Vertex

TTT is already ready, it just need population and a place to run. That would be the best place to start.
 
Edit: I have no problem running servers, but don't have time to do population or moderation.

L4D2 is still available on the Nuclear Dawn hosting.
 
GMOD
DarkRP is the only thing I would like to pass onto someone else if possible.
Morbus is all set just needs a Hosting or a fix-up to run on the ND hosting.
TTT is pretty polished just needs a Hosting and DM.
ZS is in a very beta state and needs a DM.

I've went through and purged a lot of my old permanent bans for edge jumping (l42d) and mass rdming. (gmod) The intention is to give players a second chance who deserve it. A lot of these candidates would be unbanned anyways if they protested and committed not to offend again. I would honestly be shocked if more than five of these thirty clients got banned again.
 
These drops are based on the criteria of not leaving immediately after committing the offensive; and showing no signs of further immaturity, in the sense they may come back and intentionally troll again. Banned players are smart enough to leave that information on their public steam profile.
 
All of these contain the following comment.

> This permanent ban was removed to give the client a second chance. Should they commit anther offensive consider perming them.
 
Total Perms
Before: 155
After: 125

@Rhododendron Needs to clean up this mess on sourcecomms though. One person has 1775 mutes lol

It would be nice to have web updated aswell. I'm almost sure there's UI changes in this release, from talking with veer.

There's a such thing as a permanent silence; which removes the need for a server ban, by preventing the client from using server chat or microphones.
 
I couldn't help but notice you guys talking like banning was the only option. But maybe some people are still living in the year 2000. :)

@Rhododendron hasn't added it for some reason.
 
But there is a thread which is pinned and says important for no reason. #Sarcasm
Important: Server Info
 

 
One step at a time. I think the next step is people actually using the server and asking if they don't know how.
 
At the end of the day, if people would rather play on official dedicated with half the tick-rate, double the ping, non-stop griefers and bugs/exploits etc...
Who cares if we have a 16 slot server? And why should I take the time to adjust and test the configuration?

The xG L4D2 server is back up. See instructions here for usage.
Important: Server Info
 
Subscribe to the workshop collection for more map choices.
Steam Workshop :: xG Maps Collection

@Rhododendron
 
Could we get bugzilla setup on the main website? This would allow people to report server and website issues more conveniently, allowing for significantly quicker resolution times.
 
Something like bugs.xenogamers.com/redstone would be nice as well for nd.
 
It would look something like this Bugzilla Main Page
 
You could even take it one step further and display a notification to the respective staff for issues.

Wait until the new release comes out. I've done 15 pull requests worth of plugin improvements, it's currently on the development bay untested.

It's bigger waste to buy an SSD period, if you're not going to all your games on it. If you need more space than 500gb, a 1tb sshd would be a good addition.
 
1TB ssds are a complete troll though. It just means you don't know how to free up space properly. You can free up a good 50gb/500gb of space using disk cleanup and the community winapp2.ini for ccleaner. And put stupid things like torrent downloads which degrade the life of your ssd on sshd. Plus games you're only going to launch once or twice are fine on sshd.

NFO has rolled out e5-2697v3 to all their locations on xen as of a few months ago. They come with ssd caches for decent level loading speeds. Computing power wise, they benchmark only a few percentiles (maybe 3%) slower than the current e3 1270 dedicated processors clan servers are on. The way servers are operated through the control panel is the exact same.
 
If the CPU on the server usage tab for clan servers is bellow 80% this would give the possibility for a 50% cost reduction in serer operational costs while still maintaining good performance standards. If half the servers are above 80%, this would give the possibly for a 25% cost reduction in costs.
 
I could be wrong but I think the way @Rhododendron has it setup would only require four servers at 3% lower pref for a 25% cost reduction in server operational costs. Expanding would also be flexible ie. adding two more servers for $20. Testing might bite one month, but could pay off in the long run.
 
Altho this is just a suggestion, it wouldn't hurt to possibly test it out for a month. Up to you guys, i'm just providing useful information. I know back a few years ago, this likely wouldn't have been possible.
 
@Rhododendron [uSERGROUP=5]@Division Leader[/uSERGROUP] [uSERGROUP=29]@Division Manager[/uSERGROUP]

I was referring to the flexibility of using virtual instead of dedicated.

NFO has rolled out e5-2697v3 to all their locations on xen as of a few months ago. They come with ssd caches for decent level loading speeds. Computing power wise, they benchmark only a few percentiles (maybe 3%) slower than the current e3 1270 dedicated processors clan servers are on. The way servers are operated through the control panel is the exact same.
 
If the CPU on the server usage tab for clan servers is bellow 80% this would give the possibility for a 50% cost reduction in serer operational costs while still maintaining good performance standards. If half the servers are above 80%, this would give the possibly for a 25% cost reduction in costs.
 
I could be wrong but I think the way @Rhododendron has it setup would only require four servers at 3% lower pref for a 25% cost reduction in server operational costs. Expanding would also be flexible ie. adding two more servers for $20. Testing might bite one month, but could pay off in the long run.
 
Altho this is just a suggestion, it wouldn't hurt to possibly test it out for a month. Up to you guys, i'm just providing useful information. I know back a few years ago, this likely wouldn't have been possible.
 
@Rhododendron [uSERGROUP=5]@Division Leader[/uSERGROUP] [uSERGROUP=29]@Division Manager[/uSERGROUP]

The i7-5960x is approximately 21.2% weaker than the i7-4790k for gaming and costs three times more. See this single threaded benchmark shown bellow. The i7-4790k is on the top by almost a full 200 points. (that's why they call it the devils cannon) PassMark CPU Benchmarks - Single Thread Performance
 
The only thing more cores means is half of them never get used. And the ones that do get used, max out at your silly 3.5ghz instead of keeping free at 4.4ghz. #LovingDemCores That's why intel allows eight threads to execute on four cores, so never need more than four cores.
 
You only need 16gb of ram if you're like myself with 20 tabs open in google chrome and two games running at once. More ram wouldn't make your computer go any faster, it will just stop the pagefile from being used if you try to overload the standard 8gb. (which is plenty with an optimized windows 8.1 that only uses 2gb)
 
For $500 motherboards you're paying for the looks, not the performance. Half price ones can be considered top of the line. Mine was about $175 and it was a flagship board. (top of the line)
 
p.s I could suggest a smart sexy build with 28 3.6ghz cores and 56 threads cores for a little over 150000kr. Dual e5-2697 v3 processors which are $2 500 USD a pop. Plus the $1 500 USD board. And four 1tb SSDs for raid 10 . (anther $2 000 USD) Still not done yet but #LovingDemCores

I got new information about the horrible placement of the automatic FastDL. If the game has a lot of small files ie. 150-300, it will increase an eastern & european clients download time by 10 to 15 seconds. This is due to the 70-90ms vs 30ms latency and the delays a ssociated with climbing the download speed. Of course it's still not worth changing, unless there's a few European clients, it will hurt the odd couple west coasters. (until when/if there's a proper cdn for redirecting)
 
This isn't something you guys will run into (unless you put a server in los angles, which is now possible thanks to my location change) but Seattle is pointless for oceanic clients as the ping has to be routed through Los Angeles first, thus increasing the number of hops and raising the latency.

Actually, use the version I posted above to test. If you decide you like the plugin, i'll add updater support so it can be automatically rolled out to every server by changing two files.

@Rhododendron Could you remove the chat filters inside the internal & clan management sections? It would be a nice feature aswell to automatically drop them in private conversions where all participants are community leaders, division leaders or division mangers. They are annoying and counter-productive as access is only available to higher up staff.

[uSERGROUP=29]@Division Manager[/uSERGROUP] [uSERGROUP=5]@Division Leader[/uSERGROUP] [uSERGROUP=23]@Community Leader[/uSERGROUP]
 
Disclaimer: This post provides a different perspective from the norm, in a manor which is JUST for suggestive purposes.
 
When someone comes to our forums to make a ban protest, many moderators and administrators are handling them in a way which doesn't solve anything.
 
It only inflames the issue further to the point where there is arguing and a chance that the person will join the server "one last time" and mass freekill.
 
Instance #1: xG Rep: "You should have been banned for longer". In my opinion, this is completely unacceptable to be saying to anyone who posts a ban protest. This is essentially telling to the person to "F!$k off" after taking the time to write a ban protest. Use this ban protest to tell the people what they did wrong and try to prevent future issues.
 
Instance #2: Offender: "I don't know what I did wrong" xG Rep: "Can you please close the thread, the ban has expired". The proper response to this should be "This is what you did wrong and these are the rules on our server. If you have any further questions feel free to ask." xG Rep: "It's been three days without a response, can someone NOW please close the thread."
 
Instance #3: Offender: "I was banned for this duration. This is what happened, and I think my ban was unfair" xG Member: Rating "F!$k off" @Rhododendron Why this even available in ban protests? It's heavily subject to abuse.
 
Instance #4: Offender: "I would like to protest my ban, what did I do wrong" *Someone posts what he did wrong and the evidence* xG Member: "You're a horrible person. I mean, who would do that kind of thing?". In this case, the xG Member needs to a) Not post something like that period and b) Hold off until the protester has a chance to reply to the evidence.
 
If the offender acknowledges what they did wrong, a ban drop or reduction should be considered to solidify them learning not to commit anther offensive. (or at least say "This was a serious offense, this is when your ban expires, come back then".) When you ban and unban like that, it packs double the punch in teaching the person not to commit anther offensive. It's one thing accept a punishment and anther to actually learn what was done wrong and how to avoid it in the future.

That's a bit of a overreach Vector. If they want the plugin to allow admins to act by voting, they will ask for it.
 
I have no comment for anything in this thread as it doesn't concern myself. I will however constructively say, that if a vote is passed, it leaves no merit for any type of protest. Also, it works more effectively to solve instead of jail the issue, for both the moderator and targeted player.
 
For many administrators (myself included), the first thing which comes to mind is jailing instead of solving. An hour vote silence can usually accomplish the same effect as a week server ban.
 
~Based on the post from @diabeetus ~

[uSERGROUP=5]@Division Leader[/uSERGROUP] [uSERGROUP=29]@Division Manager[/uSERGROUP] [uSERGROUP=3]@Leader[/uSERGROUP] @Developers
 
The sourcemod 1.7 compiler has logic errors which break plugins and worse case can cause server crashing. Everything compiled with 1.7 needs recompiled with 1.7.1. All future plugins need compiled with 1.7.1 aswell.
 
Plugins that shouldn't be touched while @Rhododendron rolls out updates, include by are not limited to...
[*] afk_manager
[*] store
[*] steamtools
[*] steamworks
[*] tf2items
 
It's highly recommended that all servers updated using the auto-installer to sourcemod 1.7.1 aswell. This may not be required, but better safe than sorry. git 5189 is the 1.7.1 release, an outdated ongoing build is currently on the auto installer which nfo needs to update.
 
Ref Link: SourceMod 1.7.1 Released - AlliedModders

Why do kids always act like such little basterds. Can you not calmly ask for an explanation instead of insulting the moderator or the GROUP of individuals who felt he was deserving of a promotion. Also the person who banned you was kypari so your anger is misplaced making you look even more dumb. also dont complain about me being a meany poo to you And im the super hero vector, defending gaming communites from shit heads.

See bellow a more updated list of files to redirect.

These SHOULD redirect.
/maps/roadwork_w01.bsp.bz2
/materials/advert1.vtf.bz2
/models/wraith_zsv1.vvd.bz2
/sound/music/morbus_song1.mp3
/sound/ttt/intro1.mp3.bz2
/sound/music/festive/zerg.wav.bz2
/sound/music/festive/zerg.wav
/sound/zombiesurvival/lasthuman.ogg.bz2
/sound/zombiesurvival/lasthuman.ogg
 
These SHOULDN'T redirect.
/materials/advert1.vmt.bz2
/redstone_files.zip
 
-There are many more as well which shouldn't redirect.
-btw the motd subdomain is broke as well, it redirects to the main website.

There's definitely some things which can be improved at least from my perspective. I haven't dug into things much which don't concern my divisions, but I can say that different (possibly more effective) approaches are used for dealing with conflicts.
 
Here's a general layout which could potentially be used for reference purposes. This format has received little to no complaints because when people start protesting, their sentences get reduced/dropped and any momentum is lost. (unless they troll or abuse the ban protest system)
 
[uSERGROUP=23]@Community Leader[/uSERGROUP] [uSERGROUP=3]@Leader[/uSERGROUP] [uSERGROUP=5]@Division Leader[/uSERGROUP]
Got some feedback/suggestions that could be beneficial to read over. These just provide a different perspective and might be abit too aggressive for certain environments. They are met purely for informative and discussion purposes.
 
ND/Morbus Layout

Ban protests are used as a tool to teach the client not to commit the offense again.
Format: to get the client to politely ask (then receive a moderator answer) and acknowledge what they did wrong.
If the client does that politely, I reduce or drop the ban. A lot of cases they never commit anther offense.



[*]Source comms (silence, mute, gag) are used for all offenses non-related to exploits, hacking, rdming, other trolling etc.

Non avoidable, in intervals of minutes, days or even week(s) as required.
For harassment or discrimination (1-7 day server bans) then a stacked silence after the ban expires (1-7 days) are used.
Constant repetition receives a two week followed by a perm silence.



[*]Votes to silence/gag/mute people are often thrown up to the entire server to vote, when they have a high chance of success. (I made a custom plugin for integration with sourcecomms)

It shocks the offender when the majority of people vote yes.
Teaches other people on the server not to commit the same offense.
Gives any sort of ban protest or drama no momentum.

[*]Drama queens are not given any sort of attention and are limited at their ability of involving other people.

ie. Removing flaming type posts rather quickly

[*]"Ima go to mcdonalds, get 69 Big Macs, Fuck her right in the pussy, eat 420 large fries and 91 cans of mtn dew" -March 12, 2015 Jailbreak chat log (didn't have to look far)

Usage of server chat logs for sourcecoms silencing is quite useful. Xeno Gamers - Rankings
 
On ND this would be a three day silence, because it's discriminatory and offensive to certain individuals on the server. If an online moderator caught it, an 3h silence instantly after the post might be considered.
Swearing is generally ignored unless it's used to attack other people or bombed.

[*]Moderators/Administrators are selected by division leader approval and recommendations from trust-worthy people.

ND and soon to be Morbus uses this format. Moderator applications | Xeno Gamers
The person has to explain what would make them a good moderator.
Also has convey any previous moderating experience
No moderating experience sometimes only starts with sourcecomms access.



[*]"I can kick you both from the server, if there's an issue here"

This is used to defuse huge fights between two people.
If it doesn't work, silence them both for 1h then kick them.
Banning for this has more of a negative than positive benefit.

[*]When an flame war is about to start, gag/mute everyone building the momentum for 10 to 15m.

Use this same approach for attacks against moderators/administrators.
Explain afterwards that it was a necessary step to prevent things from getting out of control.
If it's on the forums make the final post and close the thread right away.

[*]People who clearly just join for the purpose of trolling (not to play) are given stronger sentences.

Upwards of one week in length, with a repetition protest-able perm.
Hardly none of the perms protest because they just join to troll.
The ones that do simply get their sentences removed/reduced.
I got over 100 perms from people who's only purpose is to troll.
One of my Administrators has anther 25 perms.

Alright the l4d2 server is up. Afew highlights about the server is...

It's connected to our ban-list and can continue to ban greifers.
 
The tickrate is unlocked to 66 for an huge performance boost.
It supports any game-mode via loby patching.
Custom maps can be loaded onto the server and run.
 
SMAC (Source-mod Anti-Cheat) is run to automatically ban hackers.
Tons of bug and exploit fixes (yes the speed climbing is patched)
Doesn't contain any major game changing plugins. (people often complain about modded servers)

 
To use it host an lobby with an game-mode of your choice. Set the lobby to Best Available and type the following command in console.

> mm_dedicated_force_servers 216.52.143.25:27015
It can be patched to when empty, and will be shown on Xeno Gamers.