worth of forums posts and a few bans. 

The game servers on the other hand are a lot trickier to handle without the involvement of a lot more money. Luckily these machines had only lost their internet home, and a new internet home was found for them.   And there was much rejoicing in the land!  But then oh no..  Hardware failure struck down the machine that runs the Jump servers and the Badwater server.  I spent Saturday evening working on getting this machine back onto the internet so that the games could resume.  So around midmight PST all 4 of the machines that went bye-bye were back. 

•  #1   24/7 Dustbowl        113.212.76.18:27015
• #2   Jump Maps            113.212.76.6:27075
• #2.5 Jump Maps            113.212.76.6:27135
• #3   24/7 Bad Water       113.212.76.6:27015

Originally I was planning on _NOT_ bringing #3 (24/7 Badwater) back since I did not want to hurt the efforts to establish the Payload Rotation server.  After some short negotiations I was assured that there are PLENTY of people to play both.   To prove this point to me, Taraph75 also know as ‘Tara of Payload’ created a new steam group which she is actively trying to fill with payload enthusiasts Tara’s Payload Pimps This group will be used by her to coordinate all the payload love, so that next time a server has to move, all of her payload lovers can easily find it. :)

Hi everybody,

I’m trying to determine something. Something that’s bugged me for a while.

This relates to 2fort, as many things in our community do, and has to do with what we call things. No, this isn’t the next installment of “How to talk like a Newb” (though that is coming). I just want to collect some thoughts.

What do you guys call the different parts of the sewer?

I tend to refer to the “pipe” or the the “tunnel” for the long straight section, the “platform” for the area with the health and ammo (where the engies always build), and the “elbow” for the curvy part that leads out to the water.

However, I’ve found that these terms aren’t always understood clearly, so I’m curious if I’m using the wrong terminology or if I’m just crazy.

We’ve established clear definitions of every other part of the map, so the sewers should be as well.

Feel free to dicsuss it on the forum in this thread, or in the comments here.

- Scott Eats Bullets