Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban

[Yun Huang Yong]

Amusingly this is exactly the problem that community servers help with.

Community servers run community made maps - free, fresh content.

Community servers have... communities. No one talks about games like 
soccer dying. The rules rarely ever change, there's no new content. But 
the game survives because it's simply a fun game to play with your friends.


Ironically Quickplay is supposed to be better for new players but its 
current implementation is causing TF2 to lose old players at the same 
rate, hence the stagnation in total active players.


On 7/02/2015 3:08 PM, spacebur...@gmail.com wrote:

Not as much as games like CS do, I mean. What has kept it alive thus far
was mostly the steady stream of major updates, drawing new players and
pulling the old ones back in. Lately, it seems to be slowing down.

On 7 February 2015 at 04:56, Albert Davis mailto:davis.alb...@gmail.com>> wrote:

It doesn't have staying power? How so?

On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 6:01 PM, spacebur...@gmail.com
 mailto:spacebur...@gmail.com>> wrote:

A large part of the fact community is waning comes from the
natural life cycle of a game. TF2 has been around for almost 7
years now, and truth be told, it doesn't have the staying power
that games like CS do. That is not to say Valve's mishandling of
quickplay doesn't contribute to it, though.

On 6 February 2015 at 23:10, E. Olsen mailto:ceo.eol...@gmail.com>> wrote:

I agree that going out of our way to abuse quickplay & break
the rules is pretty shortsighted and ill-conceived.

Having said that, there are always people that say "it was
not about ads" or "they made the change because of THIS",
but the truth is no one really knows, because the TF2 team
never TOLD US why they thought the drastic change was
necessarily. The most I heard from Fletcher Dunn at the time
was that it was "getting bad for the players". Of course, he
said that in the same sentence that he told us that the
change was a temporary solution (I'm paraphrasing here, as I
don't have the direct quote saved).

I have my theories, and I'm sure they conflict with those
that love the idea of pinion ads plastered all over their
servers, but that's neither here nor there.

I like the idea of Valve charging for a server hosting
license, I've never thought of that before, but it would
probably be a great way to keep the more nefarious folks
from throwing up those terrible anonymous "TF2 ad-farms"
(the ones that used fake clients/bots to trick quickplay,
etc.) that plagued quickplay prior to the change.

Even if they only charged $5 per year per server, it would
probably do the trick (the same way charging for TF2 kept
more hackers out, etc.)

The thing that gets rattles me most about quickplay is that
TF2 was flourishing before it came along, with the "good"
community servers rising to the top (traffic-wise) while the
"premium" and low-quality servers languished. It wasn't
until the "easy" quickplay traffic came along that we had
the 100+ server "ad-farms" and "premium" operators launching
server after server in order to cash in on the easy traffic.

I think they need to really step back and ask themselves if
quickplay has actually improved the game. There is a
"culture" that TF2 brought with it in its first few years of
operation that the "random games with random strangers" that
quickplay encourages is destroying. The days of server
"regulars" are on the wane, and all the high-quality
teamwork & camaraderie that it created is going with it.

New players never get to see how great TF2 can really be,
and that's the biggest casualty of the quickplay system. I
wish there were some member of the TF2 team that still
understood that and would advocate for it, but the lack of
any kind of communication from the TF2 team outside of
update announcements make me doubt it.

On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 4:47 PM, Robert Paulson
mailto:thepauls...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Abusing quickplay is the dumbest idea I ever heard. The
entire point of these complaints is that almost no one
is using community quickplay because the UI is so bad
and skewed in favor of official servers.

Since everyone else is putting forth their own solutions
and theories, I will repeat mine. Default to community
servers after 1 hour of gameplay. After 1

Re: [hlds] [hlds_linux] TF2 srcds CPU experiences

[Yun Huang Yong]

We run on a variety of VPS including one where the underlying host is an 
E5-2620.


Compared to our other hosts that run 3.4Ghz CPUs we do see higher sv FPS 
variance but it's not really gameplay affecting (players don't complain).


(I believe the 3.4Ghz cores are E3-12xx v3 but I can't be certain due to 
the virtualisation.)


I'd guesstimate that each active 24p server chews up about 70% of one of 
those E5-2620 cores but peaking as high as 100%, whereas the same server 
would average around 30% on a 3.4Ghz core.


We're on Linux BTW.

Is there value in running one giant box, rather than getting a second 
machine?


One of the reasons I chose to use VPS is for the redundancy -- we use 3 
VPS across 3 different hosts. It's a given that every host will have 
issues at various times (hello DDoS) so spreading across networks helps 
to keep most of our servers online when one is having problems. We've 
never been directly DDoSed but I regularly see network blips of 1-5 
minutes on every gaming network. Bad neighbours.


On 23/09/2014 12:47 PM, Ryan Stecker wrote:

Hey all, just sending this message into the wide HLDS abyss to see if
anyone has any experiences hosting srcds (Mostly TF2, but it can really be
any game/mod that runs on that engine version) on single/dual E5-2650 v2s
or other similarly low clocked (around the 2.5GHz range) processors and
what kind of capacity they're getting (how many instances, slots, etc).

Currently we've been hosting on a E3-1270 v2, and the high single core
clock speeds have been more than enough to host 11 tf2 instances in the 28
player slot range, but we're now planning on moving hosts and looking to
expand to a box with dual 2650 v2s. My concern is that while the 2650 may
have more cores, the lower clock speeds could translate into a struggle to
meet the 15ms frame time that 66 tick servers require.

Anyone happen to be running on 2650s or similar and can share their
thoughts?
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Re: [hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please? 2

[Yun Huang Yong]

Could there be issues with the Valve servers in your region?

We saw a similar trend in Australia when, a few weeks ago, the AU Valve 
servers all disappeared (same time as when the US East servers 
disappeared). For a couple of weeks, whilst the AU Valve servers were 
dead, all of the community servers did strongly.


Note that although something like ~30 AU Valve servers died, <10 
community servers were populated in their place. I don't know where the 
roughly 200 (at peak times) other active player slots disappeared to, 
I'm guessing they were assigned by Quickplay to overseas servers.


However, as soon as the AU Valve servers returned (~3 days ago) 
community servers are struggling again -- and I would argue are doing 
worse than before the AU Valve servers disappeared temporarily.


On a broader note:

Two of the most popular community groups in AU prior to the Quickplay 
change have dwindled from 5 servers being full almost 24x7 to struggling 
to even get one server running now. At the current rate of deterioration 
I'd be surprised if both of them were still running in 3 months.


On the other hand the largest ad spammer in AU is doing even worse. They 
continue to operate a very large number of [mostly empty] servers for 
reasons unknown.


On 4/06/2014 3:06 AM, ics wrote:

No, the setting still defaults official servers but i'm thinking of they
changed something in the backend.

-ics

Daniel Barreiro kirjoitti:

Are you saying they fixed it?


On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 12:59 PM, ics mailto:i...@ics-base.net>> wrote:

Did someone at Valve did something other than changing the setting
from official to community, after reading our messages because vs
the past 3 months, i have now 300% increase on players and if this
keeps up, things go back to normal as they were before the change
was made.

-ics

Robert Paulson kirjoitti:

No we don't have access to binaries on both ends.We cannot get
players to use client modifications because even if they were
willing to download it, they would get vacced.

The ad exploit from what I heard was a one time client bug
where the big motd did not check the motd cvar. Removing
community servers from quickplay was laziness and not due to
any technical impossibility.

If Valve wants a game free of community servers then they
should do that in their newer games. Can you imagine the
outrage that would happen if EA pulled the same stunt on
Battlefield by throwing all community servers off the main list?


On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 2:14 PM, Eli Witt mailto:eliw...@gmail.com> >> wrote:

Replied to the last message, I'll post this here too.

Well, we know from experience just how good Valve is at
keeping a
lid on things (case in point HL3) so I doubt they're going to
acknowledge this in any way unless they see fit to, not
because
we're disgruntled and asking for information.

And for what it's worth, everyone (who's opinion on this
list is
worth a damn) has thrown out the point that "we're the ones
providing the servers for Valve, we're the ones who give
their
players a place to play etc etc" - but what I think is going
unnoticed here is the fact that Valve is obviously taking
steps
(and increasingly larger ones) to nullify that argument in
it's
entirety.

Perhaps it's time to examine the possibility that Valve is
very
purposefully forcing community run servers into the minority
because they're straight tired of having to play
code-counter-code
withe people like the fuckjobs who programmed plugins to
force ads
down players throats and other like-minded stains.

We've got the binaries on both ends, and Valve knows this.
It's
virtually impossible to stop people from being fuckjobs with
access to both binaries, so let [Valve] just diminish the
footprint the fuckjobs get access by about 90% by forcing
people
into the servers we can afford to run now that we've
monetized TF2.

If I was Valve and I made this decision, I wouldn't give a
piss
whether people who run servers are upset by this or
threaten to
pull their servers offline because of this decision, because
that's the direction I wanted to force you in anyway.

Just a thought.


On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 4:47 PM, Robert Paulson
mailto:thepauls...@gmail.com>
>>
wrote:

Making a new thread because replies are being blocke

[hlds] TF2 Replays

[Yun Huang Yong]

A while back I posted about some strange start-of-round pauses. The 
symptom is that at the start of each round the server "pauses" for 15-20 
seconds during which time players get the red disconnection message in 
the top right corner. The server always recovers but during that time 
some players may timeout/disconnect.


Turning off Replays appears to fix this but I'm unable to reliably 
reproduce the problem so have been unable to determine if this problem 
is due solely to Replays, or Replays + some SourceMod/plugin 
interaction. We can only tell that this problem appears to be related to 
Replays by disabling Replays for a full week and noting that the problem 
went away.


Another problem with Replays is that when mp_scrambleteams_auto is used, 
Replays are somewhat randomly recorded/deleted.


In one instance, Replays were recorded correctly before the 
auto-scramble but not after -- as in there are no .dmx or block files 
for the rounds post-scramble.


In another instance, Replays were recorded correctly before and after 
the auto-scramble but it would appear that the Replay system then 
*deleted* the rounds before auto-scramble. I noticed this because I had 
copied the files elsewhere whilst the match was in progress, and hence 
was able to realise that the files I had copied were removed from the 
server. I can say with 100% certainty that no other process would have 
removed the files in question.


Questions:

1. Is anyone else running Replays, and have you encountered these bugs?

2. It seems that very few people run Replays, not even Valve, so these 
bugs tend not to be noticed. I've spent many hours debugging the first 
problem and still can not isolate the problem sufficiently to report it. 
Does anyone know what Valve's view is of Replays -- were I to invest 
many more hours to isolate the problem, is there any likelihood of 
getting it fixed?


3. What other alternatives would folks recommend?

STV seems like an option -- preserving all POVs -- but would be much 
harder for our casual user base to make use of. 3rd party client-side 
recorders such as OBS/Bandicam/etc and even ShadowPlay require that 
client hardware be reasonably powerful/modern. Are there any viable 
alternatives?


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Re: [hlds] Help with "Rubberband Effect"

[Yun Huang Yong]

collectd is fairly light which is why it is popular as a collection agent.

I'm going to assume you are comfortable installing packages and 
configuring software. I don't have the time to write copy pasta 
instructions. I *strongly* recommend you read all of this & the links 
before you begin, and make sure you understand what is required of you.


The key components are:
  - https://collectd.org/
  - http://graphite.wikidot.com/

You need to get collectd running on each of your TF2 hosts. Basically 
apt-get but see note below regarding collectd versions.


You'll then want to setup Graphite on another machine. You *could* run 
it on your TF2 host but Carbon can get I/O hungry (it is tunable) and 
that will create more problems for you so I strongly recommend running 
Graphite on another machine.


Also, having Graphite on another machine (with the collectd collector, 
below) makes it easy for you to have multiple TF2 hosts, or migrate TF2 
hosts.


In my setup I have my Graphite host running on an Ubuntu VM at home with 
6 external servers reporting to it.


Here's a picture of the overall setup:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8110989/2014/collectd-graphite.png

Back to setup... with collectd running on your TF2 host, and Graphite on 
another host, how do you connect them?


https://collectd.org/wiki/index.php/Networking_introduction

Your Graphite host *also* needs to run collectd in order to act as a 
collection server for your TF2 host's collectd to send it data. Edit 
config on both TF2 host & Graphite host -- both sides need to run the 
collectd network plugin, Graphite host as server, TF2 host as client.


Your Graphite host's collectd also needs to run the write_graphite 
plugin to write the network collected data to Graphite.


https://collectd.org/wiki/index.php/Plugin:Write_Graphite


  
Host "localhost"
Port "2003"
EscapeCharacter "_"
  


Note: if you Google collectd + graphite you may be confused by many blog 
posts refer to custom written plugins which were necessary before 
collectd had its write_graphite plugin.


Note 2: since you're on Debian note that the write_graphite plugin was 
added with collectd 5.1. You may need to get it from backports or something.


For Graphite...

This is a reasonable overview but may be out of date: 
http://graphite.wikidot.com/installation


Read ^ as an overview but maybe follow the current instructions here:
https://graphite.readthedocs.org/en/latest/install.html

You need to pay attention to the storage-schemas.conf but you can more 
or less ignore other instructions about feeding data into Graphite. With 
the collectd write_graphite plugin your data will automagically be fed 
from collectd -> localhost:2003 which is Carbon (Graphite's collector).


Good luck :]

PS: I am happy to answer specific questions about the collectd/graphite 
setup but if you ask general sysadmin stuff I probably won't respond.


On 8/04/2014 12:50 AM, pilger wrote:

I've noticed the yellow bars mainly on the Mem field. Don't know if that
might be related. Could it?

About collectd, it seems very nice and a lot easier to visualize but you
talked greek to me up there. Would you point me to some tutorial or show
me some ropes on how to get it running so I can find the bottlenecks?
Does it use a lot of resource!?


_pilger


On 7 April 2014 11:35, Yun Huang Yong mailto:gumby_li...@mooh.org>> wrote:

Your concern about noisy VPS neighbours will show up as CPU steal -
htop shows this as yellow bars by default.

Disk latency could also be an issue.

66 tick means each tick has a time budget of around 15ms (1000/66).
If disk latency exceeds 15ms you will get stuttering - I had this
happen on servers in the past.

e.g.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.__com/u/8110989/2013/np1-disk-__latency.png
<https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8110989/2013/np1-disk-latency.png>

Stuttery server leading up to 08/03 (US style month/day, August last
year). Host migrated my server to another less loaded machine, great
for a few weeks then as that machine also became more heavily
utilised (by other customers) it started to stutter again.

FWIW I use collectd to gather these metrics on each host, feeding
into a single collectd collector which then uses collectd's
write_graphite plugin to write all the data into graphite for
storage & graphing. collectd's default 10s polling is great for
picking up transient issues, and graphite_web makes the
visualisation easy.


On 7/04/2014 10:26 PM, pilger wrote:

Hey guys, thanks for the replies.

   * The RAM seems all right when I look at it with htop;
   * We tried CentOS but the network was behaving poorly with it
so we

 switched to Debian x64 and it became a lot better;
   * net_splitpacket_maxra

Re: [hlds] Help with "Rubberband Effect"

[Yun Huang Yong]

Your concern about noisy VPS neighbours will show up as CPU steal - htop 
shows this as yellow bars by default.


Disk latency could also be an issue.

66 tick means each tick has a time budget of around 15ms (1000/66). If 
disk latency exceeds 15ms you will get stuttering - I had this happen on 
servers in the past.


e.g. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8110989/2013/np1-disk-latency.png

Stuttery server leading up to 08/03 (US style month/day, August last 
year). Host migrated my server to another less loaded machine, great for 
a few weeks then as that machine also became more heavily utilised (by 
other customers) it started to stutter again.


FWIW I use collectd to gather these metrics on each host, feeding into a 
single collectd collector which then uses collectd's write_graphite 
plugin to write all the data into graphite for storage & graphing. 
collectd's default 10s polling is great for picking up transient issues, 
and graphite_web makes the visualisation easy.


On 7/04/2014 10:26 PM, pilger wrote:

Hey guys, thanks for the replies.

  * The RAM seems all right when I look at it with htop;
  * We tried CentOS but the network was behaving poorly with it so we
switched to Debian x64 and it became a lot better;
  * net_splitpacket_maxrate was set to 5 while the rates were from
3 to 6. I've now set the splitpacket to 10 and the rates
to 5 to 10 as you guys suggested. Gotta wait a bit for the
server to get full so I can check if it worked;

Wouldn't the htop or any other monitoring tool show something wrong even
it being a VPS!?

But, anyway, as I mentioned before, the problem occurs with the server
practically empty. So I don't think it is related to CPU being
overloaded... could I be wrong on this? Could my VPS neighbours be
leeching on my CPU even it being supposedly reserved to my service?

Thanks!



_pilger


On 7 April 2014 02:10, John mailto:lists.va...@nuclearfallout.net>> wrote:

Its not the RAM. Its packet loss from server side - you won't
see it on net graph as its only client side.


Packet loss should show in net_graph output either way. But, to be
safe, certainly run MTR tests.


I've had this happen to me lots of times. Been running servers
since the 1.5 days. Ditch your host and also ditch Debian BS.


Recent versions of Debian work well for game servers, so ditching it
would not be necessary.

You should confer with your host on the status of your hardware and
whether a performance limitation is involved, such as I/O delays.
You should also double-check server-side rates, including by making
sure that net_splitpacket_maxrate is set sufficiently high (such as
10). These symptoms seem along the lines of what I would expect
from net_splitpacket_maxrate being low.


Ask ant corporation or enterprise, all use CentOS.


CentOS is marketed to enterprise and works well for such
applications because of its older, stable, well-tested software
packages and extended RHEL support for those older packages. For
game servers, it is not ideal, since those older packages often lack
useful features and performance tweaks. Debian is usually a better
choice for game servers.


If you're interested in hosting DDoS protected servers, email me
- I can help you.


Be very careful with hosts that claim to offer DDoS protection.
There is an extremely limited number who do it right, and a very
large number who do not.

-John


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Re: [hlds] Max Players on this build

[Yun Huang Yong]

1 of those cores will comfortably run a 24p or MvM server.

RAM will limit you to 1, maybe 2 servers if you tweak cache sizes down. 
But for ease of management 1.


Bandwidth will limit you to one 24p server. My 24p servers average about 
3Mbps outbound, bursting to almost 5Mbps.


This is with minrate 30k, maxrate 100k, max update/cmdrates of 66.

On 15/03/2014 2:01 AM, pilger wrote:

I need some guidance to see what can I get from a server like this one:

vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model   : 15
model name  : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU   E5645  @ 2.40GHz
stepping: 1
cpu MHz : 2400.085
cache size  : 12288 KB

That's just one of the two cores it has, of course. It also has 1GB Ram
and 4Mbits/s Bandwidth. Running CentOS 6.4.




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Re: [hlds] Important changes to TF2 coming soon

[Yun Huang Yong]

Not specifically but I'd suggest the main reason for wanting to qualify 
for Quickplay is to keep servers filled. From that POV those Quickplay 
players *are* valuable to your community. You shouldn't turn around and 
punt them because their job is now done.


For newer players -- the typical Quickplay user -- it's a pretty 
confusing and negative experience. I get kicked for... playing the game 
like everyone else?


Personally I've never liked reserved slots, and it was one of the 
reasons I started my servers. Either I am a valued member of your 
community and you treat me with the same basic respect as everyone else 
(assuming I behave appropriately), or I'm not. Don't use me to populate 
your servers then throw me away.


On 6/02/2014 6:25 PM, Doctor McKay wrote:

It's not like people discriminate against Quickplay users when
determining someone to kick for a reserved slot. It's not unreasonable
for donors to be given priority access to the server that they are
financially supporting (same with admins as they're supporting it with
their volunteer efforts).


Dr. McKay
www.doctormckay.com <http://www.doctormckay.com>


On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 2:06 AM, Yun Huang Yong mailto:gumby_li...@mooh.org>> wrote:

I think the spirit of the "Kicking players to make room for reserved
slots" item is really about treating Quickplay players with respect.

i.e. don't treat Quickplay players simply as seat warmers until your
regulars/donors/admins feel like joining into a full server
populated because of Quickplay.

 >From an enforcement POV there are obviously ways around many of
the Quickplay disqualification modifications. For this one it would
be pretty easy to tell by simply looking at the relevant groups'
donor perks.

Of course some groups may attempt to subvert the system by secretly
have such a feature but not advertise it but that's a reasonable
outcome - if it makes it harder for server owners to do undesirable
things (such as selling reserved slots) that's still a win.


On 6/02/2014 5:20 PM, Andreas Grimm wrote:

..." Kicking players to make room for reserved slots"

How does this check work?

What happens, when an admin kicks a player for flaming and that
player
reports the server with "they kicked me to make room for
reserved slots"?

Same with plugins like anti cheat - Our anti cheat system stores
dectected cheaters in a database and it kicks the players when they
connect to a server of our network or when they use cheats while
playing. Usually we also send a kick message like "you are
banned for
using cheats bla bla", but a kicked player could easily say
"they make
room for reserved slots"

   - Andreas

*From:*hlds-bounces@list.__valvesoftware.com
<mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com>
[mailto:hlds-bounces@list.__valvesoftware.com
<mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com>] *On Behalf Of
*Fletcher Dunn
*Sent:* Thursday, February 06, 2014 12:52 AM
*To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list

(hlds@list.valvesoftware.com
<mailto:hlds@list.valvesoftware.com>); Half-Life dedicated Linux
server mailing
list (hlds_linux@list.__valvesoftware.com
<mailto:hlds_li...@list.valvesoftware.com>);
hlds_announce@list.__valvesoftware.com
<mailto:hlds_annou...@list.valvesoftware.com>
*Subject:* [hlds] Important changes to TF2 coming soon


There are some changes coming that TF2 server operators should
know about.

CHANGES TO QUICKPLAY

--__-

The next TF2 update will make two changes to quickplay:

* "Show servers" button.  This runs the ordinary quickplay
search, but
instead of joining the server with the highest score, it
presents the
user with an ordered list of about 20 servers and lets them
pick.  This
gives players much of the convenience of quickplay by finding
servers
with a good ping and players on them, but also an easy way to
express a
preference over the map, server community, etc.

* We’ve added an advanced options page that allows players to
opt into
the most commonly-requested non-vanilla rules changes: nocrits,
maxplayers, and instant respawn.

There are no more scoring penalties for maxplayers or rule
changes; your
server either matches their search criteria or it doesn’t.

At this time, we are keeping the default quickplay option to Valve
servers.  However, note that if a player wants to find a server

Re: [hlds] Important changes to TF2 coming soon

[Yun Huang Yong]

I think the spirit of the "Kicking players to make room for reserved 
slots" item is really about treating Quickplay players with respect.


i.e. don't treat Quickplay players simply as seat warmers until your 
regulars/donors/admins feel like joining into a full server populated 
because of Quickplay.


From an enforcement POV there are obviously ways around many of the 
Quickplay disqualification modifications. For this one it would be 
pretty easy to tell by simply looking at the relevant groups' donor perks.


Of course some groups may attempt to subvert the system by secretly have 
such a feature but not advertise it but that's a reasonable outcome - if 
it makes it harder for server owners to do undesirable things (such as 
selling reserved slots) that's still a win.


On 6/02/2014 5:20 PM, Andreas Grimm wrote:

..." Kicking players to make room for reserved slots"

How does this check work?

What happens, when an admin kicks a player for flaming and that player
reports the server with "they kicked me to make room for reserved slots"?

Same with plugins like anti cheat - Our anti cheat system stores
dectected cheaters in a database and it kicks the players when they
connect to a server of our network or when they use cheats while
playing. Usually we also send a kick message like "you are banned for
using cheats bla bla", but a kicked player could easily say "they make
room for reserved slots"

  - Andreas

*From:*hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com
[mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *On Behalf Of *Fletcher Dunn
*Sent:* Thursday, February 06, 2014 12:52 AM
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*Subject:* [hlds] Important changes to TF2 coming soon

There are some changes coming that TF2 server operators should know about.

CHANGES TO QUICKPLAY

---

The next TF2 update will make two changes to quickplay:

* "Show servers" button.  This runs the ordinary quickplay search, but
instead of joining the server with the highest score, it presents the
user with an ordered list of about 20 servers and lets them pick.  This
gives players much of the convenience of quickplay by finding servers
with a good ping and players on them, but also an easy way to express a
preference over the map, server community, etc.

* We’ve added an advanced options page that allows players to opt into
the most commonly-requested non-vanilla rules changes: nocrits,
maxplayers, and instant respawn.

There are no more scoring penalties for maxplayers or rule changes; your
server either matches their search criteria or it doesn’t.

At this time, we are keeping the default quickplay option to Valve
servers.  However, note that if a player wants to find a server with any
of the supported modifications, then they must land on a community
server, since Valve servers do not run with these settings.

We’ve updated the quickplay policy to more clearly specify what sorts of
server modifications are allowed in quickplay:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2825-AFGJ-3513

STEAM GAMESERVER ACCOUNTS

-

Gameserver accounts are now a Steam feature.  The feature is currently
in beta.

Using a steam gameserver account provides one important advantage right
now: client favorite lists are keyed by the Steam account if present.
This means that you can move your server to another IP address, and
clients who have your server in their favorites or history will follow
you to your new location.

CREATING AN ACCOUNT:

Creating an account is currently only possible via WebAPI.  (Remember,
this feature is currently in beta.  We’ll add a nicer interface for this
soon.)  Make a HTTPS POST request to the following URL:

https://api.steampowered.com/IGameServersService/CreateAccount/v0001/

The POST arguments should be:

   appid=440 (for Team Fortress)

   key=

 is the WebAPI key associated with the user account that
will own the server accounts. See http://steamcommunity.com/dev for how
to get one of these.  (WARNING: Make sure and keep this key secret.
This key is an authentication token in some respects and makes it
possible to do certain actions on your behalf.  Don’t feed the key into
anybody’s nice convenient web page that automates this.  With your
WebAPI key they could impersonate you for some actions.  If you don’t
want to go through the pain of making a WebAPI call, just wait until we
have a nicer interface implemented.)

The output of the WebAPI will be the (permanent) SteamID of your
gameserver, and a login token.  The login token is a random string of
text that allows you to actually login to your account.

You can view a list of the servers owned by a user account by making a
HTTPS GET call to:

https://api.steampowered.com/IGameServersService/GetAccountList/v0001/?key=https://api.steampowered

Re: [hlds] Important changes to TF2 coming soon

[Yun Huang Yong]

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2825-AFGJ-3513#maps

Is the omission of these maps deliberate?

cp_degrootkeep

cp_process_final
cp_snakewater_final1
cp_standin_final

tc_hydro

We run a full rotation server so am wondering if I should remove these 
maps for Quickplay...


Yarr! goosmurf
http://steamcommunity.com/id/goosmurf/

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Re: [hlds] [hlds_linux] Important changes to TF2 coming soon

[Yun Huang Yong]

On 6/02/2014 11:28 AM, Ross Bemrose wrote:

Actually, I'll just post the entire list of things not allowed in
QuickPlay according to the new FAQ:

  * Enforcing class limits


In Australia, all of the smaller, popular independent communities run 
with class limits. Typically 2 snipers, 2 spies, and sometimes 3 on 
every other class.


The rationale behind these limits is generally to limit the worst case 
behaviour, e.g. when newer players choose to be the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 
6th sniper when their team clearly needs them to help in other ways.


Our community also limits engies to 1 on symmetric maps (KOTH & 5CP). 
This was in response to players being frustrated at the turtle nature of 
KOTH & 5CP games when multiple engies were allowed.


Can anyone shed light on the class restriction situation in other countries?

And also reasons why class limits would be excluded from QP?

I understand the desire to allow players freedom to choose what class 
they play but at the same time this needs to be balanced with not having 
entire teams rage quit because 6 of their team mates are spy.


Were there server groups selling exemptions from class restrictions as a 
premium feature?


FWIW we genuinely do not accept payment (in any form), for any perks or 
similar. Our donation page makes this clear, and has been this way since 
day one.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/smurfy-tf2/discussions/0/882964760796657104/#c882964760796750223

Our goal has always been to simply provide a great gameplay experience 
and let players choose to stay with us if they enjoy that. Hence I 
understand the other QP-disallowed modifications but the class limits 
item seems out of place so I would like to understand the thinking 
behind it.


Yarr! goosmurf
http://steamcommunity.com/id/goosmurf/
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/smurfy-tf2

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Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update released

[Yun Huang Yong]

Valid question and TBH though I've played this game since the Orange box 
beta (and QWTF since 1996 so I've always loved the franchise) this 
latest change really makes me wonder if I should bother.


I only started my servers up 15 months ago in response to the available 
servers all being team stacked one-sided steamrolls. If Valve had 
actually made any effort to prevent this I would never have started my 
servers.


So we spent ~$1800 in hosting over the last 15 months, put in tens if 
not hundreds of hours writing plugins to fix various deficiencies in the 
base server, and now we're left facing what looks like death by attrition.


Attrition because even with our current group of fantastic regular 
players who will help us get our servers started today, tomorrow, and 
maybe into the next month or so what I see happening is eventually they 
also run out of patience. Each day it will get slightly harder to start 
the servers up as one regular decides s/he no longer has the patience to 
wait.


I'll hang in there as long as our players keep playing but as the 
servers empty out I will shut them down, it makes no sense to keep 
paying for something no one is using.


The main question already in my mind is how best to empty out my 
backpack. I won't go back to playing Valve servers as they're so 
horribly run.


I don't want to sell everything on the Steam market as I really don't 
fancy giving any more money to Valve given their treatment of community 
operators. But I also don't want to sell via PayPal for all of the fraud 
issues. Any suggestions?


On 25/01/2014 5:24 AM, lemon superman wrote:

With all this talk about how Valve no longer cares and evidence of that
being quite clear, what is keeping all of you in the game? What is
keeping you all hosting servers?

Serious question.

It is clear from what I've read that this game is no longer fun and no
longer worth supporting. Every update that is added is not one that
favors any of you and normally punishes all of you who feel they are
legit server owners/communities, worked hard to stay on the straight and
narrow, followed all the rules and didn't abuse anyone playing on your
servers intentionally. All of your hard work, time, money, effort,
stress, and anything else ends up going to waste and you are constantly
getting screwed. You can't run the maps you want to run because your
communities would die with them and when you run only the stock maps in
the most vanilla way possible and by the rules Valve has imposed to keep
the community afloat, you end up hating to play because it really isn't
even that fun at all. You're tired of 2fort, tired of badlands, tired of
dustbowl, turbine, goldrush/badwater. Tired of 20 second spawn times,
tired of having to keep on to of whether or not your server is
registered to quickplay, tired of keeping in compliance with rules and
policies that Valve clearly does not enforce and uses just as a scare
tactic. Tired of the free publicity that these maverick servers who
shouldn't be in Quickplay, that break all the rules, and abuse the
community get due to dumb things like ads, quickplay placing them on
their servers, and how little effort they actually put in to building
their servers. What about you? You didn't do that at all to the player
base yet you get no mention at all!

You're tired of all of it. Tired of each and every update putting this
game closer and closer to other games that you hate because you knew
that this game was once so much more. It offered so much without being
so restricting and the playerbase gave back to it when Valve wasn't busy
adding things to help hurt EVERYTHING you came to love about the game.
The playerbase can't distinguish between a community server and a Valve
server and they only believe that servers are either Valve or shitty
ads-ridden hovels of admin abuse and general griefing. You want
something new and fresh, something that would have normally
re-invigorated the players on your community and else where, but without
actually having to change the game from what it is to do so. But if you
attempt to go outside of the norm with this game as it is now, you gain
nothing but empty servers that you pay all kinds of money for.

What is stopping you all from just packing it all up and leaving now?
What could possibly be so important that it warrants all this unwanted
stress and expense for absolutely nothing? All the emails and
badmouthing and outrage in the world will not change Valve's decision on
anything they've done and it is quite clear that TF2 is either a testbed
for other games to benefit or a cash cow and that is all. From
everything I've read in every email chain so far, there is more than
enough evidence to support that Valve has summarily turned their backs
on you all and they could care less. "Screw you, got mine." is all you
see every time you see a new email or update or preview or "feature"
that they add to this game.

So, I ask you, why do you still bother?


On Fri, Ja

Re: [hlds] Maps crashing clients (upward & watchtower)

[Yun Huang Yong]

Same here. I was wondering why the servers emptied out on change to 
pl_upward.


Linux, SM 1.5.1.

On 10/01/2014 3:06 PM, Ryan Stecker wrote:

Can confirm this myself and with multiple reports from others.


On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 9:17 PM, Alex Kowald mailto:abkow...@gmail.com>> wrote:

My server causes clients to crash on the map loading screen for the
maps pl_upward and arena_watchtower after today's update. This is on
stock servers with no mods. It seems to affect both windows and
linux. Anybody else seeing this behavior with any maps?

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Re: [hlds] Setting Up Replay

[Yun Huang Yong]

When I setup Replays I read this:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5261-UIHN-1853

Then looked at the cfg/replay_example.cfg which is well commented.

It's pretty straightforward to setup HTTP replays.

I've read many complaints about FTP offload messing up so I didn't 
bother with that.


We haven't had any problems with bandwidth or disk I/O from serving 
replays over HTTP on the same server as the TF2 servers.


I should note that my experience is with Linux and nginx as the HTTP 
server. But I can not see why Windows perf would be any worse for the 
small number of requests you will get for replay blocks.


On 26/07/2013 10:14 AM, Harsh Baid wrote:

So i am currently in the process of setting up replay. Can any1 help
me/provide advice?

I found these 2 tutorials online:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1873473
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=22315902&postcount=192

Is there anything more i need to know?


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Re: [hlds] hlds Digest, Vol 28, Issue 36

[Yun Huang Yong]

Before everyone gets all judgmental let me explain what we did.

The background is that we run the only PropHunt server in Australia, and 
for some reason after the 2.06 release Hungarians began frequenting our 
server.


At first it was only a few and that's fine, we've always had a few 
international players since PropHunt is not so latency sensitive.  But 
it got to the point where 24/24 players would be Hungarian during our 
peak hours, crowding out our regulars.


We filtered (kicked) players from Hungary based on IP, and the kick 
messages showed this:


cf_reject_msg "Country %s is blocked, see http://goo.gl/fj9nB";

Note we even linked to a Hungarian translation for them (via Google 
translate).


Also, we didn't block them 24/7.  As most of our players go to sleep 
around midnight we ended up relaxing the restriction so it only applies 
between 12am-12pm local time (roughly 4pm to 4am Budapest local time).


We did this via a cron job that changes the configs for country filter 
at those times.


On 22/07/2013 5:04 AM, ElitePowered . wrote:

Dude.how would you feel if you were the one that was being kicked
because a server owner put country restrictions. Just let the people play.


On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 3:00 PM, mailto:hlds-requ...@list.valvesoftware.com>> wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Getting unwanted player traffic from certain countries
   (Yun Huang Yong)
2. Re: Getting unwanted player traffic from certain countries
   (Daan Kemps)
3. Re: Getting unwanted player traffic from certain countries (ics)
4. Re: Getting unwanted player traffic from certain countries
   (Daan Kemps)


------

    Message: 1
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 00:36:49 +1000
From: Yun Huang Yong mailto:gumby_li...@mooh.org>>
To: cls mailto:mega9900-...@yahoo.com>>,
  Half-Life dedicated Win32 server
 mailing list mailto:hlds@list.valvesoftware.com>>
Subject: Re: [hlds] Getting unwanted player traffic from certain
 countries
Message-ID: <51ebf201.5030...@mooh.org
<mailto:51ebf201.5030...@mooh.org>>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

On 21/07/2013 9:40 PM, cls wrote:
 > Can we please get a country filter?

I've used this successfully:
https://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=67171

Grab an up to date DB from http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/legacy/geolite/



--

Message: 2
Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2013 16:37:27 +0200
From: Daan Kemps mailto:daanke...@hotmail.com>>
To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
 mailto:hlds@list.valvesoftware.com>>
Subject: Re: [hlds] Getting unwanted player traffic from certain
 countries
Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Country filter (http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=47900)
for MetaMod: Source could be used to block certain countries.
-- next part --
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Message: 3
Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2013 18:53:52 +0300
From: ics mailto:i...@ics-base.net>>
To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
 mailto:hlds@list.valvesoftware.com>>
Subject: Re: [hlds] Getting unwanted player traffic from certain
 countries
Message-ID: <51ec0410.80...@ics-base.net
<mailto:51ec0410.80...@ics-base.net>>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Countryfilter is a great way to alienate possible community members and
kill off the server itself. Just saying.

-ics

Daan Kemps kirjoitti:
 > Country filter (http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=47900)
 > for MetaMod: Source could be used to block certain countries.
 >
 >
 > ___
 > To unsubscribe, edit your lis

Re: [hlds] Getting unwanted player traffic from certain countries

[Yun Huang Yong]

On 21/07/2013 9:40 PM, cls wrote:

Can we please get a country filter?


I've used this successfully:
https://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=67171

Grab an up to date DB from http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/legacy/geolite/

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Re: [hlds] Idle Servers Dead

[Yun Huang Yong]

http://alexmk.hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Idle-in-TF2-Automatically-After-the-Textmode-Disable-Update

We could go back n forth til the end of time on how Valve will detect 
use of the above, and idlers will adapt.  You'll never be able to 100% 
stop anyone determined enough.


But in making it more difficult and more expensive (read: power) Valve 
significantly reduces the prevalence.  Also keep in mind that a bunch of 
folks who were idling in textmode did it because it was easy and wasn't 
frowned upon -- now Valve has made their position clear so a bunch of 
"casual" idlers will move on.


Let's cut this thread short by accepting that it will be an arms race.

On 19/07/2013 2:48 PM, Derek Howard wrote:

Short of utilizing some sort of exploit, none of the relevant commands
can be executed on clients by the server.

Hell, I don't even think the client can use his own client console to
get rid of the "Item Acquired" screen. There doesn't seem to be any
command that can trigger the "OK, Resume Game" button.


On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 9:40 PM, ics mailto:i...@ics-base.net>> wrote:

I'm pretty sure someone will write a plugin that will execute
command for that panel and run it with their server. That way
players could get item drops. That sounds shady and propably would
go against Valve ruling so i wouldn't recommend it. This cannot be
done with map alone.

-ics

Lyrai kirjoitti:

The change is that you have to confirm each drop manually - an
idle server won't fully solve the problem, as you'll still need
to come back every half hour-hour to hit okay and resume it. At
that point, you really are better off just playing the game
instead of trying to game the system.


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Re: [hlds] Pinion Pot of Gold blacklist?

[Yun Huang Yong]

On 19/02/2013 4:18 PM, Todd Pettit wrote:

I have also recommended to pinion to stop the "on connect" ads and to only show 
the ads every 4 rounds or more. I think viewing a 40 second AD after playing for 30-40 
minutes is a much more reasonable request of players and would do a lot to restore the 
opinion of Pinion. Their plugin should also extend the bonus round and show the ads to 
all players at the same time instead of showing the AD to miscellaneous players who have 
not seen the AD in over 20 minutes. This way players are not missing out on setup time 
and conversations going on while they are stuck watching an AD.


This is a really good idea.  I hope someone from Pinion is reading this.

It's like you're "paying" with your eyeballs *after* you've had a chance 
to play, not before you've even joined the game.  Players could also 
talk about the product(s) being advertised (good and bad hehe).


PS: I'm not pro- or anti-advertising.  I just like to see things done well.

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Re: [hlds] Pinion Pot of Gold blacklist?

[Yun Huang Yong]

On 19/02/2013 3:12 PM, Todd Pettit wrote:

I offer a pinion bypass to all my players for $1 a month. It already has close 
to a hundred people who are contributing. So our players obviously like our 
servers enough to contribute.


How do you handle the billing?

I looked around for ways for players to contribute micro-donations and 
most solutions made it crazily inefficient.  e.g. PayPal is 2.4% + 30c 
for every transaction.


I would love a mechanism that allowed players to easily contribute micro 
amounts... :)


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Re: [hlds] Tips for TF2 bball server config?

[Yun Huang Yong]

For anyone landing on the list archives via Google[1] I ended up writing 
my own plugin[2] to do the 2v2/3v3 + spectator thing.


Also, published some guidelines on my completed BBall server config:
http://jarate-chop.mooh.org/reference/tf2-bball-server-config.html

[1] One of my pet peeves is finding 10 million references to Qs that are 
apparently never answered.  I hope not to contribute to that mess.

[2] https://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?p=1881508

On 26/01/2013 4:02 PM, Yun Huang Yong wrote:

Just setup a TF2 bball server in Sydney, Australia.  Am hoping for some
tips (pointers to plugins perhaps) to config it well.

I'd like to limit the teams to 2v2 or 3v3 and have anyone else who joins
the server automatically be pushed to spectator so people can watch
whilst they wait for a turn.

Also, it sounds like people generally frown upon shotgun use. Any
suggestions on how to restrict the weapons usable?

I tried mp_tournament_whitelist but I'm guessing from its name it only
applies in tournament mode... I'd like for players to come and go as
they please so tournament doesn't really work.

Any other tips on running a decent bball server would be welcome too :)

Thanks,
yun

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[hlds] Tips for TF2 bball server config?

[Yun Huang Yong]

Just setup a TF2 bball server in Sydney, Australia.  Am hoping for some 
tips (pointers to plugins perhaps) to config it well.


I'd like to limit the teams to 2v2 or 3v3 and have anyone else who joins 
the server automatically be pushed to spectator so people can watch 
whilst they wait for a turn.


Also, it sounds like people generally frown upon shotgun use. Any 
suggestions on how to restrict the weapons usable?


I tried mp_tournament_whitelist but I'm guessing from its name it only 
applies in tournament mode... I'd like for players to come and go as 
they please so tournament doesn't really work.


Any other tips on running a decent bball server would be welcome too :)

Thanks,
yun

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[hlds] Community pl_ maps crashing clients at map end

[Yun Huang Yong]

I've been trying to introduce some community made maps to one of my 
servers and pl_boundary_final and pl_waste_v2 both cause most (often 
all) of the clients to crash to desktop at the end of the map.  I don't 
see any errors in the logs, only everyone disconnecting due to timeout.


It seems odd that these two maps have this effect but 
pl_swiftwater_final_rc is fine so I'm wondering if it's a known/config 
issue.


Has anyone come across this before?

cheers,
yun

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Re: [hlds] Monthly bandwidth usage

[Yun Huang Yong]

My 24p servers:
  sv_minrate 3
  sv_minupdaterate 20
  sv_maxrate 8
  sv_maxupdaterate 66
  replays disabled

I picked the min[update]rates based on settings I think are sensible and 
reasonable for my (Australian) player base.


Average around 160kB/s when full.
Min bandwidth 80kbps, max ~500kbps.

160kB/s x 3600 seconds/hour x 12 hours/day x 30 days/month
  = 200GB/mo/server

Full 15 hours/day =~ 260GB/mo.

In practice for 2 servers which are on average full about 12-15 
hours/day they use combined 550GB/month.


I tend to budget 350GB/mo per 24p server because I don't want to go 
over, and I don't want to waste time fiddling with rate limits for the 
sake of a few $/mo.


Despite earlier assertions regarding gameME it's not a significant 
contributor.  Logging barely uses 500MB/month if that.  All gameME does 
is use the UDP logger to export your log files (so you can look at your 
log file size for a rough idea), and then uses a bunch of RCON commands 
to do its announcements.  Even if you assumed gameME put an announcement 
for every single log line you might xfer double your log data size.  All 
up, less than 1% vs your player traffic.


On 7/01/2013 1:19 PM, Essay Tew Phaun wrote:

I don't think replays are enabled by default, are they? I figure the
most accurate representation should be that of the default settings.
It's like saying I could suck up 20 TB of bandwidth running a custom
maps server with tons of maps. Of course users will have to account for
extra bandwidth they intend to use.

On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 7:43 PM, E. Olsen mailto:ceo.eol...@gmail.com>> wrote:

That is probably true if you don't plan to enable replays via FTP -
but I run 21 servers with replay, and routinely see 12-14TB's of
bandwidth usage per month.


On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 7:18 PM, Doctor McKay mailto:li...@doctormckay.com>> wrote:

When did anyone mention ten servers? We’re only talking about
one here.
Even so, you most certainly don’t need 5-10 TB for ten 32-player
servers. I work with someone who is running 4 32-slot servers
(with fairly high rates), and only uses ~705 GB monthly. So
you’ll need about 2 TB per 10 servers.
Dr. McKay
http://www.doctormckay.com
*From:* HLDS Digest 
*Sent:* Saturday, January 05, 2013 11:41 AM
*To:* hlds@list.valvesoftware.com

*Subject:* [hlds] Monthly bandwidth usage
5-10TB needed (you need 10 if your servers are filling you will
be pushing roughly 189GB a day per each 10 32 person servers)


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[hlds] Built-in voting

[Yun Huang Yong]

There's two vote types I'd like to discuss: team scramble & vote 
kicking.  I am talking here about the built-in TF2 voting, NOT any 
SourceMod voting though I do have SM installed.



VOTE KICKING - has anyone encountered a bug where ALL votekicks 
automatically succeed?


We have seen several instances where players initiate votekicks, the 
voting panel is briefly displayed, and the vote immediately succeeds 
without anyone actually casting a vote.  In one instance we saw a player 
abusing this to boot several players consecutively.


I haven't been able to reproduce this yet, nor can I say if it's related 
to some bad interaction with SM/plugins.


Related Q - what are server ops using to allow players to implement 
votekick like voting where players can nominate the victim via a menu?



TEAM SCRAMBLE - the built-in team scramble voting resets timer when a 
vote succeeds.  Could there be a toggle-able option to disable this 
behaviour?


Ideally scramble should leave the timer alone and just restart the round 
(without incrementing the round counter so we don't bump into round limits).


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Re: [hlds] Mandatory Team Fortress 2 update released

[Yun Huang Yong]

I second the request for explanation of the tf_mvm_missioncyclefile format.

What I've found through experimentation...

As long as the server ONLY runs map & mission *combinations* specified 
in the missioncyclefile then the server will rotate through all the 
combinations within the same category as expected.


Once a server enters a particular category it will continue rotating 
between maps in that category - i.e. with the default missioncyclefile 
once players vote changelevel -> advanced it will rotation only between 
maps w/ advanced missions since they all sit in one category.


As soon as the server runs a map/mission combination that doesn't exist 
in the missioncyclefile then the server will get stuck on that map 
forever.  i.e. when you finish the mission it will not change maps.


I also find that with custom maps it regularly rotates to a new map and 
doesn't set tf_mvm_popfile so I end up stuck on that map.  I don't know 
whether the community made maps are missing something or it's a bug in 
the way missioncyclefile works.


The workaround that I use is to create a .cfg for each map, and 
force tf_mvm_popfile appropriately.  The limit that this creates is that 
I can't have more than one popfile available per map, without writing 
some custom mod to flip popfiles on the fly.


On 10/10/2012 2:22 PM, Brendan Cosman wrote:

Hi,

Unless I'm missing something, nothing in that article explains how to have an 
unofficial MvM server rotate through a series of different maps with 
appropriate popfiles.

tf_mvm_missioncycle.res appears to have changed in today's patch, but I'm still 
unsure how to tell a TF2 server to use a specific mission cycle.

Also, that file appears to be per install, not per server instance, which is 
surprising considering all other configuration files are per-instance.

The only information I can find by searching the archive of this list is this 
statement before MvM was released by Fletcher that the file was self 
explanatory. I've asked this question on this list a few times and so far we've 
been unable to find the actual answer.

Regards,
Brendan.


- Original Message -
From: "DontWannaName!" 
To: "Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list" 

Sent: Wednesday, 10 October, 2012 12:28:35 PM GMT +10:00 Brisbane
Subject: Re: [hlds] Mandatory Team Fortress 2 update released

You mean this?

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6656-IAZN-7933

On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 5:51 PM, Brendan Cosman
 wrote:

Hi,

Can we please have documentation on how to setup a proper tour of duty on an unofficial server. According to 
http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=8985 "Remember: as always, loot is the only difference between 
MvM on the unofficial "Boot Camp" server and official "Mann Up" servers. Otherwise the 
gameplay is identical." but we don't have documentation on how to configure a server to run the tour of 
duty.

I last requested this on 5 September, I've included a copy of that request 
below.

Regards,
Brendan.

-

Hi,

We still don't seem to have documentation on how to properly setup an MvM 
server with an advanced map rotation. We can use the map.cfg files to change 
the popfile, but at best that gives us one advanced mode per map per host (not 
even per server), rather than allowing us to rotate through all 6 advanced 
modes.

We'd like to support your new game mode properly and in a professional manner, 
but we need documentation on how to do it.

(Also, playing MannUp mode with 200+ ping is horrible, we'd love to run some 
Australian servers for you - we do it for EA's play for free titles Heroes & 
BFP4F)

Regards,
Brendan.

-


- Original Message -
From: "Eric Smith" 
To: "Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list" , "Half-Life dedicated 
Linux server mailing list" , "hlds_annou...@list.valvesoftware.com" 

Sent: Wednesday, 10 October, 2012 7:37:16 AM GMT +10:00 Brisbane
Subject: [hlds] Mandatory Team Fortress 2 update released

We've released a mandatory update for Team Fortress 2. The notes for the update 
are below.

-Eric

--

Source Engine Changes (TF2, DoD:S, HL2:DM)
- Fixed HTTP downloads on Mac not sending an HTTP referer

Team Fortress 2
- Updated materials/models for the Champ Stamp, King of Scotland Cape, 
Stovepipe Sniper Shako, and Freedom Staff
- Fixed a server crash that could occur if a Spy was disguised holding the 
Gunslinger
- Fixed the Lacking Moral Fiber Mask being tagged as a misc item instead of a 
hat
- Fixed the Gunslinger not accepting "Sappers Removed" strange parts
- Overhealed players that are bleeding or on fire can now pickup healthkits to 
remove these conditions
- Added tf_dingalingaling_repeat_delay (default 0) which limits how often the 
dingalingaling sound can play
- Removed outdated tip about the Spy's Enforcer
- Updated the localization files
- Vote system
- Allow kicking of connected players that haven't joined a team in Mann vs. 
Machine
- Added s

Re: [hlds] matchmaking algorythm doesn't seem to work

[Yun Huang Yong]

On 27/08/2012 2:03 AM, ics wrote:

in-game.  I already have bootcamp servers for our community and friends
so why not mann up for trusted communities or something. There is that
chance for cheating but you can VAC ban my account if i would run a
server for mann up and mess it up.


I'm not sure it's that simple.  What does Valve then say/do to the folks 
who incorrectly (and perhaps innocently) obtained items from finishing a 
Mann Up mission on your server?


Agree with what most are saying about matchmaking + pings in this 
thread.  I run a server in Sydney, Australia and majority (if not all) 
of the matchmade players have pings over 200ms, sometimes up to 600ms.


Pretty sure Valve have gotten the message though :)

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