Contratulations to
for being the 1,500,000th frag recorded on my server, gibbed by
!
If you're looking for more information on my CPU-reduced Random Map Patch, click Here.
Looks like my server isn't likely to hit the magic 2,000,000 deaths. Zoid will probably have the Quake II CTF ready by then, and when he does I'll be switching my server over to that. Ah well..
I'm running a QuakeWorld server at ctf.niagara.com:27500. Feel free to jump in. If the server is "DOWN" then I'm probably either playing Diablo or QuakeWorld myself.
The server is a Pentium-150 with 64 Megs of RAM, running Linux qwsv 2.01.
If you don't already have CTF4 installed, the source site is at Threewave. You need both 3wctf301.zip (4 Meg) and 3wctfc40.zip (6.6 Meg). A bit of a warning: it totals about 11 Meg, 25 Meg installed. But wholly worth the trouble!
And for the Quakeworld 2.0 client, go to QuakeWorld.
They've released version 0.90 of the All-Star CTF pack. This includes server options for many episodes worth of professional-quality levels, including Threewave 3/4, Thunderwalker 3/4, the CTF Expansion Pack, and a new Xeno episode.
I will continue to be running my own CTF mod, with quad/ring dropping and GL flag glowing, and bandwidth/CPU reduction. (No idea if any of these features were included in any other CTF mod yet.) ie. still 100% compatible with the original Threewave server.
I will be alternating between using the Xeno levels and the Thunderwalker levels on my server, usually switching only when my server is currently empty.
I've temporarily switched to a new IP address, still called 'ctf.niagara.com':
209.5.56.11. It seems that a whole bunch of you have saved the old address in your 'Favorites' section in Quake/GameSpy.
I am looking to get a used 3DFX card for use at home. I haven't decided between the 'Diamond Monster 3D' or the 'Orchid Righteous 3D'. Any suggestions?
And I don't suppose anybody playing on my server all the time who is upgrading to a bigger 3D card would want to donate their old one..
NEW!! I'm upgrading to a new motherboard, with one more ISA slot (sound again! whee!), with enough on-board cache for me to upgrade to 64MB RAM (X windows again! whee!), and a P150 CPU. This means I might start up another QuakeWorld server, but I doubt it.. Maybe if some of you freeloaders^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hnice people help out with some kind of donation...
This also means the server will be down for anything between 20 minutes and 2 hours, depending on what funky new hardware conflicts my new motherboard comes up with...
And before you go asking, no I can't run a Hexen server on my machine. They have to port HexenWorld to Linux first...
I now have a SCSI card in my machine, so that I can occasionally attach a Zip drive somebody bought for his Mac. (no big deal) But in order to do this, I had to rearrange my machine's ISA cards, as I was all out of room. (a big deal)
But since I had a PCI ethernet card at home, I figured I could just switch them and free up an ISA slot. Everything reattached, plugged in, turned on, and worked. Except that for no apparent reason, my perfectly working ethernet card was SLOWER. Second(s)-long delays, packet retransmissions, etc. As in, HELL for a game server.
So I had to put the old ISA ethernet card back in instead, and made a noble sacrifice: had to remove the sound card instead. Sigh!
So now I've got that soundblaster 16 card home where it belongs, and an extra soundblaster pro clone (100% compatible, but has scratchy sound) sitting around with no machine to be in.
All this reflects my increasingly hypocritical view of life: Macs rule! Plug and Play that works! (as in, you plug it in and it works)
The CTF Expansion pack has been released. Download the client pack now, because I will have the levels on my server really soon. And to keep my server's performance at its optimum, downloading from the server will still be disabled. (Man, but those levels are HUGE!)
And by the way, I've got the 'secret' level in the regular loop. This means you don't have to waste tooooo much time on ctf1bsp6 trying to figure out how to get at the secret exit.
<rant mode>
Nothing is more frustrating than running a public server with a bunch of 'kiddies' playing. And I don't mean LPB's, HPW's, or even tons of foul language.
What gets me is when the teams get completely off balance, like the game that was going on today with 9-on-5. Of course the team with the most players is going to win. What's the fun in that?
The next time I get a bunch of wusses that refuse to switch teams to balance out the teams, I'm going to do something nasty. I could enable teamplayer damage, with penalties for killing your teammates. I could disable the runes. I could patch my server to disallow the GL, RL, and LG. I could disallow the grappling hook.
In other words, I could easily set my server so that the good players can get a challenge from playing, but all the kiddies would just drop out from.
</rant mode>
Now that I have the map cycling working in CTF, I am using that instead of my own randomization code. Go figure. They should have set up map cycling in Quake and QuakeWorld forever ago.. I only begged and pleaded to the QuakeWorld team waaaaay back when version 1.54 was current.. :^)
Anyway, I have the following set of maps set to cycle on my server:
ctf2m1
ctf6
ctf2m3
ctf3
ctf2m8
ctf1
ctf2m5
ctf8
ctf2m2
ctf5
ctf2m7
ctf7
ctf2m6
ctf4
ctf2m4
Sometimes, I'll run the CTF Expansion pack maps, sans voting. Just
looping through all the levels, including the funky secret map. (ie. you
don't have to waste your time on map ctf1bsp6 setting all the switches
to get there.)If you're wondering where map ctf2 went, it is because it has a bug in the respawn points that only shows up in QuakeWorld.
Okay, I've just about completely finished my QW2-to-CTF conversion. Lots of new features. Just get it. Randomize Mod And all the gameplay is still 100% backward compatible with the original CTF 4.21 from Zoid.
The qwsv QuakeWorld server lets a server op dynamically replace the 'qwprogs.dat' file on the fly, reloading it from scratch every time. So when I added the VIS'ed (seethrough) water, I did the same thing, except that the server crashed when the next level reloaded. I guess the server caches this information.
Anyway, here's the pointers to the files you will need. On my Pentium 100, the VIS ran in just a few minutes.
VIS patch
CTF3 vis info
CTF4 vis info
and for you people without GL-capable quake, you will also need:
I run my quakeworld server with the help of a nifty unix program called screen so that I can make any changes on the fly without having to use any rcon passwords. A simple command "screen -r" and I can do my server commands, and then a simple CTRL-A d to detach.
Except that this time I missed letting go of the CTRL key, and accidentally typed in a CTRL-d character to the server. For those of you who don't already know unix, this character means 'end of input'. In other words, the server would no longer pay attention to anything else that I typed from the console, but continued merrily along.
Should I or shouldn't I? I am thinking about putting all-VISed maps onto my server. Is it really worth it? And since there is a nifty utility Waterhack, even us non-GL players can still get all the benefits. It's a little disconcerting at first not seeing the water texture, but you get used to it.
OK, you got me. I have removed one more level from the rotation: ctf2. This is the one with a grenade launcher in the middle and no rocket launcher, with grenades flying everywhere.
But that's not why I removed it. It's because way too often when the players respawn, they get stuck up in the rafters above the flag bases unable to move.
Funny how this level doesn't have this problem in regular Quake, just in QuakeWorld. Oh well, if they fix it I'll put it back in, otherwise it will stay out.
Before you bother asking me, I don't know where the Lightning Gun is on the Shub's Pit level. It's in there somewhere, and I've had all of one death caused by 'shafting' on that map on my server ever.
But if you happen to find it, jump over to a Midnight CTF server and take a screenshot of it. You won't win a Ferarri, but you might get an 'honorable mention'...
If you want to skip over (say) just those three levels, but otherwise allow all the player voting, you can still use my randomize patch to save on your CPU load:
samelevel 0 localinfo ctf2m3 ctf2m7What this means is that when map ctf2m3 is finished, the next map to play will be ctf2m7 instead of ctf2m4.
Note that this 'localinfo' option is only available if your server is running the (much improved) qwsv 2.0+.
Mine is the first CTF server to support the new funky blue/red glowing when a player has the Quad/666 powerups! In addition, the blue/red flags also glow blue/red! You can get your copy of my qwprogs.dat for your own server, still 100% compatible with Zoid's original 4.21 CTF, from my random page.
From Dr.DooM's Blue's News
I don't have a 3Dfx card of my own to play with. :^( Now, if anybody out there would like to give me one, I'd be more than gracious!
I've been tinkering with my server, trying to do little things like reducing the CPU load, improve bandwidth at critical moments, and hopefully finally get the thing to stop hanging when somebody captures the flag immediately after picking it up.
So far, I've done this much:
Not a single one of these little tweaks affects any of the actual gameplay. At worst, a player who tries to change skins, change teams, or crossdress won't be noticed for half a second. And FYI, the CPU load for a 20-player game with map ctf1 on my Pentium-100 has been reduced to about 60%-80%, as opposed to the 80%+ that it was before. Too bad that these changes aren't portable back to normal Quake..
You can download my modified source code, and a precompiled qwprogs.dat file from my randomize page. And don't worry yourself about compatibility with the original CTF 4.21 server from Zoid, because from the player's perspective everything is still the same. A little bit better response time maybe, but still the same.