December 25, 2007 - 3:26 pm PST

Merry Xmas everyone!

I think you outta open up your present. Click on the "Servers" option in the nav bar to the left. :)
Wow, that took a while to setup.
-JP

December 19, 2007 - 12:09 am PST

Two interesting pieces of news today - The first is that supposedly, 3DRealms is releasing a Duke Nukem Forever trailer tomorrow. Apparently, this isn't a sick joke. See here and here. The other piece of news is about this server... or more accurately, the new server - it's getting installed into the new Data Center this Sunday. Of course, it might be a few days before I can actually get it up and running but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and figured you guys would like to be kept in the loop.
You dirty freeloaders. I didn't pay my property taxes in full this year because of you people ;)
-JP

December 09, 2007 - 12:09 am PST

Love or hate TF2, the following link is pretty interesting:

Valve's HL2 state page

It covers everything from kill stats to visual heat maps of the highest death zones in a given map. Pretty interesting stuff.
Valve's going to use this info to "balance" out the game even more. Hope that means a better medic.
-JP

November 28, 2007 - 12:09 am PST

I bet you all thought I was pullin your chain about the server upgrade. I bet you all thought I gave up hope and left the TF*/NS community high and dry. Well guess what? Merry early xmas you filthy mooch monkeys:

Also, finally secured a different network provider/colo facility so hopefully the unstable connectivity issues will go away. The TFC/NS community is like the highest maintenance GF I've ever had, seriously. So don't ever say I don't do anything for you guys :)

P.S. A very special thanks goes out to MEP. The server upgrade wouldn't have happened without him.
Now Jiggly gets no presents for Xmas :( This was pretty time sensitive so it was either now or never.
-JP

October 17, 2007 - 2:53 pm PST

Finally something funny from the Penny Arcade:

:)
-JP

September 17, 2007 - 10:29 am PST

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? GYAH.

AAARGH THE WAIT !@@$#%$%&%^
-JP

September 12, 2007 - 2:19 am PST

Valve took my money today:

Highway Robbery

Figured I should know what I'm getting into before investing another 7 years of my life on some wacky game server... See you guys in TF2 land on Monday. C'mon Radeon x800 - I know you can do this.

Edit: Meet the engineer:

Argh, 7 more years of admin hell methinks.
-JP

August 27, 2007 - 6:25 pm PST

TF2 porn:

Clip 1
Clip 2
Clip 3

Looks like the release date is closing in so getting quotes on new servers. Trying to be there for the dawn of the TF2 era...
I'm going to stop eating out (within reason) until I get a new server and car. Bah.
-JP

August 17, 2007 - 9:31 am PST

"WHERE DID THE TFC SERVER GO???"

Update your server list :) For the lazy, it's now here: 216.152.246.98:27015 (panduck.com:27015). Due to unfortunate circumstances, I can't bring it up on the old network and it's probably never going to come up again on the old IP. What does this mean for you? It means better overall latency on the TFC server. What does it mean for me? It means probably a few complaints from the NS crew because now you guys are bed buddies - that is, both games are now hosted on the same aging server. Speaking of servers, can someone hook me up with one of these?:

The Future Panduck Box

plzkthx. No, but really. That's the server I've been looking at - those exact specs with maybe a bit more drive space. If you can get deep discounts on Dell, HP, or IBM products, please let me know... or if one falls off a truck and you're willing to part with it :)
I have to choose between a new car and a server. I should start getting used to ramen. :(
-JP

May 16, 2007 - 8:49 am PST

Why does TF2 have to look so awesome?

Hwguy and his lady, Sasha
This game looks sick
-JP

March 21, 2007 - 10:53 pm PST

Whew, that was some fun downtime, wasn't it kids? Anyways, we're back up now and humming along. I posted the reason for the outage on the other server so if you're bored out of your mind, feel free to check it out:

http://tfc2.panduck.com

Gotta get back to work now. STOP IMing ME ALREADY! :)

-JP

March 03, 2007 - 12:14 pm PST

Figured the TFC players out there can appreciate this new plugin:

Currently loaded plugins:
     description      stat pend  file              vers      src  load  unlod
 [ 1] FoxBot           RUN   -    foxbot_MM_i586.s  v0.698 F  ini  Start Start
 [ 2] AMX              RUN   -    amx_mm_i586.so    v0.9.9    ini  ANY   ANY  
 [ 3] Fun              RUN   -    fun_mm_i586.so    v0.9.9    ini  ANY   ANY  
 [ 4] Anti Nailbug     RUN   -    nailbug_mm_i386.  v1.1      ini  ANY   Pause

And on the NS front, updated from 3.1.whatever to 3.2. Everything seems good EXCEPT the AMX plugins. AMX itself loads fine but none of the plugins are loading and official AMX support ceased a couple years back. Yay for version incompatibilities. It might be time to move to AMX Mod X? I hope all (realistically, some of) the plugins work after the transition. Grrr. It's never easy.

Update: I was being a moron and forgot that you need to disable the native NS .dll/.so files if you're running metamod. Argh. Should be fixed now however, I'm still moving towards AMXX - it seems to have way better support and actually has a bunch of native NS functions built in. Neato. Now comes the pain in the ass part - tweaking it to suit our needs. Like the forum, I suppose this was long overdue.

Edit: Wow, my posts are sounding more and more like something ZOE would write... well, the tone at least. :)
Version mismatches = NIGHTMARE
-JP

February 21, 2007 - 12:57 am PST

Quick updates:

  • Updated forum avatar restrictions. Increased the size and bytecount so it's not so annoying.
  • Fixed the mail error - just need to tweak qmail so that it's not so damned strict (every host is on the deny list right now)
  • Disabled offsite avatars because phpBB doesn't do size checks on external avatars for some reason. Plugins that remedy this don't seem to work on the current version.
  • Still policing the server under various disguises. Look out evildoers.
    It's all coming along... slowly but surely.
    -JP

    February 19, 2007 - 2:53 pm PST

    [ Bad news ]: There was a fun errr.. exploit earlier that resulted in the compromise of the forums.

    [ Worse news ]: Updating to IB version 3.1.2a -> 3.1.3 -> 3.1.4 -> 3.1.5 broke all the post bodies and made a bunch of modules inoperative.

    [ Worst news ]: Lost much of the old post data and the backups were corrupted. Yay.

    [ Good news ]: Moving over to phpBB which doesn't suck as bad as Ikonboard. Plus we needed to do this anyways to move all the post data onto a real database. Actually, this was loooong overdue so it turned out to be a good thing. Watching the load on the server spike every time anyone did anything on the board sucked. Also , half of IB's functions didn't work properly like thread moving and the shutoff function for maintenance. It was pretty broken actually. Did I mention Ikonboard sorta sucks? Apologies for the pain in the ass cutover... I know this is transition isn't going to be fun(initially).

    New URL: Here.

    EDIT: If phpBB complains about some email function when registering, just ignore it. I haven't setup the relay properly yet. You should be able to login still.
    Notice how there's no info out there on transitioning TO Ikonboard?
    -JP

    January 28, 2007 - 9:00 pm PST

    Surprise, surprise. I've been patrolling the all 2fort server this past weekend. Amazingly, there were only a handful of bans and one of them came from some guy that just asked for it. I told him he'd be banished forever but he seemed insistent on the ban. Freak. Anyways, nothing new to report in the world of TFC or NS. Can't believe it's been 7 years...
    I miss when they used to let you resupply at the enemy respawn in well. That was sweet.
    -JP

    Flashback to the year: 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001