Apex-Games.net

Would you look at that, news posts on two consecutive days?  It really is a sign of the impending zombie apocalypse.  The server is primed and ready for release, so all I have to do is flip the switch to turn it on.  Maybe the midnight party plan is a bit too hopeful given Valve’s habit of using their pesky local Pacific time and letting us poor east coast folks suffer.

Whether we fire it up tonight at midnight or tomorrow afternoon, remember that for the first week or two the server will be community members only.  Using the recently integrated group exclusive setting, the server will automatically display on the game’s main menu for any members of the Steam group, and lobby joiners will be blocked from entering the server.  Anyone that wants to hop in and play should try direct connect using the IP, or messaging any of the group officer types for an invite.

In site news, I finally registered over at GameTrackers and put together a tracker panel for TF2, with one for L4D pending the server’s launch to verify it does indeed exist.  Once it’s up and I have panel numero dos in the header I’ll finally get to clean all of the blood stains off of the homepage.  The next planned feature for the homepage is a set of quick-join buttons that will automatically launch TF2 or L4D to join whichever server is currently active, as well as a button linking to our Apex-Games.net Steam group page.

Finally, before anyone asks…I will not be hosting maps ripped from CS Source, TF2 or any other Source-based game on the L4D server.  It’s a pain in the ass to set up and players would have to extract the majority of the original game’s textures and models to make it playable.  We’ll be fine with the stock four levels for awhile, and it won’t be long before the map community kicks in.

After about a month of kicking the idea around, asking opinions and mulling over options I’ve finally decided on knocking back the server from a 20-slot cap to 12 slots.  The contributing factors were the lack of ability to actually use all 20 slots often enough to be worth having, the fact Left 4 Dead runs only 8 slots and would be a monumental waste of money to host 20 and run less than half of that, and simple economics.

I briefly toyed with the possibility of running two 8-slot L4D boxes for less than a single 20-slot TF2, but given the decidedly underwhelming response from the server regulars I’d rather have the flexibility to run either game.  As it stands, we’ll have 6v6 games available in TF2 when we’re in the mood for it, or our choice of co-op or 4v4 versus in L4D.

Just a reminder in case people actually read these updates: The L4D MOTD contest ends Tuesday night at midnight.  If anyone decides they’d like to give it a shot but can’t put something together in two days, post in the contest thread here and I can always extend the deadline.

As expected, Left 4 Dead has created quite a stir amongst the regulars and the gaming populace as a whole.  I’m quite biased considering I’ll likely enjoy anything that involves shooting lots of zombies (see Call of Duty 5 bonus mode), but it really tells me the game made its mark when my console-bound brother out in Colorado spoke to me at length about the game and how much he wanted to play it.  For the Xbox, mind you…poor guy.

To celebrate the L4D release, I’ve posted a mini-contest over on the forums.  Since most people blatantly ignored the MOTD page for TF2, I’m not putting out hours of effort in making a detailed page for L4D.  I’m doing a page that includes two buttons and the winning comic from the contest, with the winner also getting a custom crafted spray or skin for the game plus at least a month of VIP status with reserve slot access when Sourcemod or another admin plugin makes it possible.  The two buttons will lead to a summary of any mods I have installed (see below) and the other will be a map list on the forums probably.

As with any game, I can’t play it more than half an hour without tinkering.  The weapon scripts in L4D aren’t encrypted like TF2’s were, so they’re easily edited.  They still require a server reboot to take effect, however.  For example, the first tweak I made was to knock the magazine capacity of the M16 down to 30 to match its real world counterpart, which I feel doesn’t hinder the weapon given it’s a headshot machine to begin with.  The main points of interest lie with capacity, total ammo reserves, damages, rate of fire and accuracy.  I won’t be making a molotov or pipe bomb launching shotgun, or a buckshot blasting Mini-14 (that’s the hunting rifle in the game) but there’s a fair amount of realism tweaking there for anyone interested.  I haven’t touched the infected weapon scripts, since it was only half usable before Valve locked it out.  It’ll wait until official release, after we’ve run through the four levels in their entirety at least ten times each probably.

Check out the MOTD contest post here!

BONUS CONTENT!  Here’s a whole thread over at Left4Dead411 dedicated to rage comics.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

The crew at Wolfservers was awesome enough to tack on the just released Left 4 Dead demo to my existing server, so I’m busy figuring out how to stamp Apex-Games.net all over the MOTD screen.  The TF2 server will be down while we’re playing L4D, since I can’t afford to run a box for each.

The L4D server can be found at 64.34.184.152:27015, for anyone who wants to hop on via direct connect in the console.

The past month has been huge in the gaming world.  Half a dozen big name releases have landed across the PC and consoles, forming a tidal wave of sequels most of us have been waiting for for years.  Mixed in were a couple of original titles that either flew under the radar or were hyped to the breaking point, so it’s not all gloom and doom for the naysayers who demand original games.

But this post is a goddamn RANT and I’ll tell you why.  Out of the veritable horde of game releases, almost every PC version’s launch has been utterly botched due to technical faults.  Dead Space got rave reviews on the consoles, but the PC port fell flat on its face when a large number of Vista users simply couldn’t launch the game (myself included).  EA proceeded to completely ignore support requests and has yet to acknowlege the issue or release a patch to make the game many spent their hard earned $60 on playable at all.

Far Cry 2 landed in a storm of graphical incompatibilities making interiors lag unplayably, with DRM issues causing the game to refuse installation or not launch because SecuROM couldn’t find licensing data.  nVidia covered for the graphical end, but I truly feel for people that purchased the game and have to put up with the malware known as SecuROM.  Adding to my annoyance, the map editor for the game proved shallow and lacked any ability to import custom content, and the game’s engine was locked down to prevent modding with no SDK on the horizon.  Way to ruin a game’s longevity, Ubisoft.

Fallout 3 suffered a similar fate, having come into the world an unstable mess riddled with crashing, freezing and refusal to launch.  Once more SecuROM reared its ugly head, causing numerous issues with installation.  Bethesda’s support board is hounded by threads collecting info on crashes, people whining and trolls trying to make the situation worse.  Personally I’m afflicted with graphical incompatibility that forces me to disable HDR and shadows entirely to simply run the game, and once I do I can’t progress beyond the intro seqeuence in Vault 101.  Having weathered a buggy Oblivion launch once before, I’m holding out for a patch before I condemn Bethesda.

The summation of this rant is that botched launches, slips in quality control and lack of testing like this serves only to drive PC gaming down.  It’s bad enough we have people in the industry crying about piracy hurting them and retards in the media proclaiming the imminent death of PC gaming every five seconds; we don’t need the cream of the crop of PC games displaying all of the faults that people fear about PC gaming.  I really wonder how many people decided “fuck this, I’m buying it for the Xbox.”

End rant.